Givens Books & Little Dickens, Lynchburg, Va., will change hands next month: Anneli Givens Morse will buy the 50-year-old bookstore from her father, Danny Givens, in August and officially take over in September, the Roanoke Times reported.
Founded by Givens's father, George, in 1976 under the name Boonshire Books, the store first occupied a renovated gas station before moving and becoming Givens Books in 1979. In the late 1980s Little Dickens, a toy store, opened, and Danny Givens bought the bookstore from his father in 1999. The same year he built the store's current home at 2236 Lakeside Dr.
Givens told the Roanoke Times the bookstore saw record sales in 2025 and so far, 2026 has been the store's "strongest" in its history. He said he is thrilled to be keeping the bookstore in the family and worried that if he ever sold the bookstore to an investor, "it would be the death knell." He added that when his daughter, who previously worked in the tech industry, told him she wanted to buy the store, he was overwhelmed. "I cried myself to sleep," Givens said. "I was in a state of shock."
Givens Morse said she left the tech world because she was "feeling algorithm fatigue" and did not want to spend her life that way. Looking ahead, she wants to expand the store's offerings of workshops and community events and emphasize its role as a third space.
"I have such strong ideas of what this business is and what this business can be for another 50 years," Givens Morse said. "The next chapter is figuring out, in an ever-increasing digital world, how we slow down and really look at what the community needs and how we can best help each other."
