Atomic Books: no weapons of mass media in this store

You will not find a Starbucks at Atomic Books. Nor will you find any John Grisham, Tom Clancy or anything that has Harry Potter in it. If you want anything on The New York Times' best-seller list and a venti mochaccino , one of the owners would be happy to point you in the direction of the nearest Barnes and Noble.

Here's what you will find at the store, which is located on the campy section of 36th Street in Hamden known as "The Avenue":

You will find books, but not the books you can find in a supermarket or high school library. Atomic Books prefers authors that produce more alternative works, and the store has maintained a friendly relationship with McSweeney's, an independent publishing house that has released works by Dave Eggers, Nick Hornby, Neal Pollack and Hopkins professor Stephen Dixon.

"Where other bookstores will look at bestseller lists as something they will stock their stores with, we usually see it as a detriment," said Benn Ray, who co-owns Atomic Books with his fianc??e Rachel Whang. "It doesn't fit in with our store. Anything that's a bestseller, we're embarrassed to carry it."

Ray is not shy about offering his opinion on mainstream fiction. "Tom Clancy books are for people who don't like to read," he said. "And they generally turn the books into movies for people who don't enjoy cinema. And this is coming from someone who has a master's degree in English and teaches at the University of Baltimore."

At Atomic Books, which is housed in a small red building that appears to be a converted old-fashioned schoolhouse, you will also find movies. The store has a rack of newly-released DVDs, but chances are, you didn't see any of the films when they came to theaters. In fact, they're mostly about vampires, such as Blood Sisters of Lesbian Sin and Vampire Obsession. Don't expect to find anything by Steven Spielberg or James Cameron--the closest you'll come is Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler, a World War II epic about a women's prisoner of war camp. The subtitle is The Last Orgy of the Third Reich. That's right, it's Holocaust porn.

Despite the fact that Atomic Books sells this and similar products that some may consider offensive, and that the first thing one sees upon entering the store is a large painting of interlocked nude bodies, Ray says that alienating customers has never been much of a problem.

"Most of our customers, even if they didn't know what to expect, start to look at stuff and they laugh as [they] take a lap around the store. Those are the customers that get it," he said.

Atomic Books has garnered such a cult following that it inevitably attracted the attention of John Waters, the eccentric Baltimorean cult-film director. Waters' movies include Hairspray and Cecil B. Demented, and have starred pop-culture icons ranging from Johnny Knoxville to Johnny Depp, as well as notable figures such as Kathleen Turner, Chris Isaak, Ricki Lake and former gunslinger Patty Hearst. Waters likes Atomic Books so much that he directs his fan mail through the store, and the store's walls are adorned with his disturbing Christmas cards from years past.

Atomic Books also has magazines, but not newsstand favorites like Newsweek or People. Atomic Books boasts a magazine section full of more esoteric periodicals, such as Heeb, which bills itself as "the new Jew review" (the cover is a picture of Jesus with a caption reading "Back off, Braveheart"), and Bitch, a self-described "feminist response to pop culture."

In addition, the store carries an extensive selection of comic books, though its staff generally tries to avoid the mainstream superhero comics. They opt instead for, you guessed it, underground comics. They have a large section of erotic comics, for those who don't feel their inner-child will be threatened by combining the medium of cartoons with pornography, as well as graphic novels, which are less obscene than they sound (a graphic novel is a novel that has graphics, not a novel that is graphic--it's like a long comic book).

For those who prefer more academic subjects, Atomic Books also has a religion section, as well as a shelf of political books, which is adroitly located one shelf over from the "Torture/Death" books, and one shelf above the "Stories for Disturbed Children" section.

And while that sign on the door that advertises Atomic Books as being "Literary Finds for Mutated Minds," might appear to be a general philosophy, it has also proven to be a successful sales strategy for the store.

"If you look at just about any independent bookstore, they're struggling to compete against all the larger corporate chains. Fortunately for us, the larger chains are afraid to sell most of the stuff that we carry," said Ray. "We've built a market on their prejudices."