The Bone Mill

The Potteries, 1829. It's a harsh world and nowhere is it harsher than at the Bone Mill. This is where animal bones are ground down to make into fine china. It's a stinking world of fetid carcases, clanking machinery and tough men. This is Joseph Ryder's world.

 A teenage orphan, Joseph ekes out a hand-to-mouth living one step ahead of the workhouse, spending his few extra coppers trying to contact his dead mother through his landlady and medium, Gerda.

 When his foreman, Sewell, offers him a chance to earn a few extra shillings, Joseph jumps at the chance and soon finds himself dragged into a deadly sideline business involving the House of Recovery and the slimy local anatomist, Mr Furness. But not everybody is as they seem and Joseph soon finds himself embroiled in a life of crime from which there seems to be no escape.

 The Bone Mill is a novel only for those with a robust constitution.