Book of Night
Charlie Hall has never found a lock she couldn’t pick, a book she couldn’t steal, or a bad decision she wouldn’t make. She’s spent half her life working for gloamists, magicians who manipulate shadows to peer into locked rooms, strangle people in their beds, or worse. Gloamists guard their secrets greedily, creating an underground economy of grimoires. And to rob their fellow magicians, they need Charlie.
Now, she’s trying to distance herself from past mistakes, but going straight isn’t easy. Bartending at a dive, she’s still entirely too close to the corrupt underbelly of the Berkshires. Not to mention that her sister Posey is desperate for magic, and that her shadowless and possibly soulless boyfriend has been keeping secrets from her. When a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie descends back into a maelstrom of murder and lies. Determined to survive, she’s up against a cast of doppelgängers, mercurial billionaires, gloamists, and the people she loves best in the world — all trying to steal a secret that will allow them control of the shadow world and more.
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Awards
Book of Night was 2022 LibraryReads Top Pick and received a starred review from Indie Next.
It won the 2022 Dragon Award for Best Fantasy Novel
Praise
“..the big twist at the end packs a satisfying punch. Hits the marks for spooky thrills and mysterious chills.”
—Kirkus
From absentee parents and child abuse, to toxic living situations and a magical system that involves no small amount of bodily mutilation, this is her messiest, most complicated book yet. (And I mean that in all the best ways.)
—Paste Magazine
Black’s adult debut Book of Night combines a world full of danger and magical shadows with an adrenaline-fueled heist and a flawed, memorable underdog of a protagonist that is sure to have readers keeping an eye on their own shadows.
—The Nerd Daily
“Black is a master at world-building.”
—New York Times
“A delicious, dark, adrenaline rush of a book. I’m already dying to see Charlie Hall’s next con.”
—Alix E. Harrow, New York Times bestselling author
“A dark romp full of danger and shadows with a razor sharp heroine and vivid magic.”
—Zoraida Córdova, Nationally bestselling author of The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina
Dark, strange, thick with mystery and twists―Book of Night is everything delicious and frightening I’ve come to expect from Holly Black. It’s a story so believable in its magic, you’ll be keeping one eye on your shadow as you turn the pages.
—Leigh Bardugo, New York Times Bestselling Author of Ninth House