01742cam a2200241 4500 503782520 TxAuBib 20170815120000.0 170216s2017||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 9781620409671 1620409674 TxAuBib Pulley, Natasha. The Bedlam stacks / Natasha Pulley. New York : Bloomsbury, 2017. 337 pages : map. In 1859, ex-East India Company smuggler Merrick Tremayne is trapped at home in Cornwall after sustaining an injury that almost cost him his leg. When the India Office recruits Merrick for an expedition to fetch quinine--essential for the treatment of malaria--from deep within Peru, he knows it's a terrible idea. Nearly every able-bodied expeditionary who's made the attempt has died, and he can barely walk. But Merrick is desperate to escape everything at home, so he sets off for a tiny mission colony on the edge of the Amazon where a salt line on the ground separates town from forest. Anyone who crosses is killed by something that watches from the trees, but somewhere beyond the salt are the quinine woods. Surrounded by local stories of lost time, cursed woods, and living rock, Merrick must separate truth from fairytale and find out what befell the last expeditions; why the villagers are forbidden to go into the forest; and what is happening to Raphael, the young priest who seems to have known Merrick's grandfather, who visited Peru many decades before. 20170815. Trees Fiction. Quinine Fiction. Peru Fiction. Fantasy fiction.