Ordinary Monsters : (The Talents Series 1) Miro J. M. (2022)

The first in a captivating new historical fantasy series, Ordinary Monsters introduces the Talents through a catastrophic vision of the Victorian world and the gifted, broken children who must save it. In 1882, north of Edinburgh and beside an isolated loch, a strange doctor gathers orphans with unusual abilities in an institution of crumbling stone. In London, two such children are hunted by a figure of darkness, a man made of smoke. Charlie Ovid discovers that he can heal himself after a brutal upbringing in Mississippi, while Marlowe, a foundling from a railway freight, glows with a strange bluish light. Two grizzled detectives are recruited to escort them north to safety, but a sinister force threatens to overturn the world they know. Their journey leads from the gaslit streets of London to the lochs of Scotland and Cairndale Institute, where other gifted children, known as the Talents, have gathered and the realms of the dead and the living collide. As secrets unfold, Marlowe, Charlie and the others discover the truth about their abilities and the force stalking them: the worst monsters sometimes come bearing the sweetest gifts.