Young Tom Afflick has never felt so alone. His parents have split up and his mother has relocated him, hundreds of miles away from his home in Manchester to the unfamiliar city of Edinburgh. At his new school, Tom is simply known as 'The Manc' - a blow-in, an outsider. On a routine school trip to the historic site of Mary King's Close, Tom follows the ghostly figure of a young girl - only to find himself transported back in time to 1645, the year of the Edinburgh plague. Apprenticed against his will to a violent plague doctor, Tom needs to use all of his modern-day skills in order to survive, while he desperately searches for a way back to his own time. This children's historical novel is a departure for Philip Caveney - acclaimed author of the Sebastian Darke thrillers for children and the Alec Devlin mysteries - and is sure to be a hit with them.