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A brilliant young police officer discovers a series of bizarre deaths are connected to the cargo of a research vessel bound for Kew Gardens in this fantasy-tinged historical thriller set in early nineteenth-century London.
London 1812. On a dull, gray June morning, the Solander, a ship containing breathtaking plants and natural specimens brought back from Tahiti for the Royal Gardens at Kew, slowly pulls into dock under the watchful eyes of London denizens.
The apparently successful expedition soon takes on a horrid - and inexplicable - turn: the crew of the Solander starts dying one by one. Thames River Police Chief Charles Horton can find no signs of murder or suicide to explain the deaths, and the ship's surviving crew, which has made a pact to remain tight-lipped about its voyage, further hampers his investigation. Meanwhile, one of the specimens begins to show frightening changes, forcing Horton to wonder just how "natural" they might be…
Tahiti 1769. English sailors arrive on the shores of the French Polynesian paradise - a place of breathtaking natural beauty where magic and ancient myths are alive and well. The island nirvana, however, soon starts to disintegrate as the explorers devastate the land with disease, death, and war. But what they carry back with them aboard the Solander fifty years later is far deadlier - and it is in the hands of Charles Horton to determine exactly what it is and how it might be stopped.
Lloyd Shepherd, the highly praised author of The English Monster, takes you into the bustling heart of the British Empire, where there seems to be no limit to what England will conquer. But what England took from Tahiti will come at a high price, one that will descend like a curse on the very soul of the London docks.
"Starred Review. Memorable prose, tight plotting, and complex characters... Shepherd's use of the present tense lends an intimate immediacy to the action." - Publishers Weekly
"If you like Regency suspense with historical figures and fantastic horticulture - or you're simply a fan of clever writing...[Shepherd] delivers the goods." - Kirkus
"A spirited evocation of an era when roving botanists could also be blithe sexual predators, and 'savages' could be both admired and exploited... Georgian London is vividly brought to life...A gutsy, involving yarn." - The Guardian (UK)
"Shepherd adroitly blurs fact and fiction with a hint of the fantastic, creating his own superior blend of historical crime fiction." - The Financial Times
"I loved it. Very stylish, very ingenious, and very well written." - Joanne Harris
This information about The Poisoned Island was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Paul Clarke
Lloyd Shepherd has worked for the past twelve years as a senior executive in the Internet business, holding senior management positions at Yahoo, the Guardian, Channel 4 and the BBC. Before his online career, Lloyd was a journalist covering the film and TV business for the likes of Financial Times and Variety. The English Monster is his first novel.
Pony Confidential
by Christina Lynch
In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.
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