The Secret Of Lost Things

　　每個人終其一生，都在追尋著一個魅影。十八歲的女主角羅絲瑪莉剛喪母，千里迢迢從塔斯馬尼亞島隻身飛到紐約，大都市裡她唯一的歸屬是一家書店：拱廊書店。

　　她在書店工作，在這個書堆如山、與世隔絕的書之迷宮中，她認識了一群稀奇古怪的人：脾氣古怪的老闆、慈愛的變性人收銀員「珍珠」、無所不知的非文學區專員奧斯卡，以及主管圖像書區胖男子亞瑟。

　　為了一本梅爾維爾的書稿，拱廊書店開始改變，書店成了一座城市的縮影，秘密與揭發、失去與尋找、學習與成長，當然還有愛與背叛……。

作者簡介

雪瑞登．海伊 (Sheridan Hay)

　　書店工作者，並且在家鄉澳洲和紐約間從事出版業。擁有班寧頓學院寫作與文學的藝術碩士，著有短篇故事，並在帕森設計學院教授寫作。已在紐約居住了二十年。

　　A stunning debut from a new Australian writer -- the story of a treasure hunt through a vast New York bookshop. At eighteen, Rosemary arrives in New York from Tasmania with little more than her love of books and an eagerness to explore the city she’s read so much about. The moment she steps into the Arcade bookstore, she knows she has found a home. The gruff owner, Mr. Pike, gives her a job sorting through huge piles of books and helping the rest of the staff -- a group as odd and idiosyncratic as the characters in a Dickens novel. There’s Pearl, the loving, motherly transsexual who runs the cash register; Oscar, who shares his extensive, eclectic knowledge with Rosemary, but furiously rejects her attempts at a more personal relationship; and Arthur Pick, who supervises the art section and demonstrates a particular interest in photography books featuring naked men. The store manager Walter Geist is an albino, a lonely figure even within the world of the Arcade. When Walter’s eyesight begins to fail, Rosemary becomes his assistant. And so it is Rosemary who first reads the letter from someone seeking to ’place’ a lost manuscript by Herman Melville.Mentioned in Melville’s personal correspondence but never published, the work is of inestimable value, and proof of its existence brings the simmering ambitions and rivalries of the Arcade staff to a boiling point. Based on actual documents the author found while doing research on Melville, ’The Secret of Lost Things’ is at once a literary adventure that captures the excitement of discovering a long-lost manuscript, and an evocative portrait of life in a bookshop.