a boy whose father fell prey to a book which drives its readers to take their own lives, a girl who tries to protect the boy from meeting a similar fate, a forensic pathologist who cannot forgive herself for the death of a girlhood friend, a mysterious used-book store – the book club – that only deals with books about death and despair, and a suicide which was committed in the ancient library of alexandria are all inexplicably connected in this unusual korean horror story.