ADRIAN — Julie Maurer’s goal in life was to end up as “the little old lady who owns a bookstore and writes novels.”

With the recent opening of her new store, Tropetastic Books and Gifts, she’s a little bit ahead of schedule.

“I’ve always wanted to start my own used bookstore,” Maurer said. She moved back to Michigan from Arizona in 2022, and the opportunity presented itself in the form of some extra space inside Rad Raptor Comics, the downtown comic shop owned by her brother, Jeff Conolly. 

Rad Raptor’s business had started to shift toward online sales, which resulted in Conolly needing less of his retail space at 209 N. Main St. So Maurer moved in, and now she has a stock of several hundred books at any given time, waiting to be discovered by the curious reader.

For Maurer, who used to manage a Waldenbooks in Okemos, finding books for the store — scouring thrift stores, going to estate sales, curating a collection — is just as fun as selling them.

“I love the hunt,” she said.

And by running a store, she said, “the endorphins that I get from buying books, I can put to use.”

The bookstore’s main focus is genre fiction, such as science fiction, fantasy, romance, and horror. Maurer said that makes it fit well with the comic store’s existing audience.

She did a kind of test run for the store with a booth at last year’s Lenawee Pride festival in September. That experience led her to discover that there’s a huge market for LGBTQ+ themed books, which sell so quickly that she has trouble keeping them in stock.

“That’s an area that is clearly a need in the community,” she said.

Another offering is called “Blind Dates with a Book.” Maurer has curated a collection of books that she sells wrapped up so the title can’t be seen, with only a brief description of the content, so that buyers can be surprised.

In addition to being an avid reader, Maurer is also a lifelong writer. She started out in journalism, working as a community newspaper reporter in Arizona for six years, and is now a romance author, published through Harlequin. 

Tropetastic Books and Gifts is located at 209 N. Main St., Adrian, inside Rad Raptor Comics. Store hours are Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday from noon to 5 p.m., and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. For more information, find Tropetastic Books and Gifts on Facebook.