How Can I Help You

· Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Carlotta Brentan and Maggi-Meg Reed
5.0
1 review
Audiobook
7 hr 38 min
Unabridged
Eligible
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More
Want a 10 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline. 
Add

About this audiobook

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
The New York Times Book Review • Publishers Weekly • CrimeReads • Book Riot

A LibraryReads Pick

The lives of two librarians become dangerously intertwined in this razor-sharp exploration of human nature and the lure of artistic obsession.


No one knows Margo’s real name. Her colleagues and patrons at a small-town public library know only her middle-aged normalcy, congeniality, and charm. They have no reason to suspect that she is, in fact, a former nurse with a trail of premature deaths in her wake. She has turned a new page, so to speak, and the library is her sanctuary, a place to quell old urges.

That is, at least, until Patricia, a recent graduate and failed novelist, joins the library staff. Patricia quickly notices Margo’s subtly sinister edge, and watches her carefully. When a tragic incident in the library bathroom gives her a hint of Margo’s mysterious past, Patricia can’t resist digging deeper—even as her new fixation becomes all-consuming and sends both women hurtling toward disaster.

Chilling, incisive, and darkly humorous, How Can I Help You is a propulsive work of psychological suspense that asks how far we might go to justify our most monstrous desires.

Ratings and reviews

5.0
1 review
Sabrina Williams
March 13, 2024
Excellent!
Did you find this helpful?

About the author

Laura Sims is the author of How Can I Help You, a New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and CrimeReads Best Book of the Year, and a LibraryReads Top Ten Books of July. Sims’s first novel, LOOKER, was included on “Best Books” lists in Vogue, People Magazine, Real Simple, Entertainment Weekly, and more, and is now in development for television by eOne and Emily Mortimer's King Bee Productions. An award-winning poet, Sims has published four poetry collections; her essays and poems have appeared in The New Republic, Boston Review, Lit Hub, and Electric Lit. She and her family live in New Jersey, where she works part-time as a reference librarian and hosts the library’s lecture series.

Rate this audiobook

Tell us what you think.

Listening information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.