The Forbidden Library

The Forbidden Library, the first book in the series of the same name, is set in the early 1930s and follows 12-year-old Alice Creighton, a rule-following girl whose ordered world shatters when she discovers that magic is real.

One night, Alice overhears her father arguing with a stranger in the kitchen. Peering through the door, she sees a fairy: a two-foot-tall creature with insect wings, warty skin, and solid black eyes. The fairy threatens "the girl" and urges Alice's father to reconsider some unspecified offer. Her father orders the creature out, then rushes to check on Alice, who pretends she saw nothing. The next morning, he announces he is catching a steamer called the Gideon, bound for Buenos Aires. Two days later, the newspaper reports the Gideon has gone down in a storm with all hands lost. Alice refuses to believe her father is dead. If fairies are real, the world is not what it seems, and she resolves to uncover the truth.

Lawyers strip Alice of her home, and she is sent to live near Pittsburgh with a relative she has never heard of. A huge, intimidating man named Mr. Black drives her to an estate called The Library, where she meets Geryon, the elderly master. He claims to be a distant relative and welcomes her but warns that the library building is dangerous and she must never enter it alone. A servant girl about Alice's age named Emma is oddly passive, standing motionless when not given orders. Over several days, Alice finds the mansion vast and eerily empty, tended by invisible servants. She is relieved when she is sent to help a scholar named Mr. Wurms in the library, a separate fortress-like building. While working there, Alice stumbles upon Mr. Black meeting secretly with the fairy from her kitchen, who says he is searching for a book hidden in the library.

That night, Alice sneaks into the library with the help of Ashes, a talking half-cat who leads her to a hidden space where Isaac, a boy about her age, lives in secret. Ashes identifies Isaac as a "Reader," a type of wizard, and explains that a nearby book titled The Swarm is a "prison-book" used to lock away dangerous creatures. Alice, defiant, opens it and reads the first line. She is transported inside the book with Ashes on her shoulder. Ashes explains that Alice must be a Reader herself and that the only way out is to defeat the prisoner within. Hundreds of small, needle-beaked creatures called swarmers herd them through sewer-like tunnels. Alice lures the swarmers into a room with a gushing pipe, floods it to drown them, but nearly drowns herself before being pulled out of the book-world.

Alice wakes in Geryon's suite. He confirms he is a Reader and explains that Readers are rare people who can enter magical books; only about two dozen exist worldwide, and most view newcomers as prizes or threats. Geryon reveals he is Alice's distant ancestor and has been secretly protecting her. He believes another Reader discovered Alice's talent, contacted her father through the fairy, and likely abducted him from the Gideon, sinking the ship as a cover. Geryon offers Alice two choices: He can erase her memories, or she can become his apprentice. Alice chooses apprenticeship, reasoning that forgetting magic means abandoning any chance of learning the truth about her father.

Ashes asks Alice not to reveal Isaac's presence to Geryon. Isaac is hiding at the direction of Ending, Ashes' mother and the library's enormous, shadowy feline guardian. Ending soon reveals herself to Alice and warns that Geryon is cruel. She identifies the fairy as a poison-sprite named Vespidian, serving another Reader who wants a hidden book called the Dragon. Ending wants Alice and Isaac to find the Dragon first, to use it as bait to trap Vespidian. Alice agrees because the plan aligns with her goal of interrogating Vespidian about her father.

Geryon trains Alice to perceive her magical essence and summon swarmers at will. Using a swarmer as a spy, she eavesdrops on Mr. Black and Vespidian in the basement. Mr. Black reveals he alerted Vespidian about Alice and her father, confirming he betrayed her family, and demands payment for a map that can guide them to the Dragon. Alice recruits Isaac to steal the map. Mr. Black catches Alice during the raid, but Isaac activates a bound creature called the Siren, whose magical song puts Mr. Black into a trance. Isaac kisses Alice to make her immune to the spell. They find the map and flee.

Following the magical map deep into the library, they reach a portal-book that transports them to a stone cottage on a windswept plain. Three spiny, elfin creatures guard the cottage. Isaac is captured by one of them, but Alice rescues him by activating the Swarm's power to harden her skin, making the creature's teeth snap off harmlessly. Isaac uses his own ice magic, and together they drive the creatures out and find the Dragon inside a locked chest: a slim, snakeskin-bound volume. When they return through the portal-book, Geryon and Mr. Black are waiting. Geryon confiscates the Dragon and forces Isaac to reveal his master is a Reader named Anaxomander.

Geryon assigns Alice a new trial: binding a tree-sprite inside a prison-book. She battles an ape-like creature of bark that controls an enormous willow tree and discovers she can dissolve her body into the Swarm to escape its grasp. She severs the sprite from the wood, revealing a tiny, helpless being inside, and refuses to kill it despite Geryon's orders. The sprite tricks her, secretly reactivating the tree, which crushes her. In a dreamlike sequence aboard the Gideon, Alice's father shows her visions: Geryon's memory-erasure leaves a person like Emma, essentially empty, and mysterious creatures consider Alice the one they have been waiting for. Alice cries for the first time since her father's disappearance. He tells her he believes in her, and she steps into darkness.

Alice wakes with the tree-sprite now bound to her, but the household is asleep. Isaac has used a power-charm from his master to amplify the Siren's song, putting everyone under, and has stolen the Dragon from Geryon's vault. Alice confronts him in the library. They struggle over the book, and it falls open, pulling them both inside. They face the Dragon itself: a colossal eight-legged lizard that speaks in a voice like a mountain. Alice can understand it, but Isaac cannot. Combining Isaac's ice magic and Alice's tree-sprite power, they trigger an avalanche and constrict the Dragon until it submits, calling Alice "little sister." Both are bound to it through a shared thread. Back in the library, Isaac warns that Geryon and Ending are both untrustworthy, then kisses Alice, activates the Siren, and steals the Dragon book as she loses consciousness.

A week later, Alice blackmails Mr. Black into arranging a meeting with Vespidian. She traps the fairy, strips his concealing charm, and interrogates him. Vespidian reveals his master is a Reader named Esau-of-the-Waters, who wanted Alice as his own apprentice and sent the fairy to convince her father to give her up. He insists only Esau knows what happened aboard the Gideon. That night, Alice takes stock. She has a new lead but trusts none of her allies. She reaches for the Dragon thread and senses that somewhere Isaac is touching it too, a connection that is oddly comforting. On the edge of sleep, the Dragon's voice echoes through her mind: "Little sister..." The story continues in The Mad Apprentice.