37The Bookshop That Spoils the Ending

Most shops put what they're selling in the window. This one painted an enormous open book on the side of its 1890s building and printed the last line right on it: “And they lived happily ever after to the end of their days.” That's Tolkien — very nearly the closing words of The Hobbit — which means Fabled Bookshop & Café is spoiling one of the most beloved endings in literature, in public, at billboard scale, and daring you to be mad about it.

You can't be, of course. It's the friendliest possible spoiler: every story in the building ends well if you just keep reading. Two Waco women announced this bookshop in 2017 and tucked it into one of downtown's oldest storefronts, and the wall works like the shop's thesis statement — vines curling around the pages, white paint glowing off the moss-green brick, an ending offered up front so you'll come inside and earn it.