Book Friends Forever

The Quiet Librarian By Allen Eskens Read By Ilvana Muratovic

After the murder of her best friend, a librarian’s search for answers leads back to her own dark secrets in this sweeping novel about a woman transformed by war, family, vengeance, and love, from award-winning writer Allen Eskens. Hana Babic is a quiet middle-aged librarian in Minnesota who wants nothing more than to be left alone. But when a detective arrives with the news that her best friend has been murdered, Hana knows that something evil has come for her, a dark remnant of the past she and her friend had shared. Thirty years before, Hana was someone else: Nura Divjak, a teenager growing up in the mountains of war-torn Bosnia—until Serbian soldiers arrived to slaughter her entire family before her eyes. The events of that day thrust Nura into the war, leading her to join a band of militia fighters, where she became not only a fierce warrior but a legend—the deadly Night Mora. But a shattering final act forced Nura to flee to the United States with a bounty on her head. Now, someone is hunting Hana, and her friend has paid the price, leaving her eight-year-old grandson in Hana’s care. To protect the child without revealing her secret, Hana must again become the Night Mora—and hope she can find the killer before the past comes for them, too.

Duration:: 4m
Broadcast on:: 16 Feb 2025
Audio Format:: other

The man steps through the door and into the library. No coat despite the late spring rain. He stops to cast his gaze around the room. Maybe it is the way he focuses on people and not books that first catches her attention. Or maybe it's the question in his eyes despite his confident demeanor, the look of a seasoned hunter in an unfamiliar wood. Whatever the peak, it is enough to hold Hannah's attention. The man pulls a small notepad from the pocket of his tweed jacket, a pencil slid into the wire spirals, old school in this world of cell phones and apps. He opens the notepad, reads something, and looks around the library again, pausing on faces, holding for a few seconds on Deb Hansen, the president of the Friends of the Library who sits in the reading room. He glances at his notes, gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head and moves on. She's not the one he's looking for. Hannah slips into a row of histories, pulling her card of books behind her, keeping one eye on the man as she reshoves a tome on the crusades. The man passes his gaze over a young mother and then a 20-something girl looking through the DVDs. There are no other patrons in the library, yet he continues to scan. The man is tall with sleepy eyes that droop at the edges. Dark hair sprinkled with gray puts him in his late 40s, maybe early 50s. Hannah's age are there about. His chin looks weak but probably hadn't been so in his youth. He wears a jacket but no tie, and his khaki pants are creased at the hip as if he had been sitting, maybe in a car before coming into the library. When he sweeps her way, Hannah holds still, a rabbit frozen in her tracks. She immediately feels foolish for reacting so. No one comes to the library looking for her. She has been invisible for far too long now, walking through the rows with her cart and her drop clothing. The sweater lady, that's what the children call her when they think she cannot hear them. She tugs at the sleeves of her cardigan, an unconscious tick that she can't seem to shake even after all these years. She likes the history section, it is quiet there, and the aging books smell slightly of old wood, a scent that can sometimes whisk her back to the mountains of her youth and the peace of those days before the war. It had been a desire to find that sense of peace that drew Hannah to the library in Farmington, Minnesota. That had been 30 years ago, and she still finds herself looking over her shoulder for those who might hunt her. 30 years and she can still see the faces of the dead when she closes her eyes at night. She peers over a collection of Civil War histories and watches the man make his way to the circulation desk where Barb snaps on her best, can I help you smile? The man is probably in sales, hustling cleaning supplies or new software for the computers. He leans down and says something to Barb, who looks confused at first, but then stands, scans the library and points at Hannah's card, which sticks out into the aisle. Hannah pulls the card into the row with her. Maybe Barb was directing the man to a book. Hannah picks up a treatise on the fall of the Roman Empire and places it on the shelf. No, that can't be it. Barb wouldn't need to look around the library before pointing. She knows the placement of every book in the building. The man walks toward the history section. Hannah pulls her card deeper into the row and picks up a book on the Louisiana Purchase, raising it toward the shelf as the man draws closer. When he enters her row, the book in her hand sinks slowly to her side. This man is not a salesman. A salesman would have no business with her. He offers a weak smile, a gesture that seems forced, practiced. Up close, his eyes seem more sad than sleepy, and his features are stronger than they appeared from a distance. He stops a few feet away and asks, "Are you Hannah Bebbick?" He pronounces her last name wrong, ending it with a hard K the way most Americans do. "Babitch," she corrects quietly, doing her best to hide what remains of her accent. Hannah Bebbick, sorry. He reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out what looks to be a wallet, then opens it to show her a gold badge. I'm David Claypool, a detective with the St. Paul Police Department. Is there someplace where we can talk? It is then that Hannah notices the gun holstered on his hip. How had she not seen that when he first walked in?