A new independent bookstore is coming to South Charlotte, and it carries a story far deeper than its shelves of new titles. The Reading Tree Bookshop is expected to open at 7314 Waverly Walk Ave., Suite E4, in the Waverly development in mid-December, with a grand opening planned for January 2027.
The shop will add another independent bookstore to Charlotte's growing scene and give South Charlotte residents a new place to gather, as reported by Axios. It will sit directly adjacent to Warby Parker in the commercial retail center off Providence Road near I-485, according to the shop's Indiegogo campaign. Co-founder Julie Isgrigg has noted the opening will make Charlotte a city of nearly 1 million residents with only three independent bookstores dedicated exclusively to selling new books, per Shelf Awareness.
A Career Built Across the Book Industry
Isgrigg has served readers for more than 27 years, according to Axios, and her path to opening a bookstore runs through nearly every corner of the industry. She began her career at Borders corporate headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, before working at Charlotte-based wholesale distributor Baker & Taylor, the same report notes. She most recently spent seven years as a regional sales rep at Hachette Book Group before leaving this past September to found the shop.
Isgrigg was inspired to make the leap from sales to ownership in January 2025, during a sales call with the co-owners of Wonderland Books in Bethesda, Maryland, the same report notes. That summer, she was awarded the Kristin Keith Sales Rep of the Year award by the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association shortly before her departure from Hachette. Isgrigg has said people in the book industry often dream of opening their own store, and in a book industry, that dream is apparently contagious enough to pull a 27-year veteran off the wholesale side and into retail.
Honoring Sam Ebersman
The store's other two founders, David and Michelle Ebersman, bring a deeply personal motivation to the project. The couple hopes to honor their late son Sam, who died in an accident several years ago, by hiring several workers with autism. Isgrigg has said David and Michelle believed Sam could have worked and thrived in a bookstore.
That mission will show up visually throughout the shop, which will feature recurring design motifs including an octopus wearing glasses as a recurring wink to Sam's memory, according to the store's Indiegogo page. The commitment also lands against a stark national backdrop: 2025 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found just 22.8% of individuals with disabilities in the U.S. were employed, compared with 65.2% of people without disabilities. Research from Drexel University found that 14% of autistic adults receiving state disability services held paid community jobs.
A Forest Theme, Down to the Shelves
Inside, the 2,200-square-foot space will sell new books for all ages and will be open daily, per Axios. The children's section will anchor around a 10- to 12-foot 3D tree, and Isgrigg's mother is making mushroom-cap floor cushions for kids to sit on during story time. Isgrigg has said she hopes visitors will come into the forest and put down roots.
The shop plans to host book-related events, community gatherings, arts and crafts nights, and a silent book club. Its shelves will be built by Franklin Fixtures, the same company that built the shelves for the shop around the corner in the 1998 film You've Got Mail, a detail that doubles as a nod to the romance of bookselling itself.
Filling a Long-Standing Gap
Charlotte's new-book retail market has historically been thin. Park Road Books, established in 1977 by John Barringer as Little Professor Book Center and purchased by current owner Sally Brewster in 2003, served for decades as the city's sole full-service independent bookstore selling exclusively new books, according to Regal House Publishing. South Charlotte in particular had lacked a physical indie bookshop of its own despite the area's rapid growth.
The Reading Tree Bookshop estimates the full buildout will cost roughly $500,000, and the founders have launched an Indiegogo campaign with a $20,000 fundraising goal to help cover shelves and some inventory. The project arrives amid a broader national rebound for independent bookstores: the American Booksellers Association's 2025 annual report counted 605 new independent bookstores opening across the country last year, the fifth consecutive year with more than 200 openings, pushing total ABA membership past 3,400 stores across nearly 3,800 locations. A separate ABA survey found 73.3% of responding independent bookstore owners reported higher sales in 2025 than in 2024, with 66.3% reporting growth during the holiday season.
A Citywide Book Scene
The Reading Tree joins a Charlotte book scene that Axios describes as showing no signs of slowing since spring 2026. The city has added several mobile bookstores alongside its brick-and-mortar shops, plus a steady calendar of book clubs, book fairs, brewery pop-ups and larger book events. Charlotte Bookpalooza, now in its third year, sold more than 6,000 tickets for its festival at Truist Field earlier this month, making it the event's biggest year yet, per Axios.
