The Shop That Knows

About this book

Ros Pennock has spent twenty years pressing books into other people's hands. She knows what you should read next before you have finished telling her what you read last. So when a library patron mentions a shop in the old arcade that sells only one title at a time - the book you are ready for - she goes to see how the trick is done. The lighting is kind. The kettle is on. A card by the till says you may not leave until you finish. The shopkeeper does not ask her name. He simply brings out a paperback in brown paper, and Ros recognises it before she has unwrapped it: the novel she has been sliding to the bottom of every pile for seven years. Around her, strangers arrive and are handed their own single volumes. Some look relieved. Some look hunted. Ros has all day. The shop, it seems, has longer.