★In the bookshop, can you stumble across the book that you never knew you wanted, that will answer all the questions that you never knew to ask. It is there, waiting, but you cannot find it by searching. You must find it by chance.
★Success after success, Cristina Caboni has become one of the most beloved Italian women writers by the press and by readers. Following The Secret Ways of Perfume, The Secret Language of Honey and The Garden of Secret Flowers, bestsellers that continue to remain in the lists, here is a new novel about the power of books. Thanks to which two courageous women, separated by time, meet and become each other’s mutual strength in their search for freedom and a better future.

The finely worked cover embraces pages yellowed with time. With her delicate, expert touch, Sofia handles the leather and the paper gently, as she restores the book to its antique splendour. Bookbinding is her passion. The only way she manages not to dwell on her life slipping through her hands day by day. When the time comes to work on the counterguard, Sofia suddenly catches her breath: inside a surprise is hidden. A handwritten page is concealed there: it contains the story of a woman, Clarice, an art- and book-lover. A skilled bookbinder who lived in the early Eighteen Hundreds, when the profession was banned to women. A woman who fought for her independence. By the faltering light of a candle she had entrusted the book with a message launched into the sea of time and a challenge that may lead the person who takes it up to an extraordinary find.
Sofia can hardly believe the treasure she is holding in her hands. This woman seems to be speaking straight to her heart and to her betrayed desires. She is determined to find out who the woman is and about her hidden secret. Helping her shed light on this mystery is Tommaso Leoni, a famous hunter of antique books and a graphology expert. Together they follow the clues they come across page by page, line by line, town after town. It is books that choose us and this book has chosen Sofia. After over two hundred years, only she can give Clarice back her voice. And only Clarice’s story can give back to Sofia the hope she has lost. Because the path towards a woman’s freedom is filled with obstacles but one must never stop looking towards the horizon.

Cristina Caboni lives with her husband and three children in the province of Cagliari, where she looks after the family bee-keeping business. She is the author of the novels The Secret Ways of Perfume – a world bestseller adored by readers and the press alike, which reached the top of the bestseller lists in Italy and abroad – The Keeper of Bees and Honey and The Garden of Secret Flowers, Selezione Bancarella Award 2017.