Her business partner, book buyer Jerry Sharkey, likes dark, gothic mysteries, set among grand manor houses and sun-choking, old-growth forests.

And for "customer-relations expert" Lucca—a black-and-white terrier mutt—the must-read this season is anything from the Walter the Farting Dog series of illustrated children's books.

Odum, her husband, Khader Abdel-Hafez, and Sharkey opened the bookstore, which offers new and used books, on March 26. The trio met and worked together at Palo Alto's Megabooks for several years.

In its first month of operation—without advertising—the Sunnyvale store sold more than 1,000 books from its new and used collection.

Odum, who lives in San Francisco, and Sharkey said they came to Sunnyvale looking for a community environment where people would come in and chat and spend time browsing the shelves. In Sunnyvale, among the coffee shops and specialty stores, they say they found that community.

"I had forgotten authentic people," Sharkey said. "Here you have people just being themselves."

Before opening their doors, the three partners spent nine months traveling around the Bay Area, to estate sales and garage sales, buying books to stock their shelves. Sharkey said he still has stacks of books in his house, waiting to be priced and shelved.

Already, Odum—who reads one book a week—says she has a wide base of regular customers, who come in looking for new reading suggestions or just looking for hard-to-find books and current bestsellers.

"We've only been open for a month, and I feel like we've lived here for years," Odum said.

Councilman Fred Fowler, who owns a business along Murphy, and his wife, Phyllis, are already regulars at the store, where they feed their science-fiction habit. Phyllis—who also enjoys mystery novels—said Odum and Sharkey go beyond just finding books for her, offering new reading ideas and authors .

It's that personal touch that Sharkey—who has one nonfiction book and two novels going at all times—said allows independent stores like Leigh's to survive in a climate dominated by chain stores like Barnes & Noble and Borders and Internet sellers like Amazon.com.

"If [independent bookstores] try to go head to head with large chain stores for new books, they're going to fail.," Sharkey said. "A bookstore should be more like a library, where whoever happens to walk in, there's something there for them."

Sharkey said that they don't really see Borders—just a short drive away in the Cherry Orchard Shopping Center—as competition, because they cater to a different crowd.

"We wish they were right next door," Sharkey said, adding that when a Borders went in next to Megabooks in Palo Alto, sales at the independent store doubled, because books that the chain store didn't carry could often be found at the smaller store. Leigh's Favorite Books buys from private citizens selling their own old collections, so out-of-print and hard-to-find books often show up on the store's shelves.

Odum said the shop's success so far has exceeded all her expectations.

"People have been really excited to have a bookstore here," she said. "They're tired of going to Borders or going to Mountain View. They want to shop locally."

Leigh's Favorite Books can be found at 121 S. Murphy Ave in downtown Sunnyvale. For more information, or for book ideas, call 408.736.2665.