As the Nazis approach Paris, a German-Jewish bookbinder stumbles across a manuscript called Crossings, consisting of three narratives. In this ingenious debut, Alex Landragin re-creates each tale, including a ghost story by the poet Charles Baudelaire, penned for an illiterate girl; a noir romance about an exiled man who falls in love with a storyteller; and the fantastical memoirs of a woman-turned-monarch whose life has spanned seven generations. How do the stories connect, and as the bookbinder wonders, how do they shed light on his own life at a perilous moment in history?

"Romance, mystery, history, and magical invention dance across centuries…. Landragin carries off the whole handsomely written enterprise with panache."—Kirkus Reviews (starred)