Available Formats
Paperback
Published: 29th July 2025
Hardback
Published: 26th August 2025
Paperback
Published: 12th February 2025
The Quick and the Dead
By (Author) Emma Hinds
Bedford Square Publishers
Bedford Square Publishers
12th February 2025
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Magic, alchemy and hermetic thought
Historical adventure fiction
Metaphysical / philosophical fiction
Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary
Classic fiction: general and literary
Historical crime and mysteries
823.92
Paperback
368
Width 153mm, Height 234mm
It matters not who you are born to but where you are made.
It is 1597 and Kit Skevy and Mariner Elgin have just robbed the wrong grave.
The two are unusual criminals in the pocket of a gang Lord named Will Twentyman, the Grave Eorl of Southwark. Mariner is the best cutpurse around, a strange Calvinist girl who dresses like a boy and is partner in crime to Kit Skevy, Southwark's best brawler who carries a secret: he cannot feel pain.
When caught out in their unfortunate larceny, Kit is kidnapped by the threatening alchemist Lord Isherwood (a man who will stop at nothing to achieve his hopes for the Red Lion elixir) and his studious son, Lazarus Isherwood, with whom Kit develops a complicated intrigue. When Mariner enlists the help of a competing French alchemist, Lady Elody Blackwater, Mariner and Kit are thrust into the shadowed, political world of Tudor alchemy.
Emma is a queer playwright living in Manchester with a focus on telling untold feminist narratives. Her latest play, PURE, was featured in Turn On festival at Hope Mill Theatre Manchester and she was the recipient of the Artist Development grant. She has written an essay published in Tarantino and Theology with Gray Matter Books, and her book Ineffable Love: Christian Themes in Good Omens was published by Darton Longman & Todd.