April 15, 2024
Seven college students gather in a library basement to perform a Greek ritual that turns deadly, in librarian Jurczyk’s underheated sophomore effort (after The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections). At an unnamed Vermont university, student library assistant Davey Kebede invites six friends to join him beneath the William E. Woodend Rare Books Library to perform an overnight ceremony modeled on the Eleunisian Mysteries that’s designed to rid them of their fears of death. Not long after Davey and his cohorts are locked in for the night, the power surges, and one member of the group—PhD candidate Kip—disappears. When Davey and company find Kip, he’s covered in blood, and he draws his final breaths in front of them. Shocked, the survivors start pointing fingers, and their worst suspicions are confirmed when a second person is killed in an attempted dash for safety. With the library locked from the outside until morning, who will survive the night? Jurczyk conjures a suitably creepy atmosphere, but her characters are thinly drawn, and the twist ending is more deflating than clever. This misses the mark. Agent: Erin Clyburn, Howland Literary.

May 1, 2024
Think libraries are staid, respectable, and boring? Think again. The night before graduation at his mercifully unnamed Vermont university, Davey Kebede plans a secret after-hours reenactment of the Eleusinian Mysteries, a ritual designed to overcome the fear of death, in the William E. Woodend Rare Books Library, where his stint as an assistant is coming to an end. Since the ritual isn't something he can stage on his own, he invites Soraya Abbasi and Mary Xiao, his two competitors for a full-time position at the Woodend, to join him, along with Kip Pickens, the son of philanthropists who've thrown their money around this campus and others; Applebee's bartender Ro Tucci, whose job this evening is to supply drugs; his girlfriend, classics student Umu Owusu; and, just to round things out, mousy physics undergraduate Faye Bradshaw, who kicks off the festivities by announcing that she's not going to take the acid Ro has brought for everyone to drop. As if on cue, the lights go out, and you'd never guess what happens next. By the end of the night, most of this crew will be history, and not in an Eleusinian way. Davey notes that "we're not in an Agatha Christie novel," and he's absolutely right. Both the setup and the execution are far less realistic than those of And Then There Were None, and the variety of means to these violent deaths is more redolent of an old dark house movie or a drug-addled teen horror flick that just happens to be set in the stacks of a well-funded library. Like the participants in this ritual, you need to be in the mood for this one. Pass the joint.

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May 1, 2024
Davey is about to graduate, and he's sure he will be offered a permanent position in his university's rare books library. So he proposes an illicit overnight stay in the basement of the building to coworkers Soraya, Faye, and Mary to reenact a Greek ritual. Soon the group grows to include Soraya's privileged boyfriend Kip, Kip's undergraduate student Umu, and Umu's best friend Ro. All but Faye take a hit of acid (provided by Ro) to start off the night. Despite Davey's careful planning, the group ends up locked in the library with the lights out, and then Kip ends up dead, apparently poisoned. As the remaining students try to figure out who killed Kip, they descend into murderous madness. By alternating points of view among all the main players, Jurczyk (The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, 2022) keeps readers guessing about who is guilty and what will happen next. This locked-room mystery is full of secrets and twists that will keep readers on their toes.

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