The Bell That Never Rang

About this book

Glasgow, 2025. Ailsa Rennie, twenty-seven, mends old books in a Merchant City basement and quietly finds lost things for those who know to ask. Her grandmother has left her one duty: train the next finder. That finder is Dani Okafor-Reid, nineteen, a Govan student who has twice woken on the banks of the Clyde with no idea why. By the old law they may not meet, so Ailsa teaches by letter through a Victorian pillar box on Kelvin Way. Then a stranger's letter turns up in the same box. Jonah Abernethy, a bell-hanger from a family of ringers, has found 1971 love letters between his grandfather and Ailsa's grandmother, and he wants the ring that went into the river found. Ailsa can't find it. Dani can, and the river does not like to give things back.