Nessundove

Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk. His small act of kindness propels him into a world he never dreamed existed.

Librarian note: Alternative cover editions for this ISBN can be found here and here.

Under the streets of London there's a place most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks.

Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is going to find out more than enough about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his workday existence and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and utterly bizarre. And a strange destiny awaits him down here, beneath his native city: neverwhere.

This is the first Neil Gaiman book I've read, after watching a lot of his work on TV to start with. This is, hand down, one of the best books I've read. The characters are a mix of very interesting, mysterious, and lovable. And the world he creates has great mystery and depth.