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EPOCH., 69 Main Street, Belfast, ME (2026)

09/26/2026

A really special pair just came across my counter.

Tea with Sister Anna: A Paris Journal and Postmarks: The Summers of ’98 by Susan Gilbert Harvey are companion volumes built around the remarkable story of the author’s great-aunt Anna, an American artist who traveled to Paris and Europe at the end of the 19th century.

Using family letters, journals, sketches and her own travels a century later, Harvey brings together two generations of women separated by 100 years. It’s part travel writing, part family history and part glimpse into the life of an adventurous woman at a time when traveling abroad to study art was no small undertaking.

And what makes this particular set especially nice: both books are signed and personally inscribed by Susan Gilbert Harvey.

I’m keeping these two together as they belong.

$45 for the signed set of two.

Available at Chase’s Pre-Read Books & More, 69 Main Street in beautiful Belfast, Maine.

09/26/2026

BONUS SATURDAY POST for the kids! 📚❤️

I couldn’t resist doing another post today because some of the children’s books going onto the shelves are just beautiful. I’ve always thought a really good children’s book is as much about the artwork as the story, and these are the kind you want to sit down and look through even when you’re a grown-up.

There’s Maurice Sendak’s wonderfully silly Bumble-Ardy, about a pig finally getting the birthday celebration he’s always wanted, and Zoo’s Who by Douglas Florian, which combines playful animal poetry with his quirky paintings.

The Color of Home by Mary Hoffman is a particularly lovely one about a young refugee adjusting to a new country and using art and color to remember the home he left behind. And When the Slave Esperança Garcia Wrote a Letter introduces young readers to the remarkable true story of an enslaved woman in 18th-century Brazil who wrote a letter demanding justice.

For the little ones, there are plenty of sweet and funny choices too, including The Sheep Who Hatched an Egg, Gideon & Otto, Rufus Goes to School, and Brownie Groundhog and the Wintry Surprise.

Sometimes the children’s section has some of the best artwork in the whole bookstore. ❤️

Come have a look! I’m here until 5 today at Chase’s Pre-Read Books & More, 69 Main Street in beautiful Belfast, Maine.

09/26/2026

Saturday morning at Chase’s Pre-Read Books & More! ☀️📚

It’s sunny and beautiful in Belfast today, the kind of Saturday that’s perfect for wandering downtown, grabbing a coffee, and spending a little time getting lost among the shelves. I’m here at 69 Main Street and open 10 to 5 today, with lots of books going out.

A few that caught my eye this morning:

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is one of those books everyone should read at least once. It follows Janie Crawford through love, loss, independence, and her search to live life on her own terms. Beautifully written and still incredibly powerful.

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George seems especially appropriate for a bookstore. A Paris bookseller runs a floating bookshop on the Seine and believes there’s a book for almost every heartache. Of course, he’s carrying a heartache of his own.

Aleph by Paulo Coelho is part travel story, part spiritual journey. Coelho sets out across the world trying to reconnect with himself and confronts questions about love, forgiveness, destiny, and the lives we might have lived.

For something completely different, A Spy Among Friends by Ben Macintyre tells the remarkable true story of British intelligence officer Kim Philby, who spent years secretly spying for the Soviet Union. It reads remarkably like a spy novel, except it actually happened.

And there’s poetry today too, including Answering Back, edited by Carol Ann Duffy, and Hayden Carruth’s Toward the Distant Islands, along with plenty more fiction, nonfiction, history and unexpected things tucked around the shop.

Come wander. You never know what book is waiting for you.

📍 Chase’s Pre-Read Books & More
69 Main Street, Belfast, Maine
Saturday 10–5

09/25/2026

Friday morning at Chase’s Pre-Read Books & More! 📚☀️

It’s a beautiful, sunny morning in Belfast, and I have a feeling it may be a quieter Friday downtown. With lots of people heading to the Common Ground Fair, and rain coming for the next couple of days, today might be the perfect opportunity to peruse the bookstore without the crowds. I’m open 10–5 today at 69 Main Street.

Instead of showing you a whole stack of books today, I thought I’d slow down and take a closer look at just two.

📖 The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave
Hannah’s husband suddenly disappears, leaving behind a note with only two words: “Protect her.” He means Bailey, his 16-year-old daughter, who hasn’t exactly welcomed Hannah as her new stepmother. As the FBI gets involved, Hannah realizes her husband wasn’t quite the man she thought he was. Part mystery, part family story, this #1 bestseller has plenty of suspense but also a lot of heart.

📖 The Silence in Her Eyes by Armando Lucas Correa
Leah has a rare condition called motion blindness, so she relies heavily on sound and smell to understand what’s happening around her. When she hears what sounds like a violent confrontation next door, she becomes convinced her neighbor is in danger. Then strange things begin happening in Leah’s own apartment. It’s an unsettling psychological thriller that keeps you wondering how much you can trust what you perceive.

Two very different mysteries, both built around people discovering that what they thought they knew may not be the truth.

Come wander the shelves awhile. 69 Main Street in beautiful, sunny Belfast. Open 10–5 today!

FridayReads

09/24/2026

THURSDAY READS: A LITTLE SOMETHING WITH BITE 🧛📚

These just look like fun.

With cooler days ahead, I’m starting to think about those books you curl up with beside the fire, preferably with a whole stack within arm’s reach. And I think Charlaine Harris might be just the ticket.

Most of these are from Harris’s wonderfully entertaining Sookie Stackhouse series, featuring a telepathic Louisiana waitress whose life gets considerably more complicated once vampires, shapeshifters, werewolves, witches and other supernatural characters start wandering through it.

Mystery, romance, murder, Southern humor and just enough weirdness to keep the pages turning. These are the novels that inspired HBO’s True Blood, and judging by these fabulous covers alone, I’m ready to move to Bon Temps.

I also have Grave Surprise, from Harris’s Harper Connelly mysteries, about a young woman with the rather inconvenient ability to find dead bodies and determine how they died.

These strike me as exactly the sort of books you start on a chilly evening thinking you’ll read a chapter or two…and suddenly it’s 1:30 in the morning.

A nice little stack of Charlaine Harris has just hit the shelves at Chase’s Pre-Read Books & More, 69 Main Street in Belfast.

Open today, Thursday, 10–5.

09/23/2026

Wednesday at Chase’s! 📚☀️

I’ve been away for a few days, and apparently everyone decided to stay away with me! 😂 Sunday was awfully quiet, and today is starting off a little sleepy too. But it is an absolutely beautiful day in Belfast, so come downtown, wander Main Street, and most importantly, come buy some books!

Today’s little shelf sampling has a definite nonfiction “learn something you didn’t know you wanted to know” theme:

📕 A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud by Peter Watson takes on the enormous task of tracing the ideas, discoveries, beliefs and inventions that helped shape human civilization.

🎭 Something Wonderful by Todd S. Purdum tells the story of Rodgers and Hammerstein and the partnership that transformed Broadway, giving us Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music.

✈️ How to Win at Travel by Brian Kelly, founder of The Points Guy, is packed with practical advice for traveling smarter, making the most of points and miles, and getting more out of your adventures.

🐕 Barking Up the Right Tree by Dr. Ian Dunbar explores the science and practice of positive dog training and building a better relationship between humans and their dogs.

💡 Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath asks a fascinating question: why do some ideas lodge themselves permanently in our brains while others disappear almost immediately? It explores the qualities that make ideas memorable.

✍️ And for my readers who love books about books, How Fiction Works by literary critic James Wood takes apart the machinery of great fiction, looking at narration, character, detail, realism and the choices writers make to bring a story to life.

And that’s only a handful of what’s hitting the shelves.

Chase’s Pre-Read Books & More
69 Main Street • Belfast, Maine
Open today 10–5

The door is open, the books are waiting, and Belfast is gorgeous today. Come find something you didn’t know you needed. 📚❤️

09/20/2026

Sunday at Chase’s Pre-Read Books & More 📚

It’s a quiet, overcast Sunday here in Belfast, and the sky keeps threatening rain. Nothing made it out onto the sidewalk today, but the flag is out, the door is open, and I’m here from 11–4!

I especially love when customers come back and tell me about a book they’ve read. Recently, a customer who bought We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas came back after finishing it and told me how much she enjoyed it and recommended it. And, as luck would have it, I have another copy on the shelves.

This is a sweeping family novel following Eileen Tumulty, the daughter of Irish immigrants, as she grows up in Queens and spends decades pursuing the kind of secure, comfortable American life she has always imagined. She marries Ed, a scientist and teacher, and together they build a family. But as the years pass, their carefully constructed life is profoundly changed by illness.

It’s a big, intimate novel about marriage, family, ambition, aging, caregiving, disappointment, and the strange ways a life can turn out differently from the one we planned. It was Matthew Thomas’s debut novel and received considerable attention when it was published in 2014.

Sometimes the best book recommendation doesn’t come from a review. It comes from someone walking back through the door and saying, “I finished this. You need to tell people about it.”

So I am. ❤️

Open Sunday 11–4
Chase’s Pre-Read Books & More
69 Main Street, Belfast

09/19/2026

Sometimes the right piece of art finds the right person. ❤️

This lovely woman from Rowlett, Texas visits Maine every summer, and today she was absolutely tickled pink when she spotted this little portrait at Chase’s Pre-Read Books & More. She immediately thought it looked like her, and looking at the two of them together, I think she may be onto something!

One of my favorite things about having the shop is watching someone discover that completely unexpected thing they didn’t know they were looking for until they saw it.

This one was apparently waiting for her all the way up here in Belfast, Maine. ❤️

09/18/2026

FRIDAY AT CHASE’S PRE-READ BOOKS & MORE 📚☀️

What a difference a couple of days make! It’s a beautiful Friday here in Belfast, the sun is shining, and it is so much warmer than it’s been the last few days. A perfect day to wander downtown and browse some books.

I’ve been pulling random titles to put on the shelves today, and here’s a little sampling:

📖 The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers (And Their Muses) by Terri-Lynne DeFino — An especially appropriate one for Maine! An aging literary legend arrives at a Bar Harbor retirement home filled with writers, old rivalries, unfinished stories, secrets, and complicated relationships.

📖 The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom — Historical fiction set on a Virginia plantation at the turn of the 19th century, following an orphaned Irish girl who is raised alongside the enslaved people working in the kitchen house. A sweeping and emotional story of family, race and loyalty.
📖 On Rue Tatin by Susan Herrmann Loomis — Part memoir, part food book, and part love letter to France. Loomis recounts creating a home in a small Normandy town, complete with French cooking, markets, neighbors, and plenty of wonderful food.

📖 Saving Italy by Robert M. Edsel — From the author of The Monuments Men, this fascinating nonfiction account tells the story of the people who worked to save Italy’s priceless art and cultural treasures from destruction and theft during World War II.

And that barely scratches the surface. We’ve also got Kristin Hannah, Martha Hall Kelly, Marie Arana, Allegra Goodman, Stephen P. Hinshaw, and plenty more making their way onto the shelves.

Come enjoy the sunshine, stroll Main Street, and find something you didn’t know you were looking for.

Chase’s Pre-Read Books & More
📍 69 Main Street, Belfast, Maine
🕙 Open Friday 10–5

09/17/2026

Thursday Shelf Lineup 📚

It’s a beautiful Thursday in Belfast, and the shelves are full of an especially eclectic mix today. From literary fiction and memoir to music, spirituality, history, mystery, and even a little sea-glass hunting, there’s something here for just about every kind of reader.

A handful from today’s lineup:

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami is a strange, hypnotic novel about an ordinary man whose search for his missing cat and wife pulls him into a surreal world of mysterious strangers, buried histories, dreams, and increasingly blurred realities.

The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman follows an eighty-year-old retired pharmacist who unexpectedly encounters the man who broke her heart sixty years earlier. A warm story of second chances, family, memory, and perhaps just a touch of magic.

Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon by Peter Ames Carlin traces the life and career of one of America’s great songwriters, from Simon & Garfunkel through his remarkable solo career and Graceland.

Belly Up by Rita Bullwinkel is an unusual collection of short stories exploring bodies, relationships, loneliness, desire, and the wonderfully strange ways people move through the world.

Shoutin’ in the Fire by Danté Stewart is a deeply personal collection of essays reflecting on Black identity, faith, family, love, and what it means to seek belonging in America.

And for anyone who would rather be wandering a Maine beach today, The Sea Glass Hunter’s Handbook by C.S. Lambert is a practical little guide to finding, identifying, dating, and appreciating those beautiful pieces of glass that wash ashore.

We’re open 10 to 5 today at Chase’s Pre-Read Books & More, 69 Main Street in Belfast. Come spend part of this beautiful Thursday browsing the shelves. 📚☀️

EPOCH.

09/26/2026

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Wednesday	10am - 4pm
Thursday	10am - 4pm
Friday	10am - 5pm
Saturday	10am - 5pm
Sunday	12pm - 4pm