IN America, Peter Byerly meets Amanda, who becomes his wife, while studying book restoration and every aspect of antiquarian books.

After she dies, he avoids friends and descends into a life of loneliness and depression. On deciding to return to England, where he and Amanda had bought a cottage, he visits the nearby antiquarian bookshop.

Here, he picks up an 18th century book on Shakespeare forgeries but out of its pages falls a Victorian photograph of a woman who looks just like his wife.

He is drawn to researching who this beauty is. Could she have a connection to Amanda? A few days later he is asked to value books and papers belonging to the owner of the local manor house where he discovers that a modern-day rivalry could lead to, not only discovering a book that could change literary history, but also uncovers the mystery of the photograph, and the history of his own past.

The author cleverly shows us Peter’s character and relationships in chapters broken-up between those revealing events in the 16th and 19th centuries.

It is a beautifully-crafted book that has the reader enthralled, especially the bibliophiles among us. It is so refreshing to find a thriller with a new angle. I look forward to his next novel.