More from 63rd Street: Anastasia’s Books

Anastasia Hope‘s words are iced with sugary defiance. Smiling sweetly behind a desk heaped with used paperbacks and hard-cover books, she doesn’t need any provocation to emphasize that she isn’t in the business of irony. Within moments of walking into her cozy shop on my journey down 63rd Street, she hits me with a preemptive strike.

“Everybody thinks people in Raytown don’t read, that Raytown is full of rednecks,” she says.

Reality is quite the opposite.

Anastasia’s Books is surviving — thriving, even.