The Book of Lost Things

The Book of Lost Things is a fantasy novel by the Irish writer John Connolly, published in 2006. It tells the story of a boy who loses his mother and finds a way into a world built out of the stories he has been reading.

David is twelve and living in an attic bedroom, mourning his mother with only the books on his shelves for company. The books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness, and as his family falls apart around him he takes refuge in his imagination until reality and fantasy start to merge.

He is propelled into a world that is a strange reflection of his own, populated by heroes and monsters and ruled by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book, the Book of Lost Things. The novel follows his journey through that country and through the loss of innocence into adulthood, and it is as interested in the power of stories as in the danger of the ones he has been living inside.