John Salonia

The Amazingly Improbable Yet Incontrovertibly Factual Adventures of Shemlard Shoreditch and Pickles the Wonder Pig John Salonia

Publisher Marketing: SORCERY AND SKULLDUGGERY IN STEAMPUNK LONDON! The Hound of the Baskervilles - the Sussex Vampire - the Devil's Foot - Sherlock Holmes, the world's first Consulting Detective, brilliantly solved these mysteries. In doing so, he proved that human villainy was behind them all instead of dark magic, for Holmes never admitted the existence of the supernatural. But what about cases in which there is no possible explanation except the powers of hell? When the bounds of nature are shattered by the incursion of dark powers, the only resource left is Shemlard Shoreditch, the world's first Consulting Ritual Necrochemanthroposophist! Aided by his trusted friend and associate Pickles (a cloven-footed Watson), Shemlard remains ready to confront and confound the demons of the Pit. When they are called upon to find a missing country rector who is meddling with infernal forces, Shemlard and Pickles face the greatest menace of their lives, against which the combined might of earth's ten Supreme Magicians cannot prevail. The hunters quickly become the hunted when the ruthless Baron Sameguma evolves a scheme to gain godlike powers - which he'll use to transform the earth into his personal hunting preserve. Sometimes aided by a gorgeous but duplicitous sorceress, who has an agenda of her own, and attacked by the vanguards of hell, Shemlard must crack the ancient code of the archimages of Atlantis to prevent the Earth's takeover by a self-created god. But even with all the secret knowledge of the dead at his fingertips, Shemlard doesn't know the identity of the ultimate threat. And this is a case when lacking even a single detail might well prove lethal. . . Fasten your seatbelt and hang onto your hat for this wild and crazy mash-up of H. P. Lovecraft, M. R. James and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, with liberal splashes of Edgar Allan Poe, Gilbert & Sullivan, Lewis Carroll and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" to spice the zany brew. You'll never think of Victorians as stuffy old fuddy-duddies again. . .