The Book Bungalow

Tanya Mills opened The Book Bungalow on September 26, 2018, after deciding that St. George — a city of well over 90,000 people and the commercial center of a region stretching into Nevada and Arizona — had no independent bookstore of its own selling new books. That absence was the whole reason the shop exists. Mills' son Jason, who has high-functioning autism, had been turned away from book retail work elsewhere; opening a bookstore meant creating a place built around the books he loved and the community he deserved to be part of.

The Bungalow sits at 94 W Tabernacle St in the Historic District, a block west of the Temple and close to the heart of old downtown. The store carries more than 6,000 titles across literary fiction, mystery, fantasy, romance, children's, and graphic novels, curated personally by Mills using multiple industry resources. In 2021, a dedicated Speculative Room expanded the store's footprint, including a Harry Potter section the staff calls the "Cupboard Under the Stairs." Events happen as often as four times a week — author visits, book clubs, writing groups, school programs, monthly spotlights on local authors, whose work the store carries commission-free for three months.

Mills' line on the store's purpose is direct: "If you want to support your community, if you care about your town, support the businesses that are there." The Book Bungalow is the only room in Southern Utah where that argument has a spine of 6,000 new books behind it.