The Lost Bookshop

On a quiet Dublin street, a bookshop that shouldn't exist keeps appearing and disappearing, and three lives quietly converge around it. In the present day, Martha arrives in the city fleeing an abusive marriage and takes a live-in housekeeping job in a grand old house, while Henry, an anxious English academic, chases rumours of a lost manuscript and a vanished bookseller. A century earlier, in the 1920s, Opaline flees an overbearing brother for Paris and then Dublin, and finds refuge and purpose among rare books.

As their stories interleave across time, the mystery of the disappearing bookshop on Ha'penny Lane draws them together, promising each of them — all of whom have felt like minor characters in their own lives — a chance to step into a larger, stranger story. Hidden manuscripts, second chances, and a touch of the impossible bind the three threads into one.

Evie Woods's The Lost Bookshop is a warm, whimsical work of book-loving magical realism. Uplifting and lightly enchanted, it celebrates the transformative power of stories and the courage it takes to believe your own life might hold more wonder than you assumed.