As a reader, it usually drives me nuts when literary fiction turns into navel-gazing, where all the attention is on character and style and the plot is empty or bland. And they seem to contain a hidden message. Brit Bennett 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.

I love mysteries, but I also read an equal amount of non-genre ‘literary’ novels, and I find that I’m drawn to the best aspects of both. Sullivan says that a lot of his character development doesn’t even happen when he’s at his desk. But when youngest BookFrog Joey Molina kills himself in the bookstore’s upper level, Lydia’s life comes unglued. 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. But when Lydia pages through his books, she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. (I’ve never actually tweeted before… this is my first! South Korea: Namu Bench, 2018, UK Hardcover: William Heinemann/Penguin, August 2017. Of course, there are some negatives. A large part of the dramatic tension is through his utterly believable characters. There is much in this book to move the reader, without even a grain of sentimentality. What did Joey know? MIDNIGHT AT THE BRIGHT IDEAS BOOKSTORE superbly straddles both mystery and literary fiction, something which Sullivan intended. GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE ‧ And what does it have to do with Lydia? Okay— I should just dive into this this particular story. The latest thrillers from Lisa Unger, Dean Koontz, Heather Martin, Ian K. Smith, Tom Ryan, Vincent Zandri, Tim Waggoner, Antony Johnston, Kyle Mills and Vince Flynn, John Connelly, J. J. Hensley, Jeremy Robert Johnson, David Holman, Ellen Butler, Joel W. Barrows, Daniella Bernett, Lee Gimenez, Brandon Barrows, Allen Wyler, Debbie De Louise, Eric J. Guignard, Heather Redmond and many more! Desiree, the “fidgety twin,” and Stella, “a smart, careful girl,” make their break from stultifying rural Mallard, Louisiana, becoming 16-year-old runaways in 1954 New Orleans. Bedazzling, addictive, and wildly clever, is a heart-pounding mystery that perfectly captures the intellect and eccentricity of the bookstore milieu and will keep you guessing until the very last page.​. Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. Find out more by visiting her website, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan. She’s represented by Josh Getzler at HG Literary. A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. Categories: A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she keeps a meticulously crafted existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the 'BookFrogs'—the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day marauding the store’s overwhelmed shelves. GENERAL FICTION, by Without ever knowing him I found him endearing, and with the little snippets that Lydia gave us of him I was able to visualize him surprisingly well and actually felt empathy for him the more his story progressed. RELEASE DATE: June 2, 2020. The novel opens 14 years later as Desiree, fleeing a violent marriage in D.C., returns home with a different relative: her 8-year-old daughter, Jude. I like twisted, and have an extremely high twisted threshold when it comes to books. I also found Joey, the man whose death was the catalyst for the plot. I avoid the synopsis, I don’t read any reviews and I just begin to read. I’m doing what Matthew Sullivan, experienced writing contest judge and writing teacher, sees as a common slip in the unsuccessful entries he reads. BookFrogs are … “I really think that the process of cutting like crazy helped boil the plot down to its essentials and see connections that weren’t obvious when it was more sprawling.”, Finally, came The Call. “Where a writer starts off by stacking up all the ingredients for the story without actually diving into the story.”.