Includes 12 collages by Sunandini Banerjee.

This pioneering volume of essays explores the destruction of great libraries since ancient times and examines the intellectual, political and cultural consequences of loss. Fourteen original contributions, introduced by a major re-evaluative history of lost libraries, offer the first ever comparative discussion of the greatest catastrophes in book history from Mesopotamia and Alexandria to the dispersal of monastic and monarchical book collections, the Nazi destruction of Jewish libraries, and the recent horrifying pillage and burning of books in Tibet, Bosnia and Iraq.

"Good morning America book club"--Jacket.

What happens when a story goes missing or remains unrecorded? When a writer carelessly gives his plot away during a conversation or dies before writing the ending? These stories end up in the Loss Library, where the books that have never been written are kept. In this poignant, thought-provoking book, one of South Africa’s fi nest writers examines eleven of his own lost fictions, how the ideas arose and why he abandoned them. But this reflection on the art of writing is not a lament for unfinished work. Rather The Loss Library is a meditation on creativity, mortality and the allure of the incomplete.

Big clues come in small packages as Miracle Books owner Nora Pennington and the Secret, Book, and Scone Society attempt to solve a series of murders connected to a bibliophile’s missing books in the latest cozy mystery from New York Times bestselling author Ellery Adams . . . When an elderly Miracle Springs resident, Lucille Wynter, arranges for Nora to deliver an order of books to her creepy, crumbling Southern Gothic mansion on the outskirts of town, Nora doesn’t expect to be invited in. An agoraphobe, Lucille doesn’t leave Wynter House. But when Lucille doesn’t come to the door to collect her books, Nora begins to worry. Forcing her way into Lucille’s dilapidated home, Nora is shocked to find rooms bursting with books and a lifeless Lucille at the foot of her stairs. After reading a note left behind by Lucille, Nora wonders if her death was an accident. Did she fall or was she pushed by someone seeking a valuable item hidden within Wynter House? Lucille’s children are clearly confident the house contains something of value, because they hire Nora to sift through the piles of books. Nora’s obsession with Lucille’s collection becomes cause for concern among her friends in the Secret, Book, and Scone Society—she’s even neglecting her bookshop! But Nora does find something valuable deep inside Wynter House—a revelation about Lucille’s terrible past . . . and a secret worth a small fortune. But there’s someone who’d do anything to keep the truth buried amid the moldering tomes, and it’s up to Nora and her friends to track down a murderer before Wynter House’s lost library claims another victim . . .

Includes, beginning Sept. 15, 1954 (and on the 15th of each month, Sept.-May) a special section: School library journal, ISSN 0000-0035, (called Junior libraries, 1954-May 1961). Also issued separately.

Includes index and appendices.