Brand-new librarian Meg Booker is just supposed to be checking out books.

Instead, it's the patrons who are being checked out--permanently.

April 1985. Fir Grove Library, Portland, Oregon: Big hair. Leggings. Card catalogs. Kicking kids with giant boom boxes out of the library. Meg's got it all handled--until her boss takes off on a way-too-long vacation and leaves her in charge.

Right away, things start going wrong. Historical records disappear out of the archives. The hot new library page skateboards into work--or doesn't--whenever he feels like it. A simmering feud boils over between two prominent and universally loathed patrons--nicknamed "The Witch" and "Leisure Suit Lothario"--leaving Meg scrambling to keep the peace.

Then the Witch turns up dead in the library conference room. The police say it's natural causes, but Meg suspects murder--and no librarian worth her reference desk credentials leaves a question unanswered. Aided by the library's mystery book club, and armed with mad research skills, she sets out to prove what really happened.

But when there's another death--and one of her friends is arrested -Meg must unmask the real murderer before it's too late.

A Shush Before Dying is the first book of the Meg Booker Librarian Mysteries--a cozy library mystery series set in the 1980s.