Books with title The Salamander Spell

Don’t freak out. Tim Cruz was the average kid. He loved the things lots of kids love. Then, one day at a baseball game, everything began to change. He got sick. Real sick. The kind of sick people don’t recover from. So Tim did the reasonable thing. He went into a cocoon and waited for the end. But just when he thought he thought he was toast, game over, yesterday’s news . . . it turned out he wasn’t. His sickness went away. Just like that. Now he’s in re-entry mode, trying to do all the things he used to do. Trying to get back into the world. But it’s not easy, especially when the world’s got a few surprises for him. Tim finds himself changing—turning into something he never would have imagined possible. Something stupid and horrifying and, frankly, kind of disgusting. Which would be crappy enough even if he knew why it was happening. But he doesn’t have a clue. And the only person who might have one has disappeared. So all Tim can do is tell himself, over and over, as the stakes skyrocket and his life gets crazier and crazier: Don’t freak out.

Spellbinding, original, Salamander careens through a world of ideas and stories in which the transforming power of books, the thirst for knowledge, and the pursuit of immortality become erotic. It is also a universal story of love and obsession. Set in the eighteenth century, the narrative revolves around a world-spanning quest for the infinite book. Along the way the novel gathers stories that range from a Chinese tale of jealousy and lost love to the remarkable history of Alexandria's other great library and to epoch-making moments on the battlefields of colonial America. At the centre of the novel's unforgettable cast of characters is the London printer Nicholas Flood, a dedicated craftsman who is unprepared for all that awaits him when he accepts an unusual commission. Intricate, humane, infused with humour and pathos, Salamander is an exhilarating, elegantly crafted novel.