From the acclaimed author of Senlin Ascends comes the first book in a wildly inventive new fantasy series where magical mysteries abound and only one team can solve them: The Hexologists. ‘Bancroft is a wonder as ever! The Hexologists was a joyous delight on every page – buoyantly inventive, witty, poignant, gripping, and deeply satisfying’ Madeline Miller, author of CirceThe Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, are quite accustomed to helping desperate clients with the bugbears of city life. Aided by hexes and a bag of charmed relics, the Wilbies have recovered children abducted by chimney-wraiths, removed infestations of barb-nosed incubi, and ventured into the Gray Plains of the Unmade to soothe a troubled ghost. Well-acquainted with the weird, they never shy away from a challenging case. But when they are approached by the royal secretary and told the king pleads to be baked into a cake – going so far as to wedge himself inside a lit oven – the W