Top Ten Tuesday: Characters Whose Job I Wish I Had – Books with Librarians or Bookstore Owners

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.

This week, the top is: Characters Whose Job I Wish I Had. I am retired and really have not desire to go back to work at this point in my life. I did think I would like to work part time though, and would enjoy working in either a library or a bookstore. Of course, there are so many great books featuring these two occupations. I am listing the last ten books I read (4 stars or above) that feature either librarians or bookstore owners.

There’s Murder Afoot by Vicki Delany.

Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mystery #5

I really enjoy this series. Gemma Doyle runs her Great-Uncle Arthur’s Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium in West London on Cape Cod. In this outing, Gemma and her friends travel to London for a Sherlock Holmes convention–but will Gemma’s father take the fall for a felonious forger’s fatality?

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Something Read, Something Dead by Eva Gates

Lighthouse Library Mystery #5

Set in a historic lighthouse on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the Lighthouse Library series is charming, entertaining, and smart. It features an unusual (and real) setting and colorful cast of characters that set it apart from other bookish cozies. The interesting thing is that Eva Gates is a pseudonym of Vicki Delany. In this book, Dark deeds in the Lighthouse Library threaten to send Lucy Richardson’s soon-to-be-wed cousin Josie to an early ’til-death-do-us-part.

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The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles

Based on the true World War II story of the heroic librarians at the American Library in Paris, this is an unforgettable story of romance, friendship, family, and the power of literature to bring us together, perfect for fans of Sarah’s Key and The Book Thief.

This is a dual timeline story set in 1939 in Paris and in 1983 in Montana. A lonely teenager meets Odile, a librarian that worked at the library. They become friends and Odile shared her story.

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Can’t Judge a Book by Its Murder by Amy Lillard

Main Street Book Club Mysteries #1

Arlo Stanley is the owener of a bookstore in Sugar Springs, Mississippi. This is the first book in a new series, so you can get in at the start. In this book, bestselling author and the town’s legendary alum, Wally Harrison is doing a book signing. Unfortunately, the book opens with his body found dead outside the bookstore. When the elderly ladies of Arlo’s Friday Night Book Club start to investigate, Arlo has no choice but to follow behind to keep them out of trouble. A great start to a new series.

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Beach Read by Emily Henry

This book is not set in a bookstore, but the characters meet through a local bookstore, owned by a relative of Agustus Everett.

A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters. I enjoyed this story and if you have had enough of winter and are dreaming of warmer weather and beach vacations, then grab this one.

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A Tourist’s Guide to Murder by V.M. Burns

Mystery Bookshop #6

The small town of North Harbor on the shores of Lake Michigan is about to have a new mystery bookstore. Samantha Washington is a recent widow who always dreamed of owning her own Mystery Bookstore. Not only has she opened her own store, but she is writing Victorian Cozy Mysteries. I really like this series as each book has a story within a story. This book has Sam, her Nana Jo and her Shady Acres Retirement Village friends Irma, Dorothy, and Ruby Mae on a weeklong trip to London, England, to experience the Peabody Mystery Lovers Tour. Of course they stumble upon a murder.

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The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Hamel

Inspired by an astonishing true story from World War II, a young woman with a talent for forgery helps hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis in this unforgettable historical novel. Eva Traub, the main character is a semi-retired librarian in Florida. Something she sees in a magazine, sends her back in time as she remembers her life during WWII in France. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names. The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war

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A Page Marked For Murder by Lauren Elliott

Beyond the Page Bookstore Mystery #5

In Lauren Elliott’s fifth Beyond the Page Bookstore Mystery, a murder and a missing first edition of The Secret Garden have rare bookstore owner Addie Greyborne running around her Massachusetts town trying to read the clues…

One thing I like about this series is that each mystery involves a classic or well-known book. Addie, the series protagonist received an unexpected inheritance from a great aunt, so she moved to a small New England town founded by her ancestors back in colonial times—and is living in spacious Greyborne Manor. Best of all, her aunt also left her countless first editions and other treasures—providing an inventory to start her own store.

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The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?”

The Librarian working in The Midnight Library is a bit different from the one you meet if you head off to your local library, but more of a tour guide to help Nora Seed make her way through her choices of books.

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The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis

In nationally bestselling author Fiona Davis’s latest historical novel, a series of book thefts roils the iconic New York Public Library, leaving two generations of strong-willed women to pick up the pieces.

This dual timeline story is set in 1913, with Laura Lyons’ husband the superintendent of the New York Public Library, allowing their family to live in an apartment within the grand building. Eighty years later, in 1993, Sadie Donovan struggles with the legacy of her grandmother, the famous essayist Laura Lyons, especially after she’s wrangled her dream job as a curator at the New York Public Library. A great story where I learned a lot about the library as well as what was happening in 1913.

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There you have it. Ten books with characters that either work/own bookstores or work in a library. Most are cozy mysteries, as that seems to be a favourite setting, but others are historical fiction.

Have you read any of these books? What is your favourite occupation or profession from a book you have read?