Ordinary Monsters

The Talents, Book 1

By: J M Miro

Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe

Length: 25 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

Bloomsbury presents Ordinary Monsters by J M Miro, read by Ben Onwukwe.

The first in a captivating new historical fantasy series, Ordinary Monsters introduces the Talents with a catastrophic vision of the Victorian world, and the gifted, broken children who must save it.

There in the shadows was a figure in a cloak, at the bottom of the cobblestone stair, and it turned and stared up at them as still and unmoving as a pillar of darkness, but it had no face, only smoke....

1882. North of Edinburgh, on the edge of an isolated loch, lies an institution of crumbling stone, where a strange doctor collects orphans with unusual abilities. In London, two children with such powers are hunted by a figure of darkness—a man made of smoke.

Charlie Ovid discovers a gift for healing himself through a brutal upbringing in Mississippi, while Marlowe, a foundling from a railway freight, glows with a strange bluish light. When two grizzled detectives are recruited to escort them north to safety, they are confronted by a sinister, dangerous force that threatens to upend the world as they know it.

What follows is a journey from the gaslit streets of London to the lochs of Scotland, where other gifted children—the Talents—have been gathered at Cairndale Institute, and the realms of the dead and the living collide. As secrets within the Institute unfurl, Marlowe, Charlie and the rest of the Talents will discover the truth about their abilities and the nature of the force that is stalking them: that the worst monsters sometimes come bearing the sweetest gifts.

©2022 Ides of March Creative Inc. (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Ordinary Monsters is a towering achievement: a dazzling mountain of wild invention, Dickensian eccentrics, supernatural horrors and gripping suspense. Be warned...once you step into this penny dreadful to end all penny dreadfuls, you'll never want to leave." (Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Heart-Shaped Box)

"From the very first page, you're pulled into a world of hope and fear, dark and light, the known and the unimaginable. A world that is equal parts magic and pain. Readers should prepare themselves: there's nothing ordinary about Ordinary Monsters." (Alma Katsu, author of The Fervor and Hunger)