By Helene Hanff
112 pages; Penguin
Available at: Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound

A must for bibliophiles, this is the story of Helene, a freelance writer in New York City, and Frank, a used-book seller in London, who develop a friendship through letters about their favorite books. Like Helene, Holmes is a fan of small, out-of-the-way bookshops; she picked up this epistolary work at the suggestion of a shopkeeper in just such a place. "Reading someone else's letters has a voyeuristic quality to it," Holmes says.

— As told to Abbe Wright