Andy and Allison started the Bookhouse in Monifieth in December 2017 and moved it a few miles along the coast to Broughty Ferry in September 2020, their son Peter now managing the shop on Gray Street. It has become the sort of independent bookshop that does the work of a community centre as much as a retailer: eight book clubs run out of it, author events, ties to the local schools, enough of a reputation that the trade magazine The Bookseller came to write it up. Broughty Ferry is a well-off seaside suburb of Dundee that can support this kind of thing, and does — a bookshop with a manager who reads what he sells and owners who chose the town on purpose. Six days a week, a proper range, and the book clubs that turn customers into regulars. The best independent bookshops are half shop and half habit; this is one of them.
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