The Mysterious Bookshop
Bookstore: The Mysterious Bookshop
Location: New York, New York
The Official Patter: "The Mysterious Bookshop is an independent bookstore and publisher specializing in mystery fiction. It is one of the oldest mystery bookstores in the Unites States.
In addition to housing its own imprint, the shop contains the offices of both the Mysterious Press, and MysteriousPress.com, an e-book imprint. The store and its various publishing enterprises are owned and operated by editor and publisher Otto Penzler; its inventory consists of new and rare titles in detective fiction, crime fiction, spy fiction, thrillers, and various other mystery fiction subgenres. The store also features the largest collection of Sherlock Holmes titles and Sherlockiana in the world, as well as a considerable Bibliomystery collection."
Why I Love Them: What's interesting about all the times I've visited New York is the number of times I ask people what their favorite bookstore is and most people just comment that there aren't really many bookstores about. How can they be this ignorant!?! There are so many independent bookstores full of goodness that you could spend your entire vacation going from one to another! Which makes me now wonder about the trustworthiness of my friends... perhaps they know me too well and know that this is what would happen and have therefore been deceiving me "for my own good." Little do they know that being surrounded by books is the best thing for me! In fact the weekly newsletter that drops in my inbox every Friday from The Mysterious Bookshop makes me wonder if I could get my doctor to recommend a trip to the store for my well being...
Best Buy: As I'm sure ALL of you know, I'm an addict of Lauren Willig's books. I don't actually know how many times I've written features for my and other blogs about how much I love her books, or even how many theme months I've done by this point, but one of my favorite theme months was Jazzy July. Jazzy July was to celebrate the release of her 2015 stand alone The Other Daughter. I got to spend that summer reading about Evelyn Waugh and other "bright young things" not to mention how much I love The Other Daughter which I devoured twice! So obviously I was sad that she wasn't going anywhere near me on her book tour, but such is life, and such is me, I will always find a way. That way was The Mysterious Bookshop. Nothing could have been easier than contacting them for a copy of The Other Daughter, signed, to me, Miss Eliza, aka my handle should Mr. Darcy ever bother showing up. The lovely surprise once I got the book was that Lauren mentioned Jazzy July in her inscription. That's what I love about forging relationships with authors and independent bookstores, there's this whole symbiotic relationship. I like their books, I buy their books, I buy their books from an independent store and everyone gets something out of it, the store gets money and a chance for the author to visit again, the author gets money and the chance to write another book, and while I am the one losing money, I get a new book. It's the circle of life! A circle that is made possible by reaching out to stores online. If there's anything I hope this final month of Support Your Brick and Mortar does is to show you that there are resources, there are stores out there to help you get signed copies of books that you will always treasure. All it takes is a little research and a call or an email.
My friend Jess and I years ago started referring to each other by our Austen handles, aka Misses Jessica and Eliza. In the spring of 2013 I texted Miss Jessica wondering what she would like for her birthday and she had an idea. It just so happened that 2013 was the bicentenary of the publication of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. As you now know over a month into my 
Madison College has a wonderful selection of wood type and when pursuing the drawers I found these stunningly large "P's" and was only sad for about half a second that there wasn't three of them, Miss Jessica being one of the co-creators of P, P and P, which is the Pride and Prejudice Colin Firth miniseries watched while eating Pizza. But in all honesty P and P works better. Because this was a quick one-off and not class work, where I was actually doing only two prints, one for me and one for her, I did this during open lab time. I didn't even do a full lockup, I just used some magnets and the showcard press, which is basically a proofing press. Funnily enough I had to do this twice, because I'm not the best at spotting typos when they're backwards. There might have been two "S's" at the end of "Misses" because I was going crazy that day apparently. So, on my second attempt I think I nailed it.
I originally went for too strident a color, a kind of spring green, and went all out metallic gold the second time around, because if gold doesn't say big two hundredth birthday celebration, I don't know what does! For those who do letterpress you might notice that there is actually more texture to the print than just from the wood type. I shall now impart a trick my teacher Beth showed me which I absolutely adore. What I did is I first printed the piece on a heavily textured paper. You pull the paper off and instead of re-inking you print again on a crisp clean sheet of perfectly flat paper. The impression of the textured paper remains in the ink on the wood type and transfers onto the new paper. I use this technique a lot because it just adds something extra, also ironically the textured paper is some of the paper I've used for my Jane Austen series I've been talking about. So this was the first non-illustrative piece I did in tribute to Jane. This was also the first piece for the gift exchange between me and Miss Jessica. Don't worry, there's more to come on that front!
