Rosewire 7 (novel)

The seventh, untitled Rosewire novel has long been called the black book because of its first-edition binding, which was entirely black——there is no identifying image or text, and even the page-edges are blackened. Later editions do not blacken the page-ends so that readers may leaf through the book without smearing black pigment across the text of the novel.

The page-edge effect prompted Ray Bradbury to throw his copy of the black book in the trash, calling it "that obscene smudge bible." In 2005, a meme called "smudge bibling" spread across the internet: readers of first-edition black books (or more often charcoaled later editions) ask questions of Harry Hardiner by flipping rapidly through the black book, finding and pointing to words in the novel to make up their question. They then flip back through the book, looking at the black smudges across the pages, and read either words indicated in the novel or words suggested by the black pigment itself. Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files proved this phenomenon to be pareidolia.

Some evangelical churches suggested that Hardiner's novel had been blackened with charred human remains. To date, no scientific establishment has investigated this claim on a first-edition copy.