Book Group

The October selection for the Augustana Book Group is Matthew Sullivan’s Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. Sullivan grew up in suburban Denver and worked at the Tattered Cover. His debut novel has been heralded as a “page-turner featuring a heroine bookseller who solves a cold case with clues from books. . .” (Nina George, author of The Little Paris Bookshop).

“When a bookshop patron [dies by suicide], his favorite store clerk must unravel the puzzle he left behind . . . 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 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 . . . 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?” (Goodreads)

Join us on Monday, October 16 at 2 p.m. in the Youth Room to discuss this novel.