Search for your favourite author or book

The Society of Unknowable Objects

ISBN 
9781787637276
Format 
Trade Paperback
Recommended Price 
R380.00
Published 
August 2025
About the book: 
From the author of the Sunday Times bestselling  The Book of Doors  comes a second fantastical, standalone novel bursting with adventure and magic and heart. A handful of very ordinary individuals are members of a rather extraordinary society - its sole purpose being to track down unknowable objects that are out there, hiding in plain sight, to keep these items safe from the outside world . . . and the outside world safe from them.
 
The world of unknowable objects – those seemingly ordinary items that most people have no idea possess magical powers – has been quiet for years . . .
 
But just in case, there exists a secret society whose sole purpose is to gather these artefacts together, and keep them safe from the outside world. And the outside world safe from them.
 
Called the Society of Unknowable Objects, it meets every six months in the basement of a London bookshop, and it’s at one of these meetings that Frank Simpson, the society’s longest-standing member, reveals that a previously unknown item has surfaced in Hong Kong. And he asks the newest member, author Magda Sparks, to investigate.
 
Within hours of her arrival in the city, Magda is confronted by a killer who seems to know all about these unknowable objects. She manages to escape, but only by using a magical artefact of her own that the society knows nothing about. Safely back in London, Magda learns that hers is not the only secret that’s been kept from the other members. And that the most pernicious secret of all seems to concern the very nature of the society itself.
 
The enormity of what Magda discovers takes her on a perilous journey – across the Atlantic to the deep south of the United States – in pursuit of an unknowable object and a seemingly unknowable individual; in pursuit of answers about her legacy and the society she serves.
 
Magic may be too powerful to be allowed out into the world, but there is something even more potent: the Truth . . .
Other titles by this author 
About the Author
Born in Falkirk, Gareth Brown  wanted to be a writer from a very young age. He wrote his first (unpublished) novel when in his teens and short stories while at university. For the last twenty years he has worked in the UK Civil Service and is currently Director of Screening for NHS Scotland. An inveterate traveller, he particularly relishes the experience of arriving somewhere new: those first few hours of culture shock and noise and bustle in an unfamiliar city - a passion that influenced the writing of his Sunday Times bestselling debut,  The Book of DoorsGareth Brown  lives just outside Edinburgh.

Others also viewed

Southern Africa has a wealth of mammal fauna, and is home to about 530 species, including tiny...
The #1 bestselling wellbeing guide in New Zealand   Discover how to live a happier life...
A hilarious, biting satire of the United States and its unpredictable leader from the best-...
A new spy thriller set over the four days of the 1938 Munich Conference, as the world waits for...