How Can I Help You

A LibraryReads Pick

From the author of Looker comes this ＂compulsive and unforgettable novel＂ (Mona Awad) of razor-sharp suspense about two local librarians whose lives become dangerously intertwined.

No one knows Margo’s real name. Her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library only know her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of countless premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges.

That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. Patricia quickly notices Margo’s subtly sinister edge, and watches her carefully. When a patron’s death in the library bathroom gives her a hint of Margo’s mysterious past, Patricia can’t resist digging deeper--even as this new fixation becomes all-consuming.

Taut and compelling, How Can I Help You explores the dark side of human nature and the dangerous pull of artistic obsession as these ＂transfixing dual female narrators＂ (Kimberly McCreight) hurtle toward a stunning climax.

Laura Sims is the author of How Can I Help You, a New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and CrimeReads Best Book of the Year, and a LibraryReads Top Ten Books of July. Sims’s first novel, LOOKER, was included on ＂Best Books＂ lists in Vogue, People Magazine, Real Simple, Entertainment Weekly, and more, and is now in development for television by eOne and Emily Mortimer’s King Bee Productions. An award-winning poet, Sims has published four poetry collections; her essays and poems have appeared in the New Republic, Boston Review, Lit Hub, and Electric Literature. She and her family live in New Jersey, where she works part-time as a reference librarian and hosts the library’s lecture series.