Top 15 Best-Selling Books at The Local Store in 2025
kickstart your new year reading by snagging some of the titles that practically flew off the shelves last year
photos by McKenna Scherer, by V1 Staff |
Periodically, we take a look at what books have been locals' and shoppers' favorites from The Local Store. Below, you'll find the top sellers of 2025, most of which are still up for grabs – alongside the tons of other titles on the shelves! – at 205 N. Dewey St., Eau Claire.
1. A Forty Year Kiss by Nickolas Butler
“Charlie and Vivian parted ways after just four years of marriage. Too many problems, too many struggles, even though the love didn't quite die. When Charlie returns to Wisconsin forty years later, he's not sure what he'll find. He is sure of one thing -- he must try to reconnect with Vivian to pick up the broken pieces of their past. But forty years is a long time. It's forty years of other relationships, forty years of building new lives, and forty years of long-held regrets, mistakes, and painful secrets.
A brave and triumphant exploration of redemption and sunset triumph, A Forty Year Kiss is a once-in-a-lifetime love story, written with dazzling lyricism and remarkable clarity of spirit, from a celebrated author at the top of his game. It's a literary valentine that promises to be a love story for the ages.”
$28 • Purchase at TheLocalStore.org
2. The Cave Lady by Jane Glenz
"Was Eau Claire native Maud Phillips a “Mad Poetess” worthy of commitment to Mendota State Hospital, or was she more accurately a victim of the too-restrictive social mores of her time and place? Local author Jane Glenz explores this question in this book. Cave Lady focuses primarily on the Maud Phillips insanity trial."
$15 • Purchase at TheLocalStore.org
3. The Nine Devines by A. Darius Husain & Deacon Jerry Devine
" “It will only be temporary.” This was the promise made to Erma Devine when her four-year old son, Dan, was sent away from his eight siblings in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin to live with his aunt and uncle in Proctor, Minnesota. He never returned home.
Though Dan Devine would become a household name as the Hall of Fame Football coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish & Green Bay Packers, his upbringing remained carefully guarded even to those closest to him. The impact of Dan’s childhood separation and the fate of his brothers and sisters left behind was destined to be lost to silence.
While Dan is on his deathbed, however, his grandson Darius experiences a vision. Dismissive of the event at first, Darius is forced to confront the vision’s meaning when Dan’s brother, Jerry “Lefty” Devine, unexpectedly appears in his life. Together, they must decide how deep they will explore the Devines’ often difficult past so they may forge a new path for the future."
$19-25 • Purchase at TheLocalStore.org
4. Summertime Souvenirs by Ken Szymanski
"With Summertime Souvenirs, author Ken Szymanski sets out to do what souvenir coffee mugs and T-shirts can’t: tell the stories from life’s small turning points, especially ones that might otherwise fade away. From Tilt-A-Whirl rides to softball fields, from lake shores to wedding dance floors, Szymanski turns fleeting memories into lasting stories.
But Summertime Souvenirs is more than a memory collection—it’s about what those moments leave behind. And it’s an invitation to dust off your own forgotten summers—the ones that shaped you in subtle ways. From childhood to parenthood, from fresh starts to the final innings, summer always goes too fast.
Don’t let it slip away without a souvenir."
$12 • Purchase at TheLocalStore.org
5. Murder on the Chippewa by Scott Dyar
"Shots barked out on a hot July morning in the City of Eau Claire, Wisconsin in 1921. Within 24 hours the city will lose a valued officer and be plunged into one of the largest man hunts the state had seen. Over half a dozen suspects would be brought in with connections varying from Chicago crime rings to local moonshiners. No one would ever be tried for the crimes and the true identity of the man known as the “Car Barn Bandit” and the location of the stolen money now worth over $20,000 remains a mystery.
Follow the action, trace the steps of law enforcement, and develop your own case against the accused as you read this true crime history. “Murder on the Chippewa” results from years of in-depth research and includes maps, images, and other first-hand accounts that will lead you through the crowded events of the early 1920s that forever changed the community of Eau Claire, Wisconsin."
$10 • Purchase on TheLocalStore.org
6. The Blue Trunk by Ann Lowry
"Rachel Jackson’s idyllic life takes a dramatic turn when she discovers a woman’s scarf in her politician husband’s computer bag. But in an election year, seeking answers to questions of infidelity is not an option. When her mother gives her a family heirloom, a travel trunk owned by an ancestor, she finds a distraction. As she immerses herself in its contents, she discovers a woman whose life is vastly different from her own. Or is it? Determined to dispel the notion that her ancestor Marit was insane, Rachel sets out to unveil her unknown story. In the interwoven narratives of these two women, who are bound by blood and a shared struggle, The Blue Trunk is a poignant exploration of identity, love, and unwavering strength."
$7.99-29.75 • Purchase online
7. Gooder by Maureen Slauson
"Throughout her lifetime, retired Eau Claire guidance counselor Maureen Slauson has honored her father’s legacy. She followed in his footsteps as an educator and mentor, she worked as a community organizer and advocate, and now she’s an author.
Maureen recently completed the book project she started three years ago: sorting through 50 years of her dad’s newspaper columns, which ran weekly for 15 years, and his handwritten essays – easily over a million words. She condensed that to 425 pages for the collection Gooder: The Writings of Marty Crowe, published in October. The subtitle says it all: selected from five decades of his thoughts on teaching, coaching, humanity, God, and life.
Marty did what many columnists do: turn their lives into stories. For him, the backdrop was American history – wars in Korea and Vietnam that took his students, integration, small town politics, and high school drama. He paid attention to what he called “the quiet ones, the meek, the shy, the lost."
$35 • Purchase at TheLocalStore.org
8. Hidden History of Eau Claire by Diane Peterson & Jodi Kiffmeyer
"Eau Claire’s history is a rich tapestry of tragedy, mystery, and everything in between. Time after time, a round-faced man with a bristly mustache appeared amongst loggers in late nineteenth-century photos, but who was this man? In 1903, residents were left stumped when a mysterious body arrived by train from Chicago. Thirty years later, Hollywood came to Eau Claire with a world premiere of Out All Night, a comedy starring Zasu Pitts and Slim Summerville. Facing a labor shortage during World War II, the city welcomed German POWs and often worked side by side with them in the corn and pea fields.
Local authors Jodi Kiffmeyer and Diana Peterson collect the humorous, heart-breaking, and utterly befuddling stories of the city’s past. "
$24.99 • Purchase online
9. Oh, Claire! Lost at Half Moon Lake by Frank Smoot
"The editor at MAST Literacy LLC Doug Dixon worked with local historian and author Frank Smoot, CVM Director Carrie Ronnander and Archivist Jodi Kiffmeyer, to produce Oh, Claire! Lost at Half Moon Lake, a new historical fiction chapter book set in 1890s Eau Claire, weaving true historical details into a narrative following two children adventuring on the shores of Half Moon Lake. The tale is largely inspired by the memoirs of two former Eau Clairians. Artist and graphic designer Julio Moreno added the illustrations to make the story come alive visually based on several CVM descriptions and documents of the times."
$12 • Purchase at TheLocalStore.org
10. Population: 485 by Michael Perry
"Welcome to New Auburn, Wisconsin, where the local vigilante is a farmer's wife armed with a pistol and a bible, the most senior member of the volunteer fire department is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives, and the back roads are haunted by the ghosts children and farmers. Against a backdrop of fires and tangled wrecks, bar fights and smelt feeds, Population: 485 is a comic and sometimes heartbreaking true tale leavened with quieter meditations on an overlooked America."
$18 • Purchase at TheLocalStore.org
11. Improbable Mentors by Michael Perry
"This book details how unlikely encounters can shape creativity, business, and life. Brief, punchy, humorous, and packed with memorable characters, it is a powerful read filled with wisdom and warm storytelling for readers, entrepreneurs, and dreamers."
$13 • Purchase at TheLocalStore.org
12. A History of Eau Claire, Wisconsin – Volume 1: The Lumbering Era by Brian Blakeley
"Eau Claire, in the years from its founding as three separate hamlets in the 1840s to the early twentieth century, was a community that faced many difficulties and tensions. Fortunately, the white pine of the Chippewa River Valley provided the new City of Eau Claire (1872) with an economic rationale that sustained it for almost forty years. Lumbering produced its own problems, however. It created serious divisions within the city between the entrepreneurial and professional classes, drawn largely from New England and NEw York, and the laboring classes, predominantly recent immigrants from Canada, Ireland, Scandinavia, and Germany. Economic class divisions were exacerbated by religious, national, and ward rivalries througout the late nineteenth century. Ultimately, Eau Claire survived and prospered, but by 1990 the city's leaders realized that Eau Claire must do more than exploit diminishing natural resources if it wished to grow and retain its regional leadership. It needed to embrace manufacturing and reinvent itself as a modern, "progressive" industrial center."
$25 • Purchase at TheLocalStore.org
13. The Caretaker's Corner by Jim Alf
"Short essays to help those who have answered the call to be caretakers of persons with Dementia."
$15 • Purchase at TheLocalStore.org
14. Clumsy Love by Andrew Patrie
"In the summer of 2011, at a family gathering in the north woods of Wisconsin, a four-year-old named Simon―the only child of a couple from West Central Wisconsin―quietly made a bold statement. Donning oversized fairy wings, Simon’s attempt to dress as a girl stunned the extended family into silence. Four years later, Simon told their parents she was a girl and would be wearing a dress to her ninth birthday party. By thirteen, she had legally changed her name to Simone. From that point forward, the family began making regular trips to Madison to see an endocrinologist at the University of Wisconsin’s Pediatric and Adolescent Transgender Health (PATH) Clinic.
As Simone transitioned and entered adolescence, her father found himself grappling with increasingly complex questions: How could he fully support her without being consumed by worry for her safety? What should be done with family photos that captured a version of Simone that no longer existed? And how could he mourn the son he thought he had while wholeheartedly embracing the daughter he now loved?
Clumsy Love tells the story of one father’s evolving, imperfect, and deeply genuine efforts to raise his transgender child. As Simone grows into the person she’s always known herself to be, her father embarks on a parallel journey―learning, day by day, what it truly means to love the unexpected child who changed his world."
$27 • Purchase at TheLocalStore.org
15. When The White Pine Was King by Jerry Apps
"For more than half a century, logging, lumber production, and affiliated enterprises in Wisconsin’s Northwoods provided jobs for tens of thousands of Wisconsinites and wealth for many individuals. The industry cut through the lives of nearly every Wisconsin citizen, from an immigrant lumberjack or camp cook in the Chippewa Valley to a Suamico sawmill operator, an Oshkosh factory worker to a Milwaukee banker.When the White Pine Was King tells the stories of the heyday of logging: of lumberjacks and camp cooks, of river drives and deadly log jams, of sawmills and lumber towns and the echo of the ax ringing through the Northwoods as yet another white pine crashed to the ground. He explores the aftermath of the logging era, including efforts to farm the cutover (most of them doomed to fail), successful reforestation work, and the legacy of the lumber and wood products industries, which continue to fuel the state’s economy.
Enhanced with dozens of historic photos, When the White Pine Was King transports readers to the lumber boom era and reveals how the lessons learned in the vast northern forestlands continue to shape the region today.
$27 • Purchase online
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