The thrilling second instalment of The ABC Chronicles. After the events at Barton lock, attacks on infrastructure have ceased, but a new adversary has emerged. The Anthropocene's political arm, the Freedom movement, with their grey-shirted thugs roaming the streets, now poses a more serious threat to the Connickle Laws and the Order.

With the need to expose their leader and discover the scientists' hideout more important than ever, the High Mother's desperate gamble to send the Stormriders on spying missions infiltrating Freedom rallies has so far proven unproductive.

Issy Windlass, as an activist in the fight for women's suffrage, temperance and the environment, is frustrated more than most. So, when her estranged, hard-drinking brother barrels back into her life, she finds the moral high ground shifting beneath her feet.

And when she learns an uncomfortable truth, she faces the hardest decision of her life.

Will she forsake her principles or her family?

Meanwhile, in leafy Worsley, retired inventor Oscar McMurdo receives a visit from his good friend, Felix Faversham, that changes everything...