The Return of the Discontinued Man

A Burton & Swinburne Adventure

Mark Hodder

370 pp • ISBN: 978-1-61614-905-5
Trade Paperback • $18.00
July 2014
Cover Illustration: ©Jon Sullivan

Explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton and poet Algernon Swinburne return in a new series of wildly imaginative steampunk adventures.

SPRING HEELED JACK IS JUMPING BACK!

It's 9 p.m. on February 15, 1860, and Charles Babbage, the British Empire's most brilliant scientist, performs an experiment. Within moments, blood red snow falls from the sky and Spring Heeled Jack pops out of thin air in London's Leicester Square. Though utterly disoriented and apparently insane, the strange creature is intent on one thing: hunting Sir Richard Francis Burton!

Spring Heeled Jack isn't alone in his mental confusion. Burton can hardly function; he's experiencing one hallucination after another-visions of parallel realities and future history. Someone, or something, is trying to tell him about…what?

When the revelation comes, it sends Burton and his companions on an expedition even the great explorer could never have imagined-a voyage through time itself into a twisted future where steam technology has made a resurgence and a despotic intelligence rules over the British Empire!


Reviews

Praise for The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi:

"Serious literary fun as Mark Hodder vaults to the front of the
new steampunk writers pack…. Hard to imagine any lover of alternate
British empires not being thoroughly amazed and entertained."
-K. W. Jeter, author ofInfernal Devices

"Set in a universe that parallels the one depicted in the previous trilogy, this outing leaves the door open for exploring a new dimension as Hodder develops more adventures. Steampunk aficionados and series fans should enjoy this."
- Library Journal