Hey, it's NPR's Book at the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Today's book, The Woman in the Library,

is a mystery thriller big on, you know, cozy New England vibes. It takes place in a library in

Boston just as it's getting cold. So, you know, big mugs of coffee, a bunch of sweaters,

you know, maybe a beanie, that kind of thing.

So it was a surprise to me that the author, Solari Gentle, was actually inspired to write the book after the bushfires in Australia, forced her and her family to evacuate and stay

at this house for refugees. It's a fascinating jumping off point for this book, and in this interview with

NPR's Alyssa Nadwarnie, Jensel talks about writing this type of book as an escape when the

world around her was literally on fire. In the U.S., national security news can feel far away

from daily life. Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, Sources and Methods.

NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.

Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Four strangers are sitting in the reading room of the Boston Public Library,

quietly working when a woman's scream pierces the silence.

Later, a body is found, and the four characters quickly become friends

as they work to piece together what happened.

That's the premise of Salari Gentles's new mystery titled The Woman in the Library.

When I spoke with her this past week, she said the idea of strangers bonding during scary events came from her own life experience.

At the time I was writing this, of course, I was sitting in Australia in the middle of the bushfires,

and I live in a town which was absolutely smashed by the bushfires. So we were evacuated,

and I was at the time sitting in what I call the refugee house, which was a little house that

was lent to the people who had been displaced, and there was three

families living there. And I think I was probably very cognizant of the idea that there was

...