Erin Morgenstern

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Night Circus, a timeless love story set in a secret underground world--a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a starless sea. Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues--a bee, a key, and a sword--that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library, hidden far below the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians--it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also those who are intent on its destruction. Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly-soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose--in both the mysterious book and in his own life.

The Starless Sea

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Shreya Bajpai

Just before they reach the door the pirate pulls the girl back to him and catches her lips with his. No bars between them now, twined together on a darkened stair with only fate and time to complicate matters. This is where we leave them-a girl and her pirate, a pirate and n his savior -in akiss in the darkness before a door opens. 

But this is not where their story ends. This is only where it changes. 

Cassidy Nolan

Sophia

There is a door in a forest that was not always a forest.

The door is no longer a door, not entirely. The structure that held it collapsed some time ago and the door fell along with it and now lies on the ground rather than standing upright.

The wood that composed it has rotted. Its hinges have rusted. Someone took its doorknob away.

The door remembers the time when it was complete. When there was a house with a roof and walls and other doors and people inside. There are leaves and birds and trees now but no people. Not for years and years.

Jamie Neely

And so the son of the fortune-teller does not find his way to the Starless Sea.

Emma Lindmark

And there are always those who would watch Alexandria burn.

There always have been. There always will be.

“Spiritual but not religious,” Zachary clarifies. He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending.

BC Hark

Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.

It is easier to be in love in a room with closed doors. To have the whole world in one room. In one person. The universe condensed and intensified and burning, bright and alive and electric.

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