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The Borrowed Dead

A fantasy trilogy set in Antwerp

The Borrowed Dead starts in Antwerp, in the rain. Bram clears out the flats of the dead for a living: the rooms nobody came for, the boxes down four flights, the van. Then he wakes up with a dead stranger's family inked on his body, and the worst week of his life begins.

The city in the books

This is the working city, not the postcard one. The rooms Bram empties, the bar where it starts, the river, and the port that never stops. Every place below is on the map of the Keeping.

Through the glass

The marks open onto other times, and the first is close to home: a Flemish valley in 1623, going under the water, with a church tower drowned and a family of dead who were not all let go cleanly. From there the story runs between that valley and the living city, and in its last book forward to the Library.

Antwerp in the books

The Vestibule The neutral order at the city's edge. They neither keep nor take. They study the door, channel energy, and broker passage for a toll of self. The Bar A low room with the light the colour of weak tea. Where a dying stranger bought Bram a drink and laid a whole family on his skin. The Flats of the Dead Twelve years of rooms where people died alone. Sell, skip, scrub. The work that taught Bram not to look. The Scheldt The cold river through Antwerp, running to the sea. Water keeps, in its own way, and the city's dead were always near it. The Flat Bram's rooms in Antwerp, and the foxed mirror that came with them, screwed to the hall wall a hand too high. It is where he first reads the family on his own skin. The Port The machine north of the city: cranes, container stacks, the reverse-beep of something backing up in the dark. It drones under every night of Bram's worst week, and it does not stop for anyone. Noor's Kitchen The warm room where the kettle lives, and the one place in the city that has always been safe. Until a courteous woman sits down in its warmest corner and makes Bram an offer. The Dock-Cut Footbridge An iron footbridge over the old dock cut, where the new flats give out and the brick goes black. Lean on its rail long enough and a mill comes up under your hands, its wheel turning the water white, and with it the man who kept the lock below.

The Borrowed Dead

  1. The Names I Woke With Book One of The Borrowed Dead · Out now Can he keep the dead he never agreed to carry?
  2. The Greying Book Two of The Borrowed Dead · Out now What does it cost to bring a name back?
  3. The Freed Book Three of The Borrowed Dead · Out now Can the dead be freed without being lost?