Brand-new librarian Meg Booker is just supposed to be checking out books. Instead, it's the patrons who are being checked out--permanently. April 1985. Fir Grove Library, Portland, Oregon: Big hair. Leggings. Card catalogs. Kicking kids with giant boom boxes out of the library. Meg's got it all handled-until her boss takes off on a way-too-long vacation and leaves her in charge. Right away, things start going wrong. Historical records disappear out of the archives. The hot new library page skateboards into work-or doesn't-whenever he feels like it. A simmering feud boils over between two prominent and universally loathed patrons-nicknamed "The Witch" and "Leisure Suit Lothario"-leaving Meg scrambling to keep the peace. Then the Witch turns up dead in the library conference room. The police say it's natural causes, but Meg suspects murder-and no librarian worth her reference desk credentials leaves a question unanswered. Aided by the library's mystery book club, and armed with mad research skills, she sets out to prove what really happened. But when there's another death-and one of her friends is arrested -Meg must unmask the real murderer before it's too late. A Shush Before Dying is the first book of the Meg Booker Librarian Mysteries-a cozy library mystery series set in the 1980s.