R.L. Stine's Really Scary Stories

Located off Peachtree Road in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood, Oxford Books was one of the great bookstores of yore—shelves of books straight up to the ceiling, and built-in, rolling wooden ladders to help customers to the top of the stacks. It was a destination bookstore. We didn’t pop in; we went to hang out. Many of my childhood memories are caught up in those aisles: weaving through legs, looking for my siblings and parents, carrying giant stacks of books I wanted to show them. To call the children’s section a corner was misleading—the section was huge, covering books for babies through young-adult literature, and there was even a small play structure in the middle. Parents used to dump their kids there while they browsed elsewhere. We’d lay splayed out on the floor, pass books back and forth, and then beg to take some home.