Welcome to the library! There are thousands of books to choose from, but how do you decide what to read next? Recently, I came across a fascinating book set in a magical library—and, of course, that was all I needed to be completely drawn in! Then I began to wonder what other books I could find that used a library as a backdrop to a fictional plot? As someone who spends a lot of time in the library, it is exciting to imagine my workplace as the setting where a new story unfolds. How many books have you come across where the narrative played out in the library? Check out the books below to read a new adventure that takes place or partially takes place in the library!
FANTASY
The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst
“Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people. Thankfully, as a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she and her assistant Caz — a magically sentient spider plant — have spent the last decade sequestered among the empire’s most precious spellbooks, preserving their magic for the city’s elite. Then a revolution begins, and the library goes up in flames. She and Caz flee with all the spellbooks they can carry and head to a remote island Kiela never thought she’d see again: her childhood home. Taking refuge there, Kiela discovers, much to her dismay, a nosy — and very handsome — neighbor who can’t take a hint and keeps showing up day after day to make sure she’s fed and help fix up her new home. In need of income and reluctantly inspired by the beauty and people of the island who have welcomed her into their hearts, Kiela discovers something that even the bakery in town doesn’t have: jam. With the help of an old recipe book her parents left her and a bit of illegal magic, her cottage garden is soon covered in ripe berries that become the town’s, and her handsome neighbor’s, new favorite confection. But magic can do more than make life a little sweeter, so Kiela decides to open the island’s first-ever and much-needed secret spellshop. Her plan comes with risks — the empire condemns the use of unsanctioned magic, and the consequence of sharing spells with commoners is death. But Kiela has only just found a place that feels like home and people who feel like family, and she’ll risk anything for a chance at happiness.”
– Provided by Publisher
The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
“Collecting books can be a dangerous prospect in this fun, time-traveling, fantasy adventure from a spectacular debut author. One thing any Librarian will tell you: the truth is much stranger than fiction… Irene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, a shadowy organization that collects important works of fiction from all of the different realities. Most recently, she and her enigmatic assistant Kai have been sent to an alternative London. Their mission: Retrieve a particularly dangerous book. The problem: By the time they arrive, it’s already been stolen. London’s underground factions are prepared to fight to the death to find the tome before Irene and Kai do, a problem compounded by the fact that this world is chaos-infested–the laws of nature bent to allow supernatural creatures and unpredictable magic to run rampant. To make matters worse, Kai is hiding something–secrets that could be just as volatile as the chaos-filled world itself. Now Irene is caught in a puzzling web of deadly danger, conflicting clues, and sinister secret societies. And failure is not an option–because it isn’t just Irene’s reputation at stake, it’s the nature of reality itself.”
– Provided by Publisher
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
“Between life and death, there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices… Would you have done anything different if you had the chance to undo your regrets?’ A dazzling novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived, from the internationally bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and How To Stop Time. Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe, there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better? In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting new novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist, she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.”
– Provided by Publisher
HISTORICAL FICTION
The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict
In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. Pierpont Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture on the New York society scene and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps build a world-class collection. But Belle has a secret: she was born Belle Marion Greener, daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle’s alleged Portuguese heritage lets her pass as white, but she will go through great lengths to preserve her carefully crafted identity in a racist world.
– Adapted from jacket
The Librarian of Saint-Malo by Mario Escobar
Through letters with a famous author, one French librarian tells her love story and describes the brutal Nazi occupation of her small coastal village.”– Provided by publisher.
Saint-Malo, France: August 1939. Jocelyn’s husband, Antoine, is drafted to fight against Germany. As World War II rages, Jocelyn uses her position as a librarian to comfort and encourage her community with books. When the Nazis occupy Saint-Malo, it is turned into a fortress, and the German commander ruthlessly begins to destroy books deemed subversive. Jocelyn hides some of the books while desperately waiting to receive news from her husband, Antoine, now a prisoner in a German camp. She writes letters smuggled to a Parisian author, telling her story in the hope that it will someday reach the outside world.
– Adapted from jacket
The Last Bookshop in London: A Novel of World War II by Madeline Martin
“August 1939: London prepares for war as Hitler’s forces sweep across Europe. Grace Bennett has always dreamed of moving to the city, but the bunkers and drawn curtains that she finds on her arrival are not what she expected. And she certainly never imagined she’d wind up working at Primrose Hill, a dusty old bookshop nestled in the heart of London. Through blackouts and air raids as the Blitz intensifies, Grace discovers the power of storytelling to unite her community in ways she never dreamed–a force that triumphs over even the darkest nights of the war.”
– Provided by Publisher
MYSTERY
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon translated by Lucia Graves
Barcelona, 1945–just after the war, a great world city lies in shadow, nursing its wounds, and a boy named Daniel awakes on his eleventh birthday to find that he can no longer remember his mother’s face. To console his only child, Daniel’s widowed father, an antiquarian book dealer, initiates him into the secret of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a library tended by Barcelona’s guild of rare-book dealers as a repository for books forgotten by the world, waiting for someone who will care about them again. Daniel’s father coaxes him to choose a volume from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the novel he selects, The Shadow of the Wind by one Julian Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax’s work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last one in existence. Before Daniel knows it his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness, and doomed love. And before long, he realizes that if he doesn’t find out the truth about Julian Carax, he and those closest to him will suffer horribly.
The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill
“The beautifully ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library is completely silent one weekday morning, until a woman’s terrified scream echoes through the room. Security guards immediately appear and instruct everyone inside to stay put until they determine there is no threat. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers who had been sitting in the reading room get to chatting and quickly become friendly. Harriet, Marigold, Whit, and Caine each have their own reasons for being in the reading room that morning–and it just happens that one of them may turn out to be a murderer. For readers of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, with shades of The Secret History, THE WOMAN IN THE LIBRARY is an unexpectedly twisty literary adventure that examines the complicated nature of friendship and shows us that words can be the most dangerous weapons of all.”
– Provided by Publisher
The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis
“It’s 1913, and on the surface, Laura Lyons couldn’t ask for more out of life-her husband is the superintendent of the New York Public Library, allowing their family to live in an apartment within the grand building, and they are blessed with two children. But headstrong, passionate Laura wants more, and when she takes a leap of faith and applies to the Columbia Journalism School, her world is cracked wide open. As her studies take her all over the city, she finds herself drawn to Greenwich Village’s new bohemia, where she discovers the Heterodoxy Club-a radical, all-female group in which women are encouraged to loudly share their opinions on suffrage, birth control, and women’s rights. Soon, Laura finds herself questioning her traditional role as wife and mother. But when valuable books are stolen back at the library, threatening the home and institution she loves, she’s forced to confront her shifting priorities head-on. . . and may just lose everything in the process. Eighty years later, in 1993, Sadie Donovan struggles with the legacy of her grandmother, the famous essayist Laura Lyons, especially after she wrangled her dream job as a curator at the New York Public Library. But the job quickly becomes a nightmare when rare manuscripts, notes, and books for the exhibit Sadie’s running begin disappearing from the library’s famous Berg Collection. Determined to save both the exhibit and her career, the typically risk-adverse Sadie teams up with a private security expert to uncover the culprit. However, things unexpectedly become personal when the investigation leads Sadie to some unwelcome truths about her own family heritage-truths that shed new light on the biggest tragedy in the library’s history.”
– Provided by Publisher
GOTHIC FICTION
The Library Thief: A novel by Kuchenga Shenje
The library is under lock and key. But its secrets can’t be contained. 1896. After he brought her home from Jamaica as a baby, Florence’s father had her hair hot-combed to make her look like the other girls. But as a young woman, Florence is not so easy to tame–and when she brings scandal to his door, the bookbinder throws her onto the streets of Manchester. Intercepting her father’s latest commission, Florence talks her way into the remote, forbidding Rose Hall to restore its collection of rare books. Lord Francis Belfield’s library is old and full of secrets–but none so intriguing as the whispers about his late wife. Then one night, the library is broken into. Strangely, all the priceless tomes remain untouched. Florence is puzzled until she discovers a half-burned book in the fireplace. She realizes with horror that someone has found and set fire to the secret diary of Lord Belfield’s wife, which may hold the clue to her fate.”
– Provided by Publisher
