Lydia’s job at the library is her world—she never expected to be a suspect to a murder. And now she must rely on the one man she’s not sure she can trust. Just months after the closure of the Chicago World’s Fair, librarian Lydia Bancroft finds herself fascinated by a mysterious dark-haired and dark-eyed patron. He has never given her his name; he actually never speaks to a single person. All she knows about him is that he loves books as much as she does. Only when he rescues her in the lobby of the Hartman Hotel does she discover that his name is Sebastian Marks. She also discovers that he lives at the top of the prestigious hotel and that most everyone in Chicago is intrigued by him. Lydia and Sebastian form a fragile friendship, but when she discovers that Mr. Marks isn’t merely a very wealthy gentleman, but also the proprietor of an infamous saloon and gambling club, she is shocked. Lydia insists on visiting the club one fateful night and suddenly is a suspect to a murder. She must determine who she can trust, who is innocent, and if Sebastian Marks—the man so many people fear—is actually everything her heart believes him to be. “Shelley Gray writes a well-paced story full of historical detail that will invite you into the romance, the glamour . . . and the mystery surrounding the Chicago World’s Fair.” —Colleen Coble, USA Today bestselling author of Rosemary Cottage and the Hope Beach series The Chicago World Fair Mystery series Book 1—Secrets of Sloane House Book 2—Deception on Sable Hill Book 3—Whispers in the Reading Room Book length: 86,000 words Includes discussion questions for book clubs

Against the backdrop of the 1893 World’s Fair, a new kind of crime comes to Gilded Age Chicago . . . and a lonely young woman is always at risk. Back on the farm in Wisconsin, Rosalind’s plan had seemed logical: Move to Chicago. Get hired on at Sloane House, one of the most gilded mansions of Chicago. Discover what transpired while her sister worked as a maid there—and follow the clues to why she disappeared. Now, as a live-in housemaid to the Sloanes, Rosalind realizes her plan had been woefully simple-minded. She was ignorant of the hard, hidden life of a servant in a big, prominent house; of the divide between the Sloane family and the people who served them; and most of all, she had never imagined so many people could live in such proximity and keep such dark secrets. Yet, while Sloane House is daunting, the streets of Chicago are downright dangerous. But when Rosalind accepts the friendship of Reid Armstrong, the handsome young heir to a Chicago silver fortune, she becomes an accidental rival to Veronica Sloane. As Rosalind continues to disguise her kinship to the missing maid—and struggles to appease her jealous mistress—she probes the dark secrets of Sloane House and comes ever closer to uncovering her sister’s mysterious fate. A fate that everyone in the house seems to know . . . but which no one dares to name. “Gray writes with honesty, tenderness, and depth. Her characters are admirable, richly layered, and impossible to forget long after the story is done.” —Jillian Hart Part of the Chicago World’s Fair Mystery series: Book one: Secrets of Sloane House Book two: Deception on Sable Hill Book three: Whispers in the Reading Room Book length: approximately 95,000 words Includes discussion questions for book clubs

When librarian Lydia Bancroft is rescued by a man who she recogizes as a mysterious book-loving patron of her library named Sebastian Marks, they begin to form a promising friendship, until a shocking truth about Sebastian comes to light.

Examines the Reading Room of the British Museum using documentary, theoretical, historical, and literary sources Roomscape explores a specific site - the Reading Room of the British Museum - as a space of imaginative potential in relation to the emergence of modern women writers in Victorian and early twentieth-century London. Drawing on archival materials, Roomscape is the first study to integrate documentary, historical, and literary sources to examine the significance of this space and its resources for women who wrote translations, poetry, and fiction. This book challenges an assessment of the Reading Room of the British Museum as a bastion of class and gender privilege, an image established by Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. Roomscape also questions the value of privacy and autonomy in constructions of female authorship. Rather than viewing reading and writing as solitary, Roomscape investigates the public, social, and spatial dimensions of literary production. The implications of this study reach into the current digital era and its transformations of practices of reading, writing, and archiving. Along with an appendix of notable readers at the British Museum from the last two centuries, the book contributes to scholarship on George Eliot, Amy Levy, Eleanor Marx, Clementina Black, Constance Black Garnett, Christina Rossetti, Mathilde Blind, and Virginia Woolf.

From pragmatic librarians finding unexpected connections to visitors discovering more than just books, Whispers in the Stacks: An Anthology of Library Love Stories explores love in quiet corners and among towering bookshelves. Whether it’s the charm of a late-night study session turning into a subtle flirtation, or a librarian uncovering a spy lurking between the stacks, this anthology proves that even in the most orderly places, romance can write its own unpredictable story. Stories from: Jessie Chandler, Venetia Di Pierro, Nicole Gustafson, Kat Jackson, Heather Rose Jones, Karin Kallmaker, RJ Layer, Micheala Lynn, Catherine Maiorisi, Nance Newman, TJ O’Shea, Melissa Price, Tracey Richardson, and Laina Villeneuve.

I heard him staggering down the hallway, banging into the banister sloshing his drink of choice, most likely a gin and tonic, along the way. As he reached for her door, I felt my airways constrict and the walls of the room close in around me. My body stiffened, and my senses numbed, as I listened for the faint squeak of my bedroom door to open softly. I am, 17 year-old aristocratic-born Candace Spencer, and I quickly recognized the monster that prowled the darkness of my sanctuary. My breath faded as the muscular figures slithered into my room and onto my body. My nightmare only lasted a few minutes several times a week but I lost a part of my soul a little bit more during each horrific moment. I closed my eyes and lived one more death as he devoured me, but tonight I vowed it would end. The prominent and respected businessman revered by the community would not return to my bedroom again. Never again! I had no idea how long it had been away; a Spiritual Guide's time was measured very differently compared to human lifetime. Was it a day later or had one or twenty years passed? Right now I had my first assignment in my new form, Mari Santiago, a 16 year-old teenager struggling to survive her family's domestic violence and sexual assaults in the tough streets of New York. The Whispers Within reveals the parallel of two dissimilar lives between two teenagers: one alive and the other dead. Mari comes to know Candace in a manner she would have never dreamt. Candace, having lived life at the opposite economic strata from the inner city life Mari was accustomed to, is only equipped with whispers of encouragement to defeat Mari's demons. How will Candace handle returning to earth as a spirit when she did not deal with her own nemesis while alive? Will Mari be consumed by the demons that surround her or will Candace pave a way for Mari to flee them? Will they both come to know each other's demons? Will Candace's whispers be enough for Mari to conquer her demons while building a new life?

`Is there one who understands me?' So wrote James Joyce towards the end of his final work, Finnegans Wake. The question continues to be asked about the author who claimed that he had put so many enigmas into Ulysses that it would `keep the professors busy for centuries' arguing over what he meant. For Joyce this was a way of ensuring his immortality, but it could also be claimed that the professors have served to distance Joyce from his audience, turning his writings into museum pieces, pored over and admired, but rarely touched. In this remarkable book, steeped in the learning gained from a lifetime's reading, David Pierce blends word, life and image to bring the works of one of the great modern writers within the reach of every reader. With a sharp eye for detail and an evident delight in the cadences of Joyce's work, Pierce proves a perfect companion, always careful and courteous, pausing to point out what might otherwise be missed. Like the best of critics, his suggestive readings constantly encourage the reader back to Joyce's own words. Beginning with Dubliners and closing with Finnegans Wake, Reading Joyce is full of insights that are original and illuminating, and Pierce succeeds in presenting Joyce as an author both more straightforward and infinitely more complex than we had perhaps imagined. T. S. Eliot wrote of Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses, that it is `a book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape'. With David Pierce as a guide, the debt we owe to Joyce becomes clearer, and the need to flee is greatly reduced.