There's a haunted house called the Angel of Mist, and the only horror greater than the thing rotting in its bricked-up crypt is the horror of doomed love. There's a great deal of love in the story, doomed and otherwise. Much of it is lavished upon Barcelona as it might have been in the mid-20th century; even more is reserved for books. The narrator is Daniel Sempere, whose mother has died and who is horrified to realize he can no longer clearly remember her face. When he tells his father this, the elder Sempere takes him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. There, a visitor may adopt one book which he will care for ever after, making sure it is never lost. Daniel chooses The Shadow of the Wind, by a forgotten writer named Julian Carax, only to discover that a terrifying man has made it his life's work to burn every Carax novel in existence. The story that follows includes murders, false identities, and two love affairs.