The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay (2006)

Picked this up because it had old books on the cover. Rosemary loses her mother back in Tasmania, and her aunt pays her way to New York to find a better life. I know New York is where my parents came to after the war, and of course there are lots of opportunities in a big city, but it seems strange to send an 18 year old girl to a big, scary place full of strangers without anyone to look after her. Though as we see in the story - there will be good and bad people everywhere.

Rosemary had worked in her aunt's bookstore, so she wandered into one of those big used bookstores in New York that are probably quite rare nowadays. (I am afraid it has been months now since I read the book, so this will be very cursory.) She befriends the strange cast of characters that works in the bookstore, and I kept wondering how it could support so many employees. This was not your bustling Barnes & Noble type store, but more like an antiquarian book store. There was a restorer of old books upstairs that I liked. Anyway, she makes a life, gets a small apartment, I think it was unheated, makes a few friends. A secret manuscript of Melville comes up in the mix that disrupts the balance in the store.  In the end, I didn't really enjoy the book that much, though I usually love anything set in the world of books.