the paris library a novel by janet skeslien charles

My favorite part of library school had been the Dewey Decimal system. I was so nervous that I forgot simple facts. And the New Testament? I waited, but the number wouldn’t come.

In the distance, I could see the ebony dome of Saint-Augustin church. The wind whipped my hair, and I tucked tendrils under my tam hat. I strode from my family’s apartment on the sooty rue de Rome, across from the Saint-Lazare train station, where locomotives coughed up smoke.

I held fast to these facts and figures, hoping they’d make me appear qualified to the Directress. Now, at the desk in my bedroom, I prepared for my job interview at the American Library, reviewing my notes one last time: founded in 1920 the first in Paris to let the public into the stacks subscribers from more than thirty countries, one-fourth of them from France. His royal collection was the beginning of the Bibliothèque Nationale. In England, while Henry VIII was busy chopping off his wives’ heads, our King François was modernizing his library, which he opened to scholars. Along with the numbers, I’d studied the history of libraries, going back to the 1500s. In my bedroom late at night, in the morning on the way to get croissants, series after series-810, 840, 890-formed in front of my eyes. NUMBERS FLOATED ROUND my head like stars. “A love letter to Paris, the power of books, and the beauty of intergenerational friendship” ( Booklist), The Paris Library shows that extraordinary heroism can sometimes be found in the quietest places. As Lily uncovers more about her neighbor’s mysterious past, she finds that they share a love of language, the same longings, and the same intense jealousy, never suspecting that a dark secret from the past connects them. Her interest is piqued by her solitary, elderly neighbor.

Montana, 1983: Lily is a lonely teenager looking for adventure in small-town Montana. But when the war finally ends, instead of freedom, Odile tastes the bitter sting of unspeakable betrayal. Together with her fellow librarians, Odile joins the Resistance with the best weapons she has: books. When the Nazis march into the city, Odile stands to lose everything she holds dear, including her beloved library. Paris, 1939: Young and ambitious Odile Souchet seems to have the perfect life with her handsome police officer beau and a dream job at the American Library in Paris. An instant New York Times, Washington Post, and USA TODAY bestseller-based on the true story of the heroic librarians at the American Library in Paris during World War II- The Paris Library is a moving and unforgettable “ ode to the importance of libraries, books, and the human connections we find within both” (Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author).

The paris library a novel by janet skeslien charles