The Binding By Bridget Collins (Paperback)

One of 2019’s standout debuts, The Binding became an instant favourite with our booksellers from the moment it landed in their hands in January. Heart-racingly exciting, chilling and with a startlingly original premise, it is a supernaturally tinged tale of forbidden love, buried secrets and unspeakable betrayal that is simply unforgettable.

Set against a landscape that is part Victorian gothic, part medieval outlier and yet strikingly modern, The Binding slowly unravels a mystery surrounding Emmett Farmer, a farm labourer whose life is irrevocably altered when he receives a cryptic summons, pressing him into service as an apprentice to a Bookbinder. It is an invitation he is both drawn to and desperate to run from.

For a Bookbinder’s trade is like no other.

In the house set deep in the marshes, Emmett learns the skills to make exquisitely beautiful volumes, every one as unique as the last and each holding a dark and peculiar secret: a person’s most unconscionable memories. And to Emmett, they whisper in the darkness. Then one day he discovers a book with his own name on it and is forced to choose between forgetting and the dreadful, tantalising promise of remembrance.

Conjuring a magic all of its own, The Binding is a richly imagined story of boundary-defying desire and prejudice wrapped in layers of enchantment, enigma and stunningly evoked detail. Peopled by fully-fledged characters that live and breathe from the book’s pages, it is a novel to fall in love with.