WEASELS and NYMPHOS at the Vintage Paperback Collectors Show

The Mystery and Imagination table at the 35th Vintage Paperback Collectors Show, Glendale, CA

photo copyright © 2014 Wyatt Doyle

Mystery and Imagination Needs Your Support!

Mystery and Imagination's website is www.MysteryandImagination.com

Their ebay store is www.ebay.com/usr/malcolmbook

Biscontini, Doyle and Danley at Mystery and Imagination This Thursday!

New Texture writers Andrew Biscontini (nu luna) and Wyatt Doyle (Stop Requested, Weasels Ripped My Flesh!) join novelist Kate Danley (The Woodcutter, Maggie For Hire) for a free-form, open conversation about genre fiction, creative writing and independent publishing — and a generous helping of no-nonsense advice on seeing your creative work through to completion and putting it into print.

A limited number of pre-release copies of Wyatt's new release as editor — Walter Kaylin's He-Men, Bag Men & Nymphos — will be available at the event, and via mail order from the shop.

Pre-order signed books from Mystery and Imagination; purchases will ship to mail order customers following the event. Plenty of parking on Brand or in the lot behind the shop. Event starts at 7 pm; admission is free.

Mystery and Imagination Bookshop 

238 North Brand Blvd. Glendale, CA 91203

Tel.(818) 545-0121 

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Doyle, Danley and Biscontini Writers' Panel in Glendale, October 3

New Texture writers Andrew Biscontini (nu luna) and Wyatt Doyle (Stop Requested, Weasels Ripped My Flesh!) join novelist Kate Danley (The Woodcutter, Maggie For Hire) for a free-form, open conversation about genre fiction, creative writing and independent publishing — and a generous helping of no-nonsense advice on seeing your creative work through to completion and putting it into print.

Pre-order signed books from the shop; purchases will ship to mail order customers following the event. Plenty of parking on Brand or in the lot behind the shop. Event starts at 7 pm; admission is free.

Mystery and Imagination Bookshop 

238 North Brand Blvd. Glendale, CA 91203

Tel.(818) 545-0121 

View Larger Map

Guillermo del Toro at Mystery & Imagination this Thursday, 6 pm!

This is a big deal.

From bookseller Christine Bell:

Director, screenwriter, novelist Guillermo del Toro, signing PACIFIC RIM: MAN MACHINE AND MONSTERS and THE STRAIN, Thursday July 25th at 6 pm

Mr. Guillermo del Toro has volunteered to sign as a benefit to our bookshop, this Thursday July 25th at 6 pm. He squeezed us in his already jam-packed schedule in order to help us out before he jets off the next day. What a generous and kind-hearted man. Since the schedule is tight, he will just be signing books and chatting to people as they get their books signed. We will make a signing-line number when you pay us for your book purchase. The books are on a first paid, first served basis.

The pre-order books for both mail order and for attendees are:

PACIFIC RIM: MAN, MACHINE AND MONSTERS. Hardcover in dust jacket. It is a large, magnificently illustrated book with the foreword by del Toro. $45.00

Just In! 20 copies of THE ART OF PUSS AND BOOTS. Lavishly illustrated hardcover in dust jacket. First edition, first printing. $39.99.

Mail orders are welcome, and patrons can bring items from their own collections for signing (there will be a signing fee for items not purchased at the store). Pre-orders are strongly encouraged - and will get you an early space in line.

Please join Guillermo del Toro and help keep the lights on at one of the finest bookstores in town.


Mystery and Imagination Bookshop
238 North Brand Boulevard
Glendale, CA 91203
(818) 545-0206


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Support "Ray Bradbury's Favorite Bookshop"

Mystery & Imagination urgently needs your help. 

From author Steven Paul Leiva:

"I've been very pleased with the reaction to my last blog at Huffington Post on Mystery & Imagination Bookshop. It has now received 500 Facebook LIKES and 165 Facebook SHARES. The pleasure comes not just from finding readers for my words -- that always pleases a writer -- but because it points out people's interest in independent bookshops that continue to exist in an economy that is all that conducive to their survival. However, if they can survive, I believe independent, neighborhood bookshops they can become THE bookshops of the future, offering a personalized service, love, and caring for books and book lovers that set them apart from both the digital sales and digital delivery of books, neither of which I am against. And, let's face it, the digital is here to stay. But independent bookshops offer an alternative to a trade that neither the digital nor the big box, big corporate book stores can offer. They are now needed cultural institutions. With your support, they can become in the future essential and honored cultural fixtures."

Click to read Mr. Leiva's essay, "Ray Bradbury's Favorite Bookshop." His new book, Searching for Ray Bradbury, can be purchased from Mystery & Imagination.

Please support the shop with your purchases, in person or online, TODAY.

Mystery and Imagination Bookshop
238 North Brand Boulevard
Glendale, CA 91203
(818) 545-0206


photo © 2013 Wyatt Doyle

New Texture at Mystery and Imagination, 2010

One of the best bookstores in Los Angeles needs your help.


I can't remember now how I first came to visit Mystery and Imagination Bookshop in Glendale. It's one of those places that becomes such an essential part of your world that you can't recall when it wasn't.

When we began publishing books, that's where we debuted them, thanks to Malcolm and Christine's generosity. Our first three releases — Chris D.'s A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die, Josh Alan Friedman's Black Cracker and my and Stanley Zappa's Stop Requested — together in one event.

Iconic Twilight Zone author George Clayton Johnson 

Our appearance coincided with the birthday of the great Twilight Zone writer George Clayton Johnson, and we — me, Josh Alan and Chris — dedicated our efforts to him. He seemed to approve.

Josh Alan performs in Mystery and Imagination's intimate upper alcove.

That's the kind of place Mystery and Imagination is, and that's what we're in danger of losing. The shop has been  long served as a unique hub for both writers and book lovers, offering frequent signings, readings and fiction workshops that connect brilliant talents with readers and fans, old and new.

Other artists Mystery and Imagination has hosted include Ray Bradbury, William F. Nolan, Earl Hamner, Jr., Ray Harryhausen, Michael Feinstein and Dennis Etchison.

Promotion for our 2010 event at Mystery and Imagination 

Today, the shop is in crisis, with less than a week to raise the money to keep the lights on. Your purchases can help save the store, and the shop is asking for your help.

We've lost far too many great independent bookstores in recent years. Whether in person or online, please support Mystery and Imagination.

Mystery and Imagination Bookshop 
238 North Brand Boulevard 
Glendale, CA 91203 
(818) 545-0206


text and photos copyright © 2010, 2013 Wyatt Doyle

Save Mystery & Imagination Bookshop!

Mystery and Imagination Bookshop needs your help.

Days after the publication of Steven Paul Leiva's effusive Huffington Post profile of the Glendale independent bookstore, "Ray Bradbury’s Favorite Bookshop," proprietors Malcolm and Christine Bell sent this plea to their regular customers:

Dear Bookfriends,

Please help. Our bookstore is in jeopardy and needs your purchasing support now.

For those of you who don’t live within driving distance, we have made a 20% off Sale on our eBay store.  We have listed many SIGNED & special books there recently.

For folks within driving distance, please come for discounts galore.  We need 100 persons to spend $100.  Our financial obligations must be met in one week.  Thank you for your support.

Please note our new expanded open store hours: Tuesday through Saturday 10:00-6; Sunday 12-5

Thank you for your support!
Cheers,
Christine 

There are few places a book lover's $100 can be happier spent, whether in person or online. Please help keep the lights on at one of the finest bookstores in town.

Mystery and Imagination Bookshop
238 North Brand Boulevard
Glendale, CA 91203
(818) 545-0206


View Larger Map

photo © 2013 Wyatt Doyle

Ray Harryhausen, 1920—2013

"Ray Harryhausen lives in the UK, but is on the West Coast for the big Comicon in San Diego. A Glendale bookshop called Mystery and Imagination hosted him for an evening that week. I'd heard him speak in Los Angeles about a year ago and he was really something.

"Surprise guest Ray Bradbury turned up to visit with Harryhausen. Lifelong friends who first bonded over dinosaurs, Bradbury sported a dinosaur necktie for the occasion. When wine was served, the two old masters sipped from dinosaur mugs.

"The depth of what I feel for both of them is hard to put into words. How do you measure the scope of what these two gentle men have contributed to the popular imagination over the last several decades? I can't even process what they mean to me, personally. They were the first monster magazine names I learned to recognize; these things I love, that's what these men do. And they're not only magicians, they happily share all their secrets.

"There are a lot of things that help make each of us what we are, but Harryhausen and Bradbury are a big influence on the best parts of me. They're ambassadors of the imagination, emissaries from the greatest place there is. And they're here to remind us about it, because we sometimes forget."

[2007] 


Text and photo copyright © 2007/2013 Wyatt Doyle