Roach would rather be listening to the latest episode of her favorite
true crime podcast than assisting the boring and predictable
customers at her local branch of the bookstore Spines, where she's
worked her entire adult life. A serious true crime junkie, Roach
looks down her nose at the pumpkin-spice-latte-drinking casual fans
who only became interested in the genre once it got trendy. But when
Laura, a pretty and charismatic children's bookseller, arrives to
help rejuvenate the struggling bookstore branch, Roach recognizes in
her an unexpected kindred spirit.
Despite their common interest in true
crime, Laura keeps her distance from Roach, resisting the other
woman's overtures of friendship. Undeterred, Roach learns everything
she can about her new colleague, eventually uncovering Laura's
traumatic family history. When Roach realizes that she may have come
across her very own true crime story, interest swiftly blooms into a
dangerous obsession.
A darkly funny suspense novel, Death
of a Bookseller raises ethical questions about the fervor for
true crime and how we handle stories that don't belong to us.