Some characters haunt you long after a book is done, especially when they’re ghosts. Here are five (5) reasons why we think you’ll love being haunted by the characters in our new release, THE GHOST AND THE DEAD LIBRARIAN, recently honored as a Library Journal “Mystery Pick of the Month” and one of Brodart’s Top Adult Titles.
#1 PENELOPE, THE BOOKSELLER
A young widow with a growing son and busy life, Penelope Thornton-McClure didn’t believe in ghosts. Oh, sure, she knew locals gossiped about her family’s shop being haunted, but she never believed it, not until one horrible night when everything went wrong and she was under a great deal of stress. That’s when he spoke to her. The Ghost. From then on, Jack speaks to Pen at will—his will, not hers—blowing in and out of her head like a blustery gale. Despite his troubled spirit, Jack has a wicked sense of humor, and after everything they go through together, Pen is amazed at the strangest irony of all, one that uplifts her own spirit: The Ghost believes in her.
#2 JACK, THE HARDBOILED GHOST
A tough PI with an acre of shoulders and an iron jaw, Jack Shepard lived a tough, whiskey-swilling life on the meaner streets of New York City. His death (in 1949) was no picnic, either. Gunned down in a Rhode Island bookshop while following a lead in a case, he found his spirit locked in the fieldstone walls of that bookshop, unable to communicate with anyone—until his breakthrough with the prim young widow. While he has little patience with being stuck in this backwater town, he can’t deny the auburn-haired bookseller has improved his intolerable existence. Yeah, the broad is one of those annoying “do-right, fair-play Jane” types, but he secretly admires her character. Now he feels lucky that his purgatory has come with an angel, a doll he can't stop watching or watching over.
#3 THEIR QUAINT RHODE ISLAND TOWN
Pen’s charming hometown of Quindicott, Rhode Island, is a character all its own. Not far from the Atlantic coast, it may be smaller and less posh than nearby Newport, but its residents are proud of its revived Cranberry Street business district and renowned Victorian B&B. Fresh ocean air, amazing seafood, and a neighborly community make it one of the area's most pleasant places to live—even if you happen to be dead.
#4 THE QUIBBLERS IN THE BOOKSHOP
The "Quibblers" are a quirky group of folks who make up the local Quindicott Business Owners Association. They meet regularly in Pen’s charming old bookshop, guarded by mouse-hunter Bookmark, the cat. There's Fiona Finch, the fastidious co-owner of Finch Inn, who has a penchant for True Crime books and "happening to overhear" conversations between guests. Seymour, the outspoken mailman and former Jeopardy! champ who moonlights as an ice cream truck driver and loves to hunt ghosts at midnight. And many more oddball characters whom Pen dearly loves—and her hard-boiled ghost barely tolerates.
#5 THE MYSTERY OF THE DEAD LIBRARIAN
Join our prim bookseller as she teams up with her hardboiled ghost to catch the cunning killer of Dory, a beloved local librarian in our new Haunted Bookshop release THE GHOST AND THE DEAD LIBRARIAN. We love being haunted by our characters, and we think you’ll love them, too.
Narrator: Hannah Cabell
Haunted Bookshop Detective Mystery
In an utterly charming new paranormal cozy mystery series from New York Times bestselling author Cleo Coyle, a smalltown Rhode Island bookshop owner investigates the death of an eccentric librarian with the help of a wisecracking, 1940s gumshoe ghost.
As a young widow, Penelope moved back to her quaint Rhode Island town to give her young son a safer home and her aunt’s dying bookshop new life. Using her late husband’s insurance money, Pen polished the store into a local treasure. But her updates did more than attract new customers. They roused a dead private eye from his big sleep.
With Pen’s affection for hardboiled detective stories, it’s no surprise she’s developed a fondness for the wisecracking yet oddly likeable spirit. Sure, Jack’s cold spots are exasperating, along with his proclivity for putting noir fiction in the cozy section. But murder was Jack’s business in life, and his PI skills come in awfully handy when the body of an eccentric librarian is found amid the bookshop’s mystery aisles.
For years, Dory jokingly called herself “The Dead Librarian” because of her hobby of collecting local obituaries. Now, in death, she’s discovered holding her own eerily pre-written obit. Was it a suicide note? Jack and Pen say no and their certainty takes them from a ghost town’s ancient cemetery to a prominent family’s Newport estate. Then an intriguing stranger comes to town. Nikki Burnside takes a keen interest in Dory’s death and makes Pen a shocking offer, one that may change her life—and Jack’s afterlife. But unless Jack can help Pen prove who “checked out” the librarian, a ruthless killer may close the book on her.
Mystery Cozy | Mystery Paranormal [ Kensington Cozies, On Sale: September 29, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9781496749338 / eISBN: 9781496749352 ]
CLEO COYLE is the New York Times bestselling pseudonym for Alice Alfonsi, writing popular fiction in collaboration with her husband, Marc Cerasini. With more than 1 million books sold, Alice and Marc have authored more than 25 works in their two long-running, “relentlessly entertaining” mystery series.
Praised as a “master of misdirection” by Mystery Scene magazine, Cleo Coyle has been awarded starred reviews by Library Journal and Kirkus, honored with Best of Year selections by multiple reviewers, and recommended by Booklist and Library Journal for core library mystery collections.
Cleo’s Coffeehouse Mystery series, celebrated for pioneering both the “coffee” and “urban cozy” genres, follows the adventures of amateur sleuth Clare Cosi, a single mom with a complicated love life who manages a Greenwich Village coffeehouse and a quirky crew of baristas while helping the NYPD solve perplexing crimes.
Cleo’s Haunted Bookshop series, hailed as a highly original blend of cozy and hardboiled genres, features an earnest young New England widow who catches criminals with the help of a gumshoe ghost, the irresistible spirit of a tough private detective who’d been gunned down in her bookshop decades before.
In addition to their critically acclaimed mysteries, Alice and Marc have written multiple works of fiction and nonfiction for adults and children. They are also accomplished tie-in writers who have created bestselling properties for Lucasfilm, NBC, Fox, Disney, Imagine, Toho, and MGM.
Originally from Western Pennsylvania, Alice and Marc live in New York City, where they haunt coffeehouses, hunt ghosts, wrangle rescue cats, cook like crazy, and write independently and together.
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