Not Quite Cozy Mystery Book Club

Amateur detectives welcome!

Join us in the Yaz Community Room on the first floor. We will share an hour as we discuss Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan. Pick up a physical copy at our second floor reference desk or place a hold on a copy through Libby. If assistance is needed, reach out to our adult reference desk at 920-886-6315 or library@neenahlibrary.org.

Free and no registration necessary.

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan

When a bookshop patron commits suicide, his favorite store clerk must unravel the puzzle he left behind. Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she keeps a meticulously crafted existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs.....the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day marauding the store’s overwhelmed shelves.

But when Joey Molina, a young, beguiling BookFrog, kills himself in the bookstore’s upper room, Lydia’s life comes unglued. Always Joey’s favorite bookseller, Lydia has been bequeathed his meager worldly possessions. Trinkets and books; the detritus of a lonely, uncared for man. But when Lydia flips through his books she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. And they seem to contain a hidden message. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?

As Lydia untangles the mystery of Joey’s suicide, she unearths a long buried memory from her own violent childhood. Details from that one bloody night begin to circle back. Her distant father returns to the fold, along with an obsessive local cop, and the Hammerman, a murderer who came into Lydia’s life long ago and, as she soon discovers, never completely left.

(From Goodreads.)

Everyone is welcome. If accommodations are needed to attend, please contact the library administrative office at 920-886-6315 or by email at library@neenahlibrary.org at least 24 hours in advance of the program.