Murder and Mystery in the Library
Getting ready for Halloween? Check out a cozy mystery or supernatural thriller… at the library!
September 19, 2023
If you’re a fan of murder mysteries, cozy murder mysteries, or supernatural thrillers, and you love the quiet atmosphere of a library, then you’re in for a treat. In this book list, we’ve compiled a selection of spine-tingling reads set in libraries that are sure to give you a fright. From ancient tomes and haunted stacks to missing manuscripts and ghostly apparitions, these books will keep you on the edge of your seat. So grab a cozy blanket, light some candles, and prepare to be transported to a world of mystery and intrigue.
Murder Mysteries… in the Library!
Murder In The Locked Library
A Book Retreat Mystery
Ellery Adams
When a collection of unusual bones and the remains of a very old book are unearthed during Storyton Halls renovations, resulting in an unexpected historical mystery and a murder, manager Jane Steward investigates.
The Liar In The Library
A Fethering Mystery
Simon Brett
Successful author Burton St. Clair invites his old friend Jude to accompany him to a talk he is giving at Fethering Library, but when the evening ends in murder, Jude finds herself under suspicion and enlists Carole’s help to solve the crime.
Death Overdue
A Haunted Library Mystery
Allison Brook
When a guest speaker claiming to have knowledge of a cold case murder dies during a program at her library, Carrie feels responsible and investigates with the help of a ghostly librarian.
A Most Curious Murder
A Little Library Mystery
Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli
After her mother’s little library is destroyed by a suspicious fire, Jenny teams up with a neighbor and Lewis Carroll enthusiast to investigate in the first book of a new series by the author of the Emily Kincaid Mysteries.
Murder At The Lakeside Library
A Lakeside Library Mystery
Holly Danvers
Widow Rain Wilmot, while preparing to reopen her mother’s informal library, discovers the body of a real estate buyer on the premises and, under the suspicious eyes of the community, pieces together the clues to solve this mystery before she meets the same fate.
A Death Long Overdue
A Lighthouse Library Mystery
Eva Gates
Organizing a library artifact exhibit for her college class’s 40th reunion, Lucy and her friends discover the body of an unpopular director and are challenged to identify a killer among a long list of suspects.
The Woman In The Library
Sulari Gentill
The tranquility is shattered by a woman’s terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who’d happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning—it just happens that one is a murderer.
The Unkindness Of Ravens
A Greer Hogan Mystery
M. E. Hilliard
Greer Hogan is a librarian and an avid reader of murder mysteries. She also has a habit of stumbling upon murdered bodies. The first was her husband’s, and the tragic loss led Greer to leave New York behind for a new start in the Village of Raven Hill. But her new home becomes less idyllic when she discovers her best friend sprawled dead on the floor of the library.
The Broken Spine
A Beloved Bookroom Mystery
Dorothy St James
Rescuing hundreds of precious books from her newly digitized library, spunky librarian Trudell Becket is forced to prove her innocence when the politician behind the library’s demolition is murdered.
Murder At The 42nd Street Library
A 42nd Street Library Mystery
Cornelius Lehane
When a murder happens on the second floor of New York Public Library’s 42nd Street branch, Ray Ambler, curator of the crime fiction collection, joins homicide detective Mike Cosgrove in his investigation.
Death In The Stacks
A Library Lover’s Mystery
Jenn McKinlay
Targeted by a new library board president who she is sure is trying to drive her out, library director Lindsey Norris and her new hire, Paula, are declared suspects when the combative president is found dead, forcing them to find the real killer to clear their names.
Better Off Read
A Bookmobile Mystery
Nora Page
Bookmobile-driving, septuagenarian librarian Cleo Watkins fights an upstart new mayor to prevent the closure of the town’s storm-damaged library, an effort that is complicated by an eccentric benefactor’s untimely murder and clues that point to Cleo’s best friend.
How Can I Help You
Laura Sims
No one knows Margo’s real name. Her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library only know her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of countless premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges. That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. Patricia quickly notices Margo’s subtly sinister edge, and watches her carefully. When a patron’s death in the library bathroom gives her a hint of Margo’s mysterious past, Patricia can’t resist digging deeper–even as this new fixation becomes all-consuming.
The Bodies In The Library
A First Edition Library Mystery
Marty Wingate
The new curator of an exclusive first-edition library in Bath encounters resistance in her efforts to modernize, before the murder of a fan-fiction writer threatens everything she has worked to achieve.
Supernatural Thrills… in the Library!
The Invisible Library
Book One Of The Invisible Library Series
Genevieve Cogman
An undercover librarian who works for an occult organization that collects books from different realities must determine what happened to a particularly dangerous book that has been stolen and becomes mired in a mystery infused with peril and conflicting clues.
Night Music
John Connolly
From stories of the monstrous for dark winter nights to fables of fantastic libraries and haunted books, from a tender account of love after death to a frank, personal, and revealing account of the author’s affection for myths of ghosts and demons, this is a collection that will surprise, delight—and terrify.
The Last Heir To Blackwood Library
Hester Fox
With the stroke of a pen, twenty-three-year-old Ivy Radcliffe becomes Lady Hayworth, owner of a sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. The abbey is foreboding, the servants reserved and suspicious. But there is a treasure waiting behind locked doors: a magnificent library. Despite cryptic warnings from the staff, Ivy feels irresistibly drawn to its dusty shelves, where familiar works mingle with strange, esoteric texts. And she senses something else in the library too, a presence that seems to have a will of its own.
The Library At Mount Char
Scott Hawkins
Carolyn and a dozen other children being raised by “Father,” a cruel man with mysterious powers, begin to think he might be God, so when he dies, they square off against each other to determine who will inherit his library, which they believe holds the power to all Creation.
The Library Of The Dead
Book One Of Edinburgh Nights
T L Huchu
Ropa dropped out of school to become a ghost talker, and she now speaks to Edinburgh’s dead – carrying messages to the living – but when she learns someone is bewitching children she investigates and discovers an occult library, a taste for hidden magic,and a wealth of Edinburgh’s dark secrets.
The Book That Wouldn’t Burn
Book One Of The Library Trilogy
Mark Lawrence
Two strangers find themselves connected by a mysterious and vast library, which contains many wonders and even more secrets. On a used-up world where civilisations have risen and retreated in an endless tide, leaving a dusty wasteland in their wake, there is one constant: an ancient library, the repository of all knowledge and art. It also contains a multitude of lives, including those of Evar and Livira.
The Starless Sea
Erin Morgenstern
Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a rare book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues–a bee, a key, and a sword–that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to a subterranean library, hidden far below the surface of the earth.
The Strange Library
Haruki Murakami
In a fantastical illustrated short novel, three people imprisoned in a nightmarish library plot their escape.
The Library Of The Unwritten
Book One Of Hell’s Library
A.J. Hackwith.
Assigned to watch the restless characters of books left unfinished by their authors, a head librarian of Hell’s neutral Unwritten Wing tracks an escaped Hero before an angel attack reveals the existence of a powerful literary weapon.