Books & Mortar by Gibbs M. Smith

December 12, 2018

The author and illustrator Gibbs M. Smith, along with his wife, started his book publishing company, Gibbs Smith, in 1969. He died in 2017. According to the note in the back of the book, Books & Mortar, it’s a celebration of his legacy, the local...

The Ghost and the Bogus Bestseller by Cleo Coyle

September 19, 2018

In 2009, the fifth Haunted Bookshop mystery, The Ghost and the Haunted Mansion, came out. It was written under the name Alice Kimberly, a pseudonym also used by the authors who write as Cleo Coyle. On September 25, nine years later, the latest one in the...

The Bookshop at Water’s End by Patti Callahan Henry

July 12, 2017

Mimi, the bookseller at Title Wave, the bookstore in Watersend, South Carolina, welcomes readers to her bookstore, a place as magic as the river. The characters revolve around the bookstore, the beginning and end of the story, a place of secrets and answers in Patti...

Elementary, She Read by Vicki Delany

March 25, 2017

Any Sherlock Holmes fan will recognize the “Elementary” from stories, movies, and TV, if not from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s actual work. Vicki Delany’s clever Sherlock Holmes Bookshop mystery, Elementary, She Read, is a wonderful addition...

Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores by Bob Eckstein

October 13, 2016

I wish I knew if I read about this book, or if one of my friends or the publisher recommended it. Bob Eckstein, New Yorker cartoonist, put all my love of independent bookstores into a charming book, Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores: True Tales...