Readers and writers both love to fall into a good story. But what happens when fiction doesn’t stay confined to the pages?

After a breakup, Gina engages in some retail therapy at a used bookstore, but one of the novels she brings into her apartment turns out to be more than a ghost story. A reader spends her life escaping her responsibilities with books until she’s escaped too far. A traveler finds a paperback left in the airplane seatback pocket, but once she starts reading, she finds she can’t leave the story behind.

While grieving the loss of her grandmother, a young woman finds that she’s been left a collection of journals that write back. Whit wants to recapture the joy of creative writing she felt when she was in college by making a deal that can’t be undone. Emily ditches the boyfriend for a midcentury modern writer’s desk that is more than a piece of furniture. 

A library science graduate student accepts an internship, only to find that the city archives are much more magical (and deadly) than she initially thought. A librarian works her first closing shift, even though she’s been warned about the nonfiction section after dark. 

With tales of writers, readers, and librarians, Ex Libris is a collection of short stories for people who know there’s something supernatural happening when you lose yourself in a good book.