"A brilliant version of the coming-to-age-in-Manhattan story with a
page-turner of a plot about a lost manuscript for which the people around the
charming heroine are willing to do very nasty things."--Nuala O'Faolain, number
one best-selling author of Are You Somebody?

"A triangle of unrequited love and a tussle over an apocryphal Melville manuscript
enliven Hay's bildungsroman."--Kirkus Reviews

"Hay does a good job with innocent, intelligent Rosemary's attempts to deal with
sinister doings and....captures Rosemary's nostalgic memories of Tasmania...."
--Publishers Weekly

Eighteen years old and completely alone, Rosemary arrives in New York from
Tasmania with little more than a love of books and eagerness to explore the city
she's read so much about. She begins her search for independence with appealing
enthusiasm, and 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 piles
of books and helping the rest of the staff, a group as odd as the characters in a
Dickens novel. But when a letter arrives from someone seeking to "place" a lost
manuscript by Herman Melville, the simmering ambitions and rivalries of the Arcade
staff rise to a boiling point.

The Secret of Lost Things is at once a literary adventure and an evocative
portrait of life in a bookstore very reminiscent of the world-famous Strand.