Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme where we randomly select a book from our Goodreads To Be Read list and share it with the world. It’s been hosted by Lauren’s Page Turners, but I’m not sure if that blog is active anymore. Please enjoy this preview of what I want to read in the future!
The Left-Handed Booksellers of London
by Garth Nix
Fantasy
400 pages
Expected publication: September 22, 2020 by Allen & Unwin
From Goodreads: In a slightly alternate London in 1983, Susan Arkshaw is looking for her father, a man she has never met. Crime boss Frank Thringley might be able to help her, but Susan doesn’t get time to ask Frank any questions before he is turned to dust by the prick of a silver hatpin in the hands of the outrageously attractive Merlin.
Merlin is a young left-handed bookseller (one of the fighting ones). With the right-handed booksellers (the intellectual ones), he belongs to an extended family of magical beings who police the mythic and legendary Old World when it intrudes on the modern world, in addition to running several bookshops.
Susan’s search for her father begins with her mother’s possibly misremembered or misspelled surnames, a reading-room ticket, and a silver cigarette case engraved with something that might be a coat of arms.
Merlin has a quest of his own: to find the Old World entity who used ordinary criminals to kill his mother. As he and his sister, a right-handed bookseller named Vivien, tread in the path of a botched or covered-up police investigation from years past, they find their quest strangely overlaps with Susan’s. Who or what was her father? Susan, Merlin, and Vivien must find out, as the Old World erupts dangerously into the New.
I first heard about this book from Rachel at Kalanadi, and it sounded wonderful. Being a left-handed booklover myself, I was intrigued by the title and then was hooked by the premise. An ancient order of magical booksellers? Yes, please. I’m looking forward to reading it this fall.
Traveling in Books 
I am also a left-handed book lover! Brilliant. Have you ever read Nix’s writing? I love his Sabriel trilogy (which is now part of the Old Kingdom series and is a much longer series I haven’t quite read… as these things tend to go). I bet I’d love this.
I read Sabriel, but never to go the rest of the trilogy. I should give them a try sometime. I think my library has the audiobooks…
The whole trilogy is well crafted. Sabriel is a perfectly acceptable standalone, however. I hope to re-read that trilogy and explore the rest of what is now The Old Kingdom once Nix is done publishing them. I want to return to that world.
Good to hear! I’ll have to give the other books a try, then.