The Bookbinder's Secret
A Novel
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
Every book tells a story. This one tells a secret.
A young bookbinder begins a hunt for the truth when a confession hidden beneath the binding of a burned book reveals a story of forbidden love, lost fortune, and murder. Now a USA Today bestseller!
Lilian ("Lily") Delaney, apprentice to a master bookbinder in Oxford in 1901, chafes at the confines of her life. She is trapped between the oppressiveness of her father’s failing bookshop and still being an apprentice in a man’s profession. But when she’s given a burned book during a visit to a collector, she finds, hidden beneath the binding, a fifty-year-old letter speaking of love, fortune, and murder.
Lily is pulled into the mystery of the young lovers, a story of forbidden love, and discovers there are more books and more hidden pages telling their story. Lilian becomes obsessed with the story but she is not the only one looking for the remaining books and what began as a diverting intrigue quickly becomes a very dangerous pursuit.
Lily's search leads her from the eccentric booksellers of London to the private libraries of unscrupulous collectors and the dusty archives of society papers, deep into the heart of the mystery. But with sinister forces closing in, willing to do anything for the books, Lilian’s world begins to fall apart and she must decide if uncovering the truth is worth the risk to her own life.
* This stunning edition includes full-color designed endpapers, unique foiled front and back case stamps, and special interior design elements. While supplies last! *
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this stellar debut from Bell, a British bibliophile courts danger while seeking answers about a mysterious note she found in a book. Lilian Delaney is a bookbinder's apprentice in 1901 Oxford, where she also assists her widowed father with running his bookstore. Lilian's confidence in her skills is bolstered when Dr. Ashburn, a well-connected physician and bibliophile, asks her to rebind a book about botany intended as a gift for his wife. On a visit to the doctor's library, Ashburn gives her a partially burnt novel, A Song for a Knave, by an obscure author, and she finds a scrap of a letter concealed in the binding that reads, "I wish you had not killed him." Lilian then finds more of the letter, a secret love note addressed to "my Knave" from his Queen. Lilian becomes obsessed with the possible homicide that the writings refer to and seeks to determine the novel's provenance. When she's mugged and the book is taken from her, she realizes that the missive's secrets still threaten someone. Meanwhile, her inquiries cause her to neglect her work, putting her father's floundering business at risk. Bell exhibits a superior gift for crafting an engrossing puzzle and a complex, sympathetic protagonist. Admirers of Charles Palliser's The Quincunx will love this.
