Excerpt from Gutenberg's Apprentice by Alix Christie, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Peter closed his eyes to sense it more precisely. It was as Fust had said. The parchment yielded in some way: it was not smooth beneath the ink, as when he wrote it with his pen. "Whose work is this?" he said again.

Fust's heavy face was shining. "This man they call Gutenberg has found a way to make the letters out of metal. He lays the ink upon each one, then stamps them in the page."

Peter raised it to his eyes. So close that he could see the faint depression, a slope so slight as to be almost imperceptible: from the surface to the gully of each stroke. The space in which the angels—or the devil, surely—danced upon a pin. He could not speak at first, the shock was so extreme.

"I was approached by a man who knew I dealt in books." His father mopped his brow, as if relieved to share this thing at last. "Gutenberg sought an investor, I was told. I went to see him, and he showed me this." The man wouldn't show him more, though, he told Peter, nor divulge how it was done. For his part, he'd been mystified, he added: he had never heard of any Elder family having anything to do with books. He'd thought that man's whole clan content with running half the abbeys and the Mint, and weaving gold from wholesale cloth they sold beneath St. Martin's eaves.

"I thought, like you," he said as he pressed Peter's hand, "that it was just another of those wretched grammars. But then this Gutenberg said he made it with a new technique. Ars impressoria, he calls it. To think he's been at work at this, in secret, just a lane or two away. . . .

"You know the house." Peter heard the words dimly through the roaring in his brain. "The Hof zum Gutenberg, on Cobblers' Lane."

"I have a trade," he said thickly and flung the sheets back on the table.

But Fust by then was standing, pacing, giving not the slightest indication he had heard. "It's not the evenness—that's just one part of it!" His voice was high; his cheeks were flushed. He had a canny and familiar look on his trader's face—yet also a strange expression Peter didn't think he'd ever seen. A kind of ravishment, an exaltation. Fust turned and fired a question. "It would take you how long—four days, five?—to copy this?"

"Two days. At most." Peter was fast, and young, and proud.

"In those two days, this Gutenberg can make, by 'printing,' as he calls it, half a dozen copies, each one perfectly alike." Fust came around the table and reached for Peter's wrist. "Without the need to wear your fingers to the bone."

His son was pinned, immobile. Fust loomed above him, blocking out the bright stars in the sky.

"Imagine it! My God, you have to see what this will mean. We can make ten times, twenty times as many copies of a book—in the same time and at the same cost." His father's hands were flailing in the air. "A book like this—or even longer ones. It's limitless." The look of wonder was replaced by triumph. He dropped a hand on Peter's shoulder and shook him hard. "The moment I saw it, I was certain. This is the miracle the Lord has been preparing for us all along."

"A blasphemy, more like, or just some shoddy trick." Peter shook Fust's hand off, reached back for the printed sheets. In truth that booklet was a soulless, lousy thing. The letters were as rough as those cheap woodcarvings that the Dutchmen hawked; the lines were blotchy and the edges slopped with ink.

Fust darkened. Then he straightened, and wiped a hand across his face. "But you must see. It is no accident that brought you here. Each step that brought you to this house, each book we've seen and sold, or that you yourself have written. What were they all, if not a preparation? What is our purpose here, if not for you to learn this blessed art?"

Excerpted from Gutenberg's Apprentice by Alix Christie. Copyright © 2014 by Alix Christie. Excerpted by permission of Harper. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.