Our Collaborators

Nikki Steinbaugh has been a bookseller for over a decade. Her interest in owning an indie bookstore began when she became the manager of The Book Rack of the Quad Cities in 2017.  While getting her MA in English at WIU, she wrote her thesis on the feminist functions of the ghost in Neo-Victorian Gothic literature.  She started The Macabre Librarian as an online store in 2018 and popularized blind date with book in the QC area in 2022.

Nikki currently works at her local library to supplement TML, which she hopes to evolve into a brick-and-mortar store. She likes staying home, the month of October, horror stories, talking to animals (scaled, furred, and feathered), iced tea, true crime podcasts, and her pet bunnies and tortoises. Her favorite book is The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice.