"From the pen of Mr Erik Clevedon, Peculiar Lives is another 'scientific romance' along the lines of The Coming Times and The Star Beasts. Exotic colour is added by the character of an American Negro detective, Honoré Lechasseur, and his delightful English companion Miss Blandish."

Once a celebrated author of 'scientific romances', Erik Clevedon is an old man now. But his fiction conceals a dangerous truth, as Honoré Lechasseur and Emily Blandish discover after a chance encounter with a strangely gifted young pickpocket. Born between the Wars, the superhuman children known as 'the Peculiar' are reaching adulthood -- and they believe that humanity is making a poor job of looking after the world they plan to inherit...