The Lost Property Office: A Wickmarsh Fantasy, Book One (The Wickmarsh Books 1)

A thing arrives at the Lost Property Office when somebody has let go of it. Not when they drop it. Not when they mislay it. When they stop holding on. That is the whole rule, and there is not another one. Wickmarsh is 900 people on stilts over a tidal marsh. There are no roads, only plank-walks, and the water comes under the floorboards twice a day. Mrs. Odderly at the bakery has tusks and is vain about them. Postmaster Quill is nine feet tall and leaves your bread on the step. And the Pell family sleep from the first frost until the spring, and the whole town plans around it. Bit Halloran is 11 and runs the counter at the shop where lost things turn up on their own. Most of it is boots. Forty things a week come over that counter and nearly all of them go back out inside a fortnight — a woman who put a jar of buttons down on Monday and wants them by Thursday, a boy who let go of his trombone mid-scale and thought better of it. Then three things arrive that nobody comes for. A gold ring, worn thin, that has not been reported by anybody in a town where everybody knows everybody. A dog collar with nothing written on the name plate. And a boy’s coat that comes back a second time — which should not be possible, because you cannot let go of a thing twice. A cozy fantasy for readers 9–12: A magic system with one rule, explained in six lines No villain, no chosen one, no prophecy, nobody with a secret Neighbours who are not human, and nobody remarks on it A heroine whose job is not finding things — it is working out whether somebody is ready Nothing a parent needs to preview The Lost Property Office is the first of six. Every one is a complete story and they may be read in any order.