In The Library of Fates, when its librarian keeper mysteriously dies, two former classmates must race to locate a rare book from their college years that can foretell your future if you confess a secret from your past—but someone is intent on protecting what’s hidden inside.
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In This Spotlight On The Library of Fates
About The Library of Fates
In The Library of Fates, the book can write the story of your future, and hide the secrets of your past
The Library of Fates was designed to show you who you are—and who you could become. Its rarest book, The Book of Dark Nights, holds a secret: When you write an intimate confession on its pages, you’ll receive a prediction for your future, penned in your own handwriting.
For Eleanor, whose childhood was defined by a senseless tragedy, the library offers a world where everything makes sense. She’s spent most of her life there as an apprentice to the brilliant librarian, showing other people how to find the meaning of their lives in stories.
But when her mentor dies in a freak accident and The Book of Dark Nights is discovered to be missing—along with the secrets written inside—Eleanor is pulled out of the library and into a quest to locate it with the last person she expects: the librarian’s estranged son, Daniel, whom Eleanor once loved before he suddenly ran off to Europe decades ago.
Together, as they hunt down clues from Harvard to Paris, Eleanor and Daniel grow closer again, regaining each other’s trust. But little do they know that they’re entangled in a much larger web. Someone else wants the book, and they’ll go to dark lengths to get it…
The novel is set around a quest to locate a mysterious magical book, is partially set in libraries, and includes literary references and philosophies throughout about the role of stories in our lives and how life is one big story. In the vein of The Cloisters, the story is grounded in the real world but with a speculative twist as the protagonists work to track down a mysterious book that reveals predictions about your future if you confess a secret from your past.
The novel features a complex love story between two people who have experienced tragedy and help each other face their darkness.
Margot’s novels combine edgy high-concept what-if premises with emotionally surprising and compelling storylines, touching on questions of fate, nostalgia, the choices we make, and what we can learn from the past. Margot’s books have received a host of starred trade reviews, have been featured in The New York Times and Vermont Public Radio, and have been included in best-of roundups in places like Goodreads, BookBub, Bustle, and the Betches, which selected The Midnight Club as their first-ever book club pick.
Praise for The Midnight Club
The Publisher is keeping things very quiet around The Library of Fates. Here is praise for Margot Harrison’s previous novel, The Midnight Club.
“[A] taut and introspective time-travel thriller…. This deserves to be savored.”—Publishers Weekly
“The Midnight Club is a strange, riveting, brilliant fable about smart people seduced by the darkest, most forbidden fantasy. Like a fever-dream of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.”—Lev Grossman, New York Times bestselling author of The Magicians
“I devoured The Midnight Club. It’s a smart, surprising, and gripping mystery about the reality that we can’t change who we were back in college, but we’d all be a lot better off if we could. And, for the characters in this fine novel, one of them might even still be alive.”—Chris Bohjalian, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant
“Eerie and suspenseful, but fundamentally a poignant look at grief, regret, and friendship.”—Bustle
“When old college friends gather, the past comes, too. Savvy, suspenseful, and surprisingly tender, Margot Harrison’s The Midnight Club takes the classic murder-reunion trope and transforms it into a reflection on friendship and surviving our youth. With each twist, this marvelously inventive novel will keep you guessing whodunnit—but also who couldn’t stop it, and why.”—Maria Hummel, author of Still Lives
“The Midnight Club by Margot Harrison keeps you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. With secrets unraveling and danger lurking, this mystery explores life, death, and the bonds that form in the darkest of times. Equal parts eerie and emotional, this book will have you hooked the entire time.”—The Betches
“The Secret History meets Black Mirror in Margot Harrison’s richly imagined, time-traveling debut. A nostalgia-soaked campus novel about second and even third chances, The Midnight Club asks the question: what price is too high to undo your greatest mistake? The perfect read for spooky season!”—Alison B. Hart, author of The Work Wife
“The Midnight Club is a moody yet thrilling mystery befitting of the dark academia subgenre.”—WBUR
About Margot Harrison, Author of The Library of Fates
Margot Harrison is the author of The Midnight Club and four young adult novels, including an Indies Introduce Pick, Junior Library Guild Selections, and Vermont Book Award Finalists. She grew up in New York and now lives in Vermont.
You can connect with Margot Harrison on her website, TikTok and Instagram.
Source: Publisher
Publisher: Gradon House | HarperCollins
ISBN hardcover 9781525804311
Pub Date: Dec 2, 2025
Titles by Margot Harrison
Other LitStack Resources
Be sure and check out LitStack Spotlights that shine a light on books we think you should read.
Be sure and look at our other LitStack Reviews for our recommendations on books you should read, including reviews by Lewis Buzbee, Lauren Alwan, Allie Coker, Rylie Fong, and Sharon Browning.
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