SHERIDAN HAY – The Secret of Lost Things.

Doubleday, hardcover, March 2007. Trade paperback: Anchor, March 2008.

   After her mother dies, Rosemary Savage, with the financial help of her mother’s best friend, moves to New York City, and soon finds a job at the Arcade, a mammoth used bookstore (clearly inspired by The Strand), where she hopes, as she puts it, to “call herself into being.”

   This coming-of-age novel will delight any bibliophile, but it should capture the interest of mystery lovers as Rosemary becomes enmeshed in the intrigue that surrounds the discovery of a lost Herman Melville manuscript.

   Still, what will probably finally linger in my memory are the incisively etched portraits of the peculiar staff of the Arcade and the portrayal of the store as a mysterious entity inhabiting a space seemingly detached from the world outside its walls.

   It drew me in so completely that, given the chance to return, I would abandon the work-a-day world without a second thought.