Banner Message
Did you have trouble finding what you were looking for?
Click here for our special store for hard-to-find and used items.
Paris Bookseller
Doug says: This is the most delightful book I've read in 2021-2022. Partners Sylvia and Adrienne's love story, and the account of how Sylvia Beach opened the first Shakespeare and Company Booksellers in Paris is inspiring, beautiful, and remarkable in how the positive perspective given all characters involved and incidents that occurred. No one without their flaws but a great family of writers and booksellers you admire. You will want to read it all the way through to the Author's Note. It's that good. Whether you are a bookseller or not, this is the great hundredth anniversary of how we ditched book banning and prohibition, began to call into question our ill-treatment of LGBTQ+ persons, women and Jews, and how these amazing women went on to publish and distribute one of the great novels of our century. Kerri Maher has done the novelists, booksellers, journalists, and others who appear, a great service, and created a book that is a fun and fabulous reading adventure. Come to think of it a book that's right on time.
--The Boston Globe The dramatic story of how a humble bookseller fought against incredible odds to bring one of the most important books of the 20th century to the world in this new novel from the author of The Girl in White Gloves. A PopSugar Much-Anticipated 2022 Novel ∙ A BookTrib Top Ten Historical Fiction Book of Spring ∙ A SheReads' Best Literary Historical Fiction Coming in 2022 ∙ A Reader's Digest's Best Books for Women Written by Female Authors ∙ A BookBub Best Historical Fiction Book of 2022 When bookish young American Sylvia Beach opens Shakespeare and Company on a quiet street in Paris in 1919, she has no idea that she and her new bookstore will change the course of literature itself. Shakespeare and Company is more than a bookstore and lending library: Many of the prominent writers of the Lost Generation, like Ernest Hemingway, consider it a second home. It's where some of the most important literary friendships of the twentieth century are forged--none more so than the one between Irish writer James Joyce and Sylvia herself. When Joyce's controversial novel Ulysses is banned, Beach takes a massive risk and publishes it under the auspices of Shakespeare and Company. But the success and notoriety of publishing the most infamous and influential book of the century comes with steep costs. The future of her beloved store itself is threatened when Ulysses' success brings other publishers to woo Joyce away. Her most cherished relationships are put to the test as Paris is plunged deeper into the Depression and many expatriate friends return to America. As she faces painful personal and financial crises, Sylvia--a woman who has made it her mission to honor the life-changing impact of books--must decide what Shakespeare and Company truly means to her.