Shelfology Book Pairing
The Midnight Library
A Novel
by Matt Haig
Between life and death there is a library. When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change. The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren’t always what she imagined they’d be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger. Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?
The Book of Lost Names
by Kristin Harmel
As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. Sixty-five years later, a book is discovered that appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don't know where it came from, or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer, but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war?