The Night Ward Walks Backward
A Ghost Story in Reverse

About this book:

At St. Jude's Infirmary, the day begins at dawn—but the story begins at the end. *The Night Ward Walks Backward* unfolds in reverse, each chapter peeling back an hour of a single night in 1838 London, where the dead do not stay buried and the living are haunted by what they've witnessed. Apothecary Arthur Povey and the iron-willed Sister Clegg navigate wards thick with gin-fog, sawdust, and secrets, their terse, darkly comic partnership the only light in a place where the sump pump beats like a second heart beneath the flagstones.

Meticulously researched and steeped in the visceral textures of a Victorian workhouse infirmary—bone-handled bodkins, cedar stethoscopes, the taste of horse droppings and river fog—this is historical fiction that reads like a gothic confession. The backward structure isn't a gimmick; it's a haunting, pulling you deeper into the mystery of what truly happened in Ward Four, why Jane Crump's teeth matter, and what the night shift saw that the morning light refuses to reveal.

For readers who loved *The Essex Serpent* and *Perfume*, who crave atmosphere so thick you can taste the vitriol and carbolic wash, *The Night Ward Walks Backward* delivers a ghost story unlike any other: one where time itself is the specter, and every reversed hour brings you closer to the truth that waits at sunset.