Staff Pick
The Bedlam Stacks is a strange and enchanting slow-build tale that moves at the pace of its damaged protagonist. Merrick Tremayne was once a formidable adventurer and smuggler for the East India Company before an accident left him a shadow of his former self. When his old boss appears one day with an assignment that will end Merrick’s financial troubles and once again give him purpose, Merrick takes the job. There were times when I wondered how the hero would be able to complete his mission, or even survive. I shouldn’t have worried; Merrick is the right man for the job not only because of what he once was, but because of who he has become. I had to find out what happened, yet at the same time I didn’t want the story to end. The Bedlam Stacks has a permanent home on my "all-time favorites" shelf. Recommended By Steph C., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Now in paperback, Natasha Pulley's "witty, entrancing novel . . . burnishes her reputation as a gifted storyteller" (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
In 1859, ex-East India Company smuggler Merrick Tremayne is trapped at home in Cornwall with an injury that almost cost him his leg. When the India Office recruits him for an expedition to fetch quinine--essential for the treatment of malaria--from deep within Peru, he knows it's a terrible idea; nearly every able-bodied expeditionary who's made the attempt has died, and he can barely walk. But Merrick is eager to escape the strange events plaguing his family's crumbling estate, so he sets off, against his better judgment, for the edge of the Amazon.
There he meets Raphael, a priest around whom the villagers spin unsettling stories of impossible disappearances, cursed woods, and living stone. Merrick must separate truth from fairy tale, and gradually he realizes that Raphael is the key to a legacy left by generations of Tremayne explorers before him, one which will prove more valuable than quinine, and far more dangerous.