While I've been to the Wonder Book and Video stores in Frederick, Maryland and Gaithersburg, Maryland, I've never been to the one in Hagerstown. So this past Sunday I decided to drive up and check it out.
The Hagerstown store is located in a rundown shopping plaza on Dual Highway (i.e., Rte 40). it's got more or less the same space and floor plan as the other two Wonder Book outlets.
I was able to pick up eight older paperbacks:
All of the above books were priced in the $3 - $4 range.
As with the other stores, Wonder has a good selection of these older books - particularly DAW Books from the 70s and early 80s.
Needless to say a lot of these are going to be Marion Zimmer Bradley, Andre Norton, Bertram Chandler, and John Brunner volumes. But if you are willing to scrutinize the shelves - and to bend down on aging, creaking knees to look at the selections on the bottom shelves, where no one ever goes - you are likely to find some rarities.
As with the other Wonder outlets, there was a large section devoted to paperback horror novels. As well, there is significant shelf space for hardbound sf. And by the time I finished the sf aisle, well, I didn't really have time left to examine the aisle devoted to non-genre fiction paperbacks - one could easily devote at least an hour to that aisle itself.
Summing up, all three Wonder outlets are worth travelling to if you are looking to get some old paperbacks at affordable prices. Given that the Hagerstown and Frederick stores both are located on the same road - Rte 40 - and they are only about 27 miles apart, it's entirely feasible to visit both stores in the same afternoon.....and the drive between Hagerstown and Frederick, past both Greenbrier and Gambrills state parks, is very scenic.
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