The Etiquette of Voles

Life is lonely in Queen Victoria’s London, especially for a talking vole. Chains may be the equal of any human detective, but there’s one case he can’t solve: where he came from and why he can speak.

Luckily, he has the help of Eldridge, the retired investigator he lives with. Their latest job-a shipload of missing fish destined for experimentation-might provide some needed answers. But when Eldridge is kidnapped, Chains is left without sanctuary at a time he badly needs friends. Especially with profiteers, scientists, and pirates from London’s mad scientific underbelly after his hide.

The more clues Chains unearths, the more certain he is that finding Eldridge will also unlock the mystery of how Chains originally came to be, and might even offer him a place to truly belong. But someone he thought he could trust doesn’t want that to happen. A talking vole may offer a significant breakthrough, but a silenced one is preferred.

Karen B. McCoy is an author, librarian, and tea enthusiast. She maintains a blog, The Writer Librarian, where she interviews other authors. She has also reviewed books for Library Journal and Children’s Literature, wrote a feature article for School Library Journal and contributed a chapter to Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. She currently lives in Northern California with her husband and two very opinionated cats. This is her first published novel. Lena has been drawing since childhood and filled her school notebooks with doodles. But life took me Lena in other directions, and she stopped drawing for many years. She moved to beautiful British Columbia from Saint-Petersburg, Russia, in 2017, and was so inspired by that beautiful place that she started drawing again and fell in love with art even more and in a completely different way. She loves spending her creative days inventing characters and worlds for them. She’s addicted to children’s book illustrations and loves to give warmth and joy to children through her illustrations.