Everyone loves chibi, the newest, hottest manga style out of Asia. Chibis—characters that range from hypercute miniature people to bizarrely furry characters—come in all varieties, all roles, including chibi teenagers, faeries, schoolgirls, nurses, mermaids, devils, angels, and everything in between.
In 1860, Alexander Ferguson, a newly ordained vicar and amateur evolutionary scientist, takes up his new parish, a poor, isolated patch on the remote Scottish island of Harris. He hopes to uncover the truth behind the legend of the selkies mermaids or seal people who have been sighted off the north of Scotland for centuries. He has a more personal motive, too; family legend states that Alexander is descended from seal men.
Fourteen-year-old Luce has had a tough life, but she reaches the depths of despair when she is assaulted and left on the cliffs outside a grim Alaskan fishing village. She expects to die when she tumbles into the icy waves below but instead undergoes an astonishing transformation: she becomes a mermaid. A tribe of mermaids finds Luce and welcomes her in. All of them, like her, are lost girls who surrendered their humanity in the darkest moments of their lives.
You always remember the first time. Isn't that what they say about sex? How much more true it is of murder... Up till now, the only serial killers Tony Hill had encountered were safely behind bars. This one's different -- this one's on the loose. In the northern town of Bradfield four men have been found mutilated and tortured. Fear grips the city; no man feels safe.
It's September 1811. Death stalks the sons of Regency England's most powerful families. Partially butchered, with strange objects stuffed in their mouths, the bodies are found dumped in public places at dawn. When the grisly remains of the eldest son of Alfred, Lord Stanton, are discovered in Old Palace Yard beside the House of Lords, local magistrate Sir Henry Lovejoy turns to Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, for help.
