The Quick and the Dead : A queer historical fantasy of thieves, secrets and dangerous alchemy in Elizabethan England

Author: Hinds, Emma

Historical fiction

Published on 3 July 2025 by Bedford Square Publishers in the United Kingdom.

Paperback / softback | 368 pages
197 x 130 x 25 | 248g

'Vividly told, with powerfully drawn characters, this tale of obsession and betrayal set in the dark world of Tudor alchemy will cast its spell over historical fiction fans.' HeatIt is 1597 and Kit Skevy and Mariner Elgin have just robbed the wrong grave.

They are young criminals in the pocket of a gang Lord named Will Twentyman, the Grave Eorl of Southwark. Mariner is the best cutpurse around, a strange Calvinist girl who dresses like a boy and is partner in crime to Kit Skevy, Southwark's best brawler who carries a secret: he cannot feel pain.

When caught out in their unfortunate larceny, Kit is kidnapped by the menacing alchemist Lord Isherwood (a man who will stop at nothing to achieve his hopes for the Red Lion elixir) and his studious son, Lazarus Isherwood, with whom Kit develops a complicated intrigue. When Mariner enlists the help of a competing French alchemist, Lady Elody Blackwater, Mariner and Kit are thrust into the shadowed, political world of Tudor alchemy, testing both their friendship and their lives.

It matters not who you are born to... but where you are made!