When a bookshop patron dies by suicide his favorite store clerk must unravel the puzzle he
left behind in this intriguingly dark twisty (Kirkus Reviews) debut novel from an
award-winning short story writer. 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. Both charming and challenging (Marilyn Stasio The New York
Times Book Review) Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is a multi-generational tale of
abandonment desperation and betrayal...inventive and intricately plotted (Publishers Weekly
starred review).
