The Stranger In The Library

Outer Banks librarian Lucy is working on an art show at the library when paintings–and people–start to go missing, in this 11th Lighthouse Library mystery from national bestselling author Eva Gates. When a traveling show of impressionist art comes to Nags Head, North Carolina, librarian Lucy and the staff at the Bodie Island Lighthouse Library are inspired to create an educational display about art history. Their launch of the display is a huge success, but the morning after, they discover that a reproduction of a famous painting has gone missing. No one knows why anyone would bother stealing it: the picture is of no value–the real, priceless painting is under lock and key at the art show itself. Lucy gets an invite to the glitzy opening night for the real show, where she notices unusual tension among the show’s organizers. Then, the man scheduled to give the welcoming speech fails to arrive, and a party-goer is discovered drowned in a fish pond. Meanwhile, Louise Jane is totally captivated by Tom Reilly, a handsome, charming art dealer lurking at the edges of the receptions on both nights. Tom slipped away from the party early, and he cannot be located by the police. Who, Lucy asks, is Tom Reilly, the shadowy figure threatening to break Louise Jane’s heart? Something is afoot in Nags Head, and it’s up to Lucy and her friends to get to the bottom of it before it’s not just paintings being framed.

Imagine you suddenly discover that you are a twin and that you are adopted. Also imagine that your twin has been involved in a serious road accident and is in a coma. On what seems like another ordinary day, Lucie's life changes forever.

A New York Times Notable Book. A literary exploration that is “surely destined to become the quintessential companion to Camus’s most enduring novel” (PopMatters). The Stranger is a rite of passage for readers around the world. Since its publication in France in 1942, Camus’s novel has been translated into sixty languages and sold more than six million copies. It’s the rare novel that’s as likely to be found in a teen’s backpack as in a graduate philosophy seminar. If the twentieth century produced a novel that could be called ubiquitous, The Stranger is it. How did a young man in his twenties who had never written a novel turn out a masterpiece that still grips readers more than seventy years later? With Looking for The Stranger, Alice Kaplan tells that story. In the process, she reveals Camus’ achievement to have been even more impressive—and more unlikely—than even his most devoted readers knew. “To this new project, Kaplan brings equally honed skills as a historian, literary critic, and biographer . . . Reading The Stranger is a bracing but somewhat bloodless experience. Ms. Kaplan has hung warm flesh on its steely bones.” —The New York Times “For American readers, few French novels are better known, and few scholars are better qualified than Kaplan to reintroduce us to it . . . Kaplan tells this story with great verve and insight, all the while preserving the mystery of its creation and elusiveness of its meaning.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “The fascinating story behind Albert Camus’ coldblooded masterpiece . . . A compelling companion to a novel that has stayed strange.” —Kirkus Reviews