Beth Gutcheon is the acclaimed author of Still Missing, More Than You Know, and Gossip. Her latest work, Death at Breakfast, celebrates its book birthday today. The first entry in a smart and stylish new mystery series, Death at Breakfast features a pair of unlikely investigators in a retired private school head and her high society friend whose trip to a scenic Maine resort takes a quick turn when another guest, the father of the latest teen pop icon, turns up dead. Be sure to pick up a copy here or request one from your local library. In the meantime, Beth has joined us today to share some library love.
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Libraries have always been a haven and a joy to me. When I was a child, the library in the village in Maine where I’ve lived off and on had the best collection of Oz books ever seen. Having already read (I thought) everything Frank Baum had ever written for children, when I found The Magical Monarch of Mo there it was like turning a corner into what you know to be a cul-de-sac and suddenly finding the road open and winding off across sunlit fields. The library had a fire going on crisp summer mornings or wet afternoons, and reading there, semi-hidden for hours, was a deep pleasure that still comes back to me with the scent of balsam or of woodsmoke.
That same library, enlarged and updated but somehow retaining its original flavor, is now often described as the living room of the town. I had my first summer job there, mending hurt books and womaning the circulation desk during Mrs. Parker’s lunch hour when I was sixteen. In the late 90’s, when I was living year round in the next village over, before the internet had become the research engine it is now, Fern McTighe, the librarian on the reference desk, was my everything. When I needed to know whether, for instance, a teenager would have been described as “grounded” in that village in the thirties, I went straight to her. Since Fern had been a teenager there in the thirties she knew the answer, plus found the citation in about two seconds flat: “grounded” was aeronautical, and wasn’t in common use until WWII. She also produced a class B miracle when I needed to know if such and such a word meant what I thought it did in colloquial Swedish. Fern disappeared and came back with a volunteer from the circulation desk who asked me, in Swedish, if she could help me. (She could. The word that seemed from the dictionary like a good Scandinavian name for a summer house actually meant “youth hostel.”)
I think my favorite librarian moment, though, happened in a tiny library in Georgia. I had gone in hoping for another miracle among the Oz books, with no luck. The librarian said, however, that she had known Frank Baum herself, as a child spending summers in the Thousand Lakes. Thrilled, I asked for details. She particularly remembered a scavenger hunt for all ages, part of a birthday party or perhaps Fourth of July celebration. Frank Baum won and the hostess announced that since it was a rackety packet old summer place, the prize was anything from the house he wanted. He took the front door.
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Thank you, Beth! If you're looking for a wickedly entertaining spring read, you can do no better than this thrilling psychological puzzle. Death at Breakfast is on sale today, so be sure to pick up a copy!
-Chris
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