**The *New York Times* bestselling author of *No Cats Allowed* and *Arsenic and Old Books* is back with more Southern charm and beguiling mystery as Charlie and Diesel must find a killer in a room full of librarians...** **Light-hearted librarian Charlie Harris is known around his hometown of Athena, Mississippi, for walking his cat, a rescued Maine Coon named Diesel. But he may soon be taken for a walk himself --in handcuffs...** **** Charlie is stressed out. The Southern Academic Libraries Association is holding this year's annual meeting at Athena College. Since Charlie is the interim library director, he must deliver the welcome speech to all the visiting librarians. And as if that weren't bad enough, the keynote address will be delivered by Charlie's old nemesis from library school. It's been thirty years since Charlie has seen Gavin Fong, and he's still an insufferable know-it-all capable of getting under everyone's...
MURDER PAST DUE
CLASSIFIED AS MURDER
FILE M FOR MURDER
OUT OF CIRCULATION
THE SILENCE OF THE LIBRARY
ARSENIC AND OLD BOOKS
NO CATS ALLOWED
TWELVE ANGRY LIBRARIANS
BLESS HER DEAD LITTLE HEART
DEAD WITH THE WIND
DIGGING UP THE DIRT
BERKLEY PRIME CRIME
Published by Berkley
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2017 by Dean James
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: James, Miranda, author.
Title: Twelve angry librarians / Miranda James.
Description: First edition. | New York : Berkley Prime Crime, 2017. | Series:
Cat in the stacks mystery ; 8
Identifiers: LCCN 2016042276 (print) | LCCN 2016048829 (ebook) | ISBN
9780425277768 (hardback) | ISBN 9780698181991 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Librarians—Mississippi—Fiction. |
Libraries—Mississippi—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction. |
BISAC: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Women Sleuths. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3610.A43 T93 2017 (print) | LCC PS3610.A43 (ebook) |
DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016042276
First Edition: February 2017
Cover art by Dan Craig
Cover design by Lesley Worrell and Katie Anderson
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks as always to the usual suspects: my agent, Nancy Yost; and her associates: Sarah E. Younger, Natanya Wheeler, and Amy Rosenbaum for all they do; the team at Berkley: Michelle Vega, Bethany Blair, and Roxanne Jones for constant support and help in numerous ways; the art department for consistently beautiful covers; and the copyeditors who always work so hard to catch my mistakes and lapses in logic.
My dear friends Patricia Orr and Terry Farmer read and encouraged as the chapters popped up in their e-mail boxes, and I can never thank them enough for what they do.
Finally, special thanks to Patrick B. Kyle, PhD, DABCC, director of clinical chemistry and toxicology, at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, for graciously answering questions about poison that came to his e-mail inbox out of the blue. He is not responsible for any errors or misinterpretations that I have made based on his answers to my questions.
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
ONE
“But I don’t
I glared at my administrative assistant and longtime friend, Melba Gilley. “You know how much I hate public speaking. Why can’t Forrest Wyatt do it? College presidents do this kind of thing all the time.”
“Forrest will be welcoming everyone to open the conference. If you’d actually
My Maine Coon cat, Diesel, obviously disturbed by the sudden tension between two of his favorite people, started meowing loudly. He butted his head against my leg, and I immediately felt exactly like the three-year-old Melba labeled me. I rubbed the cat’s head to reassure him. The meowing slowed and softened in volume.
