I travel through St. Louis a lot now as I have good friends there and it is reasonably between Texas and Michigan, where I grew up. Since my friends in St. Louis are also book lovers, I have been discovering some great bookstores there. Dunaway Books is the most recent, and it’s worth visiting if you’re traveling through.

I visited them just before Thanksgiving; I didn’t buy much, but what I did buy was very satisfying. All three of the books I purchased on this inaugural visit have been on my want list for quite some time now. I’ve been looking for the second book in Allen Drury’s Advise & Consent series ever since I discovered it was a series. The first book was amazing. The other two books have been on my list based on recommendations, but I expect them to make good reading, too.

The upstairs area is where the more mainstream books are (though what that means today, I couldn’t say, so I probably shouldn’t use the term), and the science fiction and specialized topics such as the sciences are in the basement. The basement is a bit unorganized, but there are a lot of good books down there. I found Advise & Consent upstairs, and The Best of C.L. Moore and The Mainspring of Human Progress in the basement.

There are also some nice places to eat in the neighborhood, making it a good place to stop if you’re on a road trip.