“What power lay there in words on a page. And with that thought, Charlotte knew she would not rest until she had seen what was in the manuscript that Lysbette so desperately wanted to preserve in print.”

1552, Paris: Against a backdrop of turmoil, suspicion, and paranoia, the printing press is quickly spreading new ideas across Europe, threatening the power of church and state and unleashing a wave of book burning and heretic hunting. When frightened ex-nun Lysbette Angiers arrives one day at Charlotte Guillard’s famous printing shop with her manuscript, neither woman knows just how far the powerful elite will go to prevent the spread of Lysbette’s audacious ideas.

1952, New York: Milly Bennett, lonely and unmoored, is a seemingly ordinary housewife with a secretive past. Balancing the day-to-day boredom of keeping house and struggling to find her way with the mothers at her children’s school, she finds her life taking an unexpected turn as conspiracies spread amidst the paranoid clamors of McCarthy’s America. When a relic from her past presents her with a 400-year-old manuscript to decipher, she is reluctantly pulled into a vortex of danger that threatens to shatter her world.

From the risky backstreets of sixteenth-century Paris to the unpredictable suburbs of mid-twentieth century New York, the stakes couldn’t be higher when, 400 years apart, Milly, Lysbette, and Charlotte each face a reality where the spread of ideas are feared and every effort is made to suppress them.

Dramatic and affecting, and inspired by the real-life encrypted Voynich manuscript, Book of Forbidden Words is both an engrossing story about a timeless struggle that echoes through the ages and a testament to the indomitable spirit of those who dare to let their words be heard.

Praise

“A taut, gripping story of three extraordinary women linked across centuries by an encrypted manuscript. Each of them suffers for trying to publish this manuscript, and their fates become interwoven. Louise Fein is brilliant at creating an atmosphere of creeping menace. It’s hard to judge who to trust as the net closes in. I love her courageous characters, her immersive writing, and the vivid descriptions of printing and coding techniques. The Book of Forbidden Words is a stunning achievement.”
Gill Paul, bestselling author of A Beautiful Rival

“A powerful and beautifully crafted story about the importance of the written word. I loved it!”
Nicola Gill, author of Swimming for Beginners

‘How I wish I’d written this thrilling and often terrifying story about women across the centuries, who risk everything for the importance of words and ideas. I was gripped from the first page to the last as the women face all manner of threats and dangers in different times of book banning and witch hunting. This book is both important and engrossing – a rare combination.’
Maggie Brookes. Author of The Prisoner’s Wife.