The Quiet Librarian

This uneven dual timeline thriller from Eskens (Saving Emma) toggles between present day Minnesota and the war in Bosnia. In early 1990s Yugoslavia, Nura Divjak lives with her Muslim parents and younger brother in a farmhouse near Tuzla (in what is now Bosnia). When her family is murdered by Serbian soldiers, Nura joins the Bosnian army and falls in love with a fellow soldier named Adem. During an ambush, Nura is captured and meets a woman named Amina Junuzović in prison. After Adem dies in battle, Amina helps Nura escape, and together, the pair flee to the United States, where Amina gives birth to Sara, the daughter of a Serb who raped her, and Nura reinvents herself as a meek librarian named Hana. Thirty years later, when Amina is thrown off her balcony, “Hana” becomes Nura once again, determined to hunt down the killer before he comes after Dylan, Amina’s grandson. Nura first teams up with a handsome detective, then takes justice into her own hands, with dramatic results. Eskens strains to connect his past and present timelines, with a weak romance plot and a limp through line about Nura’s affinity for building traps—first for hunting food, then for hunting her adversaries—failing to raise the cumbersome present-day sections to the level of the fast-paced, well-researched historical chapters. It’s a mixed bag. Agent: Amy Cloughley, Kimberly Cameron & Assoc. (Feb.)