The Haunted Bookshop (PDF)

The Haunted Bookshop is the 1919 novel by Christopher Morley, now in the public domain in the United States.

This is a suspenseful novel set in Brooklyn around the time of the end of World War I. It continues the story of Roger Mifflin, the book seller in Parnassus on Wheels. It also details an adventure of Miss Titania Chapman and a young advertising man named Aubrey Gilbert.

The Haunted Bookshop is not a novel of the supernatural. Rather, the name refers to the ghosts of the past that haunt all libraries and bookstores: "the ghosts of all great literature." Throughout the novel Morley, through the character of Roger Mifflin, makes reference to the knowledge and wisdom that one can gain from literature.

The narrative begins with a young advertising man, Aubrey Gilbert, stopping by a bookstore named "The Haunted Bookshop" in the hopes of finding a new client. Gilbert meets the proprietor, Roger Mifflin. Gilbert does not succeed in selling advertising copy, but is intrigued by Mifflin and his conviction concerning the value books and booksellers have to the world. Additionally, Gilbert is intrigued by the fact that his firm's biggest client, Mr. Chapman, is a friend of Mifflin and has asked Mifflin to undertake the education of his daughter, Titania Chapman, by hiring her as an assistant.