"Liesl Weiss has been (mostly) happy working in the rare books department of a large university, managing details and working behind the scenes to make the head of the department look good. But when her boss has a stroke and she's left to run things, she discovers that the library's most prized manuscript is missing. Liesl tries to sound the alarm and inform the police about the missing priceless book but is told repeatedly to keep quiet to keep the...

"It's 1913, and on the surface, Laura Lyons couldn't ask for more out of life-her husband is the superintendent of the New York Public Library, allowing their family to live in an apartment within the grand building, and they are blessed with two children. But headstrong, passionate Laura wants more, and when she takes a leap of faith and applies to the Columbia Journalism School, her world is cracked wide open. As her studies take her all over the...

John Charles Gilkey is an obsessed, unrepentant book thief who has stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of rare books from book fairs, stores, and libraries around the country. Ken Sanders is the self-appointed "bibliodick" (book dealer with a penchant for detective work) driven to catch him. Journalist Allison Hoover Bartlett befriended both eccentric characters and found herself caught in the middle of efforts to recover hidden treasure....

This is the story of an infamous crime, a revered map dealer with an unsavory secret, and the ruthless subculture that consumed him. Maps have long exerted a special fascination on viewers, both as beautiful works of art and as practical tools to navigate the world. But to those who collect them, the map trade can be a cutthroat business, inhabited by quirky and sometimes disreputable characters in search of a finite number of extremely rare objects....

The theft of the Book of Kells an exquisite ninth-century amalgam of Christian doctrine and Celtic legend from the Trinity College library is, in itself, a most shocking crime. But it is the brutal slaying of a night watchman that throws Peter McGarr of the Dublin Murder Squad into the mix. Forced to share investigative duties equally with a publicity-hungry co-Chief Superintendent, McGarr is soon entangled in a twisted web of murder, thievery, backbiting...