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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 1h

Uh oh. My order from @lornebairrarebooks.bsky.social just arrived, so I might not get much *apparent* work done today. Friends, get you a bookseller who packages like this: paper wrapping, an inner layer of bubble wrap, nice thick recyclable packing paper, and a sturdy box 📦📚

A cardboard box, sitting open, with stacks of individually wrapped rectangles of various sizes, each in plain, unbleached, recyclable paper sealed with painter's tape, in a nest of crumpled paper. Two books are unwrapped: one about bees in religion and mythology, one about book illustration in the 15th and 16th centuries.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 06/10/2026

If you want to practice binding books, I keep a stash of books for you. The titles range through literature, essays, history, etc; the bindings are anywhere from shaken to shot. Bring the repaired or rebound book back to me so that I can see your work. I refer customers! #bookbinding #bookarts

Two stacks of hardcover books, both leather bound and cloth bound. The books are missing backstrips or have chipped joints or cracked gutters or near total gilt loss or, not pictured, loose signatures, detached plates, shaken hinges, or other binding defects. I usually have a couple dozen to choose from, and I try to make sure they have nice, wide bound margins.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 04/10/2026

A 1939 printing of this small but potent collection (first published by Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company in 1927). Sure, it's a subsequent edition. But MY copy is only gently faded along the spine... and it has the POI of Alan Clodd. Yeah, THAT Alan Clodd.

This copy of James Joyce's Pomes Penyeach is a five inch by seven inch, pamphlet stitched chapbook with a kelly green cover showing only a touch of sunning along the spine, two thin gray lines at upper and foreedge, and minor corner wear. If it was printed in 1939, it was probably the last issue during Joyce's lifetime.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 02/10/2026

NEW ARRIVALS with our pet owl! Or at least, that's Sophie's current attitude. Ominously fluffed. She's still getting used to Ande 😂 Place your order via 319-337-2996 or infodesk@thehauntedbookshop.com - We ship! Or stop by 219 N Gilbert Street, Iowa City, 11-6 Central Mon-Sat.

A long-haired tortoiseshell cat with a white stripe across her face like David Bowie on the cover of "Aladdin Sane". She has pulled her head back toward her shoulders and fluffed out her ruff; her ears are angled lower than usual; the overall effect is that of a great horned owl with a cute pink nose instead of a beak. Behind her, a blue sky and part of a person trapped under the cat (who has a tendency to jump in people's laps and demand attention).

Thirtyish books arranged on two carpeted steps. This is mostly fiction, including classics by authors like James Baldwin, Jose Saramago, Isabel Allende, Louise Erdrich, Joseph Roth, Albert Camus, Jack London, Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, etc. as well as the Oxford Classics anthology of the Anglo-Saxon world, some classic Greek tragedies, and a giant volume of George Orwell's essays.

A selection of nonfiction, including a book about the Abbey of St. Gall, a coffee-table book about libraries, two neat rows of books about gardening (including a picture book about Tasha Tudor and her garden), Henry David Thoreau's "Wild Fruits", Eugene Robinson's "Freedom Lost, Freedom Won", some history and politics, and memoirs by Rob Spillman and Maxine Hong Kingston

More nonfiction, this time with some medieval history, the memoirs of Casanova in six volumes, books about the Cold War, Philip Caputo's "A Rumor of War", some popular science titles, a Classical Greek textbook, Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood", and Michael Dirda's "Browsings", which would make an excellent gift for a book lover, especially if paired with a book by Nicholas Basbanes, of which we have a few.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 01/10/2026

Ande still hides behind and under furniture for much of the day, but he is venturing out a bit, especially in search of cheek rubs. Look how trusting this guy is. He's leaning at least 30* into my hand. And his buff-colored fluff makes chinchilla fur seem coarse.

A very light orange tabby cat with very leonine features and very large paws tilts hard to one side, pushing his ear and jaw against a human's hand. His eyes are squinched up in pleasure and he is leaning about as far as he can without tipping over.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 26/09/2026

Busy day, lots of medieval history to process, but I've gotten sidetracked by a cheap paperback. "Brother Petroc's Return", by "S.M.C.", is basically a time travel romance except the romance part is monastic devotion 🤔 He goes into a trance in Henry VIII's England and wakes up in the 20th century.

A mass market paperback book published by Doubleday Image in the 1950s. The cover has a very boxy monastery perched on a cliff overlooking the sea; the land is brown and has a stone wall and a bare tree, and the sea is just several distant squiggles under a matching gray-blue sky. This book has tea droplet spots, creased corners, a felt-tip mark over the original price, scuffs along the bottom front, and more - it is what book dealers call "good", by which we generally mean you can read it just fine, but it is not gift quality - and I should absolutely not be obsessing over this, because it has negligible market value, but seriously, it was written in the 1930s and it anticipates the tropes of an entire subgenre of 'he came from an earlier time and must now learn about modern life and find a place for himself in it' stories. Like, did Jack Finney read this? Diana Gabaldon? I want to know!

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 24/09/2026

NEW ARRIVALS with Menander! Place your order via 319-337-2996 or infodesk@thehauntedbookshop.com - We ship! Or stop by 219 N Gilbert Street, Iowa City, 11-6 Central Mon-Sat.

Close-up of a pale orange cat with tabby markings around his eyes, lying on his side under a beat-up old loveseat. His eyes are slightly squinty in the way that cats show affection; one paw is raised, ready to touch your finger if you put your hand out in front of him. He likes touching your hands with his paws. Also, he's beautiful. Not that I'm biased.

About forty books, mostly soft-cover, arranged on two carpeted steps. Authors include David Lodge, Sherman Alexie, Vincente Blasco Ibanez, Gloria Naylor, Colm Toibin, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jose Saramago, Penelope Fitzgerald, D. H. Lawrence, and a row of crime fiction by Georges Simenon, Donna Leon, Jacqueline Winspear, et al.

Not quite forty more books, again fiction for the most part, with the exception of a memoir by Yiyun Li, poetry by Federico Garcia Lorca and Homer, graphic work by Marjane Satrapi and Art Spiegelman, some classic mysteries by Wilkie Collins, R.A. Dick, Dorothy Sayers, P.D. James, but also John Copenhaver's "The Savage Kind"; in the next row, everybody from Don Delillo to Henry Miller to Thomas Pynchon to a reproduction of a Nonesuch Dickens volume (David Copperfield). A couple of these have sold; call or email for further information.

Nonfiction time! An atlas of world history in German, books from the history of ideas and philosophy, some European history - back to Byzantium and forward to the Balkan wars - and the excellent book "Germans Into Nazis" by Peter Fritzsche. Also, some narrative nonfiction about the experience of nature, a little medieval art and literature, and Patricia Hampl's book about visiting Spillville, Iowa, while researching Anton Dvorak.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 24/09/2026

This just in: His name shall be Menander, and you can call him And or Andy for short. (He joined Sophocles "Sophie" and Aeschylus "Esk" on our staff a week ago Sunday and is still mostly hiding under the couch, but he gets more comfortable in his new home every day.)

A very pale orange cat with tabby stripes around his very leonine eyes. He is unselfconsciously smooshing his forehead against a human's hand. His fur looks, and in fact is, softer than a rabbit's. What's not quite clear in this picture is that he also has huge feet. Huge. Also very leonine. And did I mention that he's gorgeous?

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 17/09/2026

NEW ARRIVALS with New Cat! We have not yet settled on a new professional name for New Cat, so your suggestions are welcome! Place your order via 319-337-2996 or infodesk@thehauntedbookshop.com - We ship! Or stop by 219 N Gilbert Street, Iowa City, 11-6 Central Mon-Sat.

A golden tabby cat with very leonine features and a big, fluffy tail looks up from a food dish in a room with a squishy couch and a lot of mystery novels

A roll of discount stickers and three piles of Babysitter's Club paperbacks from the 1980s, except with an adorable golden tabby cat flopped over in the middle of everything, allowing store employee Felix to rub his forehead

Golden tabby cat looks off-camera like a movie starlet while accidentally wearing a discount price sticker on his chest. Let me stress, urgently, that the cat is not for sale. We love him.

Oh right, books. Here are some nonfiction titles, including a couple versions of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Analects of Confucius, C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, books about Montaigne and Emerson and the Inklings, a little criticism, some war history of both recent and long distant varieties, some classical history, and a bit of Western philosophy

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 10/09/2026

Sep 9 2026 Dear journal: Went to Kitty Corner Social Club after work tonight. Love it. Very chill, homelike but unique, full of good company of both human and kitty persuasions. Might need to become a regular.

A beautiful, leonine orange cat washes his massive paws behind a cute little chair. Evening sun comes through the windows and falls on a plaid blanket and various love-and-cats themed wall hangings.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 09/09/2026

22 years ago today, a weird kid bought The Haunted Bookshop. Thank you to Eastern Iowa, to our regulars and friends, for all your support over these years. I still feel like I'm getting away with something when I pull out *my* key to a *bookshop*. You are all my coconspirators, and I love you 📚❤️

A charcoal tuxedo cat sits in front of a very short flight of steps and a very full bookcase. He is turned just slightly, so that he seems to be looking just a bit over his shoulder. Logan knew he was very pretty, and he is definitely giving the camera bedroom eyes. Those who knew him (he's been gone a year now) will tell you that he used to pose for the camera when he heard the shutter sound. Usually he just looked distinguished; but this is definitely a come hither look.

A dilute tortoiseshell cat, primarily gray in this light (but peach-colored in other light), sits on a shabby rug, one front paw slightly forward, eyes watchful. Nierme was the smartest cat we have ever known and a very, very dear friend. She passed away some years ago, after a spectacular 17 years as the queen of the bookshop.

The former location of The Haunted Bookshop, a different old house with a porch on the main level and dormer windows on the second level; there is a large sign with the shop's name in Garamond hanging under the edge of the porch roof, and a second, sandwich-board style sign with the name of the shop and the word OPEN. Both signs are gone, but we have a new one made in the same style and colors on our current old house, which is about five blocks away from this place (it's now a service office of some sort; I don't get out much, so I'm not sure what).

A person wearing a v-necked sweater and a large, floppy cap sits in front of a pair of bookshelves crammed with CD cases, various book repair and shipping tools, and also books. There is a copy of "The Haunted Bookshop" by Christopher Morley on display, the view partially blocked by a coconut with a postage label on it (long story); there is a coffee mug with Marvin the Martian on the side, and there is a stack of quite old looking, smallish books (a sextodecimo edition of Addison and Steele, long since sold, sorry). The bookseller is looking over the rims of her glasses.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 09/09/2026

This reader, early in his exploration of medieval literature and history, developed an equivalent symbol: a leaf. I have found the ur-doodle. The leaf from which all future vines, threading through many texts, once grew. And now I know what is drawing my eye through these books🍃 😍

A page in a book about literary and art history. There is a curved line in the right margin, curling around the end of the first paragraph on the page, and at the end of the line is a tiny entire leaf, neatly rendered with its veins. Looks like it came from a beech but could be lanceolate. Either way, it looks a bit elvish.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 09/09/2026

Some are curved and end in a funny sort of point. The point is not like an arrowhead, nor is it like a spike. A fishhook maybe? I'd been looking through several* books owned by this one person, and a bunch of them have these pointed marks. ______________ *boxes of books. Hundreds, plural, of books

A page in a book about Epicurean philosophy. There are two curved lines that sort of curl around the end of an aphorism and then end with a point that looks like one half of an arrowhead? or the little barb on a fishhook?

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 09/09/2026

In my hand is book about medieval history, and in the book are a series of margin marks. Most are just short, straight lines in the outer margin, drawing the eye to one particular sentence. #marginalia

A printed book open to a page that includes a paragraph about Hincmar of Laon and his court case. There is a short, straight line in the left margin drawing attention to the last sentence in the first paragraph.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 08/09/2026

NEW ARRIVALS with a pensive Sophie Place your order via 319-337-2996 or infodesk@thehauntedbookshop.com - We ship! Or stop by 219 N Gilbert Street, Iowa City, 11-6 Central Mon-Sat.

A tortoiseshell cat with a spectacular white mane looks off to the left, considering whether the sound of kibble promises something better than being admired and petted. This is a tough call, folks

A group of fortyish books, all fiction, including work by Karen Joy Fowler, Paul Auster, Colum McCann, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kazuo Ishiguro, James Baldwin, Nella Larsen, Don DeLillo, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Jane Smiley, Michael Chabon, Jeanette Winterson, Anthony Doerr, Elena Ferrante, and Kurt Vonnegut, among others.

A shelf full of poetry on a half-sized shelving cart. Includes work by Diane Seuss, Adrienne Rich, Anne Waldman, Louis Simpson, Tess Gallagher, Robert Kelly, Al Young, Jack Marshall, Tristan Tzara, and more

More poetry! Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Tom Clark, Robert Bly, Don Mee Choi, Melvin B. Tolson, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen... this must be an older photo because I'm pretty sure a few of these have sold. Forgive my disorganization and, if you haven't, look up our website www thehauntedbookshop com , where you can see our most recent 100 books in the New Arrivals page, linked at the bottom of the main page. We are currently shelving (especially nonfiction) books too quickly to take pictures of all of them

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 07/09/2026

Very slightly belated happy 30th birthday to this receipt for Watson's "The Double Helix" that I found in a stack of agriculture textbooks. __________________ Hello, Coincidences-R-Us, how may I direct your call?

A blank course slip from Iowa State University's Department of Animal Science, together with a faded printed receipt from the University book store showing a purchase of three items. The prices are $1.25, $0.35, and $0.05, and the store's department codes are Roman numerals, which is kind of funny and classy at the same time. The date on the receipt is 6 September 1976.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 05/09/2026

Hahaha, we're either sinister or avuncular. Sometimes apparently one and secretly the other. When I was young, there was a movie with a pretty young empress and a tough young hero. All the kids in my class wanted to be one or the other, except me. I wanted this guy's job.

A still from the movie "The Neverending Story" showing a grumpy man in a tie and vest, holding a pipe and a book, sitting in a wingback chair, surrounded by leather bound books. The character's name is Carl Conrad Coreander

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 04/09/2026

Things booksellers say in a chat window at late o'clock, #32 of 5356778544678

Two comments made in a phone chat by the same person. The first says, "Yeah, technically it's fantasy, there's a guy doing slightly impossible stuff while coming of age". The second comment is "I guess by that definition, I'm a fantasy novel too. Will have to rethink that"

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 03/09/2026

Some blue wavers need to read Dorothy Thompson, and it shows. "In the next decade, there will be no free rides to freedom; it will not be preserved by geography or by the insistent chant, that no matter where else it is raining, it is bound to be sunny here --if not today, then tomorrow."

The text reads: "which arises out of a vague feeling that there is nothing in the world worth heroic sacrifice; the interpretation of self-government as a universal Gallup Poll, in which neither wisdom, experience, nor intelligence is the criterion, but only numbers; the elevation of leisure over creative work; the tendency to measure these are the standard of living wholly in terms of money trends which Plato described as infallible signs of decay in societies of free and self-governing men.

And Plato laid it down, almost as a scientific rule, that the worst end of decaying democracy was invariably tyranny of all possible governments.

It is too late to answer the slogans of Fascism with the slogans of Democracy. It is too late to hope that we shall preserve Democracy without effort, intelligence, responsibility, character, and great sacrifice. In the next decade there will be no free rides to freedom; it will not be preserved by geography or by the"

On the next page, that sentence ends: "insistent chant, that no matter where else it is raining, it is bound to be sunny here --if not today, then tomorrow " ... Like. Damn. Lady smiles while she slices and dices your platitudes.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 03/09/2026

First book on my stack this morning determined to make me cry. "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions." (Shakespeare, Hamlet)

The back of a paperback book, with the usual summary and blurbs, except the first blurb is from Gloria Steinem and says "The book that completed the human circle by bringing women's lives into it." The book is Carol Gilligan's "In a Different Voice"

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 02/09/2026

GENTLEMAN REGULAR: I have one more box for you. ME: Oh, how delightful! GR: This one has some poetry in it ME: My favorite 🙂 GR: (exits sans box) ME: (opens box) ... ME: 🥹🥹😭

One volume of a small pair of books is open; the other stands behind it. They're leather bound, needing some dressing but with good joints. The open one is open to the title page, which identifies the work as The Odyssey, the Pope translation. Myers and Smith, booksellers, New York, 1822.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 01/09/2026

A response to the story about David and Soren.

A reply to a post on Facebook. The other party says: "This makes me want to write... in books that I give to people or loan to them... more often" (followed by a heart emoji). I responded: "There are some who would point out that book dealers can pay more and charge more for "clean" books (with no marks)... but you know what? We only get today and maybe tomorrow. We only get so many words to read, or write, or say. Do what matters. The right people will be glad you did."

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 31/08/2026

Oh so it's going to be one of THOSE days again

Five spiral bound cookbooks from 1972 - even if I hadn't checked the year, I'd have guessed early 1970s from the yellows and browns in the deeply unattractive foods depicted on the front covers - and they're each a type of "international" cuisine - and they're in German. Now I'm going to have the gefilte song stuck in my head all day. In case you wanted an earworm, here is the first verse: "Who would take a fish / dip it in lye / use it for food? / Not the Japanese / Not even Brits / but Norwegians would"

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 30/08/2026

"If this were not a free country this book would be banned."

The cover of a mass market paperback edition of The Ugly American by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick. The illustration shows a white man peering around a corner at a woman in a pink dress with a long slit in the skirt. There is also a one word blurb from The New York Times: "Devastating".

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 28/08/2026

NEW ARRIVALS with a slightly tilted Aeschylus! Please note that Neruda and Brautigan sold while I was typing this 😂 Place your order via 319-337-2996 or infodesk@thehauntedbookshop.com - We ship! Or stop by 219 N Gilbert Street, Iowa City, 11-6 Central Mon-Sat.

A somewhat rumpled looking orange tabby cat with a white blaze on his nose walks awkwardly around a display unit on wheels. His ears need washing, but he is alert and thoughtful, listening to see where the customers in the hallway will go next, in case he needs to be there for pets and scritches.

An arrangement of fiction on two stair steps, and it's an all star cast here - Jose Saramago, Irene Nemirovsky, Zadie Smith, George Saunders, W.G. Sebald, Toni Morrison, Rohinton Mistry, Graham Greene, Thomas Mann, Peter Matthiessen, Henry James, Edgar Allan Poe, and more.

Poetry on a half-sized metal shelving cart, including Pablo Neruda (sold before I started typing the ALT here), Adrienne Rich, Thomas Hardy, Gerald Stern, Muriel Rukeyser, Ron Padgett, Dorothy Parker, Natasha Trethewey, and more.

Another shelf of poetry, this time with Diane Wakoski, David Wagoner, Marge Piercy, Carl Phillips, Kay Boyle, Rachel McKibbens, John Haines, Ingrid Wendt, and yeah, that Brautigan is already gone too

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 27/08/2026

Read me a line from the book you are reading. Let me listen, and over the sound of my own blood rushing, let me hear heartbeats back to the beginning of words. (/end)

This is the page after the two pages in the picture on the first post. It has no text. There is just an image of two rather bear-ish men on a plinth, each man holding a cornucopia of his own, but both men holding up a fleur-de-lis. This woodcut looks sort of like it ought to be a tarot card: the two of Irises. The Ace of Bilateral Symmetry. It's late, I'm whimsical, forgive me.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 27/08/2026

Tonight I am thinking about the (frequent) accusation that those of us who deal in 'rare' or 'antiquarian' books care more for the books than for people. I think it is a mistake to think that books are not human enough to be loved. (1/x)

Pages at the end of a sixteenth century book. It's Polybius, in case you're curious. The page on the left ends with the word "FINIS", and the page on the right has a register and a bit more information about this printing. In the background, behind the book, are shelves of poetry.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 25/08/2026

A regular brought his masonry drill bit and put our picture of Barbara Hotz up where she can see what's going on. That'll inspire us to clean up the chaos faster 😸 (Barbara Hotz was the owner of this house in the 19th century, as well as the owner of the Union Brewery after Simeon's passing.)

A quick snapshot of the picture of Barbara and her four older daughters now hanging above the entryway to the fiction room, which is also currently hosting a poetry annex, some gift items, and sorting space for a lot of German-language history books.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 25/08/2026

Dear publishers: Nooooooooooooooo stop doing this 😱 "Mpsteethlthkps" is NOT a thing 🤮

Part of a game box with what was obviously intended to be the word "Mythology" except, for reasons that are NOT VALID (I DON'T CARE WHAT THEY WERE), the publisher has tried to make the word look more Greeky by replacing both Ys with Psis and both Os with Thetas AND IT LOOKS BARBARIC.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 24/08/2026

New stickers just dropped! @stickerjunkie.bsky.social they're perfect 😸 thanks so much! Esky and Sophie:

Two die cut stickers, one showing a short-haired orange tabby cat with a white blaze on his nose, the other with a long-haired tortoiseshell cat doing one of her movie starlet poses

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 23/08/2026

In memoriam, I will recite parts of this at random times.

Sticking out of a stape-bound homemade chapbook, a sheet folded into thirds, with the following poemy type thingy:

Actualism - A Manifesto

Actuality is never frustrated because it is complete.

The purpose of "intention" is to complicate matter.
A material paraphase is a complication.

Or as Guillevic says, "The problem is to do to things what light does to them."

Typing thru sunglasses is, of course, an alternative.

There is no room for alternative illusions. There is barely room for the table and bed.

The World has changed its mind. Ice cream is on sale.

Concentration is a problem for those obsessed with process. For those obsessed with stasis, the opposite of concentration sets in, and there is a seeming dispersal throughout all sensory regions.

Where is the missing balance?

Actualism is to Chemistry what Fatalism was to the Middle Ages.

Actualism poses the question, "Of the seven openings in the human body, why are five of them located above the neck?"

Thoughts are concrete things.

Things are characterized more by their conditions than their conditions are characterized by them.

"The useless is not horrible until it is bandaged with truth."

Why belabor the impossible?

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 23/08/2026

Dave Morice is gone. He was much more than a poet, but in his honor, today, please allow a child to do something zany and clever, and/or Write down a thought with no punctuation all the way around the outside of a piece of paper, and/or Look up the Actualist Movement (it's a wild ride of a story)

The cover of a small, staplebound chapbook with a pattern of birds carrying alphabet letters and clouds forming the word "Speakeasy"

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 23/08/2026

G: [holding up a book from one of the boxes in the art room] Is this one of the ones I should just put directly in your hands? Me: [seeing the names "Milton" and "Doré" on the cover] Oh hi 🥹 I missed you Also me: Um. I had one before, and it sold... Uh, yes, thank you for bringing this up 😳🥴

A scene of chaos with half a dozen knee high stacks of books. In the foreground, a large clothbound book with gilt and black ink titles, with a large gilt angel in the middle. The titles read: "Milton's Paradise Lost Illustrated by Gustave Dore". The cloth is a bit rough around the edges, but it's still quite striking.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 23/08/2026

Whatever it is, I'm busy. Ask the cat 🤷

A plain brown enclosure with a pastedown showing Plate II and the following title and information:

A TRUE AND FAITHFUL RELATION OF WHAT PASSED FOR MANY YEERS BETWEEN DR. JOHN DEE.....AND SOME SPIRITS...

Dr. Meric Casaubon

Source Work of Mediaeval and Renaissance Magic - Vol 1

ISBN 0 9503876 14

340 x 220 mm - 480pp

Limited edition

Limited edition

Inside the plain brown enclosure is a spectacular gilt-blocked slipcase, the pattern very like artisanal lace, and inside the slipcase, a dust jacket showing assorted alchemical and esoteric symbols, along with a lengthy title and description of contents, including the line "TENDING (had it Succeeded) To a General Alteration of most STATES and KINGDOMES in the World"

A bookseller holds the slipcase and book open on her lap. Also visible in the picture are a printer, a desktop computer, a coffee thermos, the bookseller's kid's favorite plush toy which is stuck in the bib pocket of the bookseller's overalls, a plaid flannel shirt because she still dresses like it's 1999, and stacks of books. Like, a lot of stacks of books. And tarot decks.

The camera has backed up and now reveals even more stacks of books around the still very absorbed bookseller reading the featured book. There are a few other useful bits of information here, such as a poster with the signatures of various poets, an invoice from a publisher, a few reference books in various states of openness, a calendar that is actually turned to the correct year, and the backside of the tarot display case. And some more stacks of books. For good measure.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 22/08/2026

Fun fact: the man in this picture is actually my kid's great+ grandfather

Hans Langseth, an Iowa farmer famous for the longest beard on record (in Guinness even), sits in an ornately carved wooden chair, his beard draped to his knees and looping back up over his shoulder. Some joker photoshopped a patch over his eye and two enormous ravens perched on the chair's back

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 21/08/2026

I bought another beauty, too. Sulpicius Severus lived in Aquitania in the 4th century. This volume contains all of his known work as of 1665, when it was printed by the Elzevirs, including ecclesiastical history and his life of St Martin.

An attractive vellum binding ruled and decorated in gilt with black spine labels. A little very gentle cleaning and this book will positively glow. The title reads "Sulpicii Severi opera"

The engraved title, which depicts a humble man of the Church irking a temporal leader with his learning. Four knights grace the corners, and a second image between the lower two depicts a praying man experiencing a revelation while a skeptical cavalier observes him. A pleasant, cherubic cartouche surrounds the publisher's information and the date, 1665.

A random pair of pages inside the book, showing the still quite bright paper, bicolumnar layout, and on the left and right edges of the image, a bit of the marbling along the text block edges.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 21/08/2026

Dear Nathan's Parents, Oh, I hope he still does. Thank you. 🥹📚❤️

A lovely gift note penned on the front endpaper of a children's book. The inscription says: "To Nathan on his first Christmas from Mommy and Daddy. We can't wait to share these pictures and this story with you and hope you will always love stories. December 1983"

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 21/08/2026

It's paid for, so I can finally reveal the thing I am perhaps most excited about from a house full of wonders. Eusebius of Caesarea was among the early historians of Christianity (in the 4th century) and a noted scholar *who quoted all his sources extensively*.

The title page of a printed edition of the book described in the skeet, with an engraving bearing the motto "Festina lente", the publisher's name (John Alopecius, or John the Bald), and the date 1539.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 20/08/2026

🌶️🔥🌶️🔥😳 is it getting hot in here or is this the spiciest (and most beautifully written) novel about proofreading ever?

The History of the Siege of Lisbon, by Jose Saramago, in trade paperback

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 20/08/2026

Found it. The book I secretly bought for myself. Now I need to hide it again so I can focus on unpacking boxes 😅📚❤️

About twenty cardboard boxes completely blocking a section of the bookshop. On top of the nearest box is a hardcover copy of "Ghosts in the Middle Ages" by Jean-Claude Schmitt

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 20/08/2026

Digging though files again and stumbled across this segment from an ad created by the Downtown District association. Nothing's more #IowaCity than getting down with books and coming up with something to drink 😂

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 19/08/2026

Another late night unpacking boxes because we get another van load or three tomorrow so I'm sorting as fast as I can and what is this cute little OMG IT'S PROUST AUF DEUTSCH

A snapshot showing a hallway crammed with cardboard boxes stacked 4 deep. In the foreground there are some gaps in the box wall, and on top of one box sits a huge volume of Sartre, but more importantly, ten adorable tiny hardcover volumes in marbled paper with leatherette spine labels, each slightly larger than a mass market paperback

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 18/08/2026

Stumbled across this picture from our fiction section as it looked 20 years ago, back in the house on Washington Street.

In front of a window, a wingbacked chair with a woolen blanket thrown over the back. A pothos plant hangs above it. In the corner beyond that stands a narrow shelf that holds several Heritage Press editions. On the near side, densely shelved hardcovers and trade paperbacks, fiction by authors with names starting with F through J. Afternoon light streams through another, unseen, window and falls across one of the fiction shelves.

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The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 18/08/2026

Part of yesterday's haul. If you want to read Rilke, Mann, Maron, and Musil in the original, they're going up for shelving tonight. Then I open the next box...

A stack of German language books perched on the top of one of about 30 boxes

Some of the 30 boxes to be unpacked. They're big, probably 40-50 books per box. I need to empty them so that we can go back for the next load!

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