Introduction

Queer middle-aged librarian Nan Nethercott, a wisecracking hypochondriac with a lackluster career and a nonexistent love life, needs to make a drastic life change before it’s too late. When she lands a job as librarian in a seemingly idyllic small town in southern New Jersey, Nan quickly discovers unforeseen challenges.

Nan’s landlady, Immaculata, launches daily intrusions from below. The library, housed in the former town jail, is overrun by marauding middle-schoolers. A mysterious reader leaves distressing messages in book stacks all over the library. Thomasina, the irresistible butch deli owner, is clearly a delicious affair and not the relationship Nan craves.

There’s no turning back though. Nan must come up with her own wildly unorthodox solutions to what the town and its people throw at her and fight for what she wants until she makes a shiny new life—one with her first true home, surprising friends, a meaningful career, and a promising new love.

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Excerpt

Chapter One
So many delightful possibilities tonight. Nan Nethercott poured herself a hefty glass of red wine from the big box perched on her table and began.
Children’s Librarian on Sanibel Island! Oh, to work in flip-flops and stroll the beach at lunchtime.
Research Librarian for the Irish Government in Dublin! She’d read lots of books set in Ireland. Surely that would count toward the requirement of a second master’s degree in Irish history and fluency in Gaelic. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

From the author:

1. Nan Nethercott is portrayed as a loser at her career and in her love life at the beginning of the book. Do you think being a loser has any unexpected bonuses?

2. Nan discovers that she is lustier at fifty than she was as a teenager and feels as if all the satisfied-looking older women around her have conspired to keep that knowledge from her. If older women spoke openly about their sex lives, what do you think they would say?

3. Nan’s secret book club pulls a group of very different people together, united only by their love of reading. Does reading unite us more than divide us?

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