MAD Librarian Read online

  praise for michael guillebeau and MAD Librarian

  “Guillebeau (Josh Whatever) blends humor and mystery perfectly in this comic thriller set in the small city of Maddington, Ala. …Guillebeau keeps things light with frequent laugh-out-loud lines.”

  -Publisher’s Weekly

  “This book is truly every librarian’s dream come true. After fighting budget battles over and over again, librarian Serenity has lost her library funding. What’s a librarian gonna do? . . . A funny, moving story of our most precious institutions under threat.”

  ––Cayocosta72 Reviews

  "The hilarious patchwork of characters who run the Maddington Public Library (aka the MAD) take the perennial matter of budget cuts into their own hands. Irreverent and boisterous, this book is for anyone who believes in the power of books and libraries."

  ––Gina Sheridan, Author of

  I Work in a Public Library

  “Billed as Breaking Bad—The Library Edition and one would have to agree. Just think, as a book lover, how far would you go to save the library and the books that you love?”

  ––Joanne Cook

  “A great adventure in the fed-up world of librarians! Funny, exciting, and realistic.”

  ––Aimee Meuchel, Librarian

  “Mad Librarian is for anyone who loves books, libraries, and cracking good writing. Guillebeau sheds light on our struggling library system with clever, quirky prose and a perfect balance of humor and darkness.”

  ––Jaden Terrell, Author of

  the Jared McKean mysteries

  “MAD Librarian lives up to the pun of its title—MAD characters, MAD Library location, and MAD humor. Guillebeau has created a character in MAD librarian Serenity, who not only pays tribute to all librarians, but is exactly the one you hope works at your community library. A fun easy read.”

  ––Debra Goldstein, Author of

  Should Have Played Poker and Maze in Blue

  “Great story! Loved the characters and the flow of the story. Librarians that know what they want and how to get it.”

  ––Lisa Einwich, Librarian

  “The librarians of MAD fight the good fight, say the things we are all thinking, then do the things that none of us actually do when we are wide awake.”

  ––Rosann Goldblatt, Librarian

  “. . . You are taken down a crazy, MAD road of murder, corruption and . . . The passion of books and what they can do for an individual, a town, a community.”

  ––J. Fearnley

  “. . . Pair angst and social dismay with a wide-ranging story that offers dashes of something for everyone and you have an original production recommended for readers unafraid of chick-lit stories laced with social observation as a pillar of the community decides enough is enough.”

  ––Diane Donovan, Midwest Reviews

  “. . . nothing less than a powerful love story between a woman, Serenity Hammer, and the people of the city she serves as their librarian. I will never look at libraries or librarians the same way again . . .”

  ––Kathleen Cosgrove, Author of

  Entangled and Engulfed

  praise for Michael Guillebeau’s Josh Whoever

  “. . . the collection of oddball minor characters and surprise twists deepen an already strong story. An engrossing debut. Mystery Debut of the Month.”

  ––Library Journal Starred Review

  MAD Librarian

  Michael Guillebeau

  Madison Press

  Madison, Alabama

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Michael Guillebeau

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Published by Madison Press

  Madison, Alabama

  [email protected]

  Book Layout © 2017 BookDesignTemplates.com

  Cover Design by Artrocity.

  Author Photo by Randall Bachmeyer.

  SEC12172018

  MAD Librarian/ Michael Guillebeau. – 1st ed.

  ISBN: 978-0-9972055-2-7

  dedication, and all that

  THIS IS A BOOK of fantasy. But it is about a race of fantastic creatures who actually inhabit some of the most underfunded and overworked places in our often-dirty real world.

  They’re called librarians, and, more and more, they’re called on to shoulder any burden the rest of us don’t want. They sign up to work with books, and wind up looking after kids dropped off for day care from moms who can’t find anything else, caring for homeless men who can’t find anywhere else, providing medical and legal advice, and helping people find jobs. The list stretches to infinity. The resources don’t.

  But what if they did? What if a librarian had all the power and money she needed?

  This book is dedicated to the librarians who should have more but who always, always find a way to do more.

  Four of those remarkable librarians inspired the birth of this book, guided it as it grew, and pointed the way to use it to help mad librarians everywhere. The librarians in this book are pale shadows of these remarkable women who make their communities and libraries better every day. Thank you all, my librarian goddesses:

  Sarah Sledge

  Amanda Campbell

  Heather Ogilvie

  Anne Wood

  Anyone who’s ever read an early draft of mine will tell you that this book would be unreadable without the work of my two fine editors, Lisa Wysocky and Stacy Pethel. And you might not have bought it without the great cover from Artrocity and the wonderful title that provided from librarian Amanda Campbell.

  Chris Guillebeau and Cheryl Rydbom contributed a lot of time and useful comments.

  Most importantly, I always have to thank the best partner, first reader, and co-conspirator any man ever had: Pat Leary Guillebeau.

  Because I came to believe so strongly in the mission or our librarians, half of all of the income from MAD Librarian goes to the Awesome Foundation for Libraries fund, a small working group of passionate librarians within Library Pipeline who provide a catalyst for prototyping innovations that embody the principles of diversity, inclusivity, creativity, and risk-taking. For more information go to

  http://www.awesomefoundation.org/en/chapters/libraries.

  one

  little pricks

  SERENITY TRIED.

  She tried to be a model librarian: professional, polite and as gentle-spoken on the outside as she could possibly be.

  Her library was America at its best. In its public spaces, the MAD—as the librarians called the Maddington Public Library, from the abbreviation stamped on its books—was the eminently normal center of an eminently normal small Southern city. No matter what else was going on in the city outside: failing schools, drugs in the street, too few good jobs, teen-aged boys wearing their pants too low and homeless men with no pants at all—the city fathers expected Head Librarian Serenity Hammer to keep the MAD a calm oasis of normalcy as proof that the city fathers themselves were actually doing their jobs. And, they expected her to do that whether they did anything themselves or even supplied the library with actual support.

  Serenity tried to live up to that, too.

  Which was why, on a hot August morning, she was locked alone in a children’s reading room with a coffee cup of rum for fortitude, a rat named Faulkner for company, a copy of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird for guidance, and a highly
illegal choice before her.

  Serenity Hammer was a librarian. And Serenity was mad.

  • • •

  TWO DAYS BEFORE she wrestled with moral dilemma, Serenity threw open the library’s glass doors on a hot Wednesday morning in August. She smiled as patrons flowed past on their way to her books.

  She picked up a handful of books from the “to be shelved” cart and turned to the stacks. She ran her finger along the spine of one, inhaled the paper-and-ink smell, and smiled again.

  Someone screamed, “Damned stupid computers.” She put the books back on the cart.

  Maybe later.

  She then walked up to a worn-out older woman who was slapping a worn-out library computer like it had stole from her. Serenity took the woman’s hands away from the computer and held them.

  “I knowed this was a bad idea,” the woman said. “I told my councilman I needed a job and he said they had to close the employment office and he told me to go to the library. But your damned computer just tells me what books you got here. Don’t want a book; want a job.”

  The woman tried to pull her hands away but Serenity held on. The woman’s jaw was still jutting out but her eyes were full of fear and shame.

  Serenity put the woman’s hands in her lap and pulled up a chair. “Then let’s find you a job. What can you do?”

  “Not a goddamned thing. Forty years looking after my husband and he died. Now I don’t know what to do and they ain’t nobody to ask that won’t charge more money than I got and I just feel like everybody’s letting me get torn to pieces.”

  “So, what have you been doing in those forty years?”

  “Cooking and cleaning and raising kids and—”

  “There. Know much about baking?”

  “Well, of course. Who do you think made all them cupcakes the kids took to school?”

  “Good.” The woman slid over and Serenity brought up a web page. “There’s a bakery out on Segers Road. They specialize in making treats for people who have special dietary needs. They were in here yesterday looking for a book on hiring folks.”

  The woman shook her finger at the screen. “They better be careful. My husband Christopher was a diabetic. There’s some stuff you got to know if you’re cooking for diabetics.”

  Serenity touched her on the shoulder. “You’re just what they need. But you’ll need a resume.” Serenity slid back and turned the keyboard to the woman. “You type, and I’ll help you.”

  A few minutes later, a warm sheet of paper slid out of the printer, and Serenity handed it to the woman. “Take that to Stacey out at Liberated Specialty Foods, see if you can help each other.”

  The woman’s tears were gone, “What would we do if the library wasn’t here?”

  Serenity said, “My library will always—”

  A blue-haired woman grabbed her elbow.

  “This thing ain’t got nothing in it.”

  She shoved a book in Serenity’s hands and Serenity smiled. The woman was the wife of the Church of Christ’s choir director. She had joined the Romance Book Club so she could condemn immorality. Flipping through the pages, Serenity handed the book back and pointed to the middle of a page. “Here.”

  The choir director’s wife bobbed her head up and down like a nervous bird, studying the page and popping up to make sure no one saw her. She raised her head one last time with her mouth open.

  “Praise Jesus. This is terrible.”

  Anything to keep them coming in.

  Serenity headed for her office door. A twenty-something woman with books clutched to her chest and a librarian’s badge blocked her path.

  Fine. She didn’t want to face what was waiting behind that door anyway.

  “Ms. Hammer, he’s back.”

  “Who?”

  Amanda Doom pulled one hand from under her books and slowly raised her index finger until it was straight up. “Do you want me to get security?”

  Serenity looked over at the high school boy who had volunteered to wear the red “Security” tee shirt today.

  “No.”

  “I can call the police.”

  “Take them a half-hour to get here,” Serenity said. “Besides, he’s cousin to the wife of the district attorney. We’ll just wind up in a long discussion about his constitutional rights, again. No, we need to end this once and for all. We’re a library. Our power is books.”

  She pulled out the biggest atlas she could carry. “Keep his attention so he won’t see me coming.”

  Serenity weaved through the stacks until she heard two teen-aged girls giggling.

  “Smaller than I thought it would be,” said one. More giggles.

  Serenity peeked through a gap in the books and saw the back of a 1940’s style trench coat. She eased her way around behind him and stepped into his aisle.

  Doom was standing in front of the man as requested, looking shocked, but now she smiled at Serenity and the surprise was gone. The trench coat spun toward her. Move fast. She opened the atlas and took one giant step forward. The opening of the trench coat rotated into view followed by the man’s grinning face and his . . . pride.

  Serenity slammed the heavy book shut on the man with a vengeance. He jumped and screamed and she yanked the book away with a nasty jerk.

  He fell back against the stacks and put his hands over himself. “My rights.”

  She held the book up in both hands like Moses handing down the commandments. “Freedom of the press trumps freedom of expression.” Shook it at him. “By. The. Book.”

  She shoved him aside.

  “Come back again, Cy, and I’m going for the unabridged dictionary.” The teenaged girls giggled at “dictionary.” She held the book out to Doom and the girl took it like she was accepting a dead rat.

  “Shelve this, please.” Serenity looked back at Cy and said, “I’m tired of wasting my big books on you little pricks.”

  two

  little cash

  I NEED ARMOR.

  Serenity looked at her office door and knew that the real battle lay inside, but she didn’t have the heart to face it yet.

  So, she called in support.

  She picked up a book at random from the shelving cart, glanced at the spine (Paula Brackston’s The Midnight Witch), and headed into the stacks.

  Other people have horoscopes and morning prayers to predict their future. Librarians have books. Shelves and shelves of books. This was the tiny part of her day that she fought for. Moments with the smell and look and touch of thousands of books, walking among them, imagining a child reading a book and learning what it was like to be a man, an old woman reading another book and feeling the wonder of being a child again. Pride and Prejudice, Catcher in the Rye, The Jungle—books that had changed her life, and the world’s. She took a deep breath and inhaled as much of the dust of paper and ink as she could and wished she could disappear into the two-dimensional world forever.

  Carl Sagan said we are all made of stardust; she was made of book dust. And, like every day, she would take her omen for the day from the book dust. She slid The Midnight Witch into its home and looked at the next book on the right to see an omen of what the day would bring. The book was Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.

  That can’t be right.

  She studied the shelf and found a reprieve. Someone had carelessly shelved Something Wicked This Way Comes ahead of The Illustrated Man. She swapped the books.

  Better.

  “An illuminating day ahead,” she said to the books. Encouraged by the random promise of her books, she went into her office to face all the bills, paperwork and accounting books it took to keep her books alive one more day. She sat down at her desk, just her alone against the world.

  Almost. Something scampered through the stack of books on her work table. She jumped up and stared at a small, beady pair of rat eyes that were staring back at her. The rat waddled out from the pile, a tiny ball of fur afeared of neither God nor man. He stood up on his hind legs and studied her. T
hey both stared, waiting for the other to run away. Neither ran.

  “Hope you’ve got your library card,” said Serenity, “’cause I sure as hell don’t have money to pay an exterminator.”

  The rat didn’t seem impressed. She studied him and tried to find some meaning here.

  “Karma. I’m going to be kind to you and share my office, and the universe will be kind to my library.” She looked back at the rat. “You can stay, but you’d better deliver.”

  She flopped down at her desk and picked up a half-empty cup of cold coffee from the top of a stack of paperwork. Then she reached into the left-side drawer and pulled out an almost-full bottle of Myers’s rum that she had taken off a gaggle of teenagers who were drinking in the stacks. She looked at the clock. Ten a.m.

  When she acquired the rum, her rule had been one taste at the end of the day. Then she decided to put her drinking in God’s hands and only drink after he had handed her the first crazy crisis of the day. Cy and his itty-bitty problem qualified.

  Who am I to defy the Almighty?

  She gulped the cold coffee to get rid of it, made a face, poured the rum, had the first taste, and made a better face. Then she thought about it and poured a little in a bottle cap and put it as close to the rat as she could without scaring him and his good karma away.

  She put the bottle back and studied the stacks of books, unpaid invoices, and paperwork that overflowed her office. She fired up her ancient computer and brought up the library’s accounting program. She had enough cash on hand to maybe buy a free Jehovah’s Witness handout, and no more money coming in anytime soon. She swiveled to the stack of bills and picked up the top one. It was from the library’s internet provider. Overdue. She picked up the phone and dialed.