- Another place that's new to our state is a charming bookstore in the little town of Mount Holly.

Alison Sheridan was getting her masters degree in publishing in Ireland when she met her future husband, Matthew.

When she decided to move to North Carolina, she took a name from her husband's Irish roots and along with their Labrador, Seamus, opened a popular bookstore called Cleary's.

[bright string music] - I am Alison Sheridan and we're in Mount Holly, North Carolina.

And I am the owner of Cleary's Bookstore.

- And I'm Matt Sheridan and I am her other half, I'm here to help.

- He's our unpaid COO.

[bright string music continues] The community of readers that I've found in the Greater Charlotte area has just been wonderful to discover.

We had visited Mount Holly, that I went and toured all of the bookstores that I could find and locate.

I kind of was getting a sense that we didn't have a strong community of readers.

And since opening the bookstore, that has just been proven so demonstrably false.

So we're on Main Street, Mount Holly.

We fell in love with it, kind of.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

And this is Black Sheep Coffee.

This is our favorite coffee shop that we go to.

- Seamus.

- Seamus loves Michelle.

You wanna go say hi to Michelle and get a treat?

Yes?

Good boy.

- Good boy.

Remember just two.

- Just two.

- Good boy.

Come here.

- I love Mount Holly because it is a quirky, eclectic town when you really tuck into it and get to know the people that embody the community.

You have a large swath of people from different backgrounds and everybody loves this town and everybody loves the community.

I also, especially like that a lot of the business owners on Main Street are women, young millennial women.

Mount Holly's kind of scrappy too.

And I really like everybody's spirit around the city.

[bright string music continues] - I worked on the branding and the graphics and merch for her store.

We of course had to include Seamus, the store dog.

When Alison started, she was handwriting, I think she might still be on all the bags.

And so it became sort of a thing on social media.

And so we decided to do a tote bag as well.

[bright string music] - I went back to Ireland for about two weeks and somebody apparently got bored and ended up deciding that she wanted to run a business to own her own bookstore.

And within the space of two weeks, had a full business plan ready to go.

And by the time I got back here, it was pretty much all goals.

Like, yep, we're going seeing places, we've got an idea of where we want to be, it's gonna work.

And I'm dreading next time I have to leave.

- Which is the summer, but I already started another business this year.

So you don't have to, yeah.

- You did, so you can't start a third one.

- You don't have to worry about that.

- No.

- The whole store is about the joy of reading and about the readers who enjoy Cleary's.

As you'll see from our book clubs, we're just a group of like yappers who love to talk about books.

It's a little chaotic, some might argue a little cultish, but we just try to have as much fun as we can with reading.

- I came here pretty soon after it opened.

It was pretty cool, I didn't know Cleary's was coming here and I was walking down the street one day and just saw it.

Alison told me about the book club.

So I've been here since the first one.

She has a bunch of different themed ones, so it's different genres every week.

Like mystery, thriller, historical fiction, sci-fi.

And so you can come to as many or as few as you want, which I come to all of them because I'm obsessed.

- I couldn't be prouder, honestly.

- Thanks.

I really just want it to feel cozy.

I mean, we've got the creaky floors, we've got the exposed brick.

We put it in a Hogwarts ceiling 'cause I'm a millennial nerd.

We don't take ourselves too seriously.

So it's really kind of about finding what is going to make you want to crack that book.

- Cleary's Bookstore is at 105 North Main Street in Mount Holly.

They're open Tuesday through Sunday.

And to shop online or find out more about their book clubs, check out clearysbookstore.com.