Hanover Square Press Paperback Original
A heartwarming story about a mother and daughter in wartime England and the power of books that bring them together, by the bestselling author of The Last Bookshop in London.
In Nottingham, England, widow Emma Taylor finds herself in desperate need of a job. She and her beloved daughter Olivia have always managed just fine on their own, but with the legal restrictions prohibiting widows with children from most employment opportunities, she’s left with only one option: persuading the manageress at Boots’ Booklover’s Library to take a chance on her with a job.
When the threat of war in England becomes a reality, Olivia must be evacuated to the countryside. In the wake of being separated from her daughter, Emma seeks solace in the unlikely friendships she forms with her neighbors and coworkers, and a renewed sense of purpose through the recommendations she provides to the library’s quirky regulars. But the job doesn’t come without its difficulties. Books are mysteriously misshelved and disappearing and the work at the lending library forces her to confront the memories of her late father and the bookstore they once owned together before a terrible accident.
As the Blitz intensifies in Nottingham and Emma fights to reunite with her daughter, she must learn to depend on her community and the power of literature more than ever to find hope in the darkest of times.
Excerpt
PROLOGUE
Nottingham, England April 1931
JUST ONE MORE CHAPTER. Emma lingered in the storage area on the second floor of her father’s bookshop, Tower Bookshop, with Jane Austen’s Emma cradled in her lap. Sadly, not her namesake—her parents had named her Emmaline for an aunt she’d never met, who had died on Emma’s seventh birthday ten years ago.
Still, the book was one of Emma’s favorites.
“Emma.” Papa’s voice rose from somewhere in the bookshop, sharp with irritation.
She frowned. Papa was seldom ever cross with her.
Perhaps the smoke from the man who had come in with his cigar earlier still lingered in the shop.
She settled a scrap of paper into the spine of her book.
“Emmaline!” Something to that second cry snapped her to attention, a raw, frantic pitch.
Papa was never panicked.
She leaped up from the seat with such haste, the book dropped to the ground with a whump.
“I’m in the warehouse,” she called out, racing to the door.
The handle was scalding hot. She yelped and drew back. That’s when she saw the smoke, wisps seeping beneath the door, glowing in the stream of sunlight.
Fire.
She put her skirt over her hand and twisted the knob to open the door. Thick plumes of smoke billowed in, black and choking.
She sucked in a breath of surprise, unintentionally inhaling a lungful of burning air. A cough racked her and she stumbled back, her mind reeling as her feet pulled her from the threat.
But to where? This was the only exit from the storeroom, save the second-floor window.
“Papa,” she shouted, terror creeping into her voice.
All at once, he was there, wrapping a blanket around them, the one she kept in the shop for cold mornings before the furnace managed to heat the old building.
“Stay at my side.” Papa’s voice was gravelly beneath the blanket where he’d covered the lower part of his face. Even as he led her away, a great cough shuddered through his lean frame.
Beyond the wall of smoke was a vision straight out of Milton’s Paradise Lost as fire licked and climbed its way up the towering stacks of books, devouring a lifetime of careful curation. Emma screamed, the sound muted by the blanket.
But Papa’s hand was firm at her back, pressing her forward. “We have to run.” Not slowing, he guided her to the winding metal staircase. She used to love clattering down it as a girl, hearing the metal ringing around her.
“It’s hot,” Papa cautioned. “Don’t touch it.”
Emma hugged against his side as they squeezed down the narrow steps that barely fit the two of them together. It swayed beneath their weight, no longer sturdy as it had once been. The blazing heat felt as though it was blistering Emma’s skin. Too hot. Too close. Too much.
And they were plunging deeper into the fiery depths.
The soles of Emma’s shoes stuck to the last two steps as rubber melted against metal.
What had once been rows of bookshelves was now a maze of flames. Even Papa hesitated before the seemingly impassable blaze.
But there was nowhere else to go.
The fire was alive. Cracking and popping and hissing and roaring, roaring, roaring so loud, it seemed like an actual beast.
“Go,” he shouted, and his grip tightened around her, pulling her forward.
Together they ran, between columns of fire that had once been shelves of books. An ear-shattering crack came from above, spurring them to the front as fire and sparks poured down behind them.
Emma ran faster than she ever had before, faster than she knew herself capable. Papa’s arm at her side yanked her this way or that, navigating through the fiery chaos. Until there was nowhere to go.
Papa roared louder than the fire beast and released her, running toward the blazing door. It flew open at the impact, revealing clean sunny daylight outside. He turned toward her even as she rushed after him and grabbed her around the shoulders, hauling her into the street.
Emma gulped in the clean air, reveling in the cool dampness washing into her tortured lungs. A crowd had gathered, staring up at the Tower Bookshop. Some came to Emma and Papa, asking in a frenzy of voices if they were hurt.
In the distance came the scream of emergency sirens. Sirens Emma had heard her entire life, but had never once needed herself.
There was need now. She held on to Papa’s hand and looked behind her at the building that had been in her family for two generations and was meant to become hers someday. Her gaze skimmed over the bookshop to the top two floors where their home had once been.
The fire beast gave a great heaving howl and the top floor crumpled.
Someone grabbed her from behind, dragging her back as the rest of the structure came down, ripping her hand from her father’s. She didn’t reach for him again, unable to move, unable to think, her eyes fixed on the building as it crashed in on itself in a fiery heap. Their livelihood. Their home.
All the pictures of her mother who had died after Emma was born, all the books she and her father had lovingly selected from bookshops around England on the trips they’d taken together, everything they’d ever owned.
Gone.
Emma choked on a sob at the realization.
Everything was gone.
“We need a doctor.” A man’s voice broke through her horror, pulling her attention to her father.
He lay on the ground, motionless. Soot streaked his handsome slender face, and his thick gray hair that had once been the same shade of chestnut as hers was now singed in blackened tufts.
“Papa?” She sagged to the ground beside him.
His eyes lifted to her, watery blue and filled with a love that made her heart swell. The breath wheezed from his chest like a kettle’s cry. “You’re safe.”
Once the words left his mouth, his body relaxed, going slack.
“Papa?” Emma cried.
This time his eyes did not meet hers. They looked through her. Sightless and empty.
She shuddered at how unnatural he appeared. Like her father, and yet not like her father.
“Papa?”
The wailing sirens were still too far-off.
“I’m a doctor.” A man knelt on the other side of her father. His fingers went to Papa’s blackened neck and the man’s sad brown eyes turned up to her.
“I’m sorry, love. He’s gone.”
Emma stared at the man, refusing to believe her ears even as she saw the truth.
It had always just been Emma and her father, the two of them against the world, as Papa used to say. They read the same books to discuss together, they worked every day at the bookshop together, friends and colleagues as much as they were father and daughter. Once Emma had completed her schooling, she’d even traveled with him, curating books like the first editions they were still waiting on to arrive from Newcastle.
Now that beautiful light that shone in his eyes had dulled. Lifeless.
It was no longer Papa and her against the world.
He was gone.
Their shop was gone.
Their home was gone.
Everything she knew and loved was gone.
Excerpted from THE BOOKLOVER’S LIBRARY by Madeline Martin, Copyright © 2024 by Madeline Martin. Published by arrangement with HTP Books, a Division of HarperCollins.
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