The Book of Doors is author Gareth Brown's debut novel. Cassie Andrews works in a New York City bookshop called Kellner Books shelving books, making coffee for customers, and living an unassuming, ordinary life. Until the day one of her favorite customers—a lonely yet charming old man, John Webber, dies right in front of her. Cassie is devastated. She always loved his stories, and now she has nothing to remember him by. Nothing but the last book he was reading. But this is no ordinary book.
It is the Book of Doors. Hold it in your hand, and any door is every door. Inscribed with enigmatic words and mysterious drawings, The Book of Doors allows the user to go anywhere on the planet and even to the past which Cassie will discover later in the story. After taking a magical midnight tour of Manhattan, with her roommate Izzy, she’s approached by a gaunt stranger in a rumpled black suit with a Scottish brogue who calls himself Drummond Fox. He’s a librarian who keeps watch over a unique set of rare volumes.
Drummond has spent the past 10 years as a wanderer after his best friends were murdered by a woman who seems eager to find Drummond's Fox Library where he keeps his own collection of special books. Drummond has been searching for the Book of Doors for even longer than that. Drummond can disappear into the shadows which allows him to avoid the woman who is picking off people one by one and stealing the books they once possessed like the Book of Pain, Book of Memories, Book of Joy, and Book of Luck.
The tome now in Cassie’s possession is not the only book with great power, but it is the one most coveted by those who collect them. In this world, there are not enough books to go around for those eager to own them. Book Hunters, collectors, terrorists, warlords, and governments want these books. Each book grants whoever possesses them the ability to do extraordinary things. Now Cassie is being hunted by those few who know of the Special Books like Dr. Hugo Barbary and a New Orleans bookseller named Lottie Moore who knows she can get millions by auctioning the book to powerful people.
With her roommate Izzy, and the mysterious and haunted Drummond, it will be up to them to protect the Book of Doors—and the other books in his secret library’s care—from those who will do evil like Dr. Hugo Barbary. Because only Drummond knows where the unique library is and only Cassie’s book can get them there. But there are those willing to kill to obtain those secrets. And a dark force—in the form of a shadowy, sadistic woman—is at the very top of that list.
Similar books The Midnight Library and Shadow of the Wind. While Cassie is the main character, Drummond Fox, Dr. Hugo Barbary, Izzy, Hjaelmer, Azaki, and the Woman all play important, in what transpires throughout parts of the story itself. Cassie finds herself traveling around the world to places like Venice, Prague, and Paris, while also getting stuck in the past where she ends up being sent by the diabolical Hugo.
Meanwhile, Izzy, after telling Cassie, who discovers things about her she never imagined, to stop messing with the Book, ends up right in the middle when a major point happens in the story during an auction for powerful and dangerous Books. This is a new twist on time travel, and I hope that the author ends up writing a sequel to this story now that he has created a pretty curious team to hunt down the rest of the Books that are out there and not yet found.
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