Murder in the Locked Library (Book Retreat Mysteries, #4)

by Ellery Adams

“A little library, growing larger every year, is an honourable part of a man’s history. It is a man’s duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life.” —Henry Ward Beecher

‘adventure is not outside man; it is within.’”

“‘Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes and failures had been wiped clean by summer.’”

We living are all friends among the dead.”

She must pay her spies with baked goods,

I’m not one of those scientists who secrets her discoveries in a lab cabinet where they never see the light of day. I believe, that by pooling knowledge and sharing information, all disciplines benefit. The human race benefits.”

This cake reminds us not to judge a book by its cover—that the magic of books is the journey the reader embarks on because he or she dared to open the cover.”

“Ray Bradbury once declared that the women in his life were all librarians, English teachers, or booksellers. The man had excellent taste,”

“I want to feel the loss of Bartholomew Baylor,” she said. “He’s worth the pain.”

“As obsessed as we rare book nerds can get about bindings, printings, paper, signatures, engravings, et cetera—what value is a book without words? I’m not including illustrated works, like children’s books, in this rhetorical question. I’m talking about the idea of capturing the story of humankind on parchment or paper and binding those pages together between two unyielding, protective covers.”

“If we can use the devil to catch a demon, we will.”

People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness.’”

I know we’re talking about different centuries, but a big corporation is a big corporation. Money and power can corrupt. That hasn’t changed over time.”

You know that I adore color. I adore creativity. I adore the messy, mysterious spaces where artists work their magic.”

Let me put the flowers in your hair. Hopefully, there’ll be enough magic in the air to help you forget about what’s happened for a little while.”

Not all those who wander are lost,’” Jane said to her friend, repeating the line from Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. “But some are. And they need the people who love them to find them and bring them home.”