the Bookshop on Bend

Maren Ashby spent fifteen years in Chicago becoming a smaller, smoother, more manageable version of herself. Then her great-aunt Eleanor died and left her a bookshop in the small Indiana town she swore she'd left for good. She tells herself it's temporary. Six weeks, maybe eight, just long enough to settle the estate and figure out what's next. But the bookshop has other ideas. There's Quincy, the enormous, ancient orange cat who's been guarding the place longer than anyone can explain, and who looks at Maren like he's been waiting for her his whole strange, long life. There's the herb garden behind the shop, where things grow that have no business growing in Indiana. There's a whole town that remembers her as the quiet child who always had an animal nearby, and seems willing to wait for her to remember too. Slowly, the bookshop becomes hers. So does the magic she spent years pretending she didn't have. And so, maybe, does a life she didn't know she was still allowed to want. A heartfelt, character-driven story about returning to a place that knew the real you all along, The Bookshop on the Bend is for readers who love their fantasy cozy, their magic quiet, and their found communities full of good food, gentle humor, and one deeply opinionated cat.