Little Birds at War is dark yet hopeful mystery in a genre-bending world.

You’d think life couldn’t get worse for a friendless outcast kid in Wren’s community of refugees. Then Jessica’s mom is abducted, men are chasing her, the police are calling her an arsonist, and her only aid is from Tetra, an alcohol-addicted trash anemone and Jack, a boy raised by a colony of giant amphibious acid-spitting rats.

Wren is a city risen from the chaos of a post-nanotech apocalypse, a world left with wild technology and wilder creatures. When Jessica was only a baby, her mother immigrated there and raised her daughter alone in a strange place. Jessica, impulsive, bold, prickly, and quick to judge others, must find trust and friendship in the timid and shy Jack while they investigate the possible causes of her mother’s abduction.

Your father was taken by fairies, her mother had often said. Had they taken her, too? Why did her mom flee to Wren? Is it something from her past that has stolen her from Jessica? Perhaps her work at the woman’s shelter led her into trouble. Or could it be the priceless jewels Jessica finds hidden in her mother’s closet?

Jessica’s hunt leads her into the darkest corners of Wren, where religious diseases kill by turning you into angels or demons, where child laborers are held captive in basements, and where everyone seems to be trying to catch her. Jessica soon discovers the stakes are high--the very survival of Wren may rest on finding her mother. There is a secret in Wren. It feeds on human misery, and lately the city has been preparing a feast.