In Conversation with Author Laura Sims

Tuesday, August 27, 2024 @ 7 pm via Zoom

Local Author Laura Sims discusses her novel "How Can I Help You," with the Pennington Public Library.

The lives of two librarians become dangerously intertwined in this razor-sharp exploration of human nature and the lure of artistic obsession.

No one knows Margo’s real name. Her colleagues and patrons at a small town public library know only her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges. Chilling, incisive, and darkly humorous, How Can I Help You is a propulsive work of psychological suspense that asks how far we might go to justify our most monstrous desires.

Laura Sims is the author of "How Can I Help You," a New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and CrimeReads Best Book of the Year, and a LibraryReads Top Ten Books of July. Sims’ first novel, "Looker," was included on “Best Books” lists in Vogue, People Magazine, Real Simple, Entertainment Weekly, and more, and is now in development for television by eOne and Emily Mortimer’s King Bee Productions. An award-winning poet, Sims has published four poetry collections; her essays and poems have appeared in the New Republic, Boston Review, Lit Hub, and Electric Literature. She and her family live in New Jersey, where she works part time as a reference librarian and hosts the library’s lecture series.