Madame Two Swords — Tanith Lee

Aged fourteen, the narrator, in an unnamed French city, finds an old book in a second-hand shop. It's a slender volume, but remarkably well persevered; the narrator wonders who could have allowed such an exquisite artefact to end up amid piles of unwanted, unremarkable books. Surely it must be valuable? The book, she finds, contains writings of the revolutionary, Lucien de Ceppays, who lived and died in the city two centuries before. As she examines the book, she finds a small watercolour slipped between the flyleaf and the cover â€" a painting of Lucien himself. She feels a strange bond to the life and thoughts of this long-dead man â€" which blooms into what is almost an obsession.

Some years later, impoverished after the death of her mother, the narrator â€" in a state of desperation â€" find herself inexorably guided to meet the peculiar and unnerving Madame Two Swords, an old woman with a history, and her own enduring bonds to Lucien â€" as well as the book. For the narrator, reality seems to unravel, as she begins to penetrate just how intimately she is connected with Madame Two Swords and Lucien. What is the mysterious truth behind her obsession? Perhaps she did not find the book at all â€" perhaps it found her.

Previously published in 1988, only in a limited edition, this new edition includes illustrations by Jarod Mills.