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Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore: A Novel
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Published:
Scribner 2017
Status:
Checked Out
Description
When a bookshop patron dies by suicide, his favorite store clerk must unravel the puzzle he left behind in this "shocking, charming, thrilling" (Associated Press) and award-winning debut novel.
Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she leads a meticulously ordered existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs—the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day browsing the overwhelmed stacks.
But when a young BookFrog, Joey Molina, hangs himself in one of the upper rooms of the store, Lydia's life comes unglued. Inside one of Joey's pockets is a photograph of Lydia as a little girl. And when she flips through some of his books, she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. The more she puzzles over them, the more they seem to contain a hidden message for her about his final days. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?
With "oddball characters and [a] layered plot" (Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review), Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is "a smart, twisty crime novel set in a world that booklovers will adore" (Jess Walter, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins).
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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
06/13/2017
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781501116865
ASIN:
B01MDTCBVZ
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Matthew Sullivan. (2017). Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore: A Novel. Scribner.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Matthew Sullivan. 2017. Midnight At the Bright Ideas Bookstore: A Novel. Scribner.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Matthew Sullivan, Midnight At the Bright Ideas Bookstore: A Novel. Scribner, 2017.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Matthew Sullivan. Midnight At the Bright Ideas Bookstore: A Novel. Scribner, 2017.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 16:51:17
Date Updated:
Apr 29, 2022 06:43:39
Last Metadata Check:
Mar 27, 2024 13:24:26
Last Metadata Change:
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OverDrive Product Record

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      • value: Mr. Penumbra
      • value: emotional breakdown
      • value: barnes & noble discover pick
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      • value: estranged parent
      • value: goodreads debut author
      • value: the storied life of aj fickry
      • value: detective harry moberg
      • value: matthew sullivan new book
      • value: midnight cycle series
      • value: midnight in the orchard by the lake
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      • fileAs: Sullivan, Matthew
      • bioText: Matthew Sullivan is the author of the novel Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, which was an IndieNext pick, a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, a GoodReads Choice Award finalist, and winner of the Colorado Book Award. His writing has appeared inThe New York Times, The Daily Beast, The Spokesman-Review, Sou'wester and elsewhere, and his stories have been awarded the Florida Review Editor's Prize and the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize. He grew up in a family of eight raucous kids in Aurora, Colorado, and received his BA from the University of San Francisco and his MFA from the University of Idaho. After working as a bookseller at Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver and at Brookline Booksmith in Boston, he spent twenty years as a tenured instructor teaching writing, literature, and film at a rural HSI community college in the high desert of central Washington State. He is married to a librarian and now lives in Anacortes, on Fidalgo Island in the Northwest corner of Washington. His new stand-alone mystery novel, Midnight in the Orchard by the Lake, is forthcoming from HarperCollins/Hanover Square Press.

      • name: Matthew Sullivan
publishDate
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title
Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore
fullDescription
When a bookshop patron dies by suicide, his favorite store clerk must unravel the puzzle he left behind in this "shocking, charming, thrilling" (Associated Press) and award-winning debut novel.
Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she leads a meticulously ordered existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs—the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day browsing the overwhelmed stacks.
But when a young BookFrog, Joey Molina, hangs himself in one of the upper rooms of the store, Lydia's life comes unglued. Inside one of Joey's pockets is a photograph of Lydia as a little girl. And when she flips through some of his books, she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. The more she puzzles over them, the more they seem to contain a hidden message for her about his final days. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?
With "oddball characters and [a] layered plot" (Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review), Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is "a smart, twisty crime novel set in a world that booklovers will adore" (Jess Walter, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins).
reviews
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        April 10, 2017
        Sullivan’s solid first novel opens with 30-year-old bookseller Lydia Smith finding the corpse of Joseph Molina hanging from a beam in Denver’s Bright Ideas Bookstore. The lonely 20-something ex-con spent countless hours wandering the shop, but Lydia can’t fathom why he chose to commit suicide there—or why he died with a photograph of Lydia’s 10th birthday party in his pocket. Her confusion grows when she inherits Joey’s belongings and discovers coded messages addressed to her hidden inside his books. Lydia’s efforts to answer the questions surrounding Joey’s death uncover clues to a cold case from her own past—a household massacre that only Lydia survived. Flashbacks to Lydia’s childhood told from her father’s perspective help build the tension. Quirky characters and a keen sense of place distinguish this multigenerational tale of abandonment, desperation, and betrayal. Sullivan’s writing occasionally calls too much attention to itself and a surfeit of coincidence strains credulity, but this inventive and intricately plotted mystery still largely satisfies. Agent: Kirby Kim, Janklow & Nesbit.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        April 1, 2017
        A woman must revisit a 20-year-old tragedy after a young man commits suicide in the bookstore where she works.Lydia Smith loves her job at the Bright Ideas bookstore in Denver, puttering among the shelves and hovering over her gentle BookFrogs, the wanderers and dreamers who spend their days among the stacks. When one of her BookFrogs, Joey Molina, hangs himself in the store, she's devastated and then shocked when she learns he's bequeathed his meager possessions to her. When she discovers that he's left messages to her in the pages of his books, she's puzzled and begins trying to piece together his last days with the help of his friend Lyle. The reappearance of her childhood friend Raj Patel soon puts Joey on the back burner, however, as questions about her estranged father come to light. It all points back to the Hammerman, who, while Lydia was on a sleepover as a child, brutally killed her friend and her friend's family with a hammer, leaving Lydia alive, hiding under the sink. The Hammerman was never caught, and Lydia seeks answers from the now-retired detective who handled the case, but she may not want to hear what he has to say. Turns out he always suspected her father was the killer but was stopped from pursuing that path, even in the face of some compelling evidence, and he's never let go of his suspicion. After all, why did the killer let Lydia live after killing a 10-year-old girl and her parents, and could Joey somehow be connected? Debut author Sullivan presents a nicely paced tale about a horrifying incident with a woman at its core who must put aside her ordered life to find out what really happened all those years ago, where the truth, in the end, may be stranger than fiction. An intriguingly dark, twisty story and eccentric characters make this book a standout.

        COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        May 1, 2017

        DEBUT Sullivan, a former bookseller, sets his first novel at a fictional independent bookstore in Denver. Lydia loves to recommend titles and is patient with the sometimes difficult regulars who frequent the store. When one of her favorites, a disturbed young man named Joey, commits suicide during her closing shift, she is devastated; she is also confused by the personal library he left her. Lydia, herself a survivor of a violent childhood crime, has spent her life running from her past. As she tracks down the clues Joey left for her in his books, she discovers a connection between her nightmarish attack years before and Joey's troubled youth. Not only must she face the secrets she has buried, but the murderer who almost killed her is still out there. VERDICT Though darker than other beloved novels set in bookstores, this story will appeal to fans of Gabrielle Zevin's The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and Katarina Bivald's The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend. Mystery readers will also appreciate the clever connections between the characters and the crimes. [See Prepub Alert, 1/3/17.]--Catherine Lantz, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Lib.

        Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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shortDescription
When a bookshop patron dies by suicide, his favorite store clerk must unravel the puzzle he left behind in this "shocking, charming, thrilling" (Associated Press) and award-winning debut novel.
Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she leads a meticulously ordered existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs—the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day browsing the overwhelmed stacks.
But when a young BookFrog, Joey Molina, hangs himself in one of the upper rooms of the store, Lydia's life comes unglued. Inside one of Joey's pockets is a photograph of Lydia as a little girl. And when she flips through some of his books, she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. The more she puzzles over them, the more they seem to contain a hidden message for her about his final days. What did...
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