London, 1861.

Sir Richard Francis Burton—explorer, linguist, scholar, and swordsman; his reputation tarnished; his career in tatters; his former partner missing and probably dead.

Algernon Charles Swinburne—unsuccessful poet and follower of de Sade; for whom pain is pleasure, and brandy is ruin!

They stand at a crossroads in their lives and are caught in the epicenter of an empire torn by conflicting forces: Engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier, and dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labor; Libertines oppose repressive laws and demand a society based on beauty and creativity; while the Rakes push the boundaries of human behavior to the limits with magic, drugs, and anarchy.

The two men are sucked into the perilous depths of this moral and ethical vacuum when Lord Palmerston commissions Burton to investigate assaults on young women committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack, and to find out why werewolves are terrorizing London's East End.

Their investigations lead them to one of the defining events of the age, and the terrifying possibility that the world they inhabit shouldn't exist at all!

Sir Roger Tichborne: Lost at sea but now he's back to claim his family's fortune. Or is he? To the upper classes, he's obviously a cunning swindler; to London's laborers, he's the people's hero...while to Sir Richard Burton, he's the focus of a daring plot to gain possession of the legendary black diamonds known as the Eyes of the Naga. Burton's investigation takes him to the cursed Tichborne estate...and to an encounter with the ghost of a witch!

From a haunted mansion to the rioting streets of London, from South America to Australia, from an astonishing jewel heist to a possible revolution, Burton and Swinburne confront mysterious and deadly forces as they struggle to expose a conspiracy that threatens to topple the British Empire.

Their investigation leads them to a stunning finale in which they battle the dead, confront the un-born, and peer into the prehistoric past and the war-torn future.

Back to where the adventure began: It is 1863, but not the one it should be. Time has veered wildly off course, and moves are being made that will lead to a devastating world war. Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, believes that by possessing the three Eyes of Naga he’ll be able to manipulate events and avoid the war. He already has two of the stones, but he needs Sir Richard Burton to recover the third. For the king's agent, it's a chance to return to the Mountains of the Moon to make a second attempt at locating the source of the Nile. But a rival expedition led by John Hanning Speke stands in his way, threatening a confrontation that could ignite the very war that Palmerston is trying to avoid!

Caught in a tangled web of cause, effect, and inevitability, little does Burton realize that the stakes are far higher than even he suspects. A final confrontation comes in London, where, in the year 1840, Burton must face the man responsible for altering time - Spring Heeled Jack!

Burton and Swinburne’s third adventure completes the three-volume story arc begun in The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack and The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man.

The Beast is coming. History will be remade.

Since th assassination of Queen Victoria in 1840, a cabal of prominent men - including King George V, HRH Prince Albert, Benjamin Disraeli, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel - has received guidance from the Afterlife. The spirit of a dead mystic, Abdu El Yezdi, has helped them to steer the empire into a period of unprecedented peace and creativity.

But on the eve of a groundbreaking alliance with the newly formed Greater German Confederation, scientists, surgeons, and engineers are being abducted - including Brunel! The government, in search of answers, turns to the Afterlife, only to find that Abdu El Yezdi is now refusing to speak with the living.

Enter the newly-knighted Sir Richard Francis Burton, fresh from his discovery of the source of the Nile. Appointed the king's agent, he must trace the missing luminaries and solve the mystery of Abdu El Yezdi's silence.

But the Beast has been summoned. How can the famous explorer fulfill his mission when his friends and loved ones are being picked off, one by one, by what appears to be a supernatural entity-by, perhaps, Abdu El Yezdi himself?

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!

Time is twisted, worlds are changed, and fates are intertwined in this thrilling final chapter of the Burton & Swinburne Adventures from Philip K. Dick Award-winning author Mark Hodder.

In 1890 the renowned adventurer and explorer Sir Richard Burton could sense his impending death…

Until he was suddenly alive, young and strong in the year 1864—a past that he remembers well, but which is definitely different from what he previously lived through. Burton’s amazement is heightened when he is reunited with his loyal friend, the eccentric poet Algernon Swinburne, who is equally nonplussed at being somehow transported into his former self at the moment of death.

Before long, Burton and Swinburne—joined by many of their brave compatriots—find themselves once again being pulled to and fro by the streams of time in an adventure that may decide the fate of humanity.

For while Burton, Swinburne and company have employed time travel to save the empire and her subjects, that technology has now fallen into the wrong hands. England’s ruling class are transforming Burton and Swinburne’s beloved England into a nightmare where those in power—along with their merciless clockwork enforcers—oppress and enslave the masses.

And now, Burton and his friends will have to find a way to heal the damage time travel has done to the world if they are ever going to save it…