It’s not easy being Buddy The Book Beaver, library page and summer reading page mascot at Mallville Public Library. But when a competing library system comes out with their own beaver mascot, well that means war. The third Unshelved collection also features Empire County Strikes Back, an all-new 24-page full-color graphic novelette. Can Mallville’s librarians defeat the mother of all bookmobiles?

“Together, Barnes and Ambaum are producing a humorous, charming, and heart-warming story about the life of a library and the people who work there.”–Terry Moore, Eisner Award-winning creator of Strangers in Paradise

“Unshelved hooks you with its smart, cynical, borderline-twisted humor. Write faster, guys. Your fans want more!”– Deb Calettei, National Book Award finalist and author of Honey, Baby, Sweetheart

“…The new 23-page full-color story here, in which the library staff battle an invading futuristic bookmobile, plays out like a Simpsons episode. It’s a given that librarians enjoy the strip, but how will it hold up with the general public? Well, the I’m a librarian, not a buffalo sequence on getting out from behind the desk will most likely puzzle nonlibrarian readers, but many gags are character-oriented rather than library-specific. The strip’s most obvious antecedent, in both its focus on work life and its simple cartooning, is Dilbert, and there’s some of that strip’s management humor here. Service workers everywhere will find a hero in Dewey, who answers patrons’ questions with a large dose of cheek. The strip certainly deserves a place not only on the library’s office wall but in the collection as well.”–Library Journal

ISBN 978-0-9740353-2-1