The Haunted Bookshop

The Haunted Bookshop is a novel by Christopher Morley published in 1919 and the sequel to his first book, Parnassus on Wheels. The story takes place in Brooklyn, New York, just after the end of the First World War. On a quiet side street stands a secondhand bookshop called Parnassus at Home, run by the owner, Roger Mifflin, and his wife, Helen. A sign at the door claims that "this bookshop is haunted"; the "ghost" refers to the spirits of great literature lingering there, not to anything supernatural. Young advertising salesman Aubrey Gilbert walks into the shop to drum up business, but is drawn in by the owner's erudition, the tobacco smell, and the bookish atmosphere, and he also meets Titania Chapman, a young woman learning the bookselling trade from Mifflin. After that, odd things keep happening at the shop: a valuable book disappears, the protagonist is attacked, and a suspicious stranger appears in the back alley; behind the seemingly romantic daily life lurks a more dangerous scheme. The novel shifts between suspense and light romantic comedy, and ultimately reveals a secret connected to wartime espionage. Through Mifflin, the book discusses books and reading at length: he compares the bookseller to a doctor of "bibliotherapy," arguing that the right book should be prescribed to the right reader, and that a good book can bring a person "a new life." For book lovers, this novel is both a "bibliomystery in a bookshop" and a love letter to secondhand bookshops and to reading itself. The Chinese translation is by Chen Ru and Wang Xin.