The Waxwright's Daughters

About this book

In the free city of Hesk, the dead hold office until their successors take the hand of their wax likeness. The Sallows of Hollin Street have made those likenesses for two hundred years. In the summer of 388, Nell, a foundling apprentice with burned fingers, helps take a dead Provost's face while the grey fever spreads through the city towards the house she loves. In the autumn of 435, her world's last waxwrights are given thirty days before the Gallery is melted into poorhouse candles. Seventeen-year-old Wren Sallow and her cousins have to empty it under guard, and a rival chandler is challenging the one thing that could save it: the family's claim that Sallow blood has never failed. Two girls, forty-seven years apart, learn what a name is worth, and what it costs to keep one.