Colleen Gross and bookselling team at Dog-Eared Books in North Raleigh recommend beach reads, classics and North Carolina authors from their used-book collection.
by Ayn-Monique Klahre

The owners of NoRa Cafe, Gross and her huband Matt purchased Dog-Eared Books in 2023. The used bookstore offers a wide selection of books, nearly all of which cost less than $5. She and staffers Thoa Phon, Kailyn Shobert and Barclay Blankenship shared the recommendations.

What kinds of books do you gravitate toward, generally?

Thoa usually gravitates towards the realistic fiction, creative nonfiction, horror and mystery genres.

What book are you reading right now?

Currently, Thoa is reading How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler.

What is the best light read you’ve enjoyed recently?

For a beach read, Kailyn says, “You can’t go wrong with anything by Emily Henry! Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid is also such a great beach read, as it is fast-paced and is written in interview format, which is really captivating.”

What’s the best heavier book you’ve read recently?

Barclay recently read August, September, October by Craig Morgan Teicher and Ghost Of by Diana Khoi Nguyen. “Both collections chronicle kinds of grief and explore form in unexpected ways. Teicher’s book features a long-form poem that is startling self-reflectional, mimicking daily journal entries, moving through months of his son’s intense chronic health issues. Nguyen creates gut-wrenching concrete poems about family, identity and immigration, with a particular focus on her brother, who committed suicide and cut himself out of all the family pictures beforehand, filling the space where his body should be with poems. Both can be challenging collections in content and form, but entirely worthwhile.”

What is a classic/older book that you either always recommend, or have read many times?

The staff’s favorite classics include The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. 

What is a book by a Raleigh or North Carolina author that you’d recommend?

Thoa recommends What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher, which is a reimagining of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” a short story by Edgar Allen Poe.

Visit Dog-Eared Books at 4011 Atlantic Avenue or online at dogearedbooksnc.com.

This article first appeared in the August 2026 issue of WALTER Magazine.