Dark Romance and Fantasy Fiction Take Flight on The Raven’s Quill
The mobile bookstore pops up at local businesses and events.
PHOTO BY KRISTY GRAVER
I went to a brewery and left with a werewolf romance novel.
Last Saturday, Dancing Gnome in Sharpsburg hosted The Raven’s Quill mobile bookshop, a 6-by-12-foot, enclosed trailer with more than 500 different titles on board. It pops up at local businesses, events and private parties every weekend. Follow the flightpath on social media.
Bibliophiles will find everything from mafia love stories and mythological fantasies to literary role-playing games and a whole shelf devoted to dragon tales.
PHOTO BY KRISTY GRAVER
Can’t decide? Opt for a “Blind Date With A Book” and let fate choose your next read. Each beautifully wrapped tome comes with tea or cocoa, bookmarks, stickers, a face mask, a review sheet and a quill pen.
Owner Becky Frazier of Shaler is happy to offer a recommendation or two — or 10.
“I’ve always loved books; they’re my escape,” she says. “I get lost in a world and get out of my head.”
A longtime fan of historical fiction and biographies, Frazier was drawn into the fantasy realm by Dionne Grayson, her coworker at Rivers Veterinary Urgent Care in Baldwin. The voracious reader suggested “Fourth Wing,” a romantic yarn about a dragon-riding heroine.
Frazier blazed through the entire Rebecca Yarros series in a few months. Doomscrolling can’t hold a candle to the literary exploits of fire-breathing monsters.
After 30 years of caring for animals and kids, they empty-nester decided to start a new chapter. Her husband, Drew, helped her transform the barebones trailer into a rolling wonderland of imagination. The bird that visits her every morning inspired the company’s name.
PHOTO BY KRISTY GRAVER
The Raven’s Quill launched April 18 at Dancing Gnome, a brewery that fittingly has a pint-sized humanoid creature as a mascot. Beer drinkers flocked to the trailer, filling tote bags with T-shirts, Kindle accessories, coloring books, young adult novels and hardbound volumes.
“People don’t expect that when they go to a brewery they’re going to walk into a fantasy bookstore,’ Frazier says. “It’s part of the magic.”
Although I typically read nonfiction, Grayson, now a fixture on The Raven’s Quill, told me to sink my teeth into “Cry Wolf,” a lycanthropic novel by Patricia Briggs.
So far, it’s been a real howl.
