The Palace of Curiosities

By Rosie Garland

2013

First Published

3.43

Average Rating

326

Number of Pages

9H57M

Audio Length

Before Eve is born, her mother goes to the circus. She buys a penny twist of coloured sugar and settles down to watch the heart-stopping main attraction: a lion, billed as a monster from the savage heart of Africa, forged in the heat of a merciless sun. Mama swears she hears the lion sigh, just before it leaps...and when Eve is born, the story goes, she didn't cry - she meowed and licked her paws. When Abel is pulled from the stinking Thames, the mudlarks are sure he is long dead. As they search his pockets to divvy up the treasure, his eyes crack open and he coughs up a stream of black water. But how has he survived a week in that thick stew of human waste? Cast out by Victorian society, Eve and Abel find succour from an unlikely source. They will become The Lion Faced Girl and The Flayed Man, star performers in Professor Josiah Arroner's Palace of Curiosities. And there begins a journey that will entwine their fates forever.

Avg Rating

3.43

Number of Ratings

1,303

5 STARS

17%

4 STARS

30%

3 STARS

35%

2 STARS

13%

1 STARS

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Author

Rosie Garland

Author · 7 books

Born in London to a runaway teenager, Rosie has always been a cuckoo in the nest. She's an eclectic writer and performer, ranging from singing in post-punk gothic band The March Violets, through touring with the Subversive Stitch exhibition in the 90s to her alter-ego Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen, cabaret chanteuse and mistress of ceremonies. She has published five solo collections of poetry and her award-winning short stories, poems and essays have been widely anthologized. She is winner of the DaDa Award for Performance Artist of the Year and a Poetry Award from the People's Café, New York. Her most recent poetry collection, 'Everything Must Go' (Holland Park Press 2012) draws on her experience of throat cancer. She won the Mslexia Novel competition in 2012 and her debut novel 'The Palace of Curiosities' was published in March 2013 by HarperCollins. Her second novel, 'Vixen', (Borough Press 2014) is now available in all formats.