Little Bones

London, 1899. A young girl is abandoned by her feckless family and finds lodging and work assisting a doctor. But Jane Stretch is no ordinary girl, and Mr Swift is no ordinary medica Jane does her best to keep up with the doctor, her twisted bones throbbing, as they hurry past the markets, stage doors and side shows to appointments in certain boarding houses across town. The young actresses who live there have problems, and Mr Swift does what is required, calmly and discreetly. Grateful to her benefactor and his wife, Jane assists him and asks no questions u the desperate young women not minding that it is a cripple girl who wipes their browsa When this unlikely pair become involved with a rakish music hall star, Johnny Treble, who calls on Swift's help without his rich mistress's knowledge, and when the doctor's visits to The Cock start to befuddle his thinking, Jane is certain that her spell of good fortune cannot last. When the police come knocking u how will the doctor explain the absence of his medical certificates? How will they explain their connection to Treble's sudden death? And how will Jane argue her innocence? Suddenly, it seems that no amount of wand waving will make their problems disappear. In her tantalising new novel set in a tawdry and troubled world, Janette Jenkins exposes the moral conflicts that emerge when people are forced to act against their consciences in an effort to get by and asks whether it is ever possible to commit abhorrent acts without being corrupted by them.