Bradley's Books is one of those unexpected little surprises one happens upon every so often.
It's a three-day-a-week bookstore inside of Winning Coffee. A first visit to Winning Coffee, one is probably expecting just coffee and something to eat, maybe some entertainment, but if that visit happens on the right day of the week, one will discover a corner devoted to a solid selection of used books mainly of the modern and Classic Literature genres, along with poetry and select nonfiction, including Eastern religion and thought, and philosophy.
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Bradley, along with one or two helpers, lugs in about 50 boxes of books (approximately 1,200 books), tucking into the corner where Winning Coffee houses its fresh coffee roaster. This collection of books is a small fraction of what Bradley houses in three storage units with roughly 12,000 books total. Many are repeats of the best and most popular titles.
Bradley's Books is opened 10 a.m. until 4 p.m., but many days he's ready to sell books earlier and tends to stay late, like this evening when he was helping customers close to 6 p.m. Like any bookstore, Bradley finds that he's continuing to order more and more specialty books upon individual requests.
Bradley and his wife used to own Birdsong Bookstore, also a used bookstore, on Central Avenue SE. But after a devastating fire in 1997, they lost more than 70,000 books, they decided to sell the business to a former employee. The fire occurred early in the morning of the Summer Solstice.
Just recently, Bradley's Books began accepting debit and credit cards.
Most of the books are offered at half of today's retail prices. read more