The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks

When Maggie Banks arrives in Bell River to run her best friend's bookstore during her maternity leave, she expects to sell bestsellers to a small-town clientele. Instead she finds a shop bound by the rules of the town's literary society: in honour of Bell River's famous author, Edward Bell, the store may sell nothing published after 1968. Maggie — who is not much of a reader herself — has walked into the one bookshop in America where the books people want are contraband.

With the store tipping toward ruin, Maggie starts breaking the rules. She launches an underground book club and a run of secret literary events built around contemporary titles, and the shop begins to draw a crowd for the first time in years. Keeping the rebellion hidden gets harder as it grows, and harder still when Maggie uncovers a piece of Bell River's history that the town has spent decades not talking about.

Shauna Robinson's second novel, published by Sourcebooks Landmark in November 2022, is a warm, funny story about books, community and the difference between honouring the past and being trapped by it, with a quiet romance running alongside Maggie's own late discovery of reading. It was an Indie Next pick and a LibraryReads top ten selection for November 2022.