The Secret Chapter (The Invisible Library #6)

There had to be a heist at some point in the story, didn’t there? And there are certain tropes that consistently occur in a heist narrative, whether the protagonists are trying to get away with the Mona Lisa, a casino’s earnings, or the entire gold stocks of Turin and Fort Knox . . .

Many thanks to my editors, Bella Pagan and Rebecca Brewer. Have I said lately that I appreciate you? I appreciate you very much. You’re great at helping me work out what needs to be done to improve the book, and how to do it.

Thanks also to my agent Lucienne Diver for all her support, and for being constantly in my quarter and 100 per cent behind me. (Which sounds rather like putting your nose to the grindstone and your shoulder to the wheel at the same time, but you know what I mean.)

Thanks to all my beta-readers and all the people who supplied information for the story: Beth, Jeanne, Phyllis, Anne, Stuart, Crystal, and everyone else. Your help makes a difference, and I’m very grateful for it.

Thank you to all my friends at work and in leisure, who supported my tendency to make marginalia plot notes on minutes and who didn’t run away when I spent ten minutes trying to explain the plot to them. It’s good to know that everyone understands the significance of Chekhov’s shark. (Like the gun, but for some reason less frequently used.)

Thank you to the city of Vienna, which I have visited and loved. (I do know The Raft of the Medusa is in the Louvre in Paris – in this world, at least. Don’t shoot me.) Vienna is a beautiful, fascinating place, and really didn’t deserve me driving a plot lorry through the middle of it. Any errors in my depiction of a CENSOR-managed Vienna are my fault entirely.

And thank you to all the fans of the Library out there. Stories matter – telling them, sharing them, preserving them, changing them, learning from them, and escaping with and through them. We learn about ourselves and the world that we live in through fiction just as much as through facts. Empathy, perception and understanding are never wasted. All libraries are a gateway into other worlds, including the past – and the future.