SARAH MCNALLY'S BOOK CLUB

The owner of the McNally Jackson literary empire is reshaping the city's reading life.

- MATTHEW SCHNEIER

At the Rockefeller Center McNally Jackson.

NOT LONG AFTER ARRIVING in New York, Sarah McNally, a devoted vegetarian, tried oysters for the first time with the family of a boyfriend. She loved them—25 years later and still vegetarian, she still makes an exception for them—but she equally loved their craggy, opalescent shells, which she gathered up afterward and, to the polite horror of her hosts, stuffed into her purse.

At 49, McNally has a soft, fluty voice (with a trace of rounded Canadian oars: “Soary,” she would apologize) and a wide-eyed manner. She’s too direct to be a classic bullshitter, but the oyster story painted a portrait almost too fanciful to believe. It felt like something out of a 19th-century novel: The provincial innocent from the North making her way in the sophisticated city, the magpie magnetized by the overlooked beauty of the world.

McNally considers herself a humble bookseller. She is also the founder and owner of an ever-expanding empire, McNally Jackson, now likely the third-largest buyer of books in the city, after only Barnes & Noble and the Strand. In December, the company celebrated its 20th anniversary. Over the course of the past two decades, as many independent booksellers closed their doors, what began as a single shop on Prince Street has become five. Among them, readings and launches are hosted most nights of the week, and happy are the authors who manage to secure a spot. “McNally Jackson,” one novelist said, “conveys prestige better than anyone else.”