View a PDF of the letter here.
Dear Fellow Librarians,
Nearly all of my formative years have been spent inside the walls of a library. As a child, it was my sanctuary. Later, I became a teen volunteer, learning to drive in the parking lot, then a student employee, and finally an associate children’s librarian. As an adult, work has always been my favorite place, for there are only three things in my life that have never changed: my love of the library, my love of reading, and my dream to someday be an author.
The idea for my debut novel Nasty Little Secrets came to me on a particularly slow and rainy late-night shift when I was covering the reference desk. I was thinking about my love for thrillers, and my deep sense of connection to my hometown: Palm Beach County, Florida. It’s a place that is part of my blood, and I knew that it was the perfect backdrop for a haunting, twisty family thriller.
Nasty Little Secrets is a psychological thriller that focuses on sibling dynamics, loyalty, and the public’s habit of canonizing people with questionable morals just because they have died. The book follows Rose Dearling, whose life changed forever at sixteen when her older brother was arrested for the murder of his high-school sweetheart. Now, over a decade later, Rose is the only one who still believes he didn’t do it. So much so that she wrote a bestselling true crime novel about the case, pinning the murder on the victim’s father. But when Rose gets a call that her younger sister Hazel has gone missing, it shatters her world anew. Back home and under the same roof as her family for the first time in years, Rose must wade through dark memories—and the clues of her own book—as she searches for her sister and hopes to finally prove her brother’s innocence.
This book is incredibly personal to me as I also come from a close-knit family of sisters where loyalty was an important part of our moral code, and you will see that bleed through these pages and the characters.
As a librarian, I felt an intrinsic appreciation for every book that crossed my desk, and I feel honored to share mine now with this wonderful community. I hope you like it.
Thanks,
Gabbie Hanks
