The Black Book of Secrets

Everyone has a secret, and some are darker than others. I had the great pleasure this weekend of reading The Black Book of Secrets by F.E Higgins. Ludlow Fitch, a pickpocket from the City, is running from a terrible past. He arrives in the small mountain village, and is taken on as an assistant to a pawnbroker who trades people's darkest secrets for money. For a full summary of the plot, see below. The tone of this book is appropriately dark, and its amazing the variety of dark secrets carried around by people in this small town. All along the book is building to a climatic confrontation between the secret pawnbroker, and the man who owns most everything in the town. You know that things are going to end badly for one of these men, and it isn't clear who that is going to be until the very end. It was suspenseful enough to keep me turning pages late into the night. Come check it out!

From Booklist (starred review)
Forced into being a pickpocket by his parents, Ludlow Fitch rebels, fleeing the city after they attempt to pluck out his teeth to sell for gin money. In the mountain village of Pagus Parvus, he finds work with another newcomer to town, Joe Zabbidou, a “secret pawnbroker” whose business is to relieve people of their most troublesome secrets—which Ludlow records for Zabbidou in a mysterious black tome. The story’s vaguely Dickensian atmosphere is exquisite, and Higgins populates her dark, imaginary landscape with gnarled gravediggers, brutish butchers, impish ragamuffins, and a dastardly landlord bent on squeezing every last shilling from the destitute town. The story never lags as Zabbidou stockpiles the town’s litany of woes, leaving his own secret intentions a mystery even to his young acolyte. At the same time, Zabbidou’s developing role as a father figure for Ludlow transforms the boy into something he never dreamed he could become: worthwhile.