Introduction

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.

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! *

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Excerpt

1.??Oxford, 1901??The cold was fierce in the bindery. The late October chill so deep in the stones even the most willing fire could not coax them to warmth. My fingers were numb as I sat back, admiring the finished volume of poetry by Samuel Rogers. The buyer had wanted to turn the drab binding into a lavish gift for the bibliophile father of the girl he hoped to marry. I ran my finger over the raised bands of dark blue morocco along the spine, etched with gilt and inlaid with red flowers, a design inspired by an early work of Sarah Prideaux, a woman bookbinder I so admired.??“You should go home, Miss Delaney,” came Mr. Caxton’s voice from the other side of the workshop.??I had been apprenticed to the esteemed bookbinder Mr. John Caxton of St. Giles, Oxford, for the past three years. No relation to the great printer but a name he leaned on as a credential, nonetheless.??“I will when you do,” I said and saw his bright, round face in the lamplight. He was a small, thin, crooked-backed man who looked every bit of his sixty years.??We were two islands of yellow light in a dark expanse. The bindery workshop was not big but felt it at night. The walls lined with books in all stages of undress, endless drawers of cloths, vellum, leather, paper beyond measure of all grains and grades and hues, of marbled and painted endpapers, of gilt leaves, presses, blocks, and sewing frames. Tools so numerous it would take a lifetime to use them all. Tools so specific one may use a dozen on a spine alone. Drawers of awls, knives, scalpel blades, bone folders, rulers, and brass trindles. Trays of needles, curved and straight, shears and hammers. By the back door were sacks of dried glue ready to be mixed and laid with hog-hair brushes.??An Aladdin’s cave of riches and chaos, and it was my unenviable task to maintain order. To find places for the dozen new awls Mr. Caxton would arrive with one morning, or the new order of goatskin he had failed to inform me was being delivered. But he was kind-faced, patient, and rather funny.??He appeared at my desk, his small, bespectacled eyes peering down at my work. He lifted the slim volume and turned it over, opened the covers to see how it lay.??“No doublures?” he asked, inspecting the inside of the covers where I’d glued marbled papers rather than matching morocco-grain cloth.??“They did not pay enough.”??He said nothing but lifted the book to his ear and flicked through the leaves as if to hear for mistakes.??“You have bound the book upside down, Miss Delaney,” he said and handed it back.??My jaw fell. I could not have. I grabbed the book, panic fluttering through me, and whipped it open.??Then I heard him laugh. For a sixty-year-old man he laughed like a child.??I raised my head and locked my weary, aching eyes on him. “You are a terrible teacher.”??“And you a mirthless student!” He continued his creasing as he ambled back to his desk.??“You win. I shall go home,” I said, unable to look any longer upon the Rogers.??I wrapped the book in a clean cloth and locked it in the cabinet behind my bench. I would send a note in the morning to the buyer to collect. Despite doing all the work, Mr. Caxton’s name would accompany the binding and the sizeable fee would go to him, less than a quarter then would come to me. It stung, when I saw the bills changing hands and saw so little of it cross my own palm, but it was the price I paid for learning. To be able to say I trained under John Caxton, who once bound books for the queen’s personal library.??I wrapped myself in my cloak and put on my gloves. Warming my aching hands in the wool.??“Goodnight, Mr. Caxton,” I said as I passed him.??“The binding is beautiful,” he said, eyes shining up at me. “I shall be writing to Frank Karslake about you.”??Frank Karslake, the founder of the Guild of Women Binders. They had been established for three years now. I had written to them before with a request to join but those letters had gone unanswered. With Mr. Caxton’s recommendation, it would open a door I’d thought closed. I felt a great surge of warmth. A dream, to be recognised.??“I shall tell him you are a hack of course, with little talent beyond sewing.”??“Only the truth.”??“I speak nothing else,” he said. “Goodnight, Miss Delaney.”??I stepped out into the freezing air with a light step. What a joy it was to love your work. My father had loved his, perhaps more than he should, and now I mine. Though as apprentice, twenty-five and unmarried, I did not earn enough to keep me as comfortable as I wished nor to give me the freedom I craved. I still lived in my childhood room, above Delaney’s Rare Books—my father’s bookshop—on Victor Street, and when I was not binding books, I was cataloguing and selling them.??When I was a child, rare and fusty tomes had been the boundaries of my life, giving it shape and meaning. There were books in the winding rooms of my father’s shop older than my child’s mind could imagine, volumes that had seen kings rise and fall, buildings crumble and wars fade from memory. Books endure, my father would say. They endure, as we do not.??The walk between Mr. Caxton’s workshop and my home was short, a few turns only. I had little time for myself and, in truth, I wasn’t sure what my life looked like when I was not ink-deep in book blocks and cover boards.??My world was small, bound between Cotswold stone walls, pressed thin as paper. I loved it, yet I chafed against it, and when an opportunity came to break open those walls, I seized it with both hands and little thought of consequence. For really, I thought in my naivety, what danger could lie within a book?... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

From the publisher- added by Pauline:

1. In 1901 Oxford, Lilian is a woman in a man’s profession. How does her struggle for independence mirror the mystery she uncovers? Do you think her pursuit of the truth is an act of rebellion or self-discovery?

2. How does the hidden confession inside the Bell books handle themes of secrecy and censorship, both in personal relationships and in society?

3. Isabel and William’s story is at the heart of the mystery but ends in tragedy, mirroring some of Lilian’s own history. How do you think the book explores the line between love and destruction?

4. As Lilian’s search for the six Bell books becomes all-consuming, do you think her obsession is justified? What does the story suggest about the cost of pursuing knowledge or truth at all costs?

5. If you were Lilian, would you have kept digging into the mystery, even when it became dangerous, or walked away? Why?

6. How does the novel depict the limitations placed on women in Edwardian England? In what ways does Lilian navigate and challenge these restrictions?

7. The novel revolves around uncovering truth hidden within fiction, both in the literal bookbinding and in people’s lives. What do you think the story says about the reliability of the stories we inherit?

8. What role do you think Mr. Caxton play in shaping Lilian, as both a bookbinder and a person? Do you see their relationship as supportive, limiting, or both?

9. The story is full of rare books, secret libraries, and dusty archives. Which setting would you most love to explore in real life?

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