Photo by Steve Kinderman Mark Patterson and Sharon Ager found they had a mutual love of books when they met nearly a decade ago. After they got married they started their own used bookstore, Crossroad Books. The Web site for Crossroad Books is www.crossroadbookstore.com. Here are some of the rare or unusual books for sale at Crossroad Books. Prayers offered by the Chaplain of the Senate, 1947-48, signed by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, $175. A first edition of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel The Beautiful and the Damned, $280. A copy of the William Faulkner novel Idyll in the Desert signed by Faulkner, $1,300. A copy of the D.H. Lawrence poetry book Pansies, signed by Lawrence, $700. A copy of Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous, signed by Spencer Tracy and Freddie Bartholomew, who starred in the 1937 movie based on the book, $175. About a dozen books written by Eau Claire author Waldemar Ager, some of them signed by Ager.

To paraphrase Tolstoy, new bookstores are all alike, but every used bookstore offers its own special mix of books.

Crossroad Books’ 40,000-book collection reflects the eclectic tastes of its owners, former electrical engineer Mark Patterson and former journalist Sharon Ager.

If you wander among the bookstore’s tall wooden shelves with hand-lettered signs, you’ll find a mixture of titles on science and technology, American and military history, philosophy and, of course, Wisconsin and the Chippewa Valley.

Topping it off are their treasures: first editions of literature and poetry, books signed by their authors, scholarly tomes, and hard-to-find books issued by small presses.

Patterson and Ager are book lovers, and they live for the times when a customer walks in with a fresh find.

"There’s nothing like holding a finely bound book in your hands," Patterson said.

Patterson, 48, and Ager, 42, started Crossroad Books on Clairemont Avenue six years ago based on their mutual love of books.

"We’re both insane," Patterson said, and he and Ager laughed. "We both loved books and collected books. We spent a lot of time in used bookstores."

A few weeks ago they moved to a larger store downtown at 301 S. Barstow St. The 4,500-square-foot building has a second-story reading area lit by a ceiling-to-floor corner window.

"We know in this business we’re not going to get rich," Patterson said. "We like what we do, as long as it pays the bills."

And they like the customers who come in.

Customers Wednesday included a man who inquired about the worth of a copy of a the 1846 Wisconsin Constitutional Convention that he bought for $12 at a sale in Portage, another who bought a book on Green Bay Packers legends and asked for tips on repairing the binding, and a third who came in to sell paperbacks with alluring titles such as "Mean Justice," "When She was Bad" and "Deadly Girls."

Patterson and Ager met nearly a decade ago, when he was an engineer at Cray Research in Chippewa Falls and she a former journalist and UW-Eau Claire student.

They started Crossroad as a part-time venture, but eventually they left their other jobs and turned to it full-time. Patterson left Cray after 17 years, tired of the uncertainty of waves of layoffs.

Today half of Crossroad’s book buying and selling is done through the Internet, they said. Walk-in customers benefit because the store is able to keep a wider selection of rare books.

Some books come from book and estate sales, and still others are brought in by customers seeking to sell them, they said.

"We pay more than other dealers," Patterson said, in order to draw more customers.

Patterson’s favorite author is John Steinbeck, and he hopes someone wanders in with a copy of "Of Mice and Men," some day. Ager, meanwhile, said her holy grail is a signed copy of "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison.

Crossroad Books hopes to start groups for book readers and writers.

"We need to sell books to make a living, but we want to be part of the community," Patterson said.

Downtown Eau Claire Inc. helped Crossroad Books find its new site, finally settling on the building formerly occupied by Goheen Photography. Landlord Cigan Properties renovated it for Crossroad.

Many people wanted to see another used-book store downtown after the Book Peddler closed its store on Graham Avenue last year, said Kim Palzkill, downtown development specialist for the city of Eau Claire.

"A lot of people had actually missed the Book Peddler -- they had a large following," Palzkill said.