The Bookbinder's Secret

In Oxford in 1901, Lilian Delaney is a 25-year-old bookbinder apprenticed to the elderly Mr. John Caxton. She lives above Delaney's Rare Books, her father Andrew's shop. Her mother died when Lilian was 10, and Andrew retreated into grief, leaving Lilian to learn rare-book identification as her only way to connect with him.

Dr. W. Ashburn, a wealthy physician and collector near Bath, requests Lilian for a binding commission. At his estate, she discovers a fire-damaged book: A Song for a Knave by Abel Bell, published in 1851. Ashburn says it arrived by mistake from a bookseller named Grieves and offers it to her. On the return train, a woman in green introduces herself as Mrs. Chand, wife of bookbinder Mohan Chand, and shows interest in the burned book. When the train jolts, the front cover detaches and a singed scrap falls out: "I wish you had not killed him." That night, Lilian peels back the book's front board and uncovers a hidden letter addressed from "Your Queen" to "My Knave," speaking of confinement, murder, and a plan to hide letters within books. The following morning, Caxton discovers a five-dot pattern on the back cover while Lilian finds the binder's mark "FFG."

Caxton's contacts identify Edmund Grieves as a London bookseller. At his Cecil Court shop, Grieves warns Lilian the Bell books are "cursed." Leaving the shop, she is attacked by a man in a bowler hat who tries to steal her satchel. Charlie Cutter, Grieves's young assistant, chases the attacker, but on the train home Lilian discovers the hidden letter was stolen during the struggle. Charlie reveals a mysterious buyer paid Grieves to find three Bell books, but the arrangement soured and Grieves scattered them. Charlie steals the remaining one from the shop and gives it to Lilian.

The second book, He Sings His Devotion, is bound in identical dark purple leather. Lilian and Charlie spend the evening together and sleep together. Back in Oxford, she cuts open the endpapers and finds hidden pages in dense copperplate handwriting, initialled by W.A., H.P., and I.C. They recount a young woman launched into society by her cruel father during the 1851 season. She escapes to a theatre and meets William Heathfield, a young gentleman of modest means holding a Bell book. They arrange to meet at the Henley Regatta, and the pages break off.

Caxton tells Lilian he intends to leave the bindery to her and urges her to focus. Lilian reconnects with Harry, a childhood friend and former sweetheart from whom she parted years earlier after rejecting his proposal. When Harry tells her he intends to marry her, she asks him to wait until the book business is finished. That evening, she finds the bowler-hat man in her father's office with a knife. He demands the books. She surrenders them but secretly retains the hidden pages. He presses his blade beneath her chin and warns her to find the remaining volumes.

Lilian tracks the next book, Orpheus in the Tower, to Mohan Chand's shop and steals it when he refuses to sell. At the London Looker-On archive, she discovers that 1851 society pages mentioning William Heathfield have been deliberately cut out. The hidden pages continue Isabel's confession: She and William communicated through coded puzzles and met in secret until her father, Lord Malcolm Chatton, discovered them. Malcolm beat William nearly to death, forced Isabel's engagement to an elderly lord, and flew into a rage when Isabel fell pregnant.

Lilian tries to negotiate with the bowler-hat man, offering to find the remaining books for 4,000 pounds. Days later, she finds the bookshop ransacked, her father unconscious, and a note: "Your offer is declined." Andrew is taken to the Radcliffe Infirmary. Lilian resigns from Caxton's employ to protect him. Bell's publisher directs her to Ambrose Fane, a collector in Birmingham who owns Love's Last Aria. At Fane's estate, she causes the blood-averse collector to faint and extracts the hidden pages. These recount Isabel and William's secret elopement to Gretna Green in Scotland and their plan to save for passage to America.

Andrew undergoes trepanning, a procedure to relieve pressure on his brain, but never wakes. He dies in his sleep. Fane becomes Lilian's ally, revealing that the bowler-hat man is named Devlin and that at a Sotheby's auction, a Bell book was bought under the pseudonym "Fahig Peal." Devlin killed Grieves's lover, explaining why Grieves scattered the books. Lilian visits the ailing Grieves, who tells her the pseudonym contains everything she needs. A German-speaking woman helps her realize "fahig" means "able": Fahig Peal is Abel Bell.

Lilian writes to Bell and is invited to a clifftop house near Swanage. There she discovers that Abel Bell is two women: Deidre, the 74-year-old original author who wrote under a male pseudonym, and her granddaughter Agnes. They give Lilian the sixth book and its hidden pages. Deidre identifies the losing bidder at the auction as Julia Chatton, daughter of Malcolm's brother Silas. The final confession recounts the birth of Isabel's son, Isaac. Malcolm ordered the baby killed, but Dr. Walter Ashburn, the family physician, saved the child. Malcolm's brother, Silas Chatton, enraged over his son Julian's death at William's hands, beat Malcolm to death. Isabel witnessed the murder, arranged for Ashburn and a notary to witness her confession, and embedded a puzzle in the book titles for William to find her.

At Dr. Ashburn's estate, his late father's journal reveals that the elder Ashburn took Isaac to William, but Silas's men tracked William down and killed him. William died clutching the same smoldering book that would reach Lilian 50 years later. The elder Ashburn raised Isaac as his ward. Dr. Ashburn reveals Isaac is now a doctor in New York and that Julia Chatton, Silas's daughter, married Mohan Chand. Lilian realizes that Mrs. Chand, the kind stranger on the train, orchestrated every attack. Ashburn produces the final Bell book, The Lyre's Broken String, from which Lilian extracts the marriage and birth certificates proving Isaac's legitimacy.

Lilian lures Julia to her late father Silas's abandoned Belgravia townhouse. Julia wants the documents destroyed so her own son can inherit the Chatton fortune instead of Isaac. She confirms she ordered the attacks, including the one on Lilian's father. Julia hands over the stolen pages, then throws the entire confession into the fire. In the violent struggle that follows, burning coals scatter and the library catches fire. Lilian escapes; Julia does not survive.

Lilian tells Harry everything, including her night with Charlie, and he asks for time. After her discharge from the hospital, she discovers her father's debt has been paid by Caxton, who proposes a partnership: Caxton and Delaney, Bookbinders and Sellers of Rare and Valuable Tomes. She accepts. Lilian solves Isabel's puzzle: The first and last letters of the six titles spell ATHLOW GRANGE, a double acrostic. At the Gloucestershire estate, she finds Isabel, now in her seventies, still waiting for William after 50 years. Lilian tells her everything, including that Isaac is alive and practicing medicine in New York. Isabel weeps but is grateful.

Harry appears at the bookshop with an apology for trying to force a life on Lilian she did not want. They reconcile, and he presents her with a mysterious book found beneath a floorboard at the university press, a volume with a hammered silver cover. Lilian's fingers begin to explore it, signaling a new mystery and the next chapter of her life.