In this powerful, labyrinthian thriller, David Martín is a pulp fiction writer struggling to stay afloat. Holed up in a haunting abandoned mansion in the heart of Barcelona, he furiously taps out story after story, becoming increasingly desperate and frustrated. Thus, when he is approached by a mysterious publisher offering a book deal that seems almost too good to be real, David leaps at the chance. But as he begins the work, and after a visit to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, he realizes that there is a connection between his book and the shadows that surround his dilapidated home and that the publisher may be hiding a few troubling secrets of his own.
The book starts of by telling us about a monster who once came to Castle Rock - he was not a vampire, werewolf or ghoul but a cop named Frank Dodd with mental and sexual problems. This is in relation to the character in a previous King novel, The Dead Zone . Dodd killed himself after being discovered by the extra sensory perception of John Smith.
Madame de Renal, a wealthy heiress who married the mayor of Verrieres, suddenly finds herself in love with handsome young Julien Sorel
(the novel's central character). Julien leaves his provincial home to become a tutor, strives to raise himself professionally and socially, becomes embroiled in a series of romantic escapades, and finally faces a capital trial. After a lifetime of complying with all the social rules of French high society, the unassuming ...
The book goes through numbers one to ten, each page showing the numeral, with its number spelled out and naming the objects in the picture: 3 three blocks, 5 five cuddly teddy bears, etc. When it gets to 7 seven soft kittens, the pictures cover the entire two-page spread. After the number ten, we get twenty shiny beetles, fifty friendly dogs, and one hundred pretty butterflies.
The six stories in Haruki Murakami’s mesmerizing collection are set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, when Japan became brutally aware of the fragility of its daily existence. But the upheavals that afflict Murakami’s characters are even deeper and more mysterious, emanating from a place where the human meets the inhuman.
