Envoy of the Black Pine

Synopsis

It is April 1807, and a storm gathers over the Atlantic. It sweeps across the lower half of England, bringing snow and thaw and flood, and on to the North Sea, the Baltic and Russia, leaving devastation in its wake. In the drowned valley of Little Slaughter, a miniature library has been lost, and Whilbert Stroop, missing-persons finder, has been asked to locate it. His search will lead him, and the small family he's adopted as his own, on to the east, where the island archipelago of Saareema has been beset by animal mutilation, piracy, and murder. Stroop must unravel the increasingly tangled strands of past and present, where people expelled long ago are coming home. He will discover a secret world of tree-chapels, ancestral boulders, and the ancient art of ink - and with it, a more sinister scenario of intrigue, insurrection and death.