Penguin Random House Library

"I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure." — Virginia Woolf

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A Letter from the Author Michael McGarrity, author of The Last Ranch In one of my early novels, I introduced readers to Molly Hamilton, the blonde, pretty chief research librarian at a small New Mexico college, who with her laser-sharp mind and thousand-watt smile helped Kevin Kerney, the protagonist in my then still evolving crime series, solve a mystery. While on book tours and at speaking engagements during the next several years, librarians repeatedly approached me to say thanks for creating a true-to-life character that ran counter to the dowdy, old maid librarian stereotype. My response was to simply tell them that from childhood on, librarians have always been among my most favorite people. But I haven’t told why until now. I don’t truly know if it was John Gregory Dunne who said that writers should thank their lucky stars they came from a dysfunctional family, but I attribute the quote to him. In my case it’s one hundred percent true. The library was where I could escape to a safe and secure place and be left alone in silence to explore the world through books. It was a place where helpful people encouraged me; gave me advice, not criticism; treated me kindly; and helped me refine my taste in fiction, history, and biography — my three favorite subjects. It was at the library where I discovered that I could learn things my way, on my terms. There were no bullying teachers, no constant reminders of my shortcomings, no discipline handed out because of my restless inattention and out-of-seat behavior. At the library, I was free to pursue what interested me without all the imposed rules and structure. At times I’d roam the stacks, randomly pick out books by titles that caught my eye, and hurry home with my selections, eager to discover what awaited me inside. Guided by the librarians, I discovered writers such as George Orwell, Albert Camus, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, Ray Bradbury, and Isaac Asimov. On my own, I found Bernard DeVoto, J. Frank Dobie, Will James, C.S. Forester, and others. Each time I presented my choices at the checkout counter, I’d receive more suggestions, and every time I walked back through those library doors, my world would expand. Under their gentle tutelage, librarians did as much, if not more, to educate me than all of my public school teachers. Starting out twenty years ago, with the publication of my first book, Tularosa, I resisted the notion that my writing was autobiographical. I’d willingly admit that I wrote based on experience and observation, but I saw little of myself or my personal history in my twelve crime novels. Looking back, I was kidding myself a bit, which I clearly discovered when I embarked on writing the American West trilogy.   It was a daunting enterprise to imagine and create four generations of one family living out their lives over the course of a hundred years of American history. I never could have written Hard Country, Backlands, and now the final book in the Kerney family saga, The Last Ranch, without drawing deeply on my own lifetime of personal and family experience. And I doubt I could have done it without the long-ago help of some perceptive, kindhearted librarians who saw a restless solitary kid with a hungry mind searching to find himself.             What beautiful people they were, one and all. 

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A Conversation with BILL BEVERLY Author of Dodgers And his mother, Martha Beverly A high school LIBRARIAN!

Q. Tell us about your career as a librarian and why you chose it.

A. (Martha) Quite frankly, I didn’t realize that library work would become my future. I stayed home with Bill and his younger brother until they entered school. We read and played phonics games every day. Once the boys were in school, I completed my degree as an English major, heading for teaching. But the schools were laying off teachers, so my husband suggested that library school might be a good idea. It was a brilliant idea! My organizational mind and love of reading made that a better career match. My first library job was a two-year stint as a bookmobile librarian and driver. Then I was hired into a public school system where I served as elementary librarian and, later, high school librarian.

Q. Did you see Bill as a writer early on?

A. (Martha) Bill’s love for language is no surprise. He read constantly as a young kid, and we read together as a family every night. We bought desks for the boys when Bill was six. Every day, even if there was no school homework, the boys spent twenty or thirty minutes at their desks, reading, writing or drawing. We felt that a quiet time for study was an important habit to develop.

At dinnertime every night the dictionary or Warriner’s grammar book made an appearance as we discussed and debated grammar, usage, and vocabulary. When the grandparents visited, the discussions grew livelier. We all love to play with language and never fail to discover ways to tickle each other with reports of billboard language, puns, weird words, and creativity.

Q. Bill, we hear your first job was at a library. What was that like? 

A. Yes – I shelved books at the Kalamazoo Public Library: first the 600 section was mine, then fiction, science fiction, and mystery – we observed the old schisms. It was a good job to have. I alphabetize well: even today, most of my house is alphabetized. And, there were always bookish girls working there. And as long as your section was in reasonably good order and the reading areas were picked up, you could get some reading done back in the office. Most of my jobs, come to think of it, have been jobs that allowed me to get some reading done.

Q. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

A. (Bill) Oh, fourth or fifth grade. Maybe earlier. But it took me a long time to do anything about it. I’m not sure why, but I wasn’t brave about the arts, about making things. In college, it amazed me to hear my friends who were musicians and see my friends who were artists and writers, creating, making things. Making noise. It took me a long time to imagine myself as one of them.

Q. How has your mom’s career inspired and influenced you?

A. (Bill) My mom was and is a great librarian – she took over a moribund high school library and, in a couple of years, transformed it. She ditched much of the old, unused collection and restocked it with paperbacks she’d bring home from book sales. She made the place bright and comfortable. She applied for grants, got computers handed down from the university in town, had the internet in the library before almost anyone. She was relentless in listening to what students wanted and trying to make it available. And that’s always been an inspiration to me as I’ve taught. I don’t know that I always live up to it – or could. She still has more energy than anybody else I know.

She and my father, a German teacher, filled the house with books. My brother and I grew up seeing our parents read. So we read. There was never a shortage of books about. And we were never hassled about what we read, or chose not to read. That activity always seemed to be protected, to be blessed.

Q. What is it like to have your son publish a novel? Did you get to read drafts or provide sage advice?

A. (Martha) His dad and I were blown away by the power of his writing. As a librarian and his mom, I’ve jumped for joy when the starred reviews were announced!

Q. What do you both like to read?

A. (Martha) I’ve always preferred non-fiction. As a kid I read every children’s biography in my town’s library. I like poetry, plays, history, travel, and lately have been focusing on African American literature, some of it fiction. I’m in two book groups that read fiction to stretch myself in that direction. Recently I led a discussion of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah.

A. (Bill) In my day job, I'm an English professor, so I get to read on the job all the time. My favorite author in the classroom is James Baldwin. But I read whatever I can get ─ I graze poetry, fiction, reviews of music and film and books. My mom's aunt, who lived in Lower Manhattan, bought me a New Yorker subscription every year beginning when I was about 14 ─ an amazing gift for a kid who reads. And my daughter helps me revisit ─ Madeleine L'Engle, Roald Dahl, William Steig. Right now we're reading Treasure Island together. I recommend it.

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A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR A video from Stewart O’Nan, author of City of Secrets

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A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR Denise Swanson, author of Between a Book and a Hard Place

Dear Librarian,

As a writer, I know the importance of libraries. But before I ever dreamed of becoming a published author, I was a little girl living in a small town. An only child, living on a farm with no neighbors within walking distance, I suffered panic attacks if I didn’t have a pile of books waiting for me to read.

Which was why, when I heard about all the libraries being closed due to lack of funding, I decided to focus the plot of my next Devereaux’s Dime Store mystery on the offer of a philanthropist to reopen the Shadow Bend Library.

Like me, my sleuth Dev grew up on a farm outside of town, so she too would have depended on the library for entertainment, knowledge, and companionship. Knowing that it was important to the story that she feels conflicted about the library re-opening, I decided that the philanthropist would turn out to be her stepfather. A man she’d never met, married to the woman who had abandoned Dev and run off seeking greener pastures.

Next, I took a good hard look at what libraries meant to their towns in the twenty-first century versus what they had been when I was growing up in the late sixties and early seventies. I found out that in this ever increasing digital world, the role of libraries is undervalued. Many public officials have no idea that libraries are the community and cultural centers and when there’s a shortfall in the budgets, libraries are among the first institutions to suffer.

From my research, it was clear that municipal governments often don’t understand how much libraries can strengthen a community’s bond. Libraries, especially in small towns, are one of the few remaining places where folks from diverse backgrounds can gather to interact. One of the few places that remain centers for the arts. And one of the few safe places for children and adolescents to socialize and learn how to appropriately interact.

With that in mind, I wrote Between a Book and a Hard Place. It saddened me that because of the way the plot developed, I was going to have to deprive Dev’s hometown of the library they were counting on regaining. But rest assured, sometime in the near future, like the next book, Shadow Bend will get its library and it will be bigger and better than ever. Because as we all know every town needs a good library.

I hope you’ll read Between a Book and a Hard Place, and if you enjoy it, recommend it to your patrons. They of all people understand the value of a library.

—Denise Swanson

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A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR J. Todd Scott, The Far Empty

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A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR Letter to Reader by J. Aaron Sanders, author of Speakers of the Dead

America was on the verge of war, again. A tidal wave of immigrants unleashed a discriminatory backlash. Political corruption was rampant, and the disenfranchised protested with bricks and firebombs. New York was the center of the world.

In 1858, lower Manhattan looked much as it does today, only with horses. 700,000 citizens crowded its tenements and walked its filthy streets. There were 260 churches, 3,000 saloons, and 100 schools. Cholera claimed 2,000 lives, typhoid 2,800, and the infant mortality rate was 250 in 1,000.

America had 32 states, 300 congressmen, 500 firemen, 4,700 policemen, and one woman doctor: Elizabeth Blackwell.

 This is her story . . .

This is the premise for a TV show called The Infirmary I pitched with Robert Palm in 2012. Though the script and the premise are damn good, the show was not picked up, killed in one part by Copper (BBC) and in another by The Knick (Showtime). Still, working with Robert Palm was a pivotal moment in the evolution of Speakers of the Dead.

I happened upon Elizabeth Blackwell when reading about medicine in the 19th century. I was amazed that more had not been written about her, since she was the first woman doctor in the United States. Her admission to Geneva Medical College was a fluke: the headmaster thought her application was a joke and so he opened the question of her admission to the other students. They voted to accept her and were flabbergasted when she showed up. She earned her degree, despite many obstacles, and I knew she had to be a character in my novel.

After graduating from Geneva in 1849, Blackwell moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a surgeon. There, while treating an infant with ophthalmia neonatorum, she lost her sight in one eye when some of the contaminated solution squirted in her eye. Blackwell returned to New York City, where she opened her own clinic. Her sister, Emily, along with Marie Zakrzewska, both MDs, joined her in 1857 to help run her newly established New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children.

When I pitched my idea for a TV show about Elizabeth Blackwell, Robert had no real incentive to help me. But he did it anyway. Later, he would tell me that some Hollywood old-timer helped him and basically told him to do the same.

Robert Palm is a reporter turned screenwriter. He got his start on Miami Vice, and his first produced script—Sonny Crockett’s wedding—was viewed by 34 million people.

Later, he would work with Dick Wolf on Law & Order, and later still, he was the show runner for Law & Order SVU, among many other writing and producing credits.

Robert came to Columbus, Georgia in March 2012 where we created a beat sheet for The Infirmary pilot episode. In retrospect, I’m not sure how much I “created.” Instead, I watched Robert map out the beats with such a finely tuned sense of story I felt like I had been allowed to go behind the curtain to watch a master at work. That is not overstated. I spent the entire three days trying to keep up. But I was learning too: how to create more efficient and varied story beats, how to twist stories, add conflict, and how to eliminate dramatic redundancies. When we separated on Tuesday, we had mapped out the entire pilot episode. Now all we had to do was write the damn thing.

We divided up the pilot into acts: Robert would take acts 1 & 3; I would take acts 2 & 4. I wrote and rewrote and rewrote Act 2, and when it was time to share the pages, I was terrified. Again, Robert encouraged me with this baseball analogy:

In TV land, one always expects the rookie to whiff, hopefully not looking, while secretly hoping he or she hits it out of the park. And knowing that a clean single is more than okay, while a sharply-lined double is gravy. I’d say you crushed one deep into the corner, and while I’d like to wave you on, I’m going to hold you at third, knowing you’ll go in face first.

I was elated. Of course Robert had to clean up Act 2, but he found a way to do it that also encouraged me. I could go on about how he helped me through the process, but I think I’ve made my point. Robert mentored me in such a way that I learned how to write a good story. He would continue to mentor me through the pitch stage in Hollywood, and later in the writing of Speakers of the Dead. I will never be able to thank him for what he did for me.

In our script, Robert came up with the idea to call Marie Zakrzewska “Zacky.” I kept this nickname in Speakers of the Dead to pay homage to Robert Palm. I also like the significance of Elizabeth’s and Zacky’s relationship: a mentorship. Blackwell dedicated her life to helping women in medicine: both as caregivers and patients. She did this because she believed in what she was doing, and she wanted to help. Zacky (and her sister, Emily) benefited from this mentorship. Just as I did.

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A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR Mona Awad, author of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl

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A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR Morgan Callan Rogers, author of Written on My Heart

I was in my mid-twenties when I returned to my hometown of Bath, Maine, after six months of living with my brother, who was stationed at a military base located in Norfolk, England. While the poppy-laden, bunny-infested countryside was beautiful and I had many adventures, my penultimate dream of marrying a British rock star went unrealized. It was time to make another plan.

In the local classifieds, I spied an ad for an assistant at the Patten Free Library and I applied. It sounded like a good fit. I loved books. I loved reading. I loved the library itself. Constructed of light brick, it featured a round castle-like tower at one end and overlooked the pretty city park.  

To my delight, I received a call for an interview, which was held in the dignified half-circular reading room, with its big comfortable chairs and a grandfather clock that ticked time away in a gracious, steadied manner. My interviewer was Barbara R. King, the library’s director.

I had heard about Barbara. She was ‘that new librarian’. She had come from ‘away’ and had really ‘shaken up the place’ with her notions of how a library should be operated. Before Barbara, the atmosphere in the library could best be described as dull. Generations of dusty decorum had settled over the place. But when Barbara was hired, that changed. She enlisted the artist Dahlov Ipcar, who lived in nearby Five Islands, to drench the children’s room walls with prancing African animals, set against a bright orange background. Barbara initiated programs for all ages, encouraged ideas and conversation, and brought a new level of enthusiasm.

She was one of those fierce, tiny women with the energy of a hummingbird in flight. She was here. She was there. She was everywhere. She changed many lives, including mine.

I remember the interview as painful, but not because of Barbara. She sat across from me—all eyes and encouragement. Our exchange was painful because of my shyness. I don’t remember the questions but I do remember my monosyllabic responses to anything she asked me. Why she hired me, I don’t know. But she did. Her faith in me, a dreamer with a half-hearted grip on reality, created a sea change in my awareness of what might be possible in my life.  

What an honor it was to be part of her team! She was a mentor, a mother, and an admonisher, if need be. My coworkers and I adored her even as we maintained a healthy respect for her rare bursts of temper. I loved going into work every day, surrounded by energy, allies, and books. I read constantly, becoming reacquainted with old friends and new friends on the pages of novels, biographies and nonfiction, do-it-yourself—anything that passed through my hands. A book lover working in a library is a bit like a chocoholic living in a chocolate factory; one can never get enough while at the same time one is overwhelmed by the availability of one’s addiction. It was a wonderful period in my life.

Barbara moved on after a while, to her own bookstore and then, out of Maine. I continued to work at the Patten Free Library, but the light had dimmed. I decided to move on, too. I applied to college with the intention of getting an English degree. Somehow, Barbara found out about my plan from far away and one day I received a note from her, along with a one hundred dollar check.

“College is expensive. I hope this helps,” her letter read. “I know you can do it.” 

And I did, thanks, in great part, to her. 

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Check out this wonderful book club kit for Natasha Solomons' The Song of Hartgrove Hall--coming out December 29!

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A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR A letter from Susan Meissner, author of Stars Over Sunset Boulevard

I grew up in a home where bookshelves were a necessary piece of furniture in every room, and where reading was as common an activity as eating breakfast and brushing our teeth. It was a happy house, but not one of extravagance, or even of plenty. Books might have been the only thing we had in abundance. We weren’t poor, but neither were we rich. My parents bought used cars, we didn’t go on family vacations, and eating out was getting Filippi’s pizza to go. We had the essentials, though:  love, laughter, and library cards.

My family didn’t travel on summer breaks to fun or exotic or faraway places. We never went to the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone or the East Coast. But I’d been to San Nicolas Island, and the forests of Wisconsin, and the moors of Yorkshire, all by the time I was ten just by reading Island of the Blue Dolphins, Little House in the Big Woods, and The Secret Garden. Despite spending my entire childhood in one little corner of San Diego, I tasted raspberry cordial in Anne of Green Gables, entered a pig in a county fair in Charlotte’s Web, and flew in a glass elevator in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. On the outside I lived a quiet, unassuming life with no visible luxuries, but on the inside, I traversed continents and time zones and even dimensions every time I brought home a pile of books from the library.

The kid in my class with the richest parents and the nicest clothes and the best toys had the same library card that I did. We stood before the same shelves. We were allowed to check out the same books and even the same number of books.

Looking back on it now, I think that was the most amazing thing about the library. Everyone who walked through the doors was suddenly the same as me, which is pretty amazing when you’re a kid (and a future writer) who notices everything. The hallowed halls of the library equalized us into nothing more or less than fellow book lovers and seekers of knowledge.

The library was and still is for me, the place where what I own and who I am doesn’t come into play. It’s all about what I want to know. And I am still, all these many years later, so very hungry for knowledge. I write to understand this world and our place in it, and, I suppose, I was a reader first for the same reason.

My latest novel, Stars Over Sunset Boulevard, is a tale about two studio secretaries whose goals collide on the movie set of Gone with the Wind in 1939. Like many of my other books, the story is set in a historical time and place that abounds with opportunities for sensorial detail. Hollywood in its pre-television heyday was a dream factory of glamour and bright lights, long white gloves and fedoras, big bands and streetcars. This is a world that is gone today, existing now only in books. It’s a heady notion that, if I’ve done my job right, my story will transport readers – regardless of class or health or age or means – to a place they cannot visit any other way.

Truly the most remarkable thing about book travel is that the only thing a person needs in his or her wallet is a library card.

The books are the destination, we authors are the privileged tour guides, the readers are the lucky passengers, and the libraries? They are the vessels that take us wherever we want to go. We only need step aboard and off we go.

See you on the deck…

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A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR A letter from Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen   

   One of the characters in The Portable Veblen is loosely based on my father, who grew up in Palo Alto, California, apprenticed as a rare book dealer with William P. Wreden, went to library school at UC Berkeley, and was recruited by Lawrence Clark Powell to come to UCLA, where his career in the University Research Library spanned thirty years. He collected mountaineering books, books about conservation and the American southwest, about the history of California, of Australia and Oceania, and in short, would start a collection once he possessed any book of any type. Our house was wall to wall shelves, surrounding us with iconic spines. We crowded around him when he returned from ALA conventions every year, bringing us cool posters and buttons, and we proudly entertained librarians at our house when they visited from other countries, like Japan and Fiji and Nigeria. My impression at that time was that the world revolved around books and libraries.

    When we were kids he’d bring home armloads of books on the weekend, books that had been set aside because they were damaged. My sister and I would go through them, erasing scribbles and notations, unfolding dog ears, dumping out potato chips and other greasy crumbs that had fallen between the pages. We’d trim loose threads off the cloth binding, and glue down buckling endpapers. On behalf of the UCLA library, which held approximately two million volumes at the time, he’d thank us.

     I wish more than anything my father could see this beautiful book that Penguin has produced. For months after my first two books came out, in 2005 and 2007, he’d call to tell me about his latest findings on WorldCat. He had a yellow legal pad, and with the passion he kept track of baseball stats he’d jot down every new library that purchased one. “Wichita Falls and Downers Grove and Singapore Polytechnic!” he would report one day.  “Multnomah County and Toronto!” he would say the next.

    I am talking about my father’s love and stewardship of books because this feels like an opportunity to thank him for making books so central and sacred to me. From his example, it seemed as if there could be no higher calling than to be charged with the care of books, let alone attempting to write one. For the same reason, it’s a chance for me to thank you, too.

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A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

A video from Nastasha Solomons, author of The Song of Hartgrove Hall

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Daredevils by Shawn Vestal

By Josh Hanagarne

           Every time I read a book in which Mormonism--in this case, its most fundamentalist strain--is the backdrop, I fear that I lose all objectivity. I was raised in the LDS church and had a very happy childhood. Since I’ve left, I’ve been forced to confront some of the darker aspects of the organization and have experienced predictable periods of anger, resentment, doubt, et cetera. When I read a book where Mormons of any strain are potrayed eccentrically and I catch myself  thinking, “Yeah, what a bunch of weirdos!,” I take a step back to see if I think I’m being overly biased. I don’t like it when the members of a church--or any church--are rendered like Flannery O’Connor’s or Carson McCuller’s southern grotesques.

           It’s temping. It’s occasionally deserved. But it doesn’t serve the reviewer or the reader.

           Happily, there are two things I can say about Daredevils right out of the gate:

           It gets fundamentalist Mormonism right, particularly the mood of such in the 70’s, and Shawn Vestal’s writing and storytelling gifts are such that I didn’t find my own history interrupting my reading at all.

           Daredevils offers a unique take on the Coming of Age Tale. Loretta is a fourteen year old living in a Fundamentalist Mormon community. She lives in one of the communities that tend to get raided by the feds.

           She frequently sneaks out to fool around with an older man who promises her that he’ll take her away from it all very soon.

           It doesn’t happen soon enough. Shortly after the book begins, she learns that she’s been “promised” to one of the community elders. Now she’s going to become yet another of his wives. Her early interactions with her new husband are some of the most depressing pages I’ve read. Loretta is trapped already, and now she knows she’s adding another layer to her captivity and there’s nothing she can do about it.

           This is all happening during the period when the daredevil Evel Knievel is preparing to make his Snake River Canyon jump on the motorcycle. Right away we’re set up for the idea that Loretta breaking away from her upbringing and faith is every bit (or more) the daredevil act, just as much as anything Knievel could come up with.

           I’d say her situation is way more intriguing. Knievel at least had a parachute. Loretta is fifteen, with all the limitations that can accompany the age, complicated further by her status in the religion.  

           After she marries, her new husband (Dean Harder, like something out of porn) moves his family. Loretta has to go with him and this is where the story really begins. Her husband’s nephew, Jason, a boy of endless pop culture enthusiasm and a devotee of Knievel, gives her a chance to be a kid again. They make an impulsive choice and hit the road together, along with one of Jason’s friends.

           The trip they take is every bit as sad, frustrating, and fun as you might imagine, There were few things I enjoyed as much as teenage roads trips, and I never had anything to escape from. I just liked to go and laugh with friends. Loretta’s dash for freedom is worth cheering about and I enjoyed every page.

           There are also some immensely enjoyable scenes where someone who may be Evel Knieval pops in and out.

           Vestal writes wonderful dialogue and has such an obvious affection for Idaho, for Loretta, and for his lucky readers, that Daredevils was irresistible for me from word one.

             The child forced to grow up too soon is an endlessly fascinating trope. This is a portrayal of a child forced to grow up too soon in some very odd circumstances. Full of heart and joy, Daredevils is one to read at least twice.

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Libraries and Me

By Elizabeth George

           I’m a lucky woman. I have enough money to buy all the books I want, and as a result I’ve filled my own library, my office, my assistant’s office, and my bedroom with books.  I have never been without a book to read for as long as I can remember, and while I’m reading one book, there is another waiting. When I reach the last page of a book, I sigh, feel immensely gratified, sometimes write to the author, and then grab for the next one.

           I began buying books when I was in seventh grade and began babysitting for neighbors. Books—along with Christmas presents—were how I spent that first earned money. I’m aware, though, that not everyone is as lucky as I am, and for this reason we have libraries.

           Prior to my having that aforementioned babysitting money, I had no funds to purchase books and although I always received a book at Christmas, as did my brother, we made short work of them and we usually finished reading them before New Year’s Eve. So early on, my father took us to the Mountain View Public Library.

           In those days, Mountain View, California, was not the place it is today: abloom with techies—and the industries they work for—and filled with restaurants, coffee houses, and some of the most expensive real estate in the state.  Then—in the 1950s—Mountain View stood on the edge of farming land, huddled alongside the south end of San Francisco Bay where, picturesquely, the city dump was a sea gull’s paradise. Downtown featured a shoe store, a dress shop, a real Italian delicatessen, an equally real meat market, and a grocery store with saw dust on the floor. Tucked nearby this store—ah, I recall its name: Purity—was the public library. This was a storefront, and when we went inside, we were greeted by a librarian whom I can see at this moment, mostly because she had a mustache. We were allowed to wander along this tiny library’s few tall bookshelves and we could select as many books as we wanted. So we did. Some we read in the car on the way home. Others we set aside and doled out to ourselves. For we didn’t go to the library every week, only when the books were due, two weeks later.

           In the summer, there were reading contests. When you finished a book, a balloon was colorfully filled in on a dittoed sheet of paper with your name on it. This featured a clown holding a whole slew of balloons, and it was with a source of pride that I saw my clown’s balloons get filled in quickly, faster than anyone’s.

           Ultimately, a bigger library was built as the little town began to grow. A fine building not far from the Catholic church now housed the city’s books, and I can remember going there repeatedly and gnawing at the bit until the moment the next Anne of Green Gables book was returned by whoever had borrowed it. That same library is even larger now, but I haven’t been inside. Long ago, I moved away from Mountain View to seek libraries elsewhere.

           My favorite was the old and wonderful library in the British Museum. My British publisher arranged for me to have a card there. I remember exactly what he wrote: “Please allow our distinguished author Elizabeth George entrance to the library,” and upon this merit, I was given a card. How proudly I passed the people in line to get into the museum when it opened. I didn’t have to wait in that line because the library was already open and…I had my card.

           The library was a quirky and wonderful place where you could sit exactly where some of the great writers of English literature sat before you. You occupied a position in a large circle, row upon row of curved spaces upon which you could do your reading. Up above you: a deep blue ceiling. All around you: individuals studying, scribbling away on notepads, creating masterpieces….Who really knew? I was there to find books that would assist me in my understanding of the Pakistani experience in Great  Britain in advance of writing a novel that I called Deception on His Mind. But…there was something about the British Museum’s great library that I didn’t understand at first.

           The library is vast. Its books are not on view. There were no stacks to wander along. What you had to do was put your request in and wait and wait and wait—sometimes days—for the book to arrive. What I learned later from my publicist who had worked in the library was this: The stacks occupied an enormous place below ground, so enormous that unless the librarian assistants below had more than one book requested from a given area, they didn’t fetch the one you requested. Until, of course, they had another request! Consequently, it was many days of returning to the library before I finally received my books. I’m happy to say that they were very helpful. How irritating it would have been had they not been so.

           Libraries exist for reasons. One of those reasons is scholarship. The other—and far more important, I think—is accessibility. Libraries give young children an access to a reading experience they might not otherwise have. They allow people who cannot afford to buy a volume of their own a chance to read the latest book in a series they love or a best seller that they’ve read about. Now, as a novelist who supports herself by selling books, I want people to frequent bookstores, of course. But I also want them to support their local library for what it can offer anyone—like the child I was—who walks inside.  

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Be sure to check out the beautifully drawn fable The Fox and the Star by Coralie Bickford-Smith. You may her work as she is also the talented artist behind our gorgeous Penguin Classics Hardcovers.

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A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

A video from Jenn McKinlay, author of A Likely Story

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Enter the Librarian, a Review by Josh Hanagarne

Perfect Days by Raphael Montes 

  Perfect Days made me uncomfortable in the best and worst ways, right down to its brilliant cover design. It reminded me of Roberto Bolano’s darker works, nearly all of Patricia Highsmith’s short stories and novels, Hannibal Lecter, and every oddball I’ve ever had a class with.

When the book starts, medical student Teo Avelar is lovingly interacting with a cadaver. She’s his best friend. At this point, you are already intrigued or you know all you need to. I suggest you keep reading. There have been a glut of get-in-the-head-of-a-sociopath books recently and I find nearly all of them tedious. Not so with Perfect Days.

To put it charitably, Teo has issues. He lives with his mom. He’s a medical student for all the wrong reasons. He sees himself as a romantic but is most definitely not. For most of the time on these pages, the issues are directed at Clarice--and maybe that’s why I couldn’t get Hannibal Lecter out of my head--an aspiring screenwriter and party girl. Teo begins fixating on her immediately. When she doesn’t reciprocate, and to be fair, she gives him every chance, he kidnaps her and begins the long process of winning her over. Easier said than done when you stash someone in a suitcase, or under your bed, during the day while you go out.

Clarice comes with all sorts of baggage, like a boyfriend of her own, a mother, a life that does not include being kidnapped, et cetera. But these are all mere inconveniences to Teo, who whisks her away to a remote cabin where she can work on her screenplay and where he can slowly bend her to his will. When they’re driven onto the road by events that I won’t spoil for you, so begins a bizarre trip.

It’s ostensibly undertaken for the research and completely of Clarice’s screenplay, titled Perfect Days, which also concerns a road trip. The journey is a struggle of wills, a genuine creative endeavor, an obscene tableau of a developing codependency, something of a romance at times, and a nail-biter of a book. Teo and Clarice’s interactions always left me a little queasy, partly because her fears align so closely with some of my own.

Talk to enough people about their fears and you’ll hear “I can’t imagine just being stolen and locked up.” Most people fear what they consider randomized violence. The truly chilling reality is that, with Teo as an example, these sorts of cases are anything but random.

Perfect Days is a good reminder that there are people who look like everyone else, who are very much not. It is naive to think that you can predict the behavior of someone who plays with a different rulebook.

Perfect Days is a brilliant examination of the victim selection process. I can’t quite “recommend” a handful of books that would make your reading of it even more unnerving, but if I had to I’d choose Robert Hare’s Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, Gavin De Becker’s The Gift of Fear, and Jon Ronson’s more lighthearted but equally serious The Psychopath Test.

Highly recommended for fans of Chuck Palahniuk, Patricia Highsmith, Thomas Harris, Katherine Dunn, and people who can’t get enough of reading about writing. Or reading about perfectly rendered psychopaths.

 And that cover. I had to close the book five times just to look at it and shiver.