All the Bones?

One of our regular customers came in today, with short neat grey hair, wearing jeans, a white button-up shirt and a salmon colored sweater. I asked if I could help her find something.

"Yes you can," she replied, looking at a piece of paper she'd brought. "I'm looking for a new book called ALL THE BONES, and it's by a Phyllis or a Penelope or something. I can't read my own writing." She laughed a little.

"Hmm, okay, I'll see what I can find," I said as I started searching the computer. I didn't find any book with that specific title, never mind one with that title and a Penelope or Phyllis as an author. "I'm not finding any book with that exact title," I told her. "There are lots of titles with the word 'bones' in it..."

"Well, let me see," she said, looking at her paper again. "It's about Thomas Cromwell. And it's called ALL THE BONES."

While she was talking, I was continuing to search our system, using key words and exact title and title words (I just skipped the author part). "I'm not finding anything. Let me search the internet and see what I can find." I searched and found that Hilary Mantel has written two books about Thomas Cromwell.

"Is it BRINGING UP THE BODIES by Hilary Mantel?", I asked.

"That's it! Well, I was kind of close, with Phyllis or Penelope and the word 'bones', wasn't I?", she joked.

"Yep, pretty close!", I agreed. I walked over to the shelf, took a copy of the book and handed it to her. She was thrilled.

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