A gothic companion tale set in the world of His Dark Materials, offering a chilling glimpse of the young woman who will one day become Mrs Coulter - one of fiction's most compelling villains. On a cold winter's night, two art collectors sit before a fire in the senior common room of an Oxford college, admiring two recently acquired pieces: a portrait of a striking young woman and a bronze sculpture of a fearsome monkey. As they discuss the works' provenance, the story behind the art reaches across time and worlds to find them. A standalone story that does not feature Lyra or the familiar cast of the trilogy, The Collectors instead illuminates the origins of Pullman's most dangerous creation through an atmosphere of mounting dread.