Readers Guide for The Library After Dark

My Readers Guide for The Library After Dark by Ande Pliego discusses this tense and fantasy-adjacent locked room mystery for the author of You Are Fatally Invited. If you liked that book, you will definitely enjoy this one! Let’s discuss it!

Cover of The Library After Dark, which shows a few of nested doorways leading into an elaborate library

The Library After Dark by Ande Pliego

Table of Contents:

Jen’s Quick Take on the Library After Dark

Character List for the Library After Dark

Map of the Daedalus Library

My Longer Thoughts on The Library After Dark

Spoilers for The Library After Dark

Jen’s Quick Take on The Library After Dark

If you enjoyed You Are Fatally Invited, Ande Pleigo’s locked room mystery featuring a group of authors invited to an island by a mystery host, The Library After Dark has a similar structure.
In both books, a group of people are invited to a private event. They are trapped there and then, one by one, bodies start to fall. (Yes, this is the premise of And Then There Were None and other closed circle mysteries.)
The setting of the book is the Deadalus Library. Located in New York City, this private library has a lhistoryu filled with intrigue. Owned by Evangeline Riordan, it is the site of several mysterious deaths.
The Library is also the home of The Dark Hearth Tales, a collection of 18th century fairy tales.
How is The Library After Dark different from You Are Fatally Invited? It has a more whimsical/dark fairy tale vibe. It also contains epistolary elements from The Dark Hearth Tales.
Publication date: May 5, 2026. Thanks to the publisher for my advance copy!

Character List for The Library After Dark

This is included in the book, but in case you are listening, here you go!

Confirmed Guest List — Daedalus Library After-Dark Tour

Guest List for the Daedalus
Library’s After-Dark Tour

Saskia Voss

Librarian at the Daedalus and
guide for the after-dark tour

Aria Stokes

Jasper Knox’s plus-one; bookseller and
library and information science graduate student

Jasper Knox

Architect

Callum Greene

Professor at the University of Edinburgh and
rare manuscript expert

Michelle Baudelaire

Award-winning middle grade fantasy author
invited to the Dark Hearth Tales 25th anniversary gala.

Piper Kingston

Journalist covering the Dark Hearth Tales
anniversary gala

Ruth Howard

Retired nurse

Weston Martinez

Prep school teacher, book enthusiast

Dorothy Jessel

Unknown

Map of the Daedalus Library

What’s better than a book with a map? This is for the audiobook listeners! It didn’t help me that much.

An illustration of the Daedalus Library from The Library After Dark by Ande Pliego. Image copyright Bantam Books and Wolf Noir LLC

My Longer Thoughts on The Library After Dark

There were things about this book I LOVED and also a few I struggled with. But you may feel completely differently, so let’s break it down!

What I Loved About The Library After Dark

The world-building in this book was excellent. The library and its recently deceased owner have a whole complicated backstory that I really appreciated.

The epistolary elements were fun. Ande Pliego’s fairy tale writing was fantastic! She might consider dabbling in fantasy for a future book!

The library setting was fantastic! As someone who lives in New York City and LOVES libraries (fun fact: I got married in a New York City library) I adored this aspect of the story.

John Fulleylove's rendering of the Interior of the Bodelian library 1903 — John Fullylove, Interior of the Bodelian Library, 1903

But, just like in You Are Fatally Invited, there was a LOT going on here

The setting was elaborate and (for me) hard to visualize at times
Many of the characters were clearly not who they said they were
There were murders in the course of the story AND past suspicious deaths AND missing Riordan family members.

The fantastical fairy tale vibe may not be for all readers either. I hope this book will be cross-marketed to fans of The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, The Archived by Victoria Schwab, or The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.

Spoilers for The Library After Dark

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There were multiple deaths in the book:

(If I missed one, which is entirely possible, let me know in comments)

Evangeline Riordan: was she murdered? Or was she a serial killer?
Everyone who owns The Dark Hearth Tales (the original owner, Grant Iversaon, and Evangeline) also end up dead.
Then there were two other mysterious deaths in the Daedalus Library: an archivist who was poisoned when the poison book room flooded
Saskia’s brother: he’s described as a book restorer. Does that mean he was NOT the archivist in the poison room, but another victim.
Finally, the tour participants die one by one: Ruth is seemingly poisoned by a cocktail; Michelle is fatally cut by a guillotine; Piper gets stuck in a hermetically sealed rare book room with no air; Callum is impaled; Wes is hanged (or maybe garroted); Saskia is shot.

Multiple people want to steal The Dark Hearth Tales:

Saskia: because it’s evidence in her brother’s murder
Jasper: to prevent his family from being exposes as fraudsters

There are multiple missing people:

Evangeline’s daughter Alice
Eden, an estranged grandchild
The mysterious Dorothy, a girl with red shoes. Who must be the Dorothy on the guest list!

And multiple people are not who they say they are:

Jasper: either an architect, a NYC cop or an art thief. He’s an Iverson who needs to get rid of Callum before he exposes the fact that The Dark Hearth Tales is fake.
Wes: also an Iverson
Aria: who has clearly been in the library before; claims she killed Alice Iverson. She’s the daughter of the housekeeper
Saskia: the sister of one of the people who died in the library.
Piper: is 1) not dead and 2) actually Rory, Evangeline’s granddaughter

The Ending of The Library After Dark Explained

Piper (who is actually Rory, Evangeline’s granddaughter) and Ariadne “Aria” (the housekeeper’s daughter) were raised together by Evangeline.

Alice (Evangeline’s daughter) was a serial murderer. Aria witnessed two of Alice’s murders and tried to tell Evangeline, who didn’t believe her. Aria then killed Alice by locking her into the basement vault, where she ran out of air. Evangeline then sent Aria away.

Piper/Rory thought Evangeline was the serial killer (Evangeline had written a confession letter) and smothered her with a pillow, then staged it as an overdose. Ruth was on to her.

Piper/Rory also figured out that someone was blackmailing Evangeline about the book being fake.

So Piper/Rory invited everyone who could be the blackmailer for the tour. She must have staged her own death in the rare book room, and then snuck around the library (as she was very familiar with it.)

Aria begs Piper/Rory to turn herself in, but Piper/Rory threatens to kill Aria, who stabs her in the neck with some kind of book restoration tool made of bone.

Before her death, Evangeline admitted to Michelle that she wrote the Dark Hearth tales herself.

Was it me or was that a LOT? Did I miss anything? Give me your take in the comments.

Readers Guide for The Library After Dark

The Library After Dark by Ande Pliego

Jen’s Quick Take on The Library After Dark