The Book of Stolen Tales

In 2011, D.J. McIntosh took the book world by storm with her bestselling debut novel, The Witch of Babylon. Praised by The Globe and Mail for its “stellar research” and “superb writing,” it introduced readers to John Madison, a rakish New York art dealer with a past.

He uncovered a fabulous treasure trove of antiquities in the hills outside Baghdad and discovered the truth behind a famous story long believed to be a myth. In this sequel, John Madison travels to London to purchase at auction a rare seventeenth-century Italian book of fairy tales for an anonymous client. Madison is warned of the book’s malevolent history, but before he can deliver it to the buyer, he is robbed by a mysterious man claiming to be the book’s author. When his client disappears and the book’s provenance is questioned, Madison must immerse himself in the strange world of eccentric European aristocracy and rare-book collectors. As the dark origins of familiar fairy tales appear to come to life around him, Madison discovers that a well-loved children’s story contains a necromancer’s spell and points to the source of a deadly Mesopotamian plague.