Mortal Love
by Elizabeth Hand | 
The Elementals
by Morgan Llywelyn | 
The Enterprise of Death
by Jesse Bullington |
The Philosopher's Flight
by Tom Miller |
The Beautiful Ones
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia | 
Altdorf
by J. K. Swift | 
Latro in the Mist
by Gene Wolfe | 
The Paper Magician
by Charlie N. Holmberg |
The Silver Witch
by Paula Brackston | 
Glamour in Glass
by Mary Robinette Kowal | 
Shades of Milk and Honey
by Mary Robinette Kowal | 
The Compass Rose
by Gail Dayton | 
The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic
by Emily Croy Barker | 
Valour And Vanity
by Mary Robinette Kowal | 
The Warrior's Path
by Catherine M. Wilson | 
Circe
by Madeline Miller | 
Tower of Thorns
by Juliet Marillier |
Scriber
by Ben S. Dobson | 
Sorcerer to the Crown
by Zen Cho | 
Children of Earth and Sky
by Guy Gavriel Kay |
Books are dangerous things in Collins's alternate universe, a place vaguely reminiscent of 19th-century England. It's a world in which people visit book binders to rid themselves of painful or treacherous memories. Once their stories have been told and are bound between the pages of a book, the slate is wiped clean and their memories lose the power to hurt or haunt them. After having suffered some sort of mental collapse and no longer able to keep up with his farm chores, Emmett Farmer is sent to the workshop of one such binder to live and work as her apprentice. Leaving behind home and family, Emmett slowly regains his health while learning the binding trade. He is forbidden to enter the locked room where books are stored, so he spends many months marbling end pages, tooling leather book covers, and gilding edges. But his curiosity is piqued by the people who come and go from the inner sanctum, and the arrival of the lordly Lucian Darnay, with whom he senses a connection, changes everything.