Assistant district attorney Alex Cooper and her crew are drawn into the strange and privileged world of rich collectors, eccentric library trustees, and the treasures of the great New York Public Library after a librarian disappears and a woman's corpse turns up in the missing librarian's abandoned apartment.

"Trace Carter doesn't know how to feel at ease in his new life in New York. Even though his artsy Auntie Lea is cool, her brownstone still isn't his home. Haunted by flashbacks of the accident that killed his parents, the best he can do is try to distract himself from memories of the past. But the past isn't done with him. When Trace takes a wrong turn in the New York Public Library, he finds someone else lost in the stacks with him: a crying little...

"A note from bartender Brian McNulty, Raymond Ambler's friend, confidant, and sometimes adviser, sets the librarian sleuth off on a murder investigation, one that he pursues reluctantly until a second murder upends the world as he knows it. The second victim is a lady friend of McNulty's - and the prime suspect is McNulty himself. As Ambler pursues his investigation, he discovers that the murdered woman had a double life. Her intermittent visits to...