The Librarian of the Haunted Library

Strangely Scary Funny #1

by Brian Yansky

Demons, Headless seductresses, Rip Van Winkle, witches, occasional visits from angels, a god or two, and a ghoul in the stacks – just another day in Eden. A fun, fast, fantastical read.
My escape from a creepy clown lands me in a town straight out of a fever dream. And guess what? I become the new librarian after my predecessor is murdered ( a not uncommon end for librarians I find out too late) right in front of me. My first task is to find the killer.

Shouldn’t be too hard since it happened right in front of me, right? Wrong. The suspects are a town full of Supernatuals, including but not limited witches, magicians, ghosts, a werewolf, a grumpy gargoyle, a zombie, a mad scientist and four teenagers.
Did I mention that I might be the Chosen One according to some people in the know? Unfortunately, in this case Chosen One means the one destined to bring about the apocalypse. Guess whose son that makes me?

Can I solve the murder, save the town, and avoid fulfilling my doomsday destiny? Find out in this hilarious comedy adventure where the laughs are loud and the stakes are high! Read book 1 today!

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Fiction, Paranormal, Science Fiction Fantasy, Ebooks

222 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 29, 2023

About the author

I write supernatural horror suspense comedy (a mix of dark humor, quirky, silly humor and satire.), .

I love many kinds of stories. I especially love off-beat, quirky stories with unusual characters and settings that have a sense of wonder and humor.…Falling in love with stories saved me from a life of crime (I’m only sort of kidding; they did save me from something). A lot of my main characters are adopted. Like them, I was adopted. I seem to write often about identity. I live in Austin, Texas. I have no horses or cowboy hats. I do have a 125 pound sheep dog. I’ve taught college, been a bartender and waiter and am now a full-time writer.

I've had five novels traditionally published and something like fifteen independently published. My independently published series, Strangely Scary Funny, is, by far, my most popular.

I like writing most anything. My grocery lists are excellent.

Reviews

[William]

Entertaining horror comedy listening 🎵😎

This kindle ebook is from my Kindle Unlimited account book one of twelve

He leaves his step parents house and travels to New Orleans. From there he spends the next seven years traveling around the country. He ends up in the woods and a small town. He becomes the libertarian and the adventure begins leading to a happy ending 🙂

I would recommend this series and author to readers of fantasy world 🌐 horror comedy adventure thriller novels 😯🙄 2025 🏡🤓

[Carm]

Fun and absurd about sums it up.

[Kathy Brackin]

Haunting Eden town when you get lost you end up in Eden loved it 🎃

[Ivy]

I don’t even know what that was

This was super hard to get through, none of it made sense & was so rushed with almost no detail. Characters popped out of nowhere totally out of context, a year would pass in a single 5 word sentence. I’m not even sure what I just read. The plot sounded INCREDIBLE so I’m really sad this fell so flat for me.

[Indigo]

This book is written with absolutely no details and made very little sense

[Kristen]

This wasn't very good. It needed another run through by an editor.

[Jessie Hager]

This book is what I imagine a fever dream is like. It had the vibes of Alice in Wonderland, only the Mad Hatter is the main character. I almost put it down after all the grammatical errors but decided I’d give it a chance. Though it was weird it was the kind of weird that kept me interested and was an easy fun read.

[Rita M Kryglik]

Very disappointed. Random thoughts, dropped in characters with no follow through, no connectivity with the plot line. Sorry I wasted my time.

[A Bookish Little Life]

I wish I'd read the reviews before I downloaded this one. It's like the others are saying this book is not good. I got halfway through, and then I thought, "Life is too short to waste it on bad books, " so I deleted it. 'Nuff said.

[Dave]

This was a pretty fun read though I felt the main character’s background and storyline was all over the map with who he knew or ran into or learned from prior to becoming lost in the woods and being pronounced the new librarian of a haunted secret town called Eden by the mayor. A ton of characters introduced in and around the city and surrounding woods as we get talking animals and trees. A mystery needs to be uncovered! If the Harry Potter series and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy crossbred with Piers Anthony’s Xanth books you would get this book.

[Lauren DiGi]

This was absurd and I absolutely ate it up. Lots of harsh reviews on here - yall clearly don’t have a pinball brain. If you read this & loved it, I see you 🫡

[David Griffin]

A writer with ADD?

Was this book written by a man with ADD? His grammar is atrocious, and paragraphs that have nothing to do with the context of the previous paragraph appears randomly. You could be reading about a three headed dog and a ghost in one sentence, then about four women practicing lesbianism in the city park in the next. What does the ghost and three headed dog have to do with lesbians in the park? Nothing. And that is what it's like reading the book, skipping from one thing to the next.

[Michelle]

Unreadable

I'm fairly certain this was written by a poorly designed AI program or that somehow a first draft got published. I made it to chapter three before giving up and deleting it from my list. The writing is stilted and while there is some personality there it's covered up by mediocrity.

[Kassandra]

This was a quick and easy book to get through. It was very quirky and made me laugh out loud many times. I’m sure the author intended this because he made this into a series. The best part about this is that the books can be read as standalone.

I’d suggest this if you need a quick read in between books where you don’t have to pay heavy attention to detail, BUT it is enjoyable when you do.

The story follows a 25 year old man who gets lost in the woods, and one thing leads to another and he becomes the librarian to a VERY small town near some mountains. I enjoyed the story and the narration done by our mmc.


4/5 stars

[Sylvia Fey]

The first half of the first chapter started off a little meh, but then it picked up pretty good and grabbed my attention. This was probably one of the funniest and stupidest (in the best way) books I have ever read, which was even funnier when I imagined the MC speaking and narrating in a deadpanned tone of voice. There was a LOT of randomness and if you don't like random thoughts or ideas or subjects popping up out of nowhere like an after thought, then you probably aren't going to like this book. It was very creative and confusing at times to the point that I had to reread a few parts to understand them more clearly. There was a lot of adventure, spookiness, and action in a book that I expected to be a little funny but mostly spooky and it turned out to be more comedy than spooky, which I did enjoy. I also liked that there was a little bit of everything in this book which made it more fun and exciting to read because you never really knew what was coming next.

I would probably consider this to be one of those "Garbage" books or a "potato chip" book. Just something light that you don't really have to think too hard about and can just read and enjoy without doing too much diving into other resources to figure out what something is. It's fairly straight forward and the MC is so relatable. It also kept reminding me of the Librarian movies that I used to watch, with more magical inclination than Indianan Jones, but still very similar in an alright way.

[pastbedtimestories]

This was a good book in so many ways.

The first person narrative had great personality and was very funny. The plot was unique and interesting. The setting was also unique and interesting. The characters were very cool.

I never read a book quite like this one before. It was told with a sense of carefree abandon but also concisely somehow. And did I mention with lots of personality?

I thought the town of Eden was conceptually an awesome concept and I imagined it maybe really existing somewhere near the edge of a forest.

I really liked the library and the way Kevin became the Librarian and how that gave him certain responsibilities. The townsfolk of Eden were very neat too.

I’m definitely going to continue this series because I want to go back to Eden and see what the mayor and Olive and the Blackstones are all up to. I want to see what new adventures await Kevin as well. I know it’s selfish on my part, but I don’t want him to leave Eden. I hope he marries Olive and finds happiness in Eden. Or at least they could start dating.

And is Kevin dead? Are they all dead? Is Eden Heaven? Or some kind of Purgatory?

I’m excited to read more!!!

[aks]

I appreciate what the author was trying to accomplish, but I found his writing to be very flat. A good editor might be helpful.

[Anita Grendell]

2.5
It seemed like the author had too many ideas and tried to fit them all into the story.

[Bronwyn]

April 27, 2026: DNF @ 7%

I chose this because I was looking for a book about a library. Unfortunately, I can’t get past the simplistic writing.

[Mike Lewis]

this was an entertaining and quirky paranormal mystery comedy series

This was an entertaining and quirky paranormal mystery series. An odd cast of characters with a unique storyline. A young man with some unique abilities is traveling the country helping where he can. When one day something happens and he gets lost in the woods. He ends up in a small rural town With only a couple hundred people live in there. No cars no roads at least paved roads. And a haunted forest surrounding it. Read on and see what happens and how he ends up here and what happens once he gets there. It’s humorous it’s paranormal and it’s a bit quirky it is entertaining. Check it out

[Becky]

Staccato rhythm. feels like AI

This book is written entirely in choppy, short, staccato sentences. It falls into a weird rat-tat-tat rhythm, and has horrible misspellings throughout.
It’s oddly patched together; I wonder if it is an AI creation, as it feels like someone fed Neil Gaiman (ugh. Gross. He’s just so gross, really) to AI and told it to come up with something even more banal and derivative.

[Mary Matroni]

Story line had potential but

Disappointment. Story like random thoughts that while follow a lose pattern it is not complete. Like author had some specific statements to make. Once made, he was done. Story not necessarily complete thought . Felt disconnected.

[Lori Greenberg]

Just what I needed

Comedy is hard to get right. Try too hard - or even at all - and you miss. Often painfully. The best funny is just allowing us to see everyday absurdity through a new lens. This book does that beautifully. I’m not really either a suspense or a horror person EXCEPT when coupled with supernatural comedy (or so this book taught me.) If you’re reading reviews to decide if you should give this book a try, consider this my ringing endorsement. I managed to hold off jumping immediately into book 2 to write this so I do hope you read this and give it a try. I know I’m happy I did, even if my plans for the next several hours now must all be set aside. The library calls.

[Kristin Lansdown]

This book is laugh out loud funny. I love that there’s really no explanations; things are simply what they are. There were parts that I was confused and felt like I had missed something, but it’s a fast paced book that’s almost more character driven than story driven. At one point I said to myself “I would read 10 more of these” and was very happy to find there are actually 10 books in this series.

[Cassie]

This book was nonsensical & I loved it

I can understand why some people find this book challenging it is somewhat as one reviewer said “like following someone with ADHD around” but that was part of its charm for me. I love how quirky and silly it was, I loved how I could never tell where the plot was going, I really liked our main character Kevin and it was a quick and easy read. I’m looking forward to reading the others!

[M.K. McCollom]

Oddly fun read

Who doesn't love a haunted library and a good mystery? It was an entertaining fun read once the book started getting into things.

[Catisha Scavairello]

2.75 rounded up barely

I liked the concept in the beginning. I like that it seemed like a Christian fiction book. About the halfway point, I started losing interest. By the end, just meh

[Lace]

Great for fans of snark, absurd fiction and urban fantasy. Flavored similar to Terry Pratchett Douglas Adam’s and Christopher Moore. Maybe even A Lee Martinez.
Angels, demons, magicians, headless women, ,ghosts a ghoul and a librarian. Welcome to Eden.

[Kristan]

I'm not quite sure what I just read, but it was a fun ride!

[Hannah Howard]

This was fun and not at all explained. A nice break after the disappointment of my last book. I might read the others, it was a very easy read with lots of interesting creatures and people, though no one is particularly developed