The Demon Reads After Closing

A Curvy Heroine Small-Town Monster Romance

von Marlowe Ashwood

66 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

Josie Calloway did not move back to Ashgrove Hollow to save a building. She moved back to run a library, keep her aunt's cataloguing system intact, and go to bed at a reasonable hour. One out of three isn't a great start.The county's letter arrives her second week: the Carraway Public Library has ninety days to prove its restricted collection is worth the building it sits in, or the whole thing gets folded into the county's mobile-unit budget and the doors close for good. Her aunt, retiring three states away and not picking up her phone, left exactly one instruction taped inside the restricted-stacks door: Don't go in without him.Him turns out to be Rook - seven feet of horn and old scar tissue, who has kept the restricted collection catalogued, mended, and worth considerably more than the county has any idea, for sixty years no one asked him to. He does not want an appraiser. He especially does not want the appraiser to be her. But ninety days is ninety days, and Josie has never yet met a deadline she was willing to lose to a man who'd rather disappear than be thanked.What follows isn't the plan. It's a master key handed over unasked, because trust turns out to be something a man can decide to give rather than something that has to be earned by inches. It's a county official with her own reasons for wanting the collection catalogued into visibility - and vulnerable. It's a promise sixty years old, made to a dying woman who asked for nothing but that he be trusted, that Rook has never once told another living soul. And it's a found-family cast - a baker who leaves a second box of pastries marked for the stacks, an old friend who worked out what Rook was decades ago and never needed it confirmed - who make it very clear that this town has room for exactly this kind of secret to stop being one.Josie built her whole career on a rule: never let liking someone cost you your own judgment. Rook built sixty years on a different one: the only promises that survive are the ones no one else knows to break. Neither rule survives this book intact - and neither of them, in the end, wants it to.This is a slow-burn, closed-door, small-town monster romance with a touch-starved, book-mending hero, a heroine who solves problems by refusing to be scared of them, a found-family cast that already half-suspects exactly what's living in the stacks, and a guaranteed happily ever after. No cliffhangers. No cheating. Just a demon learning that being known isn't the same as being caught.Perfect for readers who love: curvy heroine romance, small-town paranormal romance, slow-burn monster romance, grumpy-but-soft demon heroes, found-family fated-mates romance, cozy fantasy romance with real heart.Book 2 of the Ashgrove Hollow series - a small town where every book brings a new demon, a new heroine, and a new happily ever after.

• Reihe: The Demon Reads After Closing
• ISBN: 9798173972842
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 13.09.2026
• Größe: 229 x 152 mm
• Verlag: Independently published