How Can I Help You
Published on 25. July 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
224 pages
978-0-85730-875-7 (ISBN)
Description
A razor-sharp psychological suspense about two librarians whose lives become dangerously intertwined, How Can I Help You explores the dark side of human nature and the dangerous pull of artistic obsession.
No one knows Margo's real name.
Her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library only know her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of countless premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges.
That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. Patricia quickly notices Margo's subtly sinister edge and watches her carefully. When a patron's death in the library bathroom offers a hint of Margo's mysterious past, Patricia can't resist digging deeper - even as this new fixation becomes all-consuming.
No one knows Margo's real name.
Her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library only know her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of countless premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges.
That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. Patricia quickly notices Margo's subtly sinister edge and watches her carefully. When a patron's death in the library bathroom offers a hint of Margo's mysterious past, Patricia can't resist digging deeper - even as this new fixation becomes all-consuming.
Reviews / Votes
A marvellously intense, read-in-one-sitting game of cat and mouse among the book stacks * Guardian * Openly indebted to Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith, this is a terrific two-hander... This makes for fine cat-and-mouse (or cat-and-cat?) suspense, but also an unsettling moral tale in which Patricia's exploitation of her rivetingly grotesque subject - and Laura Sims's - is called into question * Sunday Times * A fun and entertaining cat-and-mouse novel... a perfect book for when you just want to sit back, relax, and read about women behaving badly... you'll fly through the pages * Glamour * Sims plumbs the depths of obsession and madness... deftly building the tension until the explosive ending * The Washington Post * Deliciously unsettling * New York Times (Best Thrillers of 2023) *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 195 mm
Width: 125 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
160 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-85730-875-7 (9780857308757)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Laura Sims
How Can I Help You
A Razor-sharp Suspense about Two Librarians Whose Lives Have Become Dangerously Intertwined
E-Book
01/2024
1st Edition
Verve Books
from
€8.49
Available for download
Person
Laura Sims's previous novels How Can I Help You and Looker have been featured on Best Books lists in the New York Times Book Review, Vogue, People, Entertainment Weekly, Real Simple, Publishers Weekly and more. An award-winning poet, Sims has published four poetry collections; her essays and poems have appeared in the New Republic, Boston Review, LitHub and Electric Lit. She lives in New Jersey, where she works part-time as a children's librarian.