It’s become a favorite quarantine-era date and pastime for my wife and I to go out horror hunting across the southeastern US to add more tomes to the Macabrary. At long last, we made it to Mr. K’s Used Books in North Charleston…and it did not disappoint!
Situated in an easy-to-access strip mall along with some other intriguing haunts (an antique coin and collectibles shop, for one), Mr. K’s is meticulously organized and reasonably priced. I’m always pleased when a store offers a veteran discount, and I’m happy to report Mr. K’s does (when you buy the volume I do, you need every penny off you can get!).
Exciting finds for the week include a beautiful Onyx Edition “Sunglasses After Dark,” by Nancy Collins, as well as a Carroll & Graff collection of Cornell Woolrich’s horror shorts; for those of you unfamiliar with the noir master, Cornell Woolrich’s prodigious output included many stories adapted to film, including Hitchcock’s “Rear Window.” I’m stoked about scoring a clean copy of Thomas F. Monteleone’s “Borderlands 2,” as well as some Leigh Clark’s “Reincarnate” and Kathryn Ptacek’s “Shadoweyes.”
As is ritual, Vanessa and I had to hit up Kaminsky’s Bakery in downtown Charleston, taking our goods to go (a true shame, because a glass of wine and a sit down treat at Kaminsky’s is as close to bliss as we get on this side of life.
To finish the trip off, we stopped at Trade-A-Book in Mount Pleasant, where there are almost always some great finds, among them today a few missing Chet Williamson and T.M. Wright’s. A great haul, all for just over a hundred bucks. I can’t wait for quarantine to end, but until it does, skulking about bookstores with masks and hunting for delicatessens is certainly not the worst way to spend a weekend!
The Macabrary 