First published 2026
Frederick Archer goes by Red, and he has nowhere particular to be the afternoon he wanders into a cramped, overstuffed bookshop. Then a girl falls out of a book and lands in his life. Rose Penrose was pulled into the pages of a novel her mother wrote by an act of violence she did not choose. She has learned to survive inside fiction, and she has learned to jump from one book to another when danger closes in. The jump that saves her this time drops her into the shop where Red is standing. Now the two of them are running together through the interiors of beloved stories, chased by something that will not stop. Every world they enter is borrowed. Every exit costs them something. The pursuer is always a step behind, and the only destination that might actually shelter them is a story neither of them has read yet. Red came in off the street looking for nothing. What he has to find now is the one narrative that belongs to both of them.
Genres: literary-fiction, adventure, fantasy, contemporary
Vibes: atmospheric, fast-paced, imaginative, suspenseful, whimsical
Tropes: forced-proximity, found-family, meet-cute, portal-fantasy
Setting: bookshop, fictional worlds
Period: contemporary
224 pages · Hardcover · Ace
Content warnings: violence