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Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

by Matthew Sullivan

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
1,7211439,982 (3.71)106
Fiction. Literature. Mystery. Thriller. HTML:When a bookshop patron commits 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 BookFrogsâ??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 revie
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English (141)  Italian (1)  All languages (142)
Showing 1-5 of 141 (next | show all)
Engaging characters (& the bibliomystery angle) grabbed me almost immediately & rarely let me go. Tightly plotted mystery within mysteries all character-driven & essential to the story. The only negative was a nagging want of more detail & Roth on tertiary & some secondary characters, but that would have unbalanced its tightly wound mystery.

FYI I received this ebook via Netgalley.com & the book's publisher free for an honest review. ( )
  SESchend | Feb 2, 2024 |
Picked this up because I liked the cover and I'm a real sucker for anything bookstore related. I knew nothing about the actual plot and was surprised to find out it was a mystery - more like two of them.

I found the story interesting (if a little too neat) and the details were just creepy enough while not being creepy enough to make me want to stop reading.




( )
  hmonkeyreads | Jan 25, 2024 |
This one didn't do it for me very much. The first half was slow and hard to trudge through (I even switched to audio and that was a terrible mistake; the narrator's reading style was so distracting that it ruined the book even more and I switched back to hard copy). Once I got through the grueling introductions I enjoyed it much more. But still, an easy book to put down and not one I will repeat. ( )
  rosenmemily | Jan 7, 2024 |
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 shelves.
When Joey Molina, a young, beguiling BookFrog, kills himself in the bookstore’s upper room Lydia’s life comes unglued. Always Joey’s favorite, Lydia has been bequeathed his meager belongings. As Lydia untangles the mystery of Joey’s suicide, she u earths a long buried memory from her childhood. ( )
  creighley | Dec 7, 2023 |
An alright enough book but not anything special. Definitely too predictable and the characters really fell flat for me. ( )
  levlazarev | Oct 18, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 141 (next | show all)
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Epigraph
All words are masks, and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal. --Stephen Millhauser, "August Eschenburg"
"As always, we take up again where we left off. This is where I belong after all." --Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
Dedication
For Libby
First words
Lydia heard the distant flap of paper wings as the first book fell from its shelf.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Fiction. Literature. Mystery. Thriller. HTML:When a bookshop patron commits 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 BookFrogsâ??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 revie

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Hiding in plain sight / Lydia's Lost Book Frog notes / Solves serious crime (HelenGress)

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