Poisoned Pages
(2025)(A book in the Tails Between The Shelves Mystery series)
A novel by Hailey Hartley
When head librarian Emma Hayes arrives at the Cedarville Public Library early on a quiet Monday morning, she expects nothing more than an hour of peaceful shelving before the day begins. What she doesn't expect is to find town historian Harold Finch slumped in a leather reading chair, a cup of poisoned coffee beside him and his research scattered across the table. While Sheriff Bannister initially dismisses it as accidental poisoning, Emma and her energetic beagle puppy Scout can't ignore the bitter almond smell, the missing documents from Harold's messenger bag, and the alarming research about fraudulent property deeds that Harold had been investigating. As the new librarian in this close-knit community, Emma knows she should leave detecting to the professionals, but Harold's death feels deeply wrong, and Scout's nose keeps leading her back to crucial clues.
Emma's investigation into Harold's final project uncovers a seventy-year-old forgery that could halt Cedarville's biggest development project and destroy reputations built over decades. With help from her assistant Lila and an antiques dealer with his own guilty conscience, Emma begins to piece together why someone would kill to protect a long-buried secret. But as threatening texts arrive and shadows appear outside her cottage window, Emma realizes the killer is watching her every move. The deeper she digs into Harold's meticulous research, the more she understands that the murderer isn't a stranger but someone Harold trusted completely, someone with access to the library and knowledge of his habits, someone willing to poison a twenty-year friendship to prevent the truth from coming to light.
In this compelling third installment of the Tails Between the Shelves series, Emma must use every librarian skill she possesses to finish Harold's investigation and expose a killer who believed their crime would stay buried forever. With Scout's crucial assistance in finding hidden letters and alerting Emma to danger, a dramatic confrontation in the library's basement archives, and a community forced to reckon with uncomfortable truths, Emma discovers that being a guardian of knowledge sometimes means risking everything for the truth. Perfect for fans of character-driven mysteries and stories about libraries, "Poisoned Pages" proves that even the quietest small towns harbor deadly secrets, and that a determined librarian with a loyal beagle can bring justice to those who thought they'd gotten away with murder.
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Emma's investigation into Harold's final project uncovers a seventy-year-old forgery that could halt Cedarville's biggest development project and destroy reputations built over decades. With help from her assistant Lila and an antiques dealer with his own guilty conscience, Emma begins to piece together why someone would kill to protect a long-buried secret. But as threatening texts arrive and shadows appear outside her cottage window, Emma realizes the killer is watching her every move. The deeper she digs into Harold's meticulous research, the more she understands that the murderer isn't a stranger but someone Harold trusted completely, someone with access to the library and knowledge of his habits, someone willing to poison a twenty-year friendship to prevent the truth from coming to light.
In this compelling third installment of the Tails Between the Shelves series, Emma must use every librarian skill she possesses to finish Harold's investigation and expose a killer who believed their crime would stay buried forever. With Scout's crucial assistance in finding hidden letters and alerting Emma to danger, a dramatic confrontation in the library's basement archives, and a community forced to reckon with uncomfortable truths, Emma discovers that being a guardian of knowledge sometimes means risking everything for the truth. Perfect for fans of character-driven mysteries and stories about libraries, "Poisoned Pages" proves that even the quietest small towns harbor deadly secrets, and that a determined librarian with a loyal beagle can bring justice to those who thought they'd gotten away with murder.
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Used availability for Hailey Hartley's Poisoned Pages