Hound

the long version

A bookhound, Henry Sullivan buys and sells books he finds at estate auctions and library sales around Boston and often from the relatives of the recently deceased. He<U+2019>s in his late thirties, single, and comfortably set in his ways. But when a woman from his past, Morgan Johnson, calls to ask him to look at her late husband<U+2019>s books, he is drawn into the dark machinations of a family whose mixed loyalties and secret history will have fatal results. As the true story unfolds, its mysteries are also of the everyday sort: love found and love lost, life given and life taken away. At the center is Henry himself, with his troubled relationships and his love of old books. There<U+2019>s his landlady Mrs. Prowder whose death unsettles Henry<U+2019>s life and begins the sequence of events that overturns it. There<U+2019>s the secret room his friend Albert discovers while doing "refuse removal," a room that reveals the story of a woman who lived and loved a century ago. And throughout the novel are those of us whose lives revolve around books: the readers, writers, bookstore people, and agents<U+2014>as well as Henry, the bookhound, always searching for the great find, but usually just getting by, happy enough to be in the pursuit.