Once upon a time, back in the days of flip phones and answering machines, Care Bears and Cabbage Patch Kids, there was a wondrous place on the north side of Tucson where children could literally make themselves disappear … into a world of books.
At the Haunted Bookshop in Tohono Chul, kids hung out with Harry Potter. They got goosebumps reading Goosebumps. They explored The Secret Garden.
“I grew up going to the Haunted Bookshop,” Crispin Jeffrey-Franco said with a smile last week. “My uncle would take me almost every weekend. Even though I was allergic to the paper pollen — I’d sneeze the whole time I was in the store — I loved going there. It was a magical place. I never knew what I’d find when I walked in the door.”
The Haunted Bookshop is gone now — it closed in 1997 — but its spirit lives on in Oro Valley.
Welcome to Stacks Book Club, a bookstore bar and coffee shop that opened in the Oro Valley Marketplace last July. Now meet the man at the register: Jeffrey-Franco, who co-owns the store with his wife, Lizzy.
In a very real way, they are calling out to those same young people Jeffrey-Franco saw at Tohono Chul 30 years ago. Want to browse for a book while nursing a vanilla latte? Read a chapter or two while sipping a glass of merlot? Check. Check. Stacks is open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, and — good news — Jeffrey-Franco has outgrown his allergy.
“All of us loved to read at some point in our lives,” he explained. “We’re trying to help people get that feeling back.”
Staff members at Stacks are called “booktenders,” as adept at recommending a good novel as they are at pouring a good latte.
The coffee, tea, pastries and wine all come from Southern Arizona providers. The artwork on the walls and the merchandise on the kiosks come from local artisans.
Still, make no mistake. This is a bookshop. Even the store’s name is a bow to popular literature.
“Six or seven years ago, when Lizzie and I lived in Phoenix, we started a small book club with our friends and people we knew at work,” Jeffrey-Franco said. “Our first book was ‘Ready Player One,’ and – in the book – Wade Watt lived in a part of Kansas City called Stacks. We started calling ourselves the Stacks Book Club, and the name kind of stuck.”
Jeffrey-Franco said there are now some 5,000 books new books on the shelves and the mix is evolving as the customer base grows.
“The poetry section has gotten a lot bigger than it was,” he said. “We have more large-print books now. We have more book in English and Spanish now.”
Stacks opened on July 8, and business continues to be brisk.
“The first eight months have been fantastic,” Jeffrey-Franco reported. “We originally projected a 60-40 split for the café and books on the revenue side, and we’re closer to 50-50. The reading community has definitely embraced us to an amazing extent so far.”
The dining area at Stacks Book Club.
To their credit, the Jeffrey-Francos have opened their doors wide to that community.
Make Way for Books now holds a Storytime for preschoolers at Stacks the first Saturday of every month.
Among its six monthly book groups is one for kids ages 9-12 and another for retirees living in Saddlebrooke.
In February, the store hosted a book fair with 12 local authors. On April 18, playwright and author Victor Lodato will be there to celebrate the launch of “Honey.”
“We’re doing a Harry Potter Trivia Night next week,” Jeffrey-Franco said. “We do spelling bees, open mic nights, puzzle competitions … Really, we want this to become a community space where people can come for all sorts of things. If your PTA or homeowners association needs a place to meet, give us a call.”
Crispin and Lizzy both grew up in northwest Tucson, he graduating from Marana High School and she from Mountain View. After launching their careers elsewhere, they moved back to the area in 2019. The prospect of starting their own business began taking shape the following year.
“The idea of a bookstore was probably in the back of our minds – we had started our own book club in Phoenix a few years earlier – but it wasn’t until COVID that we really had time to sit down and talk about it,” Jeffrey-Franco said. “OK, so what kind of a store should it be? What should it look like? Where should it be? COVID gave us a whole bunch of time to talk to booksellers around the country and learn what it would take to run a store.”
Soon, a concept began taking shape.
“We knew pretty quickly that the book bar model was the way we wanted to go,” Jeffrey-Franco said. “We’d seen them in a lot of places, but not here in Tucson. Book bars are great spots to grab a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, and just hang and be for a while.”
Also of note: the bookstore café would drive revenue in between book sales.
To test the market, the Jeffrey-Francos contracted with Ingram — America’s largest distributor of books and magazines — and began doing popup book events.
Seeing green lights everywhere they looked, the couple began working with the Town of Oro Valley to find a location.
So far, at least, it appears to have been time well spent.
Stacks is the only bookshop of its kind in Tucson and the only bookshop of any kind north of Ina Road.
“I think we’re in a good place,” Jeffrey-Franco said. “I know I am. Now I can get my books for free.”
At Stacks Book Club, the owners seek to create a sense of belonging.
FOOTNOTES
Light a prayer candle for Syrena Arevalo-Trujillo, owner of Barrio Books in South Tucson. A recent Facebook post by her husband, Walter, reported that Syrena is again on the wait list for a lung transplant. She underwent the same procedure five years ago.
For a rundown of upcoming events at Stacks Book Club, visit stacksbookclub.com/events.
One reason the Jeffrey-Francos chose to call their business a book club rather than a bookstore? “The word ‘bookstore’ just feels transactional,” Jeffrey-Franco said. “A club is a place you belong, and we want people to feel they belong here.”
