In a slightly alternate London in 1983, art student Susan Arkshaw is looking for her father, a man she’s never known. But before she can question her first suspect, he’s turned to dust by the prick of a silver hatpin in the hands of the mysterious Merlin St Jacques, a young left-handed bookseller on a quest of his own. When Susan joins forces with Merlin, she is quickly drawn into the secret business of magical booksellers tasked with policing the legendary Old World wherever it intrudes on the New World.
As Susan tracks down her father and Merlin searches for the Old World entity who killed his mother, they find their quests strangely overlapping. Worse still, their investigations begin to attract unwanted attention from enemies of the Old and New Worlds. With time running out and the society of booksellers in grave danger, Susan and Merlin must race to find out the truth about their parents and prevent the release of the hordes of the mythic past.
