Loan Stars is the readers’ advisory tool that allows library staff across Canada to collaboratively select their favourite forthcoming titles. Using CataList, the online catalogue service and order management tool available for free to libraries, library staff can endorse the Fiction, Non-Fiction, Juvenile, and Young Adult titles they want to recommend to their patrons. The titles with the most recommendations become Loan Stars picks!

But who are the authors and illustrators behind these great Loan Stars reads?

We find out in our series, Meet the Loan Stars.

Photo credit: Leah O'Connell, Firefly Photography

Meet Katharine Schellman

Katharine Schellman is the author of the Lily Adler Mystery series: Body in the Garden, Silence in the Library, and the upcoming third instalment, Death at the Manor. Katharine is a former actor and a one-time political consultant. She currently lives in the Philadelphia and the DC area. In 2020, her debut year, she was named one of BookPage’s 16 Women to Watch. She is a tea-lover, an occasional morning person, and firm believer in the Oxford comma.

Katharine’s latest novel, Last Call at the Nightingale, is on the June 2022 Loan Stars Adult list!

Meet Katharine and learn all about her love for libraries, book recommendations, and more in the interview below.

If you could visit any library in the world, where would you go?

It might be a bit of a boring answer, but I'd go to my hometown library in Arlington, Virginia. And if I could time travel to a sticky summer day when I was in elementary school, that would be even better! I have so many memories of summer days spent there, browsing for books, reading in the air conditioning, and checking off titles from their summer reading challenges. It was one of my favorite places!

Do you have a favourite librarian, real or fictional?

The first fictional librarian I met was Mrs. Phelps in Matilda. I also escaped into books as a child, so I loved seeing an adult help Matilda do the same thing.

Which book would you choose to recommend to library patrons?

Do I have to pick just one?! I'm going to cheat and recommend Sherry Thomas's Lady Sherlock series. Just check out all of them in one go, because as soon as you finish each one, you'll want to read the next one right away. And then put in a request for the one being published later this year!

What does being a Loan Stars pick mean to you?

I'm truly honored! I think libraries are incredibly institutions and the backbone of so many communities. I'm grateful my parents took me to the library so regularly, and I do the same with my kids now. Every time I see one of my books in a library it makes me smile!

Thank you for answering our questionnaire, Katharine!

Are you a Loan Stars-recommended author or illustrator who wants to be featured on our blog? Get in touch with us to get started.

Until next time!