She was a remote, elegant woman with ice-pale features and hair as red as flame. But she wouldn’t earn that until she became a warden, after years of training at the Collegium. “Yes, Director.” All she was missing was a sword. “Do you have your salt? Your gloves?”Įlisabeth patted the leather straps that crisscrossed her chest, feeling for the pouches they held, the canister of salt that hung at her hip. Though the night was cool, sweat slicked Elisabeth’s palms. Iron bars transformed the rear of the carriage into a prison cell.

High above, the last of the sunset blazed on the Great Library’s tower windows, as if the rooms inside had been set on fire-but the light retreated swiftly, shrinking upward, drawing long fingers of shadow from the angels and gargoyles who guarded the library’s rain-streaked parapets.Ī gilt insignia shone upon the carriage’s side as it rattled to a halt: a crossed quill and key, the symbol of the Collegium. Elisabeth stood in the courtyard and watched the horses thunder wild-eyed through the gates, throwing froth from their mouths. NIGHT FELL AS death rode into the Great Library of Summershall. For Elisabeth has a power she has never guessed, and a future she could never have imagined. Not only could the Great Libraries go up in flames, but the world along with them.Īs her alliance with Nathaniel grows stronger, Elisabeth starts to question everything she’s been taught-about sorcerers, about the libraries she loves, even about herself. With no one to turn to but her sworn enemy, the sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn, and his mysterious demonic servant, she finds herself entangled in a centuries-old conspiracy.

Then an act of sabotage releases the library’s most dangerous grimoire, and Elisabeth is implicated in the crime.

If provoked, they transform into grotesque monsters of ink and leather. Raised as a foundling in one of Austermeer’s Great Libraries, Elisabeth has grown up among the tools of sorcery-magical grimoires that whisper on shelves and rattle beneath iron chains. Elisabeth has known that as long as she has known anything. “If you loved the Hogwarts Library…you’ll be right at home at Summershall.” -Katherine Arden, New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingaleįrom the New York Times bestselling author of An Enchantment of Ravens comes an “enthralling adventure” ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review) about an apprentice at a magical library who must battle a powerful sorcerer to save her kingdom.Īll sorcerers are evil. “A bewitching gem.I absolutely loved every moment of this story.” -Stephanie Garber, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Caraval series

The sorcery of thorns