The answers to a puzzle lie hidden within an old book. Open The Birdcage Library and let the treasure hunt begin…
The year is 1882, and the most important thing, unknown reader, is this: The man I love is trying to kill me.
It’s 1932 and adventuress and plant-hunter Emily Blackwood accepts a commission from Heinrich Vogel, a former dealer of exotic animals in Manhattan, living now with his macabre collection in a remote Scottish castle.
Emily is tasked to find a long-lost treasure which Heinrich believes has been hidden within the castle walls. But instead she discovers the pages of a diary, written by Hester Vogel, who died after falling from the Brooklyn Bridge.
Hester’s diary leads Emily to an old book The Birdcage Library and into a treasure hunt of another kind, one that will take her down a dangerous path for clues, and force her to confront her own darkest secret…
With fiendish clues and clever twists, The Birdcage Library will delight and dazzle you to the final page.
About the book
I was delighted to be invited to read this fantastic story with my Squadpod pals for our June Book Club.
Emily Blackwood, a botanist and explorer is invited to Castle Parras by Heinrich Vogel, she had previously been working for Lord Rothschild but she is requested by Mr Vogel to come to work for him. She has not been at the castle long when he explains exactly why he has asked her to come to Scotland to take part in a treasure hunt to solve a mystery which has perplexed them for many years.
Emily soon finds a diary of a Hester Vogel who was the wife of Charles Vogel, Heinrich’s (Henry’s) brother who had mysteriously disappeared fifty years before. Henry and Charles were dealers in exotic animals and Hester meets Charles when she is working in the family business which had originally made cages and now makes corsets in America. She is invited to visit their emporium in Manhattan and she manages to find a way to visit them.
The book is set across two time lines Emily’s in 1930’s Scotland and Hester in New York as the wife of Charles Vogel, in the Gilded age of glamour, parties and spectacle. The rich wanted large exotic animals filling their homes and Charles and Henry obliged. I loved this part of the story so rich and visual.
This book is one that you will really quickly become engrossed in because as the reader you not only want to find out what Henry is searching for but what happened to Hester. Family secrets are a plenty in this book it has a real gothic feel with the setting of the Scottish castle, there is plenty of mystery, drama and even murder.
I loved this book as it ticked so many boxes for me, a book within a book, a mystery from the past to be solved, a castle with secrets, which will drag you in and not let you go until the stunning conclusion.
If you would like hear Freya chatting more about this fantastic story you can watch our Squadpod In Conversation here : https://youtu.be/TaTO60Xrtws
5 stars *****
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