Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstor..., Matthew Sullivan
Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstor..., Matthew Sullivan
8 Rating(s)
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Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

Author: Matthew Sullivan

Narrator: Madeleine Maby

Unabridged: 9 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/13/2017


Synopsis

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).

About Matthew Sullivan

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.  


Reviews

Goodreads review by Chelsea on April 22, 2018

Have you ever been scouring Goodreads and notice a particular book continues to pop up on your feed? Maybe it starts slowly, just a glance here or there, but then turns into a full blown case of THE book everyone has just finished reading. That’s what happened to me with Midnight at the Bright Ideas......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer on July 25, 2017

5 Unexpectedly Wonderful Stars! I absolutely loved this little gem of a novel! I listened to the audio. The narrator didn't grab me at first but the story did and within a half hour of audio I was hooked! This novel is tough to describe because it's unlike anything I've ever read. I never expected t......more

Goodreads review by James on August 12, 2022

3 out of 5 stars to Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, a new mystery and thriller novel set to release on June 13, 2017, by author Matthew J. Sullivan. Why This Book For all us readers, who wouldn't love a book with such a title? And when you read the description, learning about a hor......more

Goodreads review by Lindsay L on September 27, 2017

4 stars! I enjoyed this unique and clever mystery revolving around a past crime which is slowly unraveled through clues within several books. The main character, Lydia Smith, works at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. Lydia gets to know all of the ‘BookFrogs’, the regular customers whose loneliness is cure......more

Goodreads review by Mary Beth on September 25, 2017

Lydia Smith is a clerk at the Bright Idea Book Store. She loves her books and the BookFrogs. Joey Molina is one of the book frogs. One night Lydia finds Joey hanging in the air. A long strap was threaded over a ceiling beam and looped around his neck. Lydia was so upset, because Joey just committed......more