Young Clod, living in his family's mansion amongst a mass of shifting forgotten items, becomes aware of the items whispering to him and senses a growing storm ahead, needing the help of an orphan servant to unravel the mystery. "Young Clod is an Iremonger. He lives in at Heap House, his family's mansion at the center of the Heaps, a vast sea of lost and discarded items whose ever-shifting masses have been known to swallow people alive. The Iremongers...

"At the Iremonger mansion, set in the trash heaps of an alternate Victorian London, Grandfather Umbitt Iremonger has found a way to make objects assume the shapes of people, and how to turn people into objects. Will outcast grandson Clod--transformed into a gold coin--and servant girl Lucy (now a discarded button) be found and returned to human form?"--