The Map of Bones (The Fire Sermon)

Book Two in the critically acclaimed Fire Sermon post-apocalyptic trilogy, “with its well-built world, vivid characters and suspenseful plot” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), is an exciting and thought-provoking continuation of this epic social commentary written by award-winning poet Francesca Haig.

Four hundred years after a nuclear apocalypse, all humans are born in pairs: the Alphas, and their deformed Omega twins, who are ruthlessly oppressed. But despite their claims of superiority, the Alphas cannot escape one harsh fact: Whenever one twin dies, so does the other.

Following the events of The Fire Sermon, the Omega resistance has been brutally attacked, its members dead or in hiding. The Alpha Council’s plan for permanently containing the Omegas has begun. But all is not entirely lost: the Council’s seer, the Confessor, is dead, killed by her twin’s sacrifice.

Cass is left haunted by visions of the past, while her brother Zach’s cruelty and obsession push her to the edge and threaten to destroy everything she hopes for. As the country moves closer to all-out civil war, Cass will learn that to change the future she will need to uncover the past. But nothing can prepare her for what she discovers: a deeply buried secret that raises the stakes higher than ever before.

Francesca Haig grew up in Tasmania, gained her PhD from the University of Melbourne, and was a senior lecturer at the University of Chester. Her poetry has been published in literary journals and anthologies in both Australia and England, and her first collection of poetry, Bodies of Water, was published in 2006. In 2010 she was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship. She is also the author of the Fire Sermon series, which includesThe Fire Sermon, The Map of Bones, and The Forever Ship. She lives in London with her husband and son. Visit FrancescaHaig.com and follow her on Twitter @FrancescaHaig.