**AN INTERNATIONAL No. 1 BESTSELLER** **Selected as a Washington Post Book of the Summer**
'I absolutely adored it' NINA STIBBE From bestselling and award-winning author Patrick
deWitt comes a novel about an ordinary man who thought life's surprises were behind him - until
a chance encounter changed everything Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary
days surrounded by books in a mint-colored house in Portland Oregon. One morning on his daily
walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior
centre that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he's known since retiring Bob begins
volunteering at the center. Here as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob and
following a brush with a painful complication from his past the events of his life and the
details of his character are revealed. Behind Bob Comet's straight man facade is the story of
an unhappy child's runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War of true love
won and stolen away of the purpose and pride found in the librarian's vocation and the
pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses.
