A closed Oxford library stack is reopened, and an ageing archaeologist is asked to examine a peculiar row of blank, untitled volumes that are not quite books in any ordinary sense.

As he opens them, they begin to show not words but fully realised lives, wars, epidemics, and intimate crossroads that never happened yet feel horribly, seductively possible.

Each “unwritten” book offers him and his city a different fate, forcing him to decide what should remain only a ghost of a choice and what price is too high for correcting past regrets.