Mooncussers by Eli Brown

A wild, dark fantasy-adventure sequel to ODDITY, in which Clover and her friends face a new danger: the ravenous Underking.
Despite Clover's victory over the Seamstress, war continues to rage between the fledgling United States and Napoleon Bonaparte. Clover and Nessa join the Women's Service League expecting to dole out soup and socks to invalids and orphans. Instead they're tasked with rooting out the last of the pestilential Vermin-vicious creatures animated by magic, which have been terrorizing the countryside. But when the group is attacked by a new kind of monster-a sharp-toothed harehound with bloodshot eyes-they discover a much greater threat: the grotesque Underking and his army of twisted creatures. With the help of a Paper-Doll Witch, an elegantly dressed skeleton and Susanna the bad-tempered Doll, Clover and Nessa must defeat the Underking before he conquers the whole land.

Eli Brown is a Yaddo fellow with an MFA in creative writing from Mills College. His acclaimed adult novel, Cinnamon and Gunpowder, was a finalist for the California Book Prize, a San Francisco Public Library One-City One-Book selection, and an NPR Book Review Staff Pick. This is Eli's second children's novel. He lives in California.

Jacket illustration by the American artist Teagan White.

Interior illustrations by Karin Rytter, including specially commissioned linocuts of the Oddities themselves. Karin is a Scandinavian printmaker and illustrator living in Denmark.