SMOKE is a gripping tale that bridges commercial, literary and genre fiction - a sweeping epic with the thrilling edge of The Secret History or The Passage and the magic of Philip Pullman's 'Dark Materials' trilogy or Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. SMOKE opens in a private boarding school near Oxford, but history has not followed the path known to us. In this other past, sin is a physical attribute, visible to all, and children are born carrying the seeds of evil within them. It is in this school, surrounded by the sons of the wealthy and well-connected, that two boys called Thomas and Charlie discover that the world of smoke, soot and ash is not as it seems, for sin has a secret history, and virtue a politics both intricate and murderous. The two boys soon leave the confines of the school to enter into a struggle for the very soul of their nation. But will their own souls survive unscathed?