Excerpt from Melmoth by Sarah Perry, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The lights change – the crowd surges on – Helen is taken on the noisy tide and pitches up against an iron railing, withdrawing her gloves from her pocket. It is then she hears – above the noise of wealthy Koreans bound for the brass-clad riverboats moored down in the dock – her own name lifted on the wind coming off the river. 'Helen – Helen Franklin!' – called frantically, as if perhaps she's dropped her purse. She looks up, gloved hand to mouth, and sees – standing still beneath a street light, coatless and shivering – a tall man, blue-shirted, clutching a large dark object to his chest. Eye meets eye; an arm is raised. 'Yes?' – imperious, impatient – 'Yes! Come here, would you? Come here now, please.' The man plucks at the fabric of his shirt as though that half-transparent silk irritates his skin: within, his body is violently shaking.

'Karel,' says Helen, who does not yet move. It is Karel Pražan, who constitutes precisely half her complement of friends and acquaintances, their friendship struck up in the café of the National Library of the Czech Republic, there having been no free tables available that morning. He is tall, and carefully thin; his dark hair always gleams against his scalp; his shirts are silk, his shoes suede or calfskin, according to the season; he is not handsome, but gives the illusion of it, and seems always to have only just shaved. But even at this distance, jostled by passing children in bright padded coats, it is possible to make out the greyish pallor, the sunken eyes, of a man who does not sleep. The cold has touched his lips with bluish dust; the arm that clasps that dark object to his shaking chest is locked in place as if all the joints are fused. 'Karel,' she says, and moves unhurriedly towards him. Ten paces on she sees he holds a document file, its leather black and coarse; it is worn pale at the edges from much use; it is bound three times with a leather cord. The street light gleams on a mark in the corner, but she can't make it out. 'Karel?' she says. 'Put on my scarf. What's happened – where is your coat – are you hurt?' A likelier thought occurs. 'Is it Thea?' She pictures Thea, his partner and certainly his better half, lifeless in her wheelchair on the ground floor, eyes fixed at some point beyond the plaster ceiling, taken – as they'd always feared – by another clot of blood to the brain in the night. 'Thea?' Karel is impatient. 'What? She's fine – no, I don't want it' – he pushes fretfully at the offered scarf, then surveys her as if he cannot think why she has troubled him.

'You will get ill.'

'Take it back! I won't. I don't care. Look: I suppose we should sit down.' He looks about, as if he might simply sit cross-legged on the pavement; then he lifts the leather file, and shakes it at her. She sees it is heavy, stuffed with documents and stained with water; he moves his thumb, and reveals in the corner a rubbed gilt monogram reading J.A.H. She notes with unease how he holds it with both avarice and distaste, as if it were an object he had coveted all his life, only to find that having paid the asking price it had a foul smell. 'It's no good. I shall have to tell someone, and you of all people will bear it. I mean' – he breaks off, and laughs without merriment – 'I believe she could walk up and look you dead in the eye and still you'd not believe it! Not a word!'

'She? Who is "she" – have you taken this file, Karel – does it belong to some friend of yours? You ought not to play your tricks.'

'Oh ...' He grows vague. 'You'll see.' He begins then to walk on; calls over his shoulder that she must keep up, as though she were a child, and a tiresome one at that. She follows him down a cobbled alley beneath a stone arch which is hardly ten yards from the tourists' thoroughfare, but which you would certainly not find, were you ever minded to try. He pushes open a painted door, slips between heavy curtains drawn against the chill, and sits – beckoning – in a dim corner. The place is familiar – the wet fug on the windows, the green ashtrays, the 40-watt bulbs in their green glass shades – and Helen's anxiety diminishes. She sits beside her friend (he shivers, still), removes her gloves, smooths the sleeves of her cardigan over her wrists, and turns to him.

Excerpted from Melmoth by Sarah Perry. Copyright © 2018 by Sarah Perry. Excerpted by permission of Custom House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.