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An indie bookshop owner realizes that a customer has stolen a book connected to an unsolved local mystery. What happens next?

Posted in Short Story on Jul 4, 2025

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✍️ 6 stories

The Litchfield House Mystery

Submitted to Contest #310

The cold, fall rain lashed against the frosted glass of "The Written Word," each drop a tiny percussion on the mournful soundtrack of a typical night, here in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Inside, the only light came from a single, dusty lamp on my desk, illuminating a half-empty mug of lukewarm coffee and a stack of overdue bills. I, Jack Macintosh, purveyor and part-time private dick, was nursing a headache as thick as a first edition. Business had been slow, and the only company I’d had all day was the phantom scent of old paper and the creak of the...

8 likes 13 comments 13
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A Margo Peabody and Winston the Menace Goose Mystery

Submitted to Contest #310

Chapter One: A Mystery Most Middle-Aged Margo Peabody’s day began, as all great disasters do, with optimism.She flung open the creaky doors of The Whispering Tome, inhaled the scent of aged paper and Mr. Fitzgerald’s latest hairball, and declared, “Today’s the day, Fitz! No drama, no chaos, just books.”The cat, sprawled atop Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, blinked slowly—a gesture Margo chose to interpret as solidarity.The shop was its usual cacophony of charm and mild hazard. Sunlight strained through dust to illuminate the “Local Lore”...

7 likes 4 comments 4
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Of an Old Man, Golden SIlverware and The House That Looks Like a Boat

Submitted to Contest #310

The little bell stringed to the top of the door rang briefly when it opened. “Good morning, sir,” I greeted the old man entering my shop. “How may I help you today?” “My, my, what a place you got here,” he said, looking around the little room crammed with antique books on shelves and books stacked on top of each other in neat columns in the middle of it. “Thank you kindly,” I said, smiling. “What brings you in today?” “Oh, I was just passing through the main square when I noticed this store that wa...

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THE WHISPERING PAGES - A BOOKSHOP MYSYTERY

Submitted to Contest #310

On a rain-glazed Thursday evening, with the last wisps of twilight clinging to the rooftops of Olde Crescent, Sarah Hargrove was closing up her little indie bookshop, The Whispering Pages. Her routine was a comforting one—shelving the errant paperbacks, aligning the displays, counting the cash register to the mellow hum of jazz. She knew every book and every regular by name, so when she noticed a book was missing from the shelf where The Violet Ledger—a battered, out-of-print volume chronicling the infamous Crescent Disappearances of 1982—ha...

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Bookseller

Submitted to Contest #310

Great Grandmother told him something was going to happen if he lets the book disappear from the bookstore. Tommy knew there would be consequences. What he didn't know was what those consequences would necessarily be.So he guarded the thin book – more out of habit and the mantras he had been taught for years - throwing it somewhere in the corner behind the counter, where no book lover would stick their curious, ink-stained nose. It had no spine title. No barcode. The kind of book that made your eyes feel like they were trying to read through ...

1 like 1 comment 1
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How Forgiveness Was Found In A Book Store

Submitted to Contest #310

How Forgiveness Was Found In A Bookstore Once upon a time in a huge metropolis called Danville, Va., there was a bookstore called Books A Million. It was run by a young lady named Suzan Ellaneous. Since she wasn't married, most of the customers called her, "Miss Ellaneous." Her 14 year-old niece helped her when school was out. Her name was Caroline Steak, but people called her, "Miss-Stake." That was a fitting name for her since it seamed that was what she made a lot of. Suzy's friends called her Suzy Q, although nobody knew what ...

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