The door-to-door bookstore A novel

Carl Kollhoff spends his evenings traversing his small German town, delivering books to customers of the bookstore where he has worked for decades. For most of these people, Carl is the only outside human contact they have, and Carl prides himself on providing them the exact books that will satisfy their reading tastes. And then one day, Schascha, a nine-year-old girl in a sunshine-yellow coat, appears and bursts into his carefully ordered routine. With the new owner of the bookstore threatening to suspend the book-delivery service and Schascha causing him to rethink the role he plays in his customers' lives, Carl questions what his future will look like. This slim novel is a warm and heartfelt story about the myriad ways books create connections between people. Readers who love Fredrik Backman and books about books, such as The Last Chance Library (2021), by Freya Sampson, and The Reading List (2021), by Sara Nisha Adams, should pick up this charming story about the power of books and reading.