Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Lucas Corso is a cynical, resourceful book detective who makes his living tracking down rare editions for wealthy collectors. When he is hired to authenticate a manuscript believed to be a chapter from Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, he finds himself drawn into a mystery involving a suspicious death, literary forgery, and a secret society of Dumas enthusiasts. But another assignment soon takes him into even darker territory: a wealthy collector wants him to verify a rare book entitled The Nine Doors of the Kingdom of Shadows, a mysterious volume said to contain instructions for summoning the Devil. As Corso travels between Madrid, Toledo, and Paris, he encounters obsessive bibliophiles, enigmatic women, and individuals whose fascination with forbidden knowledge borders on madness. The two investigations begin to intertwine, blurring the boundaries between literary scholarship and the occult. With every clue, Corso becomes less certain about whom he can trust—or whether the dangers surrounding him are entirely human. Combining intellectual mystery, Gothic suspense, and a playful exploration of literary history, Pérez-Reverte creates a thrilling tribute to the power of books and the obsessions they inspire. The Club Dumas asks whether rare books are merely objects to possess or gateways to worlds that might be better left unexplored.

When the phone rings, Teresa Mendoza knows her life is about to change forever. Her boyfriend, a pilot who smuggles drugs for the Mexican cartels, has warned her that if she ever receives that call, she must run for her life. When he is murdered, Teresa flees Mexico, leaving behind everything she knows and entering an unfamiliar world where survival depends on intelligence, courage, and the ability to trust no one. Her journey takes her from Mexico to Spain, where she becomes involved in the dangerous business of smuggling hashish across the Strait of Gibraltar. Initially an outsider in a ruthless, male-dominated criminal world, Teresa gradually discovers her talent for negotiation, strategy, and business. As she builds her own network and accumulates wealth and influence, she transforms herself from a frightened young woman into a formidable criminal leader. Spanning continents and more than a decade, Pérez-Reverte’s novel combines crime thriller, political intrigue, and a powerful portrait of female ambition. Inspired in part by real-world drug-trafficking networks, the story explores loyalty, betrayal, identity, and the price of power. Teresa’s rise challenges conventional ideas about femininity and authority, while revealing the brutal realities of a world where survival often demands becoming the very person one once feared.

In June 1960, a violent storm traps nine travelers on the secluded Greek island of Utakos, where they are staying at the island’s only hotel. Their isolation takes a sinister turn when Edith Mander, a quiet British tourist, is found dead in a beach pavilion. Although her death initially appears to be suicide, the circumstances suggest something far more mysterious. With the island cut off from the outside world, the guests find themselves trapped in a classic locked-room mystery, and everyone becomes a potential suspect. Their unlikely investigator is Ormond Basil, a once-famous actor whose most celebrated role was Sherlock Holmes. Although Basil has spent his career portraying the legendary detective rather than solving real crimes, his familiarity with Holmes’s methods may be the group’s only hope. When another body is discovered, the mystery deepens into a deadly game involving literary clues, carefully staged murders, and a killer who seems to understand detective fiction as intimately as Basil himself. A witty homage to the golden age of crime fiction, the novel explores the boundaries between fiction and reality, the nature of storytelling, and the intellectual duel between a detective and a murderer—and between an author and a reader.