If you are interested in local history, looking for a guide to the area, reminiscing about your Iowan times, or in search of books published by Iowan small presses, this is the section for you.

We have gift books, picture books, Hawkeye yearbooks, local atlases, and county histories, and a large collection of books about people, places, and events in general Iowan history, as well as:

Journals from the University (such as The Iowa Review) and Coe College (such as Colere and The Pearl).

Iowa City and University of Iowa history.

Small Presses include Toothpaste Press, Torch Press, Maecenas, The Spirit That Moves Us, and other local publishers, as well as back issues of The Wapsipinicon Almanac - check at the front desk for the latest issue.

State Historical Society publications include works about the political, social, and economic history of Iowa, as well as several biographies. Authors like William Petersen and Benjamin Shambaugh are here, as well as issues of The Annals of Iowa and of The Palimpsest and official publications such as geological surveys and old city ordinances.

Local Authors contains a very broad cross-sample of Iowan authors, from early pioneer memoirists to recent children's writers. Writers' Workshop has first, signed, or otherwise special editions of books by Writers' Workshop alumni and teachers.

Natural History includes field guides to wildflowers, birds, ferns, bats, and more as well as books on Iowan geology, ecology, and important naturalists.

Also in this room are our collections of fisrt editions, signed copies, antiquarian, and rare books. What we have available varies constantly, but these are the types of things we carry:

Small Press chapbooks, some signed, most scarce;

Collectors' Editions - often leatherbound, all well-made, some complete-works sets;

First and Signed novels, poetry, and history;

Antiquarian books, particularly scholarly works and books on travel and discovery from 1870 and before;

Rare books of merit, especially books on religion, philosophy, history, and fine arts; we also have a few scarce, older children's books.

Born on a family farm in Cedar County in 1895, Weldon, the present owner's great-grandfather, loved gardening and woodwork and spent a great deal of time teaching his work ethic, humor, pragmatism, and heritage to Nialle when she was little. When he passed away in 1991, he left her the old books he had shared with her - Shakespeare and Longfellow and other classics - and it may be that from these she caught the book collecting bug.

His son, William Weldon, worked the same farm and taught Nialle chess and fishing as well as good financial management (and a man who made money farming in Iowa in the 1980s obviously knew a thing or two about that). When the Haunted was up for sale in 2004, William Weldon was Nialle's first investor and advisor and remained her staunchest business supporter until his passing on April 22, 2009. While Nialle remains inept at growing even cucumbers, William Weldon understood that the seeds of curiosity and literacy, well tended, can fruit as bountifully as a field of good Iowan earth, and for that, she remains grateful.