A Nancy Drew Dream Comes to Life at Hollow Oak in Medley

When Katie Bossie told her husband she wanted to open a bookstore, she wasn’t sure how he would react.

His response, as she remembers it: “My God, we’re gonna save a fortune on books.”

During our visit to Hollow Oak at Medley, Bossie told that story with Devin O’Guin nearby. While she worked on the lease, he started on the logo. His work now extends to the mural, much of the shop’s design and the bookmarks customers take home.

“Everything beautiful is attributed to him,” she said.

Bossie grew up in Johns Creek; O’Guin grew up in Lawrenceville. After about a decade in software sales, she wanted to try something she would enjoy. She bought a domain name and spent years thinking about the bookstore before leaving her job to pursue it.

The name reaches further back, to a childhood favorite: the Nancy Drew mystery The Message in the Hollow Oak. Long before there was a shop at Medley, there was a young reader who loved that book.

Another childhood influence turned up when I asked about the ladder.

Bossie wanted a library ladder, a detail inspired by Beauty and the Beast. She called it her “little millennial dream.”

Our conversation eventually moved from how the shop came together to what we should read next.

Bossie had recently finished The Searcher by Tana French and was enthusiastic about its writing. She likes crime fiction with literary qualities, stories where the language matters as much as the mystery. O’Guin’s favorite territory is science fiction, though their reading overlaps.

When we asked for a recommendation, Bossie had a question of her own: historical fiction or nonfiction? She picked up Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile, describing a nonfiction book that had drawn her in like a novel. For science fiction, she brought O’Guin into the conversation.

We tried to remember titles we had read and talked about losing interest partway through a series. O’Guin recommended The Three-Body Problem, with a qualification: its opening takes some patience. He thought the history in those early pages was worth staying with.

Bossie said customers have been enthusiastic since the shop opened. When choosing books, she wanted a range of authors and stories so readers from different backgrounds could find something that interested them.

Plans for the shop include book clubs, author talks, letterpress workshops, creative writing classes and craft nights. Bossie wants people to come in, put their screens aside and make something together.

Paper books, Kindles and audiobooks can coexist, Bossie said. Some readers will always want to hold a book and turn its pages, while audiobook purchases through Libro.fm offer another way to support independent bookstores.

Before we left, Bossie reminded us to take one of O’Guin’s bookmarks. I asked who chose the music. That was his department, too, and she said he took it very seriously.

Would Christmas songs be coming soon?

“Yes, yes, we’re gonna pull some in.”