The Book of Lost Things

London, 1939. David is a boy still grieving his mother, who died of cancer, while war closes in on the city. His father has since married Rose, the hospice administrator who nursed her, and the couple now have a baby son, Georgie. David withdraws from the new household into the books his mother left him, and they begin to seem to whisper.

Then the Crooked Man, a trickster who steals children, turns his attention to Georgie. David follows him through a crack in an ancient wall and enters a fairy-tale kingdom.

The stories he knows are real here, and far darker than he remembers. Some figures are hostile and some helpful. Half-wolf creatures called Loups plot against an aging king, and a Woodsman gives David the first help he finds.

John Connolly published the book in 2006. The early chapters read as historical fiction, and once David crosses over it becomes dark fantasy that retells familiar fairy tales and twists them. It received an Alex Award in 2007. The Land of Lost Things, a sequel, appeared in 2023.

David's hunt for his brother becomes a test of how he copes with loss and with growing up.