The morning of April 28, 1986, a fire alarm sounded in the Los Angeles Public Library. As one fireman recounted, "Once that first stack got going, it was 'Goodbye, Charlie.' Investigators descended on the scene, but more than thirty years later, the mystery remains: Did someone purposefully set fire to the library—and if so, who? Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, reporter and bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before.
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