The Lunatic's Curse (34 page)

Since his father disappeared, Pin Carpue has lived alone

in the dismal city of Urbs Umida. Then he meets the

Bone Magician – a man who can make the dead speak – and

Pin is drawn into a mysterious world of illusion and deceit . . .

A foul tale of
DEATH
and
REVENGE!

THE PLACE:
Grim and gruesome Withypitts Hall.

THE HERO:
Hector Fitzbaudly – a boy

with revenge on his mind.

THE VILLAIN:
A story FULL of villainous rogues . . .

but pay attention to the GHASTLY glass-eyed fiend

known only as the Eyeball Collector.

Another poisonously brilliant adventure from the

dark imagination of F. E. Higgins.

TALES FROM THE SINISTER CITY

Prodigious praise for the writing of F. E. Higgins:

‘Atmospheric, suspenseful and cleverly written with a love of unusual words (“gibbous”, “crepitate”), it is not for the faint-hearted’
Sunday Times

‘Young readers with a taste for the macabre will find it deliciously scary’
Observer

‘Writing so atmospheric that the fumes from the noxious River Foedus seem to seep off the page and swirl round the reader’
Telegraph

‘If you can imagine Terry Pratchett’s
Discworld
rewritten by a junior James Joyce you might get an impression of the playfulness, drama and disgust of Higgins’s created world’
The Times

‘A deliciously rich mix of Gothic nastiness . . . and black humour . . . Higgins’s prose has terrific verve, with glittering descriptive flashes’
Guardian

‘Gruesome, assured storytelling’
Evening Standard

‘[A] deliciously dark and satisfying experience’
Stirling Observer

More twisted tales by F. E. Higgins

The Black Book of Secrets

The Bone Magicain

The Eyeball Collector

Delve further into the dark underworld of
The Sinister City . . .

www.fehiggins.com

To Patricia
et
Gulielmus
A posse ad esse

Excerpt from
ON MADNESS

Look well behind and to your front

Look always to the side

For madness creeps on soft-soled shoes

Dark-suited and wild-eyed

With hairy palms and pigeon-toes

And fingers splayed so wide

Beware, I say! Beware! Beware!

Or reader, woe betide!

Beag Hickory

First published 2010 by Macmillan Children’s Books

This electronic edition published 2010 by Macmillan Children’s Books
a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-0-230-75287-0 PDF
ISBN 978-0-230-75286-3 EPUB

Copyright © F. E. Higgins 2010

The right of F. E. Higgins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital,
optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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