Page 1 of The Lonely Hearts Book Club

SLOANE

1

The day I met Arthur McLachlan was perfectly ordinary.

I woke up at my usual hour. I ate my usual bowl of oatmeal while hunched over the last few pages of my library copy ofParable of the Sower. I can’t remember what I wore, but I’m pretty sure it was both machine washable and designed for comfort.

Everythingin my closet was machine washable and designed for comfort, but not by choice. Rule number one of being a librarian: You’ll leave work every day looking like you waged battle with a league of ancient scribes. Adapt early and adapt often, or your dry-cleaning bills will bury you.

When Arthur first came barreling into my life, I was in the Fiction section restocking a bunch of titles someone had moved for the sake of internet kudos. There was a new TikTok trend going around where people descended on bookstores and public libraries in order to write out sentences using titles. If you ignored the part whereIwas the one who had to put everything back where it belonged, it was kind of clever.

Looking for AlaskaWhere the Sidewalk Ends

We Were Liars Under the Never Sky

Are You Anybody? I Am No One

I was still chuckling over that last one when I heard the sound of an annoyed cough behind me.

“Young lady, you are blocking the way to Roman History.”

Years of practice had me immediately stepping back, an apology on my lips. As I pushed my cart aside, I noticed the man was elderly, his wire glasses perched on the end of his nose and his tweed jacket sporting a pair of suede elbow patches. He walked with the aid of a gold-tipped cane that looked as though it might conceal a sword stick inside.

“Do you want me to look up a specific title for you?” I asked, since he had some way to go to reach the nonfiction shelves. “Anything by Tom Holland is good, but I find I prefer to get my history from Mary Beard. Her approach is wonderfully emotional.”

He snorted. “Typical sentimental claptrap.”

I blinked at him, wondering what I could have said to cause offense. “I’m…sorry?”

He tapped his cane sharply. “Emotion doesn’t belong in history. Emotion belongs in maudlin childhood literature. You should know that,Pollyanna.”

I was taken aback but not dismayed by the belligerence in his tone. Strange though it seemed, we had actual library rules about patrons like this. Soothe and disarm, that was the order of the day. Leave them in a better frame of mind than when they arrived. And never, under any circumstances, engage.

“You don’t have to read anything you don’t want to,” I said with a careful smile. “But my name isn’t Pollyanna. It’s Sloane.”

Instead of accepting my peace offering, Arthur tilted his head and appraised me. Something about the intelligent gray eyes behind his rims caught my attention.

“You know what I meant,” he said, stabbing a finger at my cart. Sure enough, a copy of Eleanor Porter’s beloved childhood tale sat on the top. One of the teens had had the audacity to pair it with John Grisham’sA Time to Kill.

I held both books up with a laugh. “Don’t blame me,” I said. “It’sA Time to Kill Pollyanna.”

He looked pained.

“It’s a joke,” I explained. “Kids trying to make sentences out of book titles. Some of them are actually pretty good. Maybe I should try my hand at it next time I run into a patron.” In an attempt to defuse the tension, I said the first title that came to mind. “PollyannaisPleased to Meet You.”

“Those kids are a plague on the public library system,” he said, glaring. “And so, I’m starting to think, are you.”

I had no response for this. Well, to be fair, Ihadone, but I knew better than to voice it aloud. One of my greatest skills in this world—some might say it was my only skill—was how good I was at being inoffensive. The trick was to look bland, act blander, and voice no opinions whatsoever. The looking bland part I had down pat, my frizzy brown hair and lightly freckled skin blending into the background so easily that I sometimes felt like a potted ficus. The acting part was easy, too. I could go for days at a time without opening my mouth to say anything but “Yes, of course” and “No, you’re right,” and no one seemed to think there was anything odd about it.

The opinions part was harder, but working in a public space like the Coeur d’Alene library had taught me the value of tact.

“Well?” he demanded. “Don’t you have anything else to say?”

I shrugged, wishing—not for the first time—that I was more like my sister Emily. She’d have knownexactlyhow to wrap a grouchy old man like this around her finger. I don’t know if it was all the doctors she grew up around or just her natural charm, but she’d had a way of making even the meanest grumps do her bidding. Before she’d gotten too sick to roam the neighborhood with me, we used to visit an ice cream shop a few blocks away from our house. No matter how many fingerprints we left on the glass or how exasperated the shopkeeper got with all our requests for free samples, she always walked out of there with at least one extra scoop.

What would Emily do?

“We could probably incorporate some Roman history, if it helps,” I said, thinking of the towering ice cream cones Emily used to carry home with her. She’d never been able to eat the whole thing, but that hadn’t been the point. It had been thetriumphof it she’d enjoyed. In all the years since I’d lost her, I hadn’t triumphed over anything.