The Bookshop Below

Summers (The City of Stardust) loads this enchanting fantasy with sensory details and imaginative lore about London’s underground network of magical bookstores. Chiron’s bookshop is a mystical place trading in tomes imbued with magic that can change readers’ fortunes. Chiron’s disgraced ex-protégé, Cassandra Fairfax, has been exiled from the store and now uses her skills as an ink magic reader, someone able to decipher these text-based enchantments, to get by via extralegal means. Shortly after she’s attacked by a stranger, the store suddenly reappears to her, but it’s deserted and in disrepair. As it turns out, Chiron has been killed and he’s willed the store to Cassandra. She then encounters the exasperating yet charismatic Lowell Sharpe, who warns her about the dangers of her running the bookshop without any experience and offers to buy it. Meanwhile, a shadowy society comprising the owners of London’s other magical bookstores plots the best way to remove her from her new role. With enemies to dodge, Chiron’s murder to solve, her own origins to discover, and Lady Fate presiding over it all, Cassandra has her hands full. It’s perhaps one subplot too many, but Summers’s feisty protagonist anchors this elaborate urban fantasy, and her vivid prose makes the dust and mustiness of the antique bookshop palpable. Fans of Genevieve Cogman’s Invisible Library series should take note. (Nov.)