Overdue books returned to library more than 600 miles away

Sept. 18 (UPI) -- A pair of long-overdue books arrived at their Ontario home after being returned to a library in Massachusetts -- more than 600 miles away.

The Middlesex County Library said a package arrived in the mail recently at its Dorchester branch and librarians discovered it was sent from the Claire T. Carney Library at the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth, more than 600 miles away.

The package contained two books, No Man's Land by G.M. Ford and Hog Wild by Cathy Pickens, that were checked out at some unknown point in the past from the Dorchester branch.

Library officials said the books are no longer listed in their system, but they were added to the collection in 2005 and 2007. Librarians estimated they may have been checked out about seven years ago.

Aimee Sparzynski, the Dorchester library's coordinator of technical services, said the books weren't even the most well-traveled of the tomes to be returned to the library by mail.

"We had one book that actually came back to us from Paris a few years ago. A patron had borrowed it to read on the plane and left it behind in the hotel," Sparzynski told CBC News.