The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs

I’m always a sucker for books about libraries and bookshops, and this one did not disappoint. The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs is about Natalie Harper who lost both her mother and her boyfriend on the same day in a plane crash. Natalie, who is not happy with her inventory specialist job at a winery in the Napa Valley, is suddenly the proprietor of her mother’s San Francisco bookstore, a venture heavily in debt and in much need of repair.

The most immediate repairs are handled by a local contractor Peach Gallagher, who just happens to be a very nice man and the father of one of the store’s best patrons, Dorothy Gail. Besides running the bookstore, Natalie is also assisting her ailing grandfather who grew up in the store’s living quarters and had a typewriter repair shop there before the age of computers.

When little Dorothy realizes the bookshop is in trouble, she writes to a famous children’s author, who takes an interest in the bookshop and its manager. A sold-out event with the author infuses the bookstore with some much-needed cash but it’s not nearly enough to pay off all the debt Natalie’s mother had accumulated. Will The Lost and Found Bookshop be just one more independent bookstore to close?

I haven’t read much of Susan Wiggs but I would classify her as a writer of women’s fiction. Her fans will surely love this tale of the trials and tribulations facing bookstores today.