The Library of the Dead

Ropa is a teenage ghostalker in Edinburgh, a city that has fallen on hard times since a calamity long ago. Scotland is now a place of slums and scarce fuel, and mediums work under licence. Ropa dropped out of school to pass messages between the dead and the living, though the money barely keeps her family afloat.

A ghost approaches her with a request: find his missing child. Ropa soon learns the disappearance is one of several. Children are being bewitched, and the ones who turn up again have lost their joy and their vitality.

She brings Zimbabwean magic and Scottish pragmatism to the search. The trail leads her to an occult library hidden somewhere in the city, and along the way she gathers a few allies she did not expect.

The book is urban fantasy built around a missing-children mystery, and it opens the Edinburgh Nights series. Each step toward the answer puts Ropa in more danger, until the question is whether she will be the one hunted.