The Novel Corner Novels & Stories

Ivone sat in the corner of the cold dungeon, her back pressed to the damp stone wall, knees tucked to her chest. The torches lining the corridor outside flickered wearily, casting long, flickering shadows through the bars of her cell. The silence was thick, broken only by the occasional drip of water from the ceiling or the distant shuffle of guards. But her mind wasn’t in the dungeon. It was in the library, lost in scrolls and ink and secrets far too heavy for parchment to bear.

Then she replaced Rosamund carefully on the shelf. “I will come back.” Not I cannot have it. I will come back. I looked at the title again. A Season for Lady Rosamund. Two coins. Secondhand bookshop beneath a white feather near the fountain. Then I looked at Ailis. “Mara was first.” I understood. The bookseller wrapped Mara. Ailis watched him protect the corners with the same concentration she had given my embroidered cuffs. Another thing learned. She cared about book corners. We left through the narrow passage.

It's come to my notice that I actually do that to him a lot. "Rica wait!" he's voice boomed through out the library. I turned back and gave him a look like he was crazy, I mean he might have as well been, didn't he know the librarian Mrs Agboola was a no nonsense woman, she could banned us permanently from the Library. Dili probably might have not cared about that but I strongly did. The library was my only form of safehaven in school, and I was very determined to keep it that way. "I don't think the people at Zuma rock heard you well, why not be a little louder ehn" I whispered sarcastically with yet another eye roll.

She raised her brows. “Seriously?” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Yes, seriously! Ah yous should check it out too, come I’ll read it out to you, it’s great!” She clapped her hands in excitement. “No thank you, you know I don’t read romance,” He shook his head. “But it’s a unique one,” She protested, “A popular mystery/thriller writer is thrown inside her own novel! How cool is that?” “Hmm?” he raised his brows. “Did it pick your interest?” She wiggled her brows. “Ah, the guy has the same name as you, by the way,” She added.

He turned a page. At noon he closed his book. "Hungry?" he said. "A little." "There was a place on the corner." "I saw it." We put our books in our bags and left the reading room. He kept my hand on the way out, through the narrow aisles and past the front desk where the owner nodded at us without interrupting anything. The restaurant on the corner was small and warm and we got a table by the window and ordered without much deliberation. He looked at me across the table.

She stopped at the corner of a street she didn't have a specific reason to be on. There was a bookshop at the end of the block. Used, by the look of it — the kind of place that had stopped organizing itself by any system other than accumulation, books stacked in windows and spilling onto a rack outside, a handwritten sign in the door that said OPEN in letters that leaned slightly to the left. Above the bookshop, basement windows glowed with warm light. Ilyra stood on the corner and looked at it. She didn't have her tablet. She couldn't report it even if she'd wanted to. She had walked here without a route, without a purpose, without the apparatus of the thing she was in the process of stoppi

No touch of cement was there, at least not visible to the bare eyes. And inside was filled with tons of books. The bookshelves were touching the ceiling, and there was a wooden spiral staircase by which a book lover could read a book from the top of the shelf. There were many chairs-tables in one corner and lamps set over the head, indicating that the place was for those who want to read comfortably. The place was segregated with translucent glass, the word 'reader's corner' written in white bold letters on the glass walls did not escape Maze's eyes.

She had thought about the corner all weekend and she had thought about the terms and she had thought about the specific thing he had done, offering instead of asking, defining instead of waiting to be told, and she had walked past the book on Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening and Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon and she had not opened it because she had needed the corner to land fully before she let anything else arrive. The corner had landed. She sat with that for a moment and looked at the empty windowsill and the book on the hall table. Then she got up. Crossed to the hall table. Picked up the book. Light in her hands. The dark blue cloth cover. No title on t

“This one weaves mystery and magic, but underneath, it’s a story about trust and power.” Her face softened. “I’ll take it.” As I wrapped the book, another man stepped in, younger, sharp-eyed, dressed in a rumpled suit. His gaze swept the shelves with a hunger I recognized all too well. “Looking for something… thrilling,” he said, voice low. I leaned forward slightly. “Try The Silent Corner, it’s about secrets that change everything.” He nodded, brows furrowed, then murmured, “Secrets change everything.” The bell jingled again. A teenager, headphones around his neck, glanced nervously at the counter. “Uh, do you have any fantasy? Like with dragons?”

It wrapped around me like a blanket, soothing and fragile, just enough to keep me from panicking in the hall. I went straight to my favorite corner—the desk by the window where the sunlight always hit just right—and reached for a book on the shelf. A novel, something new: All the Hidden Places. The title alone promised escape. I opened it, hoping the words would distract me, but they refused to stick. My eyes scanned the page, but my mind refused to follow.