Marsha’s Reviews > Ex Libris: Stories of Librarians, Libraries, and Lore > Status Update

“Are you saying,” I asked, “that these are all lost masterpieces by people like Tacitus? That this”--I pointed at Watch by Night--“is a bona fide Hemingway?” “Yes,” she said. I took another long look around. Thousands of volumes filled the shelves, packed tight, reaching to the ceiling. “It’s not possible,” I said. “How? How could it happen?” “Quite easily,” she said.

The gangly man was running up the street, his long legs pushing through the fresh unplowed snow. He was a stranger; or at least that was her initial impression. In ways that Mary couldn't quite define, he acted both lost and at home. His face and manner were confused, yet he nonetheless seemed to navigate as if he recognized some portion of his surroundings. From a distance, his features seemed pleasantly anonymous.

I was going to get into so much trouble if I was caught. I whirled back and grabbed books quickly, filling my backpack. I grabbed history books and poetry and a bunch of Dorothy Sayers novels. I left some space at the top, just in case Emily Bronte turned up, and finally found what I wanted, several battered paperback copies of Wuthering Heights, hidden on the lower shelf of the Recent Returns (ha!) trolley.