The Dark Library

Estella Ecker, or E as she prefers to be called, joins our Girls of Summer courtesy of author Mary Anna Evans and her new suspense novel, The Dark Library. On the surface, Estella has lived a charmed life. She’s the only child of an esteemed and revered professor and a loving, beautiful mother. She grew up in the impressive Rockfall House, surrounded by lavish parties, priceless rare books, and great art. However, when she’s summoned home with the news that her father is near death, the first cracks in that facade begin to surface.

After college, wanting to live life on her own terms, she’d accepted a teaching position that ensured she was far from his controlling influence. Returning to Rockfall House to comfort him in his last days wasn’t what she wanted on her syllabus.

From the moment she arrives home, Estella is still subjected to her father’s control. Not only does she discover that her mother has been missing for some time, with no one much interested in finding her, including the local sheriff, Estella quickly realizes that nothing about her parents or the home she grew up in is what she had always believed.

With Pearl Harbor bombed, war threatening, and academics coming under increasing scrutiny, Estella is forced to step into her late father’s world: teaching at the college he dominated, where she’s treated with cold indifference, and living in the home famous for his academic and artistic soirees.

With her father dead and her mother also presumed dead, Estella takes over running the estate. However, like so much else she’d discovered wasn’t true, her father was—and now she is—broke. She’d grown up amid the comfortable affluence of lavish parties, expensive wines, rare books, and impressive art. What happened?

Estella must traverse a lifetime of dark, hidden family secrets, and exposing them can be dangerous for her

—and the people desperate to keep them buried.

But her financial woes, hardly mitigated by her meager salary, aren’t her only problem. Why is someone watching her from across the lake? Between hard questions and harsh realities, Estella must discover who her parents really were and whether her father killed her mother. And why is no one in the town interested in helping her find the truth?

Estella must begin her search for a solution to her dire financial straits in her father’s extensive and impressive library of rare books, which she’d always been forbidden to touch. Now, she must not only touch them but also sell them to survive. While searching the cherished tomes, she discovers something far more valuable and dangerous in the secrets hidden in the dark library. Answers. Estella must traverse a lifetime of dark, hidden family secrets, and exposing them can be dangerous for her—and the people desperate to keep them buried.

Author Mary Anna Evans has a gift for creating young characters living in the shadow of war who don’t realize their strength because they haven’t been tested. However, when life throws down the gauntlet, these young women discover their mettle, how to survive, and discover the answers they need.

Evans is also the author of the Faye Longchamp archeological mysteries, which have received recognition, including the Benjamin Franklin Award, the Mississippi Author Award, and three Florida Book Awards bronze medals. She is also the author of two other standalone mysteries, The Physicists’ Daughter and The Traitor Beside Her. She is an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches fiction and nonfiction writing. Winner of the 2019 Sisters in Crime Academic Research Grant. Learn more about the author at www.Maryannaevans.com