Julesburg Public Library

From 1957 to 1978, Janet Groth served as the receptionist for one of America's greatest publications, The New Yorker. Along with the regular office tasks, like taking messages, she interacted with many of the colorful people who worked the magazine as well some of the eccentric folks who inhabited the colorful Greenwich Village scene. Here she shares her experience.

"Lyla Moody loves her sleepy little town of Sweet Mountain, Georgia. She likes her job as receptionist for her uncle's private investigative firm, her fellow true crime obsessed Jane Doe members are the friends she's always wanted, and her parents just celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. But recently, with her best friend Melanie on vacation, and her ex-boyfriend and horrible cousin becoming an item and moving in next door to her, her...

Operating the switchboard at the business office shared by her brother's computer-game company and six unusual therapists, Meg Langslow finds herself drawn into a mystery when the company's practical joker is murdered on top of a mail cart.

It's winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. The cold slows everything down. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn venomous, beyond the beach guns point out from the North's watchtowers. A young French Korean woman works as a receptionist in a tired guesthouse. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives: a French cartoonist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape. The two form an uneasy relationship....

Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. Desperate for relief from her panicky mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church, and finds herself being greeted by Father Jeff, who assumes she's there for a job interview. Too embarrassed to correct him, Gilda is abruptly hired to replace the recently deceased receptionist Grace....