Former B. Dalton manager Evan Middling took over Starrlight Books at the turn of the 21st century, but the Flagstaff, AZ, shopkeeper isn’t interested in bestseller lists and trendy self-help titles. He’s a bookworm with a gallerist’s eye toward peculiar curation, stocking his shelves with vintage sci-fi paperbacks, eastern philosophy, Kerouac and Bradbury and every Bukowski title under the sun, early print editions of literary classics like Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and rare travel books like a 1938 children’s tome by author-adventurer Richard Halliburton (pictured below). The second release in Halliburton’s Book of Marvels, series, The Orient offers escapist snapshots of Hindu temples, Egyptian tombs, untamed jungles, and the Great Wall of China. (An “alternative fact” about that last one—that the Wall was the only man-made thing on the planet that could be seen from the moon—still persists today. Wrong!) The shop is small but prices are fair for an indie and the owner is always up for a chat. Obscure requests welcome.

15 N. Leroux St., Flagstaff, AZ; 928-774-6813.