HERE LIES KNOWLEDGE. POWER. GLORY. LOVE.

'Devilishly macabre … As dark as a midnight graveyard' PATRICE McDONOUGH

'Hauntingly gothic, intimately told, and wickedly, wonderfully grotesque' MARIELLE THOMPSON

In this decadent, twisty debut novel, a young medical student is lured into the illicit underworld of body snatching in 19th-century Edinburgh … and unexpectedly falls in love.

1828. Naïve but determined James Willoughby has abandoned his sheltered life at Oxford to pursue a lifelong dream of studying surgery in Edinburgh. A shining beacon of medical discovery in the age of New Enlightenment, Scotland's leading university offers everything James desires—except the chance to work on a human cadaver. For that, he needs to join one of the private schools in Surgeon’s Square, at a cost he cannot afford. In desperation, he strikes a deal with Nye MacKinnon, a dashing young dissectionist with an artist’s eye for anatomy and a reckless passion for knowledge. Nye promises to help James gain the surgical experience he craves—by inviting him into the illicit world of body snatching.

Intoxicated by Nye and his noble mission, James rapidly descends into the underground ranks of the Resurrectionists—the grave robbers infamous for stealing fresh corpses from churchyards to be used as anatomical specimens. Before he knows it, James is caught up in a life-or-death scheme as rival gangs of snatchers compete in a morbid race for power and prestige. And as they lock eyes across graves and dissection tables, it doesn’t take James and Nye long to realise that they yearn to be more than partners in academic crime …

Queer romance, true crime, and dark academia intertwine in this thrilling tale of love, murder, and the grisly origins of modern medicine.

'A macabre gothic mystery … a sensitive coming-of-age tale and a touching queer romance' firstCLUE

'With wit as sharp as a scalpel … A thrilling debut that will have readers turning pages deep into the night' HESTER FOX

'Expertly captures … the dark and twisted depths that are the byproducts of progress' ANNA LEE HUBER