Callum Doyle

First draft

The Last Library Tea

When a small Durham library starts clearing out a long-closed reading room, volunteer cataloguer Elsie Marr finds a hidden ledger tucked inside an old donation box. Before she can work out what the names and dates mean, a local benefactor is found dead after a committee meeting, and the library’s quiet routines turn into a tangle of old grudges, missing records and careful lies. Elsie has to follow the paper trail through parish notes, book plates and borrowed keys before someone decides the past should stay buried.