Book of Night
Charlie Hall has never found a lock she couldn’t pick, a book she couldn’t steal, or a bad decision she wouldn’t make. She's spent half her life working for gloamists, magicians who manipulate shadows to peer into locked rooms, strangle people in their beds, or worse. Gloamists guard their secrets greedily, creating an underground economy of grimoires. And to rob their fellow magicians, they need Charlie Hall. Now, she’s trying to distance herself from past mistakes, but getting out isn’t easy. Bartending at a dive, she’s still entirely too close to the corrupt underbelly of the Berkshires. Not to mention that her sister Posey is desperate for magic, and that Charlie's shadowless, and possibly soulless, boyfriend has been hiding things from her. When a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie descends into a maelstrom of murder and lies. Determined to survive, she’s up against a cast of doppelgangers, mercurial billionaires, gloamists, and the people she loves best in the world—all trying to steal a secret that will give them vast and terrible power.
Themes & atmosphere
Also by Holly Black
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What you might want to know about Book of Night
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Charlie Hall, a former con artist who used to steal magical shadows for the wealthy, is trying to live a quiet bartending life in western Massachusetts. The killings start, and her boyfriend's shadow vanishes.
Book of Night is Holly Black's first adult fantasy novel, after a long career writing YA. It contains explicit content, violence, and morally gray characters that mark it as adult.
Yes. Book of Night is the first novel in a planned trilogy by Holly Black. The Book of Night sequel, The Book of Bones, is in progress.
Book of Night was written by Holly Black, published in 2022 by Tor Books.
Book of Night is 400 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Book of Night takes most readers 6 to 9 hours to finish.
Book of Night is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.