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Informationen zum Autor Laura Sims is the author of How Can I Help You , a New York Times , Publishers Weekly, and CrimeReads Best Book of the Year, and a LibraryReads Top Ten Books of July. Sims’s first novel, LOOKER, was included on “Best Books” lists in Vogue , People Magazine , Real Simple, Entertainment Weekly , and more, and is now in development for television by eOne and Emily Mortimer's King Bee Productions. An award-winning poet, Sims has published four poetry collections; her essays and poems have appeared in The New Republic, Boston Review, Lit Hub , and Electric Lit . She and her family live in New Jersey, where she works part-time as a reference librarian and hosts the library’s lecture series. Klappentext "No one knows Margo's real name. Her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library only know her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of countless premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges. That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. Patricia quickly notices Margo's subtly sinister edge, and watches her carefully. When a patron's death in the library bathroom gives her a hint of Margo's mysterious past, Patricia can't resist digging deeper--even as this new fixation becomes all-consuming."-- Leseprobe MARGO The moment I walked through the front door, I knew. That deep, abiding quiet, and the sense that the outside world couldn't reach me here. I was like someone chased by demons across the threshold of a church, stepping into the library that first time. I could have turned around, right there at the door, and stuck my tongue out at the world. Can't catch me. I didn't do it, and besides, the world wasn't watching. Couldn't find me anyway, could it? I'd already changed my hair and makeup, my clothes, my voice, and even the way I walked. I'd changed my name, too. I'd been Jane but I was Margo now. I liked Margo. Jane would have turned and stuck her tongue out, but Margo never would. No, Margo simply stood in the vestibule, shoulders back and head held high like a queen. I hadn't spent much time in libraries before then. It was quiet as a nighttime ICU ward-maybe quieter, without all the noise that goes with slow dying: the whoosh of respirators, the mechanical beeps of infusion pumps. I stared up at the high, vaulted ceiling and around at the egg-white walls, then sat down at one of the public computers. I checked the want ads and saw one for circulation clerk right there at the Carlyle Public Library. I toiled over a cover letter and résumé for an hour or so, then handed them in at the desk. "I was so happy to see this job come up," I said to the stout, red-haired woman there. She seemed managerial, but I learned later that Liz was just a just a regular staff member. "I can't imagine a more peaceful work environment," I went on, waving my arm around. She chuckled a bit, as if I'd said something funny. But from what I could tell, the library was just that: quiet, anonymous, orderly, and sane. From the grandness of the old building to the way the light slanted through the high windows that afternoon, I knew I'd landed in a cozy, carpeted, outdated vault, and I loved it on sight. The job was what I wanted, too: helping people. Not the way I'd helped them before, at the hospital, but still. I would be serving others. When I'd glanced around at the careworn souls sitting at the monitors that day, I'd known there would be plenty of work for me here, plenty of helping to do. Liz and I struck up a conversation. I told her how long I'd been in town, how much I was enjoying the weekend farmers' market-though I hadn't even been-and the birdsong outsid...
