Havighurst, Marion Boyd. Murder in the Stacks (Oxford, Ohio: Miami University, 1989) 249 p. Originally published, Boston: Lothrop, Lee & Shepherd, 1934.

A professor reading in the Library of Kingsley University (Based on Miami University in Oxford, Ohio), together with young desk clerk Agnes Hubbard, finds the body of another professor in the stacks. The library staff has a mystery involving murder and a rare book. University Librarian, Mark Denman, looks like "quite a Lothario ... with his dark foreign-looking face, his clipped mustache and his immaculate clothing." (p. 17). Also involved in the mystery is young Bertha Chase, one of the assistant librarians. This is a classic library mystery with romantic entanglements among the library staff, theft of a rare book, and of course, terror in the dark stacks where death could be waiting around the next corner or at the top of a spiral staircase.