11/17/13 MYSTERY LOVES COMPANY

Would you like to go where they really know your name? Better yet, if you read mysteries, they know what you want to read?

Try your local independent mystery bookstore. I drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge last week to the quiet shores of Oxford, Maryland, to drop in on Kathy Harig and the Mystery Loves Company Bookstore. An energetic woman with short white hair wearing a blue turtleneck and corduroy slacks, Harig greeted me with a smile as she waved good-bye to a woman bemoaning the fate of two handsome oak trees in town. The store is on the main street in a building dating from 1900—it’s on the Historic Register–and used as a bank and then a post office for 30 years each.