Celebrating its independence in specialty bookselling for 33 years, Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore's atmosphere is warm and friendly, with oak/cherry bookcases, shelves clearly labeled with the historical era / topic, mystery, or related subjects , and comfortable seating, inviting you to browse your chosen subject(s). You won't "get lost in the stacks", but you can definitely get lost in the books. As many of you have seen in local press and the Tribune, Augie is planning to retire. He had hoped to complete the purchase by December 31,2023, but complications have delayed commencement of transfer to a new bookseller. We don't want to leave Forest Park without a book store, so we are still in the process of making sure an independent bookseller succeeds him at Centuries & Sleuths, and he is willing to postpone his retirement a little while until we can make it happen.
Centuries & Sleuths wishes a Happy 2024 and beyond, to all of our friends and patrons, with plenty of good books,
good friends & good health!
The new year brings new hours, as we work to sell our bookstore.
Tue-Sat.12pm -5pm
Sun.-Mon. Closed
Appointments can be made outside posted hours by calling the store owner at :
Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore's Bestselling Authors of First Quarter, 2023. These Bestsellers are determined by a variety of factors (e.g. Author Signings, Mystery & History Discussion Groups' choices, Special Programs, Newspaper & Magazine listings, etc,) in addition to customer & staff recommendations.
First, on behalf of the book and comic industries, we must thank the Book Industry Charitable (Binc) Foundation for all it has done to help stores and store staff in need, especially since March 2020.
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With the help of three volunteers, Binc created an online application to further ease the process. Other volunteers pitched in as well, and Binc essentially brought on anyone who had the skills French and her team knew they needed. They also relied on a public health emergency policy that Binc had formulated in the past. As a result of all this, Binc was able to send out the first checks to individual applicants on March 17. At this time, Binc was receiving a new request for assistance every 15 minutes, all day every day.
"It's humbling to know that what we have been working towards for the past eight years, all of the advocacy we did and conversations we had, it paid off," French says. "Folks found us when the need was highest."
(For a full account of how Binc responded in the first few months to the pandemic, see this Shelf Awareness article from May 2020.)