When small-town assistant librarian Tru Beckett sets up a secret book room in her newly modernized library, she discovers that protecting the printed word is harder than she’d ever imagined. In fact, it’s murder. Trudell Becket, known to her friends as Tru, finds herself in a bind when her library in lovely Cypress, South Carolina, is turned into a state-of-the-art bookless “technological center.” A library with no books breaks Tru’s book-loving heart so she decides to rescue hundreds of beloved tomes slated for the town dump. Under the cover of darkness, Tru, along with her best friends—coffee shop owner Tori Green and mysterious bestselling author Flossie Finnegan-Baker—set up a secret bookroom in the library’s basement and prepare to open it to their most loyal, trustworthy patrons. But as Tru and her crew are putting the finishing touches on their new book room, the town manager, who was behind the big push for the library’s transformation, is crushed by an overturned shelf of DVDs. Tru becomes the prime suspect as she hadn’t hid the fact that she hated having all of those wonderful books replaced by tablets and computers. But if she gives the police her alibi, she’ll have to explain about the secret book room and risk losing the books. Tru knows she’s in a heap of trouble, and it doesn’t help that the officer in charge of the case is her old crush from high school, who broke her teenaged heart. To keep herself out of jail and her beloved bookroom up and running, Tru—with the help of Tori, Flossie, and a brown tabby stray cat named Dewey Decimal—decides to investigate. And faster than you can say “Shhhh!” Tru quickly finds herself on the same page with a killer who would love to write her final chapter. . . . A lover of puzzles and perhaps a bit too nosy about other people's lives, author Dorothy St. James is a former Folly Beach beach bum. She now lives in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, with her husband, precocious daughter, slightly (okay, terribly) needy dogs, and the friendliest cat you'd ever meet. Author of a dozen novels, Dorothy enjoys writing both cozy mysteries and romance. Her works have been nominated for many awards, including the Southern Independent Bookseller's Alliance Southern Book Prize, the Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award, the National Reader's Choice Award, and the Romance Reviews Today Perfect 10! Award. Chapter One   No one in the moderately sized rural southern town of Cypress would ever suspect their stalwart assistant librarian of breaking into the library where she worked. Why would they? A bronze plaque hangs on my kitchen wall. It was personally presented to me by Mayor Goodvale. He declared me an asset to the town. I'd received the award because I always performed my job with the highest level of pride and professionalism. For the past thirteen years I put the town and library first, often to the detriment of my personal life.   An even bigger honor occurred a few years ago when Mrs. Lida Farnsworth, the town's head librarian, whispered (she always whispered) while we busily returned books to their shelves: "Trudell Becket, I couldn't be more pleased to be wrong about my first impression of you. I would have hired any other candidate for the position. But, alas, the only other person who'd applied was that drunkard Cooper Berry. I honestly didn't think you had it in you, honey. But, bless your heart, you've become the model of a perfect librarian."   And she was right. I was perfect. Until . . .   Well, let's just say someone needed to do this.   As a general rule, librarians don't speak in loud voices. Librarians don't exceed the speed limit when driving to work. And librarians certainly don't dress head-to-toe in black ninja-wear while attempting to pick the library's backdoor lock.   Yet, librarians can always be counted on to get things done.   "Don't look at me like that," I muttered to a lanky brown cat with black tiger stripes. It had emerged from the darkened back alleyway to stand next to the library's cool pearly-pink granite wall and watch me. "Someone needs to protect those books before they all end up destroyed. They're sending them to the landfill." The small metal flashlight clenched between my teeth caused the words to come out garbled. Both of my hands were busy working the lock.   A textbook for locksmiths that I'd borrowed from the library's reference section sat open to the page featuring a diagram of a lock. Since I didn't own a lockpick kit-why would I?-I'd improvised with a few sturdy paperclips bent to resemble the tools depicted on the book's previous page. Every little sound, every scrape and rumble in Cypress's quaint downtown boomed in my ears. I jumped at the soft cough of a car engine. And with that cat watching me, I felt an itchy need to scurry into the nearest mousehole to hide.   But I couldn't run. I had to finish what I'd set my mind to finishing.   After what felt like a million thundering heartbeats while I fumbled with the