Fiction about Bookstores and Bookselling

[RetroLounge]

Looking for books where the story or the main characters revolve around a bookstore or bookselling.

Can annyone add to my list?

on edit: Okay, not necessarily Fiction Only...

Parnassus on Wheels - Christopher Morley
The Haunted Bookshop - Christopher Morley
The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald.

RL

[Kutjara]

1. 84 Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff

I know it's based on fact, but it reads like good fiction.

[RetroLounge]

2. Good choice!

I chose fiction for this forum...

thanks!

RL

[mitchum]

3. There was a series of crime/mystery novels back in the 80s...

set in the world of book grubbers. Granted, there are some fellow book grubbers who I wouldn't mind doing away with...:)

Sorry, but I can't remember the author or any of the titles

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. John Dunning: "Booked to Die" is the first in the series

Supposedly another one is coming out soon, but there's "The Bookman's Wake" and "The Bookman's Promise," too.

[mitchum]

11. That's it!

Thank you. I could not, for the life of me, remember the author or protagonist.
I do remember enjoying them.

[kimmerspixelated]

4. Wasn't there a bookstore owner character

in that movie with....Kate Capshaw, Ellen Degeneres and Tom Selleck? Can't think of the name... I feel certain it was based on a novel.

[Lisa]

5. The Bookfair Murders, Anna Porter

Set at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

http://members.shaw.ca/mystery3/review.htm

[RetroLounge]

12. Thanks!

:hi:

RL

[brer cat]

6. Lawrence Block's

Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries. Bernie is a bookseller as well as burglar.

[RetroLounge]

7. Oh, thanks for this... hadn't heard of it.

:hi:

RL

[brer cat]

8. Interesting thread.

I'm a bookseller too! I deal mainly with children's books--my passion--but I also have adult sections.

[RetroLounge]

9. I'm reading Parnassus over the phone

long-distance with a friend aloud to each other...

Started me thinking...

RL

[Killarney]

13. The Shadow of the Wind

Carlos... ummmm... Zafon, I think?

Very good.

[Greyskye]

14. Charles de Lint

A number of de Lint books/stories feature characters who run bookstores.

Here are the ones that come immediately to mind:
"Yarrow: An Autumn Tale" has a character (Peter Baird) who is a bookstore owner.
Holly Rue is a bookstore owner character in both a story in the short story collection "Tapping the Dream Tree" and the novel "Spirits in the Wires".

If you haven't read any Charles de Lint, I urge you to check him out. My favorites are his books that take place in the fictional modern city of "Newford".

The best place to start the Newford stories is the collection Dreams Underfoot. From there they go pretty much in this order:

The Dreaming Place
A Whisper To A Scream (originally credited to "Samuel M. Key")
I'll Be Watching You (originally credited to "Samuel M. Key")
Memory And Dream
The Ivory And The Horn
Trader
Someplace To Be Flying
Moonlight And Vines
Forests Of The Heart
The Onion Girl
Seven Wild Sisters (also available in Tapping the Dream Tree)
Tapping the Dream Tree
Spirits in the Wires
Medicine Road
The Blue Girl

The Dreaming Place and The Blue Girl are YA novels. A Whisper To A Scream and I'll Be Watching You are, respectively, a horror novel and a thriller; they're darker fare than the other Newford books and aren't really that integral to the underlying, ongoing backstory that takes off center stage in so many of the books and stories.

Charles de Lint is hands down my favorite author. I hope you enjoy him as much as I do!

[lumberingbear]

15. How about a gay mystery series....

Adrien English Mysteries
by Josh Lanyon (Author)

The series takes place at a bookstore. The main character (Adrien English) is an author and bookseller who ends up solving murders.

[Tesha]

16. "The Fresco" by Sheri S. Tepper

While not *ABOUT* bookselling or booksellers, Sheri
S. Tepper's 2000 sci-fi novel The Fresco features
as its heroine a woman who makes her living managing
(throughout the course of the plot) several bookstores.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheri_S._Tepper

The novel is also interesting in that it hypothesises
unique solutions to a number of our society's most-
vexing problems, not the least of which is how religions
misinterpret practically everything.

Tesha

[mzteris]

17. a favorite in our household

a few years ago . . .

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51S3HC6RDVL._BO2,204,203



(shoot, I can't get the pic to show . . . wah.)

[Mz Pip]

18. Joan Hess

has a series of mysteries whose protagonist, Claire Malloy, runs a bookstore. They are pretty good and she has a wicked sense of humor.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/h/joan-hess/

Mz Pip
:dem: