The Contrary Tale of the Butterfly Girl

Two orphans, Pedrock and Boo Boo, are sent to live in the sinister village of Darkwound, where they befriend the magical, dangerous Mr. Loveheart and his neighbor, the reclusive Professor Hummingbird, a collector of rare butterflies. When the demon Mr. Angelcakes visits Boo Boo one night and carves a butterfly onto her back, she begins metamorphosing into a butterfly-human hybrid, and is kidnapped by Hummingbird before anyone can stop it.

Loveheart's attempt to rescue her, with the help of Detective White and Constable Walnut, pulls all of them into a plot far wider and darker than any of them expected, one that stretches all the way to the Prime Minister and Queen Victoria herself. A blackly funny, Alice-in-Wonderland-gone-to-hell Victorian fantasy, and the second book in the Peculiar Adventures of John Loveheart series.