Jason McCrady, owner of J&M Books and Play, rings out a customer. (Photo by Candice Black)

PARKERSBURG — From Stephen King and Nicholas Sparks to puzzles, card games, board games and dice, J&M Books and Play is continuing to expand its inventory and shopping space so people can “put down the phone and pick up the fun.”

To encourage reading and board game playing, J&M Books and Play recently received a $10,000 grant to expand its inventory and create more events for loyal and new customers.

The grant came from Book Industry Charitable Foundation, an organization with a mission of supporting bookstores and comic shops.

To help bookstores recover from the pandemic, the BIC Foundation raised $1.1 million and awarded 115 stores grants but J&M Books and Play was the only store in West Virginia to receive one of the grants.

Owner Jason McCrady said the money will be used to spruce up the store and bringing in new inventory.

J&M Books and Play has a wide selection of books and board games and with the $10,000 grant the store received, the plan is to expand inventory. (Photo by Candice Black)

“With our event center in the back, nobody has used it for years and all of the lights have been failing, we need all new lights,” he said. “(We will also) pay off debt that we incurred during the pandemic.”

Two rooms which were previously used as storage will soon be the home of children’s books and puzzles. J&M Books and Play used to pride themselves on used books but with this extra funding, McCrady said the store will expand its selection of new titles, specifically manga and young adult books.

“(We will) keep on expanding that, as long as people keep buying books,” he said. “We plan on doing weekly new book orders, we can get it within a week. I’m really excited to see what happened with the new books.”

Not only does the store have a large selection and variety of books and games, it has an escape room which opened this past winter.

The room is set up like a doomsday prepper shed with a full backstory and theming.

J&M Books and Play received at $10,000 grant which will be used to offer more event space and inventory to customers. (Photo by Candice Black)

“We had teenagers and a set of parents go through and one of the teens said they had to tell themselves they were in a store and not in a shed, we really tried to make it themed,” McCrady said.

A second escape room is in the planning phase and McCrady is hopeful it will open by the end of the year.

August 7, J&M Books and Play will host a local business scavenger hunt, Trekking the MOV, with puzzles that lead participants to local businesses and prizes will be awarded. Some of the prizes will include a board game for the winning team, gift cards from local businesses and escape room tickets.

“My manager tried to come up with the idea to help small businesses,” McCrady said. “The goal is for everybody (to have) fun, we’re trying to get the word out.”

Teams can be as few as one but no bigger than four people. To register, go to bookeo.com/jandmbooksand play. The deadline to register is Aug1.

In planning for future events and expansions, McCrady is thankful for the grant award and local customers who have helped to grow the business.

“Glory to God alone. There’s no way we could have done this without God with everything that has happened. We opened right at the end of the great recession, survived COVID and moved three times, it’s just amazing,” McCrady said.

Candice Black can be reached at cblack@newsandsentinel.com.