-The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

"People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some their is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like lies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to thelaws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic."