What lies hidden in the mud?
What might happen if you look at it too long?
And what will happen if you let it go?

Twelve-year-old Nina is not happy. Her scientist parents
are spending a year in Antarctica, and Nina’s sent to London
to stay with her Aunty Bee. Nina arrives with an Attitude.
Her parents have never left her behind before. She’s
determined to hate everything.

But Aunty Bee, an intertidal archaeologist, lives on a
converted barge on the Thames. She’s also a keen mudlark,
searching the river shingle and mud for fascinating, long-
forgotten articles from past lives. Nina can’t help becoming
interested. She joins in with the Mud Puddlers, a local group
of wildly enthusiastic amateur mudlarks and becomes friendly
with Molly, an elderly Mud Puddler living on a nearby, haunted
barge. Molly knows things. Sees things. She draws Nina into
the mystery and magic of the ancient river and the treasures
it holds.

But soon, Nina becomes aware that there can be unexpected
and uncanny dangers in the things she discovers. She finds
herself stranded in time, in the Blitz in 1940. And she and a
very unwilling fellow traveller, Tom, become runaways.
Fumbling their way across wartime England, desperate to
return to London. Will they ever see their families again?