The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
A voracious reader, Mr. Berger leads a solitary but satisfying life. Preferring the company of books to that of people, he’s looking forward to an early retirement in the English countryside, where he can spend his remaining years nestled comfortably between the pages of classic literature. But his serene life is disrupted when he witnesses a woman with a distinctive red traveling bag fling herself before a train. If Mr. Berger isn’t mistaken, he’s just seen the climax of Anna Karenina reenacted on the Exeter-to-Plymouth railway. Though there is no body on the tracks, and the destiny of the tragic victim was written nearly a century before, Mr. Berger still longs to rescue her.
The investigation leads him to the Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository, where the living breathing characters of literary invention are under the guardianship of a curious caretaker—and where, for Mr. Berger, the line between fiction and reality will blur beyond comprehension.
John Connolly
John Connolly is the author of the #1 internationally bestselling Charlie Parker thrillers series, The Book of Lost Things and its sequel The Land of Lost Things, the Samuel Johnson Trilogy for younger readers, and (with Jennifer Ridyard) the Chronicles of the Invaders series. He lives in Dublin, Ireland. For more information, see his website at JohnConnollyBooks.com, or follow him on Twitter @JConnollyBooks.
Read more from John Connolly
Inherit the Dead: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Book of Lost Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Land of Lost Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Charlie Parker: A Mysterious Profile Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Monks of Appalling Dreadfulness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Down These Green Streets: Irish Crime Writing in the 21st Century Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Unready Project Manager: Advice and Preparation for Project Success Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository
Titles in the series (45)
The Last Honest Horse Thief Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Ghosts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Acceptable Sacrifice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pretty Little Box Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Hemingway Valise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Book of Virtue Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Book Thing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sequel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Seven Years Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Book Club Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Death Leaves a Bookmark Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Long Sonata of the Dead Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Final Testament Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Scroll Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Pronghorns of the Third Reich Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It's in the Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rides a Stranger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Remaindered Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Little Men Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5What's in a Name? Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Travelling Companion Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fantastic Crimes: Four Bibliomysteries by Bestselling Authors Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5From the Queen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Compendium of Srem Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gospel of Sheba Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reconciliation Day Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Haze Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Hoodoo Harry Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Every Seven Years Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Condor in the Stacks Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related ebooks
Night Music: Nocturnes Volume 2 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Man Who Wasn't All There, The Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Gospel of Sheba Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bookshop Mysteries: Five Bibliomysteries by Bestselling Authors Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Good Morning, Midnight: A Dalziel and Pascoe Mystery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBig Foot Stole My Wife: And Other Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Skeleton in the Grass Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reconciliation Day Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Book 'Em: Four Bibliomysteries by Edgar Award–Winning Authors Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDead Dames Don't Sing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Long Sonata of the Dead Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tropic of Stupid: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Traitor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Empire of Night Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bookscout Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown: Bernie Rhodenbarr, #13 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Acceptable Sacrifice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hollow Man: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Secret Lives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Deader the Better: A Leo Waterman Mystery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rides a Stranger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Man Who Died Laughing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girl Who Did Say No Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Diver's Paradise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5CWA Anthology of Short Stories: Mystery Tour Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5California Schemin': The 2020 Bouchercon Anthology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Darkling Halls of Ivy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gone 'til November: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Honest Horse Thief Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Cozy Mysteries For You
Nemesis: A Miss Marple Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Murder at the Vicarage: A Miss Marple Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eight Perfect Murders: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Color Me Murder Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Regatta Mystery And Other Stories: Featuring Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and Mr. Parker Pyne Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Murderous Affair at Stone Manor: A Completely Gripping Cozy Murder Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/54:50 from Paddington: A Miss Marple Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Perfect Recipe for Murder: Cloverleaf Cove Cozy Mystery, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Word Is Murder: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Moon Over Soho Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Quiche of Death: The First Agatha Raisin Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Epitaph: A Gripping Murder Mystery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Secret of Poppyridge Cove Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Marlow Murder Club: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Line to Kill: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All Her Little Secrets: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Herb of Death: A Miss Marple Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Secret, Book & Scone Society Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Accidental Alchemist: An Accidental Alchemist Mystery, #1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rivers of London: 10th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Murder Is Announced: A Miss Marple Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Little Shop of Hidden Treasures: a joyful and heart-warming novel you won't want to miss Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Death by Dumpling: A Noodle Shop Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mistletoe and Murder Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nearly Departed: Miss Fortune World: Sinful Stories, #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Murder Under a Red Moon: A 1920s Bangalore Mystery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Golden Spoon: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Find You First: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gaudy Night Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository
3 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository - John Connolly
The Caxton Private Lending Library & Book Depository
John Connolly
1
Let us begin with this:
To those looking at his life from without, it would have seemed that Mr. Berger led a dull existence. In fact, Mr. Berger himself might well have concurred with this view.
He worked for the housing department of a minor English council, with the job title of Closed Accounts Registrar
. His task, from year to year, entailed compiling a list of those who had either relinquished or abandoned the housing provided for them by the council, and in doing so had left their accounts in arrears. Whether a week’s rent was owed, or a month’s, or even a year’s (for evictions were a difficult business and had a habit of dragging on until relations between council and tenant came to resemble those between a besieging army and a walled city), Mr. Berger would record the sum in question in a massive leather bound ledger known as the Closed Accounts Register. At year’s end, he would then be required to balance the rents received against the rents that should have been received. If he had performed his job correctly, the difference between the two sums would be the total amount contained in the register.
Even Mr. Berger found his job tedious to explain. Rare was it for a cab driver, or a fellow passenger on a train or bus, to engage in a discussion of Mr. Berger’s livelihood for longer than it took for him to describe it. Mr. Berger didn’t mind. He had no illusions about himself or his work. He got on perfectly well with his colleagues, and was happy to join them for a pint of ale—but no more than that—at the end of the week. He contributed to retirement gifts, and wedding presents, and funeral wreaths. At one time it had seemed that he himself might become the cause of one such collection, for he entered into a state of cautious flirtation with a young woman in accounts. His advances appeared to be reciprocated, and the couple performed a mutual circling for the space of a year until someone less inhibited than Mr. Berger entered the fray, and the young woman, presumably weary of waiting for Mr. Berger to breach some perceived exclusion zone around her person, went off with his rival instead. It says much about Mr. Berger than he contributed to their wedding collection without a hint of bitterness.
His position as registrar paid neither badly nor particularly well, but enough to keep him clothed and fed, and maintain a roof above his head. Most of the remainder went on books. Mr. Berger led a life of the imagination, fed by stories. His flat was lined with shelves, and those shelves were filled with the books that he loved. There was no particular order to them. Oh, he kept the works of individual authors together, but he did not alphabetize, and neither did he congregate books by subject. He knew where to lay a hand on any title at any time, and that was enough. Order was for dull minds, and Mr. Berger was far less dull than he appeared. (To those who are themselves unhappy, the contentment of others can sometimes be mistaken for tedium.) Mr. Berger might sometimes have been a little lonely, but he was never bored, and never unhappy, and he counted his days by the books that he read.
I suppose that, in telling this tale, I have made Mr. Berger sound old. He was not. He was thirty-five and, although in no danger of being mistaken for a matinée idol, was not unattractive. Yet perhaps there was in his interiority something that rendered him, if not sexless, then somewhat oblivious to the reality of relations with the opposite sex, an impression strengthened by the collective memory of what had occurred—or not occurred—with the girl from accounts. So it was that Mr. Berger found himself consigned to the dusty ranks of the council’s spinsters and bachelors, to the army of the closeted, the odd, and the sad, although he was none of these things. Well, perhaps just a little of the latter: although he never spoke of it, or even fully admitted it to himself, he regretted his failure to express properly his affection for the girl in accounts, and had quietly resigned himself to the possibility that a life shared with another might not be in his stars. Slowly he was becoming a kind of fixed object, and the books he read came to reflect his view of himself. He was not a great lover, and neither was he a tragic hero. Instead he resembled those narrators in fiction who observe the lives of others, existing as dowels upon which plots hang like coats until the time comes for the true actors of the book to assume them. Great and voracious reader that he was, Mr. Berger failed to realize that the life he was observing was his own.
In the autumn of 1968, on Mr. Berger’s thirty-sixth birthday, the council announced that it was moving offices. Its various departments had until then been scattered like outposts throughout the city, but it now made more sense to gather them all into one purpose-built environment and sell the outlying buildings. Mr. Berger was saddened