RAE’S READS

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This year (2025) finds me with 53 years of teaching “under my belt.” I have taught all levels from pre-K “(library lady” or “book lady”–volunteer) to juniors, seniors, and graduate students enrolled in my Advanced Writing class at the university where I have just completed 34 years. My first paying teaching job was junior high, and I spent 13 years with ages 12-13, the “difficult years.” I had some of the “funnest” experiences with this age group. When I was no longer the “young, fun teacher,” I taught in an elementary school setting before sixth graders went on to junior high, teaching language arts blocs, an assignment that was a “dream-fit” for me. After completing graduate school in my 40s, I went on to community college, then university teaching. This past fall I accepted a part-time teaching job at Apogee Gulf Coast Schools in its first year at the Alvin campus. After my Better Half died n 2022, I achieved a lifelong dream: opening a bookstore of my own, Rae’s Reads. A year later, I sold the house we had lived in for 47 years and moved into the bookstore. My goal is to circulate and repurpose books. Just as teaching is “in my blood,” so is a passion for reading, writing, libraries, and everything bookish. This blog will be open to anyone who loves books, promotes literacy and wants to “come out and play.”

THE HAUNTED BOOKSTORE, A CLASSIC by Christopher Morely: Review

In attempting to read about books, bookstores, libraries, and all things “bookish” between January 2019 and December 2019, I came across a book considered a classic, which fits my definition of a cozy mystery. Just in time for Halloween, Christopher Morely’s The Haunted Bookstore continues the saga of Parnassus on Wheels. It describes the bookstore of Roger Mifflin, proprietor, whose sign in the window welcomes booklovers, but warns, “This shop is haunted.”

The story is set in 1915 Brooklyn, NY. Enter Titania Chapman, enlightened daughter of a business magnate father who asks Mifflin if he will hire his daughter as an assistant. A budding career girl, something new to Mifflin and his wife, Titania is full of “new views” and ways to improve the comfortable old bookstore. Meeting a young ad salesman who tries to get Mifflin to advertise, Titania puts him through the paces and hoops of earning a young girl’s affections. There is mystery; there is romance; there is humor–all told in a charming style of writing that endears these characters and this novel to the reader. “Lively spirits” seem to be the cause of the things that go bump in the night, and the mysterious shadow men who appear are obviously up to no good.

All is revealed and satisfyingly resolved at the end, something modern readers seldom get enough of. I highly recommend this novel.

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4 responses to “THE HAUNTED BOOKSTORE, A CLASSIC by Christopher Morely: Review”

  1. beth Avatar
    beth

    I love this one

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. Rae Reads Avatar
      Rae Reads

      Did you read how the bookstore owner and his wife met in Parnassus on Wheels?

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  2. Becky Ross Michael Avatar
    Becky Ross Michael

    This sounds good!

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. Rae Reads Avatar
      Rae Reads

      It was dee-light-ful! Old-fashioned in a GOOD way. The book before it tells the story of the bookstore owner and his wife and how they met. Parnassus on Wheels–same author, Christopher Morely.

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