Reconciliation Day

This is Chris Fowler's contribution to Mysterious Bookshop's Bibliomysteries series.

The original manuscript of Bram Stoker's DRACULA, heavily edited before publicaion, is now lost, which means that the removed chapter concerning Count Dracula's bewitched library may never be read again. But for Carter, a New York-based scholar of Stoker's work, there is still hop to find that missing material: a storied edition of the text bound in blue cloth, so rare that many doubt it ever existed at all. After years hunting for the so-called 'blue edition' he believes it to be held in the collection of Viscria, a small village nestled in the Carpathian mountains. To get there, he must enlist the aid of a German bookseller and form an uneasy alliance with his academic rival, a wealthy antiquarian named Mikaela Klove. But beneath Viscria's picturesque old-world exterior lurks something sinister, and its source will be found in the pages Carter so desperately seeks.