After the murder of her best friend, a librarian’s search for answers leads back to her own dark secrets in this sweeping novel about a woman transformed by war, family, vengeance, and love, from award-winning writer Allen Eskens.

Hana Babic is a quiet, middle-aged librarian in Minnesota who wants nothing more than to be left alone. But when a detective arrives with the news that her best friend has been murdered, Hana knows that something evil has come for her, a dark remnant of the past she and her friend had shared.

Thirty years before, Hana was someone Nura Divjak, a teenager growing up in the mountains of war-torn Bosnia—until Serbian soldiers arrived to slaughter her entire family before her eyes. The events of that day thrust Nura into the war, leading her to join a band of militia fighters, where she became not only a fierce warrior but a legend—the deadly Night Mora. But a shattering final act forced Nura to flee to the United States with a bounty on her head.

Now, someone is hunting Hana, and her friend has paid the price, leaving her eight-year-old grandson in Hana’s care. To protect the child without revealing her secret, Hana must again become the Night Mora—and hope she can find the killer before the past comes for them, too.

Review:

Compelling, suspenseful, and fast-paced!

The Quiet Librarian is an intense, ominous tale that takes us into the life of Minnesota librarian Hana Babic who, after her best friend is murdered, prepares herself for the past to collide with the present when one of the depraved men she was brutalized by during the Bosnian war seems to have suddenly reappeared.

The prose is meticulous and tight. The characters are persistent, scarred, and resourceful. And the plot is a raw, menacing tale about life, loss, tragedy, danger, desperation, cruelty, secrets, survival, manipulation, betrayal, deception, revenge, violence, and wartime brutalities.

Overall, The Quiet Librarian is an absorbing, mysterious, disturbing tale by Eskens that does a wonderful job of interweaving historical facts and compelling fiction into an insightful, sinister tale that is intriguing, haunting, and highly entertaining.

This book is available now.

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