Participating Libraries
Check out a copy of this years Everybody Reads selection at any of the following locations.
WASHINGTON LIBRARIES
IDAHO LIBRARIES
- Latah County Library
- Lewiston City Library
- Lewiston High School Library
- Prairie-River Library District
CONTRIBUTING LIBRARIES
GET A HEAD START
2020 Everybody Reads Selection

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore
BY MATTHEW SULLIVAN
When a bookshop patron commits suicide, his favorite store clerk must unravel the puzzle he left behind in this fiendishly clever debut novel from an award-winning short story writer.
Lydia Smith lives her life hiding in plain sight. A clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, she keeps a meticulously crafted existence among her beloved books, eccentric colleagues, and the BookFrogs—the lost and lonely regulars who spend every day marauding the store’s overwhelmed shelves.
But when Joey Molina, a young, beguiling BookFrog, kills himself in the bookstore’s upper room, Lydia’s life comes unglued. Always Joey’s favorite bookseller, Lydia has been bequeathed his meager worldly possessions. Trinkets and books; the detritus of a lonely, uncared for man. But when Lydia flips through his books she finds them defaced in ways both disturbing and inexplicable. They reveal the psyche of a young man on the verge of an emotional reckoning. And they seem to contain a hidden message. What did Joey know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?
As Lydia untangles the mystery of Joey’s suicide, she unearths a long buried memory from her own violent childhood. Details from that one bloody night begin to circle back. Her distant father returns to the fold, along with an obsessive local cop, and the Hammerman, a murderer who came into Lydia’s life long ago and, as she soon discovers, never completely left. Bedazzling, addictive, and wildly clever, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is a heart-pounding mystery that perfectly captures the intellect and eccentricity of the bookstore milieu and will keep you guessing until the very last page.
Previous Everybody Reads Selections

2018
Emily Ruskovich, Idaho

2017
S.M. Hulse, Black River

2016
Malcolm Brooks, Painted Horses

2015
Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

2014
Erin Saldin, The Girls of No Return

2013
Janet Oakley, Tree Soldier

2012
Jim Lynch, Border Songs

2011
C.J. Box, Blue Heaven

2010
Molly Gloss, The Hearts of Horses

2009
David Guterson, The Other

2008
Gary Ferguson and Douglas Smith, Decade of the Wolf: Returning the Wild to Yellowstone

2007
Gregg Olsen, The Deep Dark: Disaster and Redemption in America's Richest Silver Mine

2006
George W. Aguilar, When the River Ran Wild!

2005
Jess Walter, Citizen Vince

2004
Craig Lesley, The Sky Fisherman

2003
Chris Crutcher, Whale Talk

2002
John N. Maclean, Fire on the Mountain

2001
Teresa Jordan, Riding the White Horse Home
Brought to You by
Idaho Humanities Council \ Confluence Press \ Lewiston Tribune \ Moscow-Pullman Daily News
Whitman County Gazette \ …And Books, Too! \ The Bookie
Artisans at the Dahmen Barn \ Northwest Media \ BookPeople of Moscow
Quality Inn & Suites of Clarkston \ Monarch Motel
Your Pullman Radio, KQZB-FM Hits 100, KHTR-FM New Country 104.3, KQQQ-AM News Talk for the Palouse