Librarian Authors and Characters

Check out these exciting forthcoming titles, either written by librarians or featuring librarian characters!

UPON A STARLIT TIDE by Kell Woods | 9781250852519 | 2/18/25

Saint-Malo, Brittany, 1758. To Lucinde Leon, the youngest daughter of a wealthy French shipowner, the high walls of Saint-Malo are more hindrance than haven.

While her sisters are busy trying to secure advantageous marriages, Luce spends her days secretly being taught to sail by Samuel, her best friend—and an English smuggler. Only he understands how the waves call to her. Then one stormy morning, Luce rescues a drowning man from the sea.

Immediately drawn in by the stranger’s charm, Luce is plunged into a world of glittering balls and faerie magic, seduction and brutality. Secrets that have long been lost in the shadowy depths of the ocean begin to rise to the surface, but as Luce wrestles with warring desires, she finds that her own power is growing brighter and brighter, shining like a sea-glass slipper.

Or the scales of a sea-maid’s tail.

WOOING THE WITCH QUEEN by Stephanie Burgis | 9781250359599 | 2/18/25

Queen Saskia is the wicked sorceress everyone fears. After successfully wrestling the throne from her evil uncle, she only wants one thing: to keep her people safe from the empire next door. For that, she needs to spend more time in her laboratory experimenting with her spells. She definitely doesn’t have time to bring order to her chaotic library of magic.

When a mysterious dark wizard arrives at her castle, Saskia hires him as her new librarian on the spot. “Fabian” is sweet and a little nerdy, and his requests seem a little strange – what in the name of Divine Elva is a fountain pen? – but he’s getting the job done. And if he writes her flirtatious poetry and his innocent touch makes her skin singe, well…

Little does Saskia know that the “wizard” she’s falling for is actually an Imperial archduke in disguise, with no magical training whatsoever. On the run, with perilous secrets on his trail and a fast growing yearning for the wicked sorceress, he’s in danger from her enemies and her newfound allies, too. When his identity is finally revealed, will their love save or doom each other?

THE LIBRARY GAME by Gigi Pandian | 9781250880239 | 3/18/25

Tempest Raj couldn’t be happier that the family business, Secret Staircase Construction, is finally getting the recognition it deserves. Known for enchanting architectural features like sliding bookshelves and secret passageways, the company is now taking on a dream project: transforming a home into a public library that celebrates history’s greatest fictional detectives.

Though the work is far from done, Gray House Library’s new owner is eager to host a murder mystery dinner and literary themed escape room. But when a rehearsal ends with an actor murdered and the body vanishes, Tempest is witness to a seemingly impossible crime. Fueled by her grandfather’s Scottish and Indian meals, Tempest and the rest of the crew must figure out who is making beloved classic mystery plots come to life in a deadly game.

COLD BURN by A.J. Landau | 9781250877369 | 4/8/25

Agent Michael Walker returns when multiple deaths at Glacier Bay National Park are just the first steps in a potential global disaster.

In Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park, a frozen woolly mammoth is uncovered by a geological survey team. When all of them are found dead at the site of the thawed-out carcass, National Park Service ISB special agent Michael Walker is called in to investigate.

In Florida’s Everglades National Park, FBI special investigator Gina Delgado traces the murder of an environmental science intern back to another U.S. Geological Survey team’s ongoing experiments that are decimating the fragile ecosystem.

Beneath the icy waters of Alaska’s Elfin Cove, the crew of a stranded Los Angeles class attack submarine is wiped out by a mysterious contagion, inexplicably causing their lungs to freeze.

The link between these apparently disparate events lies in a deadly, prehistoric microbe that killed the mammoth the same way it did the USGS survey team in Glacier Bay and the crew members of the submarine. A microbe that a rogue billionaire is desperate to attain, and a Russian strongman will do anything to weaponize to achieve even greater, wide-ranging power. Fighting a battle on several fronts—militarily, intellectually, and biologically—Walker and Delgado are running out of time to stop a devastating attack that would reshape the entire world