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Quiz: What Novel Set in a Library Should You Read Next?

Alison Doherty

Senior Contributor

Alison Doherty is a writing teacher and part time assistant professor living in Brooklyn, New York. She has an MFA from The New School in writing for children and teenagers. She loves writing about books on the Internet, listening to audiobooks on the subway, and reading anything with a twisty plot or a happily ever after.

James Patterson’s MAX EINSTEIN series

The planet is running out of time—and there is no Planet B. Max Einstein and her friends are World Champions in this newest adventure, where they:

GET OUTDOORS: From racing across glaciers in Greenland to visiting the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia, twelve-year-old genius Max and her friends live for adventure.

TAKE ACTION: Whenever there's a problem to solve, the kids work better together!

NEVER GIVE UP: Max has one more surprise in her playbook, and if she's going to pull it off, she needs her team. Whoever said that kids can't save the world?

Ready to take a library novel quiz? I don’t know if it’s narcissism, but people who love to read love books about books. From Matilda to Elizabeth Bennet, so many of my favorite characters also love reading. And reading about fictional (or real life!) writers always holds my interest. I will almost always pick up a book set against the backdrop of the publishing profession or a bookstore. And then of course there are libraries, perhaps the best bookish location of them all. Libraries can be fantastical or mysterious. Romantic or suspicious. They are filled with more books than any other location.

This library novel quiz will ask ten questions to help you discover what novel set in a library you should read next. I know it is a cliché, but this quiz truly has something for everyone. From historical fiction family mysteries set against the New York literary scene to library thrillers filled with excitement, violence, and suspense. From a romance novel with a stern “undateable” librarian heroine to a speculative novel about a library where each book is a second chance you can take to change your entire life. The library is a perfect setting for so many different genres of fiction. And librarian characters can be romantic leads, sinister villains, and morally complicated main characters.

For book lovers looking for a bookish novel, take this quiz and find your next read (or more realistically, the next book for you to add to your unending TBR list).

All Results

The Midnight Library cover

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

In this novel, there is a place you visit when you are in between life and death, where you can try out all the lives you could have had if you made a different choices. Nora Seed has to find the best version of her life before time runs out, but she isn’t sure if that means saying yes to that one coffee date, not quitting her band, or becoming a glaciologist. 

The Lions of Fifth Avenue cover

The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis

This historical fiction story follows Laura Lyons in 1913, when she is a mother and the wife of the superintendent New York Public Library. As a journalism student, she gets curious when rare books begin disappearing from the library. And in 1993, Laura’s granddaughter Sadie is a new curator at the library when someone begins stealing manuscripts and notes for her first exhibit. As she investigates, she might find out more about her family than she bargained for. 

The Plotters cover

The Plotters by Un-su Kim, Translated by Sora Kim-Russell

Translated from the original Korean, this satirical thriller is equal parts comedic, violent, and bizarre. As a young orphan, Reseng is adopted by an eccentric private library owner and trained to join his ring of assassins. But when it’s time for him to complete his first kill, Reseng isn’t sure if he can go through with it or not.

The Undateable cover

The Undateable by Sarah Title

This is the first romance novel in the Librarians in Love series. When Melissa Bernard gets turned into a stern librarian meme, struggling journalist Colin Rodriguez gets the idea to create a weekly column about trying to find her perfect match. 

The Borrower cover

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

This novel tells the story of Lucy Hull, a children’s librarian who accidentally becomes a kidnapper when her favorite 10 year old reader runs away from home after his parents try to enroll him in anti-gay classes. 

The Strange Library cover

The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami

This is an illustrated short novel about a boy who is taken prisoner in a maze underneath a library with an evil librarian trying to eat his brains.

The Personal Librarian cover

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

This is a fictionalized account of Belle da Costa Greene, the real life librarian for J.P. Morgan’s rare books collection. Belle is a brilliant book collector and a star of the global literary community. But she is hiding a giant secret from everyone as a white-passing African American woman. 


I hope you enjoy your novel set in a library! If you want to continue to explore your library knowledge, you can take the ultimate library trivia quiz or answer these questions to find out what librarian from pop culture you are. You can also take this quiz to discover if you are a library power user and find tips to make the most of your local library.