The Burning Library
The Burning Library
Two secret sisterhoods have been killing each other over a lost manuscript for six centuries. One of them just hired the only person alive who can read it — and she has no idea she was chosen before she was born.
The Burning Library
by Gilly Macmillan
- 📅 Published: November 18, 2025
- 📍 Setting: St Andrews, Scotland & Verona, Italy
- 🏛️ William Morrow · 304 pages
🕯️ Dark academia 📜 Medieval manuscripts 🐦 Rival secret societies 🔍 Amateur cryptographer
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What it's about, spoiler-free
A body washes up on a freezing Scottish shore. To her family, the dead woman was an ordinary middle-aged lady who did the church flowers. She was not.
The hook
Eleanor Bruton lived alone on an island in Loch Moidart, quietly guarding a fragment of medieval embroidery stitched with women's portraits, heraldic motifs and foliage. Two young women break into her cottage, strike her, and take it. That scrap of cloth is the missing half of a piece torn in two during a 1968 British Museum theft, and hidden in its stitching are directions to something worth far more than the fabric.
The recruit
At Oxford, 26-year-old PhD student Anya Brown has just decoded a folio that defeated the world's best cryptographers. She has an eidetic memory and a ferocious case of impostor syndrome: she feels her brain cheats. When a St Andrews professor offers her a generous salary, a rent-free cottage and exclusive access to a manuscript collection no scholar has ever seen, Anya can't say no. Her mother is in chemo. The money matters.
The detective
In London, DC Clio Spicer of Scotland Yard's Art and Antiques Squad inherits a decades-long private investigation from her retiring mentor — into two organisations nobody officially admits exist. Days later, the mentor is killed by a hit-and-run car outside a museum. Clio keeps pulling the thread alone, and it leads her to a poem sewn into a curtain hem.
The two sisterhoods
What Anya doesn't know is that the institute that hired her is a front. Behind it sit two societies of women with centuries of history, the same obsession, and opposite theories about how female power actually works:
Fellowship of the Larks
They believe in shattering the glass ceiling head-on: titles, institutions, visibility, money. They run a university institute, they're launching a public foundation, and their org chart looks like a consultancy's. Their recruitment methods are considerably less academic.
Order of St. Katherine
They believe real influence is exercised from the shadows — as wives, as mothers, as the person whispering to whoever signs. They recognise each other by St Katherine's wheel. They are in more rooms than you'd guess, and some of them carry a warrant card.
Both are hunting the same prize: The Book of Wonder, a manuscript hidden centuries ago whose location can only be reconstructed by combining the stolen embroidery with clues buried inside a private collection. Reading those clues takes a very particular pair of eyes. Anya's.
All of the above happens in the first third. After that the novel stops being an academic mystery and becomes a hunt. The real twists live in the Spoiler Zone block.
Who's who on the board
Macmillan splits the point of view across a lot of women, and that's the thesis: none of them is only one thing. These cards are free of ending spoilers.
Dr. Anya Brown
Twenty-six, eidetic memory, freshly minted Oxford PhD. Her gift is also her wound: she feels she earned nothing because her brain remembers everything effortlessly. That complex makes her manipulable, and both sisterhoods know it.
Her arc isn't about getting smarter. It's about no longer asking permission. The question that defines her: does an exceptional ability obligate you to use it for someone?
Watch for the difference between how she describes a page of vellum and how she describes a person. With parchment she's precise. With people she's always one beat late.
DC Clio Spicer
Art and Antiques Squad, Scotland Yard. The only person in the book investigating out of conviction rather than inheritance, ambition or fear. She works without institutional backing because she suspects — correctly — that the institution is compromised.
She's the novel's moral counterweight and, for a lot of readers, the most satisfying character in it. Her storyline is also the most uncomfortable: it argues that corruption doesn't always arrive from outside.
Watch for what she does with evidence when nobody is looking. That's the scene that defines her.
Rose Brown
Anya's mother, a book restorer who raised her alone. She's in cancer treatment and she is, comfortably, the most dangerous person in the novel. Her trade isn't decorative: whoever knows how to bind a book knows where you can hide something inside one.
Watch for how she talks to Anya on the phone. Rose never says anything in the clear. She encodes it.
Sid Hill
Anya's partner, finishing a computer science PhD. The only man in her inner circle and, deliberately, the one who takes up the least oxygen. His function is the parallel investigation: he searches the network while she searches the vellum.
Club debate: is Sid a well-built character, or a delivery mechanism for information Anya can't plausibly find alone?
Professor Diana Cornish
The recruiter. Charming, generous, apparently the ideal mentor. She runs the Institute of Manuscript Studies in St Andrews, and every part of her offer is too good. She's the clearest illustration of how a person actually gets bought: not with money, with recognition.
Watch for the CVs of the institute staff. Sid pulls them and something doesn't add up.
Magnus Beaufort
Physician, philanthropist, collector, builder of a grand library in Cambridge. He walked out on Rose and Anya. His famous collection burned twenty-five years ago. The fire in the title has a great deal to do with him.
Key theme: patronage as control. Magnus doesn't donate. He buys silence, and he buys time.
Eleanor Bruton
The victim in the prologue. A Kat operative disguised as a parish lady — which is precisely her order's doctrine: the best cover is the insignificance the world already assigned you. She dies on page twelve and shadows the remaining three hundred.
DS Lillian Shapiro
Clio's mentor, days from retirement. She spent decades privately chasing both organisations because nobody on the force would take her seriously. She hands over the case at her leaving party and is dead shortly after. The archetype of the investigator nobody believed.
Tracy Lock
A hugely famous actress who vanished from public life without explanation. She now keeps a private manuscript collection in a remote castle. She embodies a question the book leaves open: did she retire, or was she retired?
Cece Beaufort
Magnus's wife. She appears rarely and weighs an enormous amount. Without saying more: pay attention to every scene she's in and doesn't speak.
Charlotte Craven
Senior leadership, the Larks. The organisation's executive: she decides who is an asset and who is a liability, and acts on it with boardroom coldness. If you're looking for the villain, it isn't that simple — and that's the point.
The chorus
Alice Trevelyan, Anya's Oxford supervisor. Giulia Orlando, a colleague at the institute, and her partner Paul Fields, who knows too much. Minxu Peng, the woman who lived in Anya's cottage before her and disappeared. Viv, Rose's carer. DC Izzy Adefope, Clio's ally inside the force.
Working rule for this novel: any woman who looks like a minor character isn't one.
Drinks to pair: Scotland to Verona
The novel makes one very deliberate journey: it opens in Highland cold and ends in Veronese sun. Your bar can tell exactly that story.
Act I · Scotland, whisky and haar
Lowland whisky
St Andrews sits in Fife — Lowland country, where the whiskies run softer, greener and more floral than the peat monsters of Islay. Auchentoshan or Glenkinchie work beautifully for people who don't normally drink whisky. Serve it with a drop of cold water, not ice.
Hot Toddy
The prologue in a cup. Whisky, very hot water, honey, lemon and a clove. This is what you drink after finding a body on a freezing beach. Even if it's 90°F outside, serve it in a small cup — it's two sips of atmosphere, not a beverage.
Scottish cider or a dark ale
The easy alternative for anyone avoiding spirits. An amber ale or a mild stout carries the first half of the book and handles the cheese board without complaining.
Act II · Verona, the main pour
This is where the club gets serious. The entire endgame takes place in Verona and the Valpolicella valley, one of Italy's most recognisable wine regions. The book hands you this on a plate.
Valpolicella Ripasso · the pick
The perfect middle ground: medium body, cherry, a lick of spice, sensible price. It's made by re-passing the young wine over Amarone skins, so it has depth without heaviness. If you're opening one bottle for the club, make it this one.
Amarone della Valpolicella · the splurge
Grapes dried before fermentation; the result is dense, high-alcohol and dark. Expensive, and for small pours. Thematically it's unbeatable: a wine made by deliberately withering fruit to concentrate its power. Which is both sisterhoods, exactly.
Soave Classico · the white
Also from the province of Verona. Fresh, citrusy, with an almond finish. Ideal for opening the evening and for Caribbean heat. Pour this first and save the red for the spoiler half.
Two cocktails: pick a side
Each guest orders one of the two, and that's her sisterhood for the night. At the end you count the glasses and a faction wins.
The Lark
Bright, modern, deceptively light.
- 2 oz gin
- 0.75 oz elderflower liqueur (or floral syrup)
- 0.75 oz fresh lemon juice
- Top with soda or prosecco
- Rosemary sprig and a lemon twist
Shake everything but the soda, strain into a tall glass over ice, top up. It tastes like a fundraising gala, which is exactly the Lark energy.
The Wheel
Dark, sweet, with the edge hidden.
- 2 oz whisky (or aged Dominican rum)
- 0.5 oz burnt honey dissolved in warm water
- 2 dashes Angostura bitters
- Flamed orange twist over the glass
- One big ice cube. One.
Stirred, never shaken, in a rocks glass. The burnt honey is the nod to the fire in the title — and honestly, it makes aged rum work better here than whisky.
Zero-proof · Ink & Honey
Strong black tea, chilled, burnt honey, lemon juice, a splash of orange blossom water, ice. Nearly black in the glass and it tastes like an old library in the best possible way. Nobody should be left out of the vote just because they aren't drinking.
Substitutions: no Ripasso? A Valpolicella Superiore or a Chianti Classico hits the same register. Swap elderflower for ginger-lemon syrup. And local aged rum improves The Wheel rather than ruining it.
The table: parchment, ink and ash
Same journey as the drinks: a cold northern board, then a warm southern spread. Nothing complicated, and everything can be prepped before anyone arrives.
Cold board · Scotland
Smoked salmon on oatcakes
Oatcake, crème fraîche or dill cream cheese, smoked salmon, capers, lemon. The default Scottish canapé and it assembles in five minutes. No oatcakes? Unsweetened oat crackers work, and thin casabe is a surprisingly good local stand-in.
Cullen skink shooters
The Scottish soup of smoked haddock, potato and leek. Served in shot glasses it's a small piece of theatre and needs no cutlery. Fast version: potato, leek, milk, butter, flaked smoked fish.
Cheese board with chutney
A properly sharp aged cheddar, a blue, and something creamy. Alongside: fig jam or red onion chutney. Take the cheese out half an hour early — room temperature is not optional.
Shortbread
Butter, sugar, flour. Three ingredients. Cut them into long rectangles so they read as strips of parchment and dust with sugar. They keep for days, so make them ahead.
Hot spread · Verona
Risotto all'Amarone
The signature dish of the Valpolicella: risotto stained red-purple with wine, finished with butter and parmesan. It looks spectacular and it uses the bottle you're already drinking. If a live risotto feels like too much commitment mid-party, make it into arancini instead.
Polenta with mushrooms
The backbone of Veneto cooking. Creamy polenta, mushrooms sautéed with garlic and rosemary, a little cheese. Vegetarian, cheap, filling, and it holds heat without falling apart.
Potato gnocchi
Verona runs its own gnocchi carnival, complete with a king called the Papà del Gnoco. Serve them with butter and sage — the most Veronese version and also the simplest.
Pandoro or sbrisolona
Pandoro is Verona's own cake, baked in the shape of an eight-pointed star — the same shape as the stars embroidered on the cloth that end up working as a cipher key. Serve a slice and say that out loud. It's the best moment of dessert.
Three nods to the manuscript
- Parchment: lavash or flatbread baked until brittle and snapped into irregular sheets. Roll a few and tie them with kitchen twine.
- Ink: black olive tapenade or black-sesame hummus in a small dark bowl. It should look like an inkwell.
- Ash: goat cheese rolled in ground black sesame, or dark chocolate with smoked salt. Dessert for the book that burns.
Host's rule: cook two things, maximum. Buy the rest. Nobody remembers who made the bread. Everybody remembers whether the host was stressed.
The setting as a character
The novel runs on a very deliberate north-south axis: the cold encloses, the south excavates. Anya goes from being kept to doing the digging.
Loch Moidart and the west coast
Where it all starts. An island, an isolated cottage, a woman who chose to disappear from the world in order to guard something. The western Highlands are literally a place where you can live for decades without anyone asking you a single question. The geography makes the secret possible.
Oxford
The academic starting point and, more importantly, the value system Anya carries with her: meritocracy, peer review, the belief that if you do good work someone fair will recognise it. All of that gets dismantled over the following three hundred pages.
St Andrews
The heart of the novel and a brilliant choice: a tiny town with a medieval university, a ruined cathedral facing the North Sea, a castle with a rock-cut dungeon, and a sea fog that erases outlines. Everyone knows everyone, which ought to feel safe and does the exact opposite. In a place like that, someone vanishing without anyone commenting is the alarm bell.
London and Cambridge
Power with a postcode. A museum, a Belgravia mews house, Scotland Yard, a private library under construction. Here the sisterhoods don't hide on islands — they sit on boards. The threat changes shape, not intensity.
Verona and the Valpantena
The novel's turn is also a change in temperature. Verona is pink limestone, Roman squares, terraced vineyards and, underneath all of it, aqueducts. The city where the humanist who wrote the manuscript actually lived. The south isn't the rest stop: it's where you have to go underground.
The buried motif
Count how many times the book puts you in an enclosed, dark space: an island, a dungeon, a house with the curtains drawn, a painted vault beneath a church. The visual argument is simple and good: what women knew has always been kept underground, inside a hem, or stitched into a lining. Never on the cover.
The book trail, stop by stop
Almost every place in this novel exists and can be visited. Here's the route in the order it appears, from the frozen north to the Veronese underground.
Castle Tioram, Loch Moidart · Scotland
A ruined 13th-century castle on a tidal island: you walk out at low tide and you're stranded when it rises. It is the exact image of the isolation the book opens with.
Bodleian Library, Oxford
The research library where Anya trains. Guided tours take you into the Divinity School and Duke Humfrey's Library — the medieval manuscript room everyone already has in their head when they hear "dark academia."
The British Museum, London
Scene of the 1968 theft that tore the embroidery in half, and of the hit-and-run that launches Clio's investigation. Entry is free. Find the medieval textiles and think about what gets displayed versus what gets stored.
St Andrews Cathedral and St Rule's Tower
The seaside ruins where one of the book's hardest scenes takes place. Climb the 156 steps of St Rule's Tower and the whole town lays itself out below you. Next door sits the castle with its dungeon cut into rock.
West Sands and Kingsbarns Distillery
The endless St Andrews beach and, fifteen minutes away, a Lowland whisky distillery in a restored farm steading. This is the stop where the book trail turns into a tasting.
Beinecke Library, Yale University · USA
Mandatory detour for the obsessed: the real Voynich manuscript lives here, catalogued as MS 408. Its pages are digitised and free to browse online, so you can make this stop from your sofa on club night.
Biblioteca Capitolare, Verona
Widely considered the oldest working library in the world, with codices copied and kept there since the fifth century. If the title of this novel hurt, this stop is the answer: a library that didn't burn.
Historic centre of Verona
Piazza delle Erbe over the old Roman forum, Castelvecchio, the Arena. Walk it looking for what Anya looks for: arches, staircases and towers that resemble the illustrations in the manuscript.
Ipogeo di Santa Maria in Stelle, Valpantena
The end of the trail, and the fact that stings most if you didn't know it while reading. This is a real underground complex a few kilometres from Verona, beneath the parish church of Santa Maria Assunta: it began as a Roman aqueduct, became a nymphaeum devoted to the cult of water, then an early Christian baptismal font. It still holds 4th- and 5th-century frescoes, including a painted starry vault that gave the village its name. Visits are by advance booking only because the microclimate is fragile.
The Valpolicella valley
The perfect closer: wineries making Amarone among terraced vines. Book a tasting and raise a glass to Anya, who earned it.
At-home version: project the map on the wall, tick off stops as you discuss, and end the night with the digitised Voynich pages open on a screen. Costs nothing and works just as well.
Real or invented: the facts that change the read
Macmillan blends verifiable history with pure invention, and does it so cleanly that the seam disappears. Here's the seam — and it's first-rate conversation material.
This part is real
01 · The Voynich manuscript exists
It's at Yale's Beinecke Library, catalogued as MS 408. Roughly 240 vellum pages written in an alphabet nobody has cracked, illustrated with plants that don't exist, astronomical diagrams, and naked women in bathtubs joined by plumbing. It has defeated military cryptographers, linguists and machine learning for over a century. It's named after Wilfrid Voynich, the bookseller who bought it in 1912.
02 · And the dates line up unnervingly well
Radiocarbon dating places the Voynich vellum in the first third of the 15th century. Isotta Nogarola was born in Verona around 1418. In other words: the real manuscript and the real humanist are strict contemporaries. The entire novel rests on that chronological coincidence, which Macmillan didn't invent — she just noticed it.
03 · Isotta Nogarola was a real person
A Veronese humanist of the 15th century, educated alongside her sister Ginevra by their mother, Bianca Borromeo, at a time when almost no women were taught Latin. She wrote a famous dialogue arguing that Eve did not sin more gravely than Adam. When the male intellectual world closed its doors, she withdrew to study in a room lined with books. That gesture — choosing solitary study as resistance — is the seed of the whole plot.
04 · The hypogeum under the church exists
The Ipogeo di Santa Maria in Stelle, in Verona's Valpantena, runs beneath the church of Santa Maria Assunta. It was a Roman aqueduct, then a nymphaeum for the cult of water, then a Christian baptismal font. It preserves frescoes from the 4th and 5th centuries and a vault painted with a starry sky. Yes: there is a real painted star ceiling under a Veronese church, and yes, it resembles Voynich imagery.
05 · The library that didn't burn
Verona is home to the Biblioteca Capitolare, considered the oldest continuously operating library in the world. It has survived sackings, earthquakes, floods and bombing raids. Reading a novel called The Burning Library while that library sits open a few streets from the final scene is a lovely piece of counterpoint.
06 · The author knows this world
Gilly Macmillan studied History of Art at the University of Bristol and at the Courtauld Institute in London, and worked at The Burlington Magazine and the Hayward Gallery before writing full time. That's where the texture comes from: the details about conservation, binding and provenance aren't set dressing, they're a trade.
This part is invented
- The Fellowship of the Larks and the Order of St. Katherine don't exist. But St Katherine's wheel is a real symbol: Catherine of Alexandria is the patron saint of female students, philosophers and anyone who works with wheels, and legend has her out-arguing fifty scholars. Choosing that saint as the emblem of the traditionalist faction is a genuinely mischievous joke.
- The Book of Wonder, Folio 9 and the Everly Binding are creations of the novel, as is the 1968 British Museum theft.
- The Institute of Manuscript Studies at St Andrews is fictional — though the University of St Andrews really is Scotland's oldest, founded in the 15th century. That date again.
Three notes for the club
- Reviewers have compared the book to The Da Vinci Code with a feminist slant, and to Raiders of the Lost Ark with a brilliant woman at the centre. Good opening question: do those comparisons do it justice, or box it in?
- Macmillan is an Edgar Award nominee and her books are translated into more than twenty languages. The Burning Library is a change of register from her earlier domestic thrillers.
- Embroidery as a data carrier isn't poetic licence. For centuries, needlework was one of the few languages women could use that nobody read as writing. The novel turns that historical reality into a plot mechanism.
How to set up your meeting, minute by minute
Two and a half hours. The engine is simple: on arrival, every guest is assigned a sisterhood and has to defend it all night, whether she agrees with it or not.
The faction game
Prepare cards: half with a lark, half with a wheel. Each guest draws blind on arrival and doesn't reveal it until the discussion starts.
Larks: power is taken in the open. Titles, positions, money, visibility. Kats: real power is exercised without appearing anywhere. Influence, networks, patience, the last word on the pillow.
Through the debate, each woman argues from her assigned side. At the end you vote — cards down — on which philosophy is more honest. The fun is that someone always argues brilliantly for a position she doesn't hold, which is exactly what the characters in the book are doing.
Arrival and recruitment
Meet each guest with a cold glass of Soave and a faction card. Nobody reveals a side yet. Music low, lamps on, overhead lights off.
Cold board and warm-up
Graze the Scottish board while you break the ice with the easiest question: did you finish it, and in how many days? The pacing debate arrives on its own.
Discussion block 1 · No ending spoilers
Questions 1 to 5 from the book club questions block. Characters, atmosphere, Anya's impostor syndrome. Nobody gives anything away yet.
Hot spread, and cards face up
Out comes the risotto or polenta, open the Ripasso, and everyone reveals her faction. From here on, argue from your assigned side.
Discussion block 2 · Spoiler zone
The spoiler questions. This is the heart of the night: the ending, the deal, who actually wins. Announce it out loud first in case anyone didn't finish.
Trivia and dessert
Pandoro, coffee and the twelve trivia questions, played in pairs. Prize for the winning team: they pick next month's book.
Final vote and close
Count the Lark and Wheel glasses, vote on the winning philosophy, and rate the book out of five. Photograph the table before it gets cleared.
Supply list
Essential
- Faction cards, one per guest, half and half
- The questions printed, not read off a phone
- Paper and pencils for trivia
- A clock the host can see
Worth the effort
- A screen for the map and the digitised Voynich
- Embroidery hoops with fabric as the centrepiece
- An actual magnifying glass on the table
- Kraft paper as a table runner
Playlist
- First hour: low strings and piano, English-mystery score energy
- Second hour: something warm and Veronese — mandolin or soft Italian jazz
- Volume rule: if you have to raise your voice, it's too loud
Moderator's trick: when a conversation stalls, don't move to the next question. Ask the person who's been quiet longest, directly. Nine times out of ten she had the best observation of the night.
A table that looks like an archive
The register is dark academia with a textile layer on top. Think less movie library, more the workshop of a book conservator: paper, thread, wax and one good lamp.
The palette
Raw linen, sage green, deep burgundy, muted olive, ink black. Nothing shiny, nothing saturated. If something on your table gleams, take it off.
- Kraft paper runner, deliberately creased
- Linen napkins in sage or raw
- Plain crockery, ideally mismatched
- Matte cutlery, never gold
The centrepiece: the embroidery
The object that drives the entire plot is a scrap of cloth. Buy two or three wooden embroidery hoops at any craft shop, stretch offcuts of raw linen in them, and stitch — clumsily is fine — an eight-pointed star and a spoked wheel. Stand them upright in the middle of the table as if they were pieces under examination.
It's cheap, it takes one afternoon, and it's the thing everyone will photograph.
Scrolls and seals
Print the discussion questions on ivory paper, singe the edges with a lighter over the sink, roll them and tie with thread or a wax seal. Each guest opens hers when it's her turn to read aloud. It turns a list of questions into a ritual.
The evidence wall
A corkboard or sheet of card with printed character photos, a map of Scotland and Verona, and red thread linking alliances. Leave spare pins and thread out so guests can add connections during the night. Photograph it at the end — it becomes the minutes of the meeting.
Light
Kill the ceiling lights. Table lamps with warm bulbs, and candles in glass holders, never open. Keep one strong directional light over the central table, archive-desk style. That single move changes the whole room.
Props
- Stacked old books, the more worn the better
- A real magnifying glass, so people actually use it
- An inkwell or dark bottle with quills
- Dried flowers: lavender, heather, wheat
- Dark cloth with gold stars, nodding to the hypogeum's starry vault
- White cotton gloves beside the books — every archivist's inside joke
Restraint: pick three of these, not six. An over-decorated table stops reading as an archive and starts reading as a set. Kraft paper, hoops and a good lamp already tell the whole story.
Dark academia in the tropics
The dress code is dark academia, which on paper means tweed, wool and boots. In a country where it's 88°F at seven in the evening, that's a torture plan. Here's the realistic translation.
The base rule
Dark academia isn't a fabric, it's a palette and a silhouette. Earthy muted colours, high necklines, long lines, no loud prints. What makes a look read as academic is colour and structure, not the thickness of the cloth.
- Swap tweed for textured linen or heavy cotton
- Swap the turtleneck for a sleeveless high-neck blouse
- Swap the coat for a long vest or an open shirt worn as a layer
- Swap boots for loafers or a dark closed sandal
The palette
Wine, olive, camel, cream, charcoal, bottle green, black. One colour per look, in two or three tones. If in doubt, head-to-toe raw with one burgundy accessory solves the night.
Avoid: neons, optic white, electric blue and anything with sheen. You're in a library, not at a wedding.
Two looks, two sisterhoods
Power that shows
Clean, contemporary tailoring. Wide linen trousers in raw or grey, a structured collar, an unlined blazer if you can bear it — or just the waistcoat. Hair pulled back tight. One good watch.
- Colours: raw, smoke grey, sage
- Jewellery: silver, geometric, minimal
- Signature detail: a bird pin or brooch
- Lips: nude or bare
You should look like someone about to deliver a keynote and then let three people go.
Power that doesn't appear
Classic, soft, textured. A midi dress in wine or olive, a pleated skirt with a silk blouse, a fine cardigan over the shoulders. Hair loose and waved, or half-up with a ribbon. Everything looks gentle and nothing is.
- Colours: burgundy, camel, bottle green
- Jewellery: pearls, antiqued gold, a cameo
- Signature detail: something circular and spoked — a wheel brooch or earrings
- Lips: deep matte red
You should look like the most harmless person at the table. That is the entire doctrine of the order.
If you don't want to think about it
A look that works on anyone: dark fluid trousers or skirt, a raw or black top, and one burgundy accessory. Add a lark or wheel pin depending on your card and you're inside the game. Zero shopping.
For the club photo: ask everyone to bring one old book from home and shoot the group portrait holding it. It beats any pose, and every book says something about whoever brought it.
Questions for the table
Eight questions with no ending spoilers, ordered from easiest to most uncomfortable. The post-ending ones live in the Spoiler Zone.
1. Anya thinks her eidetic memory is a cheat, not an achievement. Is she right?
Her impostor syndrome isn't about doubting her results — it's about doubting the process, because she feels she didn't work hard enough to deserve them. Put it to the table: does merit live in the outcome, in the effort, or in what you do with what you were handed? Has anyone here felt that about something of their own?
2. The St Andrews offer is too good. Would you have taken it?
High salary, free cottage, exclusive access, zero awkward questions. Anya has a sick mother and fragile finances. At what precise point does a legitimate need become the door somebody uses to walk into your life? Which red flag would you have caught first?
3. Both sisterhoods claim to serve women. Does either one actually?
One breaks the glass ceiling; the other pulls strings from the shadows. Both kill. This is the novel's central argument and the best moment for the faction game: let each side defend its doctrine fully, then vote freely.
4. Rose is a mother, ill and protective. Do her choices hold up ethically?
Without touching the ending: Rose makes enormously radical decisions in the name of care. Does protecting someone entitle you to decide for them without telling them? Does the answer change when the person deciding is a mother?
5. Clio investigates with no institutional backing. Courage or recklessness?
Her mentor spent decades chasing this privately because nobody believed her. Clio inherits both the case and the discredit. Talk about how often you've seen someone in real life labelled obsessive when in fact they were right and simply had no power.
6. Does the pacing work?
Reviewers split on this: some praise the patient construction and atmosphere, others get lost among so many viewpoints and secondary characters in the first third. Vote at the table — is the slow opening a flaw in the novel, or a requirement of the genre?
7. The embroidery, the hem, the lining of a book. Why is everything important sewn?
The novel systematically hides information in textiles and bindings — that is, in historically female trades considered minor. Is that an effective metaphor or does it get too explicit? What other crafts can you think of that functioned as invisible archives?
8. Who does a manuscript belong to?
Private collectors, public institutions, countries of origin, descendants. The book puts patronage on trial as a form of cultural control. If a unique manuscript turned up in your basement tomorrow: sell, donate, publish, or keep?
Suggested format: print each question on a small scroll and seal it. Each guest opens one and reads it aloud. Nobody touches a phone for the whole hour.
Twelve questions, one point each
Played in pairs. Tap a question to reveal the answer. Contains light spoilers from the first half, so only play it with people who finished.
1. On which Scottish loch did Eleanor Bruton live alone?
Loch Moidart, on Scotland's west coast.
2. What is Anya Brown's exceptional ability?
Eidetic memory — she recalls everything she sees in perfect detail. And she's embarrassed by it.
3. Which document does Anya decode at Oxford, making her famous?
Folio 9, a cryptic text that had defeated the world's finest minds.
4. Which Scotland Yard unit does Clio Spicer work for?
The Art and Antiques Squad.
5. What symbol identifies the Order of St. Katherine?
St Katherine's wheel, the saint's instrument of martyrdom. She's the patron of female students and philosophers.
6. In what year was the embroidery stolen from the British Museum and torn in two?
1968. The smaller piece is still on display; the larger one vanished.
7. What is Rose Brown's profession?
Book restorer and binder — which turns out to be considerably less harmless than it sounds.
8. Which real, still-undeciphered manuscript is the axis of the plot?
The Voynich manuscript, held at Yale's Beinecke Library under the shelfmark MS 408.
9. Which real 15th-century humanist stands behind the manuscript in the fiction?
Isotta Nogarola, a Veronese scholar born around 1418, famous for her dialogue on the sin of Eve and Adam.
10. Which animal illustration identifies the correct bestiary?
A black panther, described in code by Rose so that only Anya could recognise it.
11. What is the manuscript both sisterhoods are hunting?
The Book of Wonder.
12. In which Italian city does the novel end?
Verona — specifically in an underground complex in the Valpantena, just outside the city.
0–4 points
You skimmed while someone was talking to you. Forgivable: the first third is dense.
5–9 points
Solid reader. You tracked the plot and kept what mattered.
10–12 points
You're recruited. Report to St Andrews on Tuesday. Bring your own magnifying glass.
Where to go from here
Sorted by what you liked about this book, not by popularity. Pick your reason and follow it.
If you came for the manuscript
The Historian · Elizabeth Kostova
A documentary hunt through European archives on the trail of Dracula. Long, unhurried and completely addictive if you like the smell of a reading room. The comparison critics reached for most often with this novel.
If you came for the library
The Shadow of the Wind · Carlos Ruiz Zafón
The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a cursed novel, and a postwar Barcelona that breathes. Club bonus: the Spanish-speaking half of your group can read it in the original.
If you came for the sinister university
The Secret History · Donna Tartt
The founding text of dark academia. A group of classics students, a killing, and an elegance that rots a little more with every chapter. If The Burning Library whetted the appetite, this is the full meal.
If you came for the secret societies
Ninth House · Leigh Bardugo
Yale's secret societies, for real: occultism, privilege, and a protagonist who doesn't fit and won't apologise for it. Darker and more violent than Macmillan's novel. Consider yourself warned.
If you came for power and translation
Babel · R. F. Kuang
Oxford, an institute of translation, and the question of what exactly your linguistic talent is funding. It shares this novel's suspicion that the academy is never neutral.
If you came for women erased from the archive
The Dictionary of Lost Words · Pip Williams
The real story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, told through a girl collecting the words the editors discard — nearly all of them about women's lives. Gentler, equally political.
If you came for book conservation
People of the Book · Geraldine Brooks
A conservator analyses a Hebrew codex, and every particle found in the paper opens a chapter in another century. The best explanation of why Rose's trade is so powerful.
If you came for Gilly Macmillan
Her backlist
- The Nanny — domestic thriller, a country house and a family secret
- The Long Weekend — three couples isolated, one threatening note
- The Manor House — new money, big house, bad ending
Note: these are domestic thrillers, not dark academia. The Burning Library is her change of register.
Bonus for the curious
The complete Voynich manuscript is digitised and free in Yale's digital library. Open it during the meeting and pass a tablet around. Seeing the impossible plants and the women in tubs joined by plumbing does more for the conversation than any summary. Yale University Press also publishes a printed facsimile if someone in the club wants the object.
Spoiler Zone
Everything past this point gives away the ending. It's all folded shut — nothing reveals until you tap it. If you haven't finished, skip this block.
Who is the real benefactor behind the collection?
Magnus Beaufort — the father who walked out on Anya and Rose. Physician, philanthropist and collector, building a grand library in Cambridge. Diana also reveals that the core of his famous collection, roughly two hundred volumes everyone believed burned twenty-five years ago, had been moved before the fire and survived intact.
Anya refuses at first, then negotiates: she'll study the manuscripts if he gets Rose onto a US clinical trial, on one non-negotiable condition — Rose must never know he's involved. Magnus delivers.
Who set the library fire?
Rose. And this is the twist that makes sense of the title.
Years earlier, a legendary bookbinder named Josephine Dunne entrusted her with a glossary: the key to deciphering the Voynich manuscript, which in turn encodes the location of The Book of Wonder. Rose hid that glossary inside the binding of a bestiary in Magnus's collection, then set fire to the library to destroy the whole thing.
The plan failed on a technicality: the bestiary was among the volumes moved out days earlier. The fire destroyed nothing. Rose has spent twenty-five years believing it did.
What is the Voynich manuscript, in this novel?
From the bestiary's binding Anya extracts the glossary and a letter in Latin. The letter is signed by Isotta Nogarola, the 15th-century Veronese humanist, and explains that she, three of her sisters and their aunt created the Voynich using a private family language. Inside it they encoded the location of The Book of Wonder, hidden deliberately so it would never fall into men's hands.
So: the most famous undecipherable manuscript in history isn't gibberish or a hoax. It's a women's archive with the lock still on. That idea carries the entire book.
How does Anya crack it?
By combining the glossary with the stars embroidered on the cloth fragment, which function as a substitution cipher. The final paragraph of the Voynich spells out Hypogeum Santa Maria Assunta: an underground Roman complex beneath a church near the Nogarola family's country villa outside Verona.
She goes down alone before dawn, finds painted chambers whose ceilings mirror the Voynich's strangest imagery, is pursued through a flooded passage, and escapes up a well shaft into a room adjoining the church. Inside is an ancient chest bearing the Nogarola crest and, in a hidden compartment, The Book of Wonder.
For the reality-lovers: the Ipogeo di Santa Maria in Stelle exists, it sits beneath a church dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, and its vault painted with a starry sky is genuine.
Who kills Diana Cornish, and why?
The Larks kill their own. Diana had become a liability: a secret affair with a judge and, above all, her botched cover-up of Minxu Peng's death. A Lark assassin removes her and stages the body with St Katherine symbolism so the blame lands on the Kats.
Charlotte Craven realises far too late that Diana had the stolen embroidery fragment sewn into her bra. The person who finds it is Clio, going through the victim's personal effects. She photographs it and puts it back — the smartest decision anyone makes in the entire novel.
What happens to Paul Fields and Minxu Peng?
Minxu Peng worked at the institute, lived in the same cottage Anya and Sid now occupy, and vanished. Paul Fields, partner of Anya's colleague Giulia Orlando, confides to Sid that another woman also disappeared and that he suspects the institute staff. Shortly afterwards Sid finds his body in the cathedral ruins at St Andrews, presented as a suicide.
Neither death is resolved with an arrest. That's deliberate: the novel argues these organisations don't leave open cases, they leave official versions.
What happens at the final meeting in Verona?
Anya calls the meeting at a café in a square named after Isotta Nogarola. Tracy Lock arrives for the Larks. Cece Beaufort, Magnus's wife, arrives for the Kats. The two most powerful women in her father's life belonged to opposing societies, and he almost certainly never knew.
Anya sets terms: Rose returned safely, the clinical trial honoured, Clio's safety guaranteed. The deal: the Kats keep the book, and Cece donates its equivalent value to fund the Lark Foundation, the Larks' planned public organisation. Both sides leave with something. Neither wins outright.
Mid-scene, a breaking news alert lands: Magnus has died in a helicopter crash near St Andrews. It wasn't an accident. Both organisations engineered it to remove the only man with access and to seal the agreement. Then they offer Anya continued work on the collection — and propose naming the library after Rose.
Before that: what happens with Magnus's men and the carabinieri?
Magnus's men seize Anya as she surfaces from the hypogeum, then release her abruptly after a phone call that visibly frightens them — the call announcing that Magnus no longer commands anything. When the carabinieri arrive, Anya hands over the bestiary as a decoy and keeps The Book of Wonder concealed in her backpack.
It's her first genuinely autonomous decision in the whole novel: for once, she controls what is known.
And Clio's thread? Is there any justice?
No — and it's the best ending in the book. Reviewing museum CCTV with the help of DC Izzy Adefope, Clio identifies, among the people who surveilled her and Lillian, the wife of Tony Axford: Izzy's superior, and the same detective who pulled Izzy off the Diana Cornish investigation. Beside her stands a younger woman who, Izzy suggests, may be the new wife of Tim Keenan, Clio's own supervisor at the Art and Antiques Squad.
Both are wearing St Katherine's wheel imagery. Translation: the Order is inside the police force, through the marriages of senior officers, exactly as its doctrine prescribes. Clio resolves to expose it, and that's where the novel leaves her — alone, right, and unsupported. Precisely where her mentor started.
Was Folio 9 a forgery?
It's raised twice and never confirmed. Sid finds a dark web post claiming Trevelyan forged it to draw Anya in, and Viv — Rose's carer, who turns out to be a Kat operative — repeats the accusation. Anya can't verify either.
The ambiguity is intentional and it's cruel: if the folio was fake, the achievement that launched her career never existed, and her impostor syndrome was right the whole time. Macmillan refuses to give her that certainty. It's the wound Anya takes home.
How does it actually end?
Anya speaks to Rose by phone and confirms she's safe. Sid hands the book to Tracy, and both emissaries leave. Walking along the river, Anya turns over whether either organisation genuinely helps women or whether both simply want power, and lands on a conclusion with no comfort in it: they did what it took.
She will never feel fully safe again. In exchange she has bought her mother's life and reclaimed some control over her own. The book closes with no justice, no punishment and no heroes — just a woman who negotiated from the worst possible position and still walked away with the one thing that mattered.
Six questions for after the ending
01
Anya cuts a deal with two criminal organisations and walks out with her mother alive and her career intact. Is that a victory, or a surrender with good outcomes?
02
Rose burned an entire library to protect a secret. Can you destroy cultural heritage for a legitimate cause? Does the answer change because the secret was women's and the library was a man's?
03
The Larks and the Kats end up making a pact and killing Magnus together. What is the novel saying by having two opposed ideologies converge the moment a man is in the way?
04
Police corruption arrives through the wives of senior officers. Is that a sharp idea about how informal influence works, or does it reinforce the very cliché it claims to critique?
05
The book never confirms whether Folio 9 was authentic. Did that ambiguity work for you, or did it feel like the author dodging?
06
The Book of Wonder ends up in private hands and we never learn what's inside it. Brave ending, or does the novel break the promise it made for three hundred pages?
Closing round: ask everyone for one sentence on whether they'd do what Anya did. No justifying. That round is worth more than half an hour of debate.
Don't Let Him In - Lisa Jewell
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