The Angel’s Game is set in Barcelona and revisits the mysterious Cemetery of Forgotten Books, an intricate Borgesian labyrinth. It is an independent narrative that elaborates a coherent, increasingly complex fictional universe.

The narrator is David Martin, an orphan brought up in Dickensian squalor. After years of struggle, he achieves success writing a popular series of “penny dreadfuls” called City of the Damned. In time, his work comes to the attention of Andreas Corelli, a Parisian publisher with a Faustian proposition. Corelli offers David 100,000 francs if he will use his narrative gifts to create a viable new religion.

The tale is a mystery, love story, supernatural thriller, historical drama, gothic romance, and meditation on the primal importance of stories, of narrative itself. As the author reminds us throughout this novel, books have souls, and reflect the souls of both their readers and their writers.