I, Maggie Banks, solemnly swear to uphold the rules of Cobblestone Books.
If only, I, Maggie Banks, believed in following the rules.
When Maggie Banks arrives in Bell River to run her best friend's struggling bookstore, she expects to sell bestsellers to her small-town clientele. But running a bookstore in a town with a famously bookish history isn't easy. Bell River's literary society insists on keeping the bookstore stuck in the past, and Maggie is banned from selling anything written this century. So, when a series of mishaps suddenly tip the bookstore toward ruin, Maggie will have to get creative to keep the shop afloat.
And in Maggie's world, book rules are made to be broken.
To help save the store, Maggie starts an underground book club, running a series of events celebrating the books readers actually love. But keeping the club quiet, selling forbidden books, and dodging the literary society is nearly impossible. Especially when Maggie unearths a town secret that could upend everything.
Maggie will have to decide what's more important: the books that formed a small town's history, or the stories poised to change it all.
"Maggie Banks's life is a bit of a mess. After losing a job and moving back home with her parents, she's desperate for a new Life Plan. So when her best friend asks for help running her struggling bookstore in the quaint town of Bells River, Maggie jumps on the opportunity. She doesn't even like books, per se, but anything's better than obsessively checking job boards from her childhood bedroom. It turns out Maggie's not prepared for small-town life. More specifically, the strict rules enforced by the local historical society: the bookstore is only allowed to sell 'classics.' But with a town full of people looking for fresh stories, Maggie knows she'll have to get creative to keep the store afloat"--