A Scattering of Jades

A nineteenth-century New York City reporter must rescue his long-lost daughter from a destructive god in this award-winning historical fantasy adventure. 

Locus Award winner for Best First Novel

Crawford Award winner for Best First Fantasy Novel, IAFA

International Horror Guild Award winner for Best First Novel

“Boisterously imagined and vividly written. Irvine’s debut novel has everything a reader could hope for—adventure, magic, villainy, and caves. . . . One wild ride.” —Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times–bestselling author of Booth

Haunted by the loss of his family in the 1835 Great Fire of New York, journalist Archie Prescott is barely hanging on. Every day is a struggle not to crawl into a bottle and give up. Then, seven years after the fire, a new Aztec Mummy attraction at P. T. Barnum’s American Museum comes horrifically to life, and Archie learns that his daughter Jane survived the fire . . . but is marked to be a sacrifice that will bring an ancient dark conspiracy to fruition.

Meanwhile in Kentucky, enslaved cave guide Stephen Bishop agonizes over an impossible decision. He discovered the mummy during his explorations, and was the first to sense the vast power it wields, as it tempted him with a terrible bargain: a world in which he can be free, in return for the sacrifice of just one little girl . . .

Hunting the man who has his daughter, and hunted himself by the avatar of an Aztec god, Archie must race across the country and descend into the darkness for a final battle to save his daughter, and perhaps all of humanity. 

“This is not merely a stunning debut novel; it is one of the best magic historicals I have ever read.” —James Patrick Kelly, Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of Think Like a Dinosaur

“A strange and dark and wonderful novel that comes to the reader like some weird and spicy jambalaya engaging all the senses. With its cast of the quirky and grotesque, not to mention its shadowy historical conspiracies. . . . This one’s a keeper.” —Charles de Lint, World Fantasy Award–winning author of Forests of the Heart

“Brilliant, the best kind of Hidden History novel (and an impressive first novel at that). I was reminded of the work of Tim Powers, especially in the way Mr. Irvine so compellingly underpins the everyday events of the world with magic and fantastic events, and makes it all somehow plausible.” —Kage Baker, Nebula Award–winning author of The Graveyard Game