Quiet streets. Night has fallen. Shops have closed. A key is turned, a door opened, lights switched on, illuminating shelves and tables filled with books and books. The owner settles in behind the counter, ready to welcome night owls, shift workers, random people passing by, visitors to the postcard village of Lunenburg with three bookshops in the main street. Only Elizabeth’s Books opens after the others have closed.

Chris Webb, a former seaman turned bookshop proprietor, loves the quiet, the few people around, the comforting company of 40000 books. He has his reasons – to honour Elizabeth whom he worked with for decades, to sooth the ghosts of frightening experiences at sea, to just be, to be there for the other.

Chris rings a lady in her nineties who can no longer read. “But I can read to you”, was Chris’s reply four years ago. And so he does, every night, on a landline, reading out loud, adding to the 70+ books he has read to her so far. A moving moment. Money is of little importance. Being kind, selfless and genuine is.

Lunenburg in Nova Scotia is where Chris lights the street after dark. A place I now want to visit because of Chris and Elizabeth’s Books.    

[This blog is inspired by The Bookstore That Never Sleeps, a documentary by Canadian filmmaker Justin Zoras, which had its world premiere at the New Zealand Doc Edge Festival 2026.]