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|sort=Black Book of Secrets

|title=The Black Book of Secrets

|date=September 2007

|isbn=978-0330444057

}}

Ludlow Fitch regains consciousness to find himself chained to a chair by his drunken parents. Barton Gumbroot, the local toothpuller, is leering over him, brandishing his pincers. Ludlow's parents have sold his teeth to Gumbroot for threepence a throw, to pay for their gin. In a frenzy of fear, Ludlow manages to escape the gruesome threesome and steals away on the back of a carriage, away from the filth of the City and to the remote village of Pagus Parvus, where he meets Joe Zabbidou, a pawnbroker and fellow newcomer, who offers him a job.