Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Night Circus a timeless love story set in a secret underground worlda place of pirates painters lovers liars and ships that sail upon a starless sea

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks As he turns the pages entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners key collectors and nameless acolytes he reads something strange a story from his own childhood Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded Zachary uncovers a series of cluesa bee a key and a swordthat lead him to a masquerade party in New York to a secret club and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardiansit is a place of lost cities and seas lovers who pass notes under doors and across time and of stories whispered by the dead Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive and also of those who are intent on its destruction Together with Mirabel a fierce pinkhaired protector of the place and Dorian a handsome barefoot man with shifting alliances Zachary travels the twisting tunnels darkened stairwells crowded ballrooms and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world discovering his purposein both the mysterious book and in his own life

Read by Dominic Hoffman with a full cast
Dominic Hoffman reading the Zachary Ezra Rawlins storyline
Dion Graham reading the Sweet Sorrows storyline
Bahni Turpin reading excerpts from the Secret Diary of Katrina Hawkins
Fiona Hardingham reading The Ballad of Simon and Eleanor
Allan Corduner reading Fortunes and Fables
Jorjeana Marie reading Another place another time