Meet Our Team

Interior of a bookstore with bookshelves filled with various books. A person is checking out books at the counter while another staff member organizes shelves. The bookstore has a cozy ambiance with a chandelier.
Sign for Middleburg Books on a stone building exterior.
Three women standing in a doorway, smiling. One wears a tan sweater, another a floral dress with a cardigan, and the third a plaid dress with glasses.

  • MB, a mother of three and longtime school librarian, has spent years of her life lost in books—and bookstores. She is fueled by espresso, has tried for years to re-create a Secret Garden in her backyard (but deer and bunnies keep eating it), loves a good hike and a good cocktail, and (according to friends and colleagues) bakes the best salted chocolate chunk cookies on the planet.

    She recently moved to Middleburg with her husband Michael, and puppy Bailey. While she has fallen in love with the town, she had little interest in living in a town without a thriving indie bookshop, so set about to open her own.

    As a school librarian, she developed a superpower: selecting books that delight and engage children. She is motivated by putting just the right book into the hands of a reading skeptic and watching that love of books come alive.

    Beware, when she meets you in person, she’ll likely start quizzing you about what you’re reading. Her family and friends are forever reaching out to MB for book recommendations. Her favorite grown-up reads so far this year have been Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Unlikely Animals, The Best Strangers in the World, We All Want Impossible Things and Black Cake. Her TBR pile is a wobbly tower of joy. 

    MB is a recovering globetrotter. A few years ago (pre-COVID), she explored a dreamy, crazy list of places that had been on her must-visit list forever in what she deemed a “Grown-Up Gap Year.” (Her nest was sorta empty and she had banked a lot of frequent flyer miles.) She went on adventures with her parents to the Caribbean, her son to Athens and Jerusalem, her daughter in Mexico City, and entire family in South Africa. She visited college friends in Milwaukee, her brother in Chicago, and dear friends in Melbourne, Tasmania and Mumbai. She and her husband did big hiking trips in New Zealand and the Balkans—Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro. She gave her passport a workout, depleted the stash of frequent flyer miles (and the bank account) and had the time of her life. She’s now ready to stay in one place for a while and dive into starting an independent bookshop—a long-time dream.

    MB loves to cook, loves to eat, is currently obsessed with The Bear, and has a low-key cookbook addiction—you’ll find her reading them for fun. Her point is they usually have happy endings in the form of a dessert chapter.

    Reach out to MB on mbmorell@middleburgbooks.com

  • Clarissa has always loved books.  Even before being able to read, she'd spend nap times secretly sneaking peeks at picture books. Some of her most favorite childhood possessions were her bright orange record player and set of Disney Books on Records.  Clarissa comes from a family of bookworms, is married to a bookworm, and is the mother of a bookworm.  She also shares her home with two dogs, neither of which have shown any inclination towards books (even to chew, thank goodness!).

    Clarissa joins Middleburg Books after thirty years in technology careers.  Her genres of choice are mystery (Rivers of London, Beekeeper's Apprentice, Thursday Murder Club, and Flavia DeLuce), science fiction (The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, The Martian, and Dragons Egg), and fantasy (Once Upon a River, Wee Free Men, and Ocean at the End of the Lane).  She loves her book club in part because they introduce her to great books she would have never picked up on her own volition (James, Bringing Ben Home, Miracle Creek, and Hunger).  Clarissa's other hobbies are making bobbin lace and traveling. 

  • Shayne moved to Purcellville from Southern California five years ago. She has always been a reader and it was not uncommon for her to get called out in grade school for reading books while the teacher was talking. 

    She is a native Californian and studied economics at the University of Redlands, a small liberal arts school, and at The London School of Economics. She has a masters from the University of California, Riverside. Shayne has three amazing daughters, the youngest of which just started her junior year in college at VCU. 

    She has adapted to having an empty nest by working, stitching, traveling, and reading—lots of reading. Shayne loves all kinds of books—contemporary, historical fiction, family sagas, nonfiction narrative, and memoirs, but the genre she enjoys the most is mystery. This may go back to a shared love of Elizabeth George with her mom, who was also an avid reader. A few recent books she has adored include: James, The God of the Woods, Murder Road, The Curse of Pietro Houdini, and The Housekeeper and the Professor.  

    These days she tracks her reading on a spreadsheet and shares about the books she loves in her monthly newsletter Shayne’s Bookish News. This started as a personal project to share her enthusiasm for all things books and reading when she moved. She is celebrating the newsletter’s five year anniversary this December. 

    When not talking about books in the shop, Shayne loves to hand embroider while listening to books. She also participates in a women’s writing group. She visits California to stay connected to friends and family, and is usually planning a trip abroad with her husband. Their shared love of travel keeps them busy and their favorite city to spend time in is London. 

    Shayne has had many jobs and working at Middleburg Books is her favorite!

  • Baillie has a diverse taste in reading and listening, enjoying most everything from fantasy to mystery, memoir and nonfiction, whether it’s regular books, ebooks, audiobooks, or podcasts. She credits her father, an avid reader himself, for this love of literature as he was always seen with a book, magazine, or newspaper in hand. Some of her favorite reads from the past year include “Lies and Weddings” by Kevin Kwan, “South of Broad” by Pat Conroy, and “The Book of Doors” by Gareth Brown.

    She recently relocated to the area with her partner and their two cats, and she absolutely loves the region for its proximity to the mountains and the pleasant weather. Baillie enjoys hosting friends and family and relishes the challenge of trying out recipes that are simple yet involve multiple steps to achieve the final dish.

    Baillie has a strong appreciation for Southwest Art, especially Navajo and Pueblo Indian Art, and she’s always on the lookout for Southwest-inspired decor to add to her home with watercolors being a favorite. She loves traveling, especially long road trips for the impromptu detours you can make. 

    Currently, Baillie is a beginner knitter, working on what she hopes will eventually, one day, become a shawl. Taking long road trips is also the absolute best way to simultaneously work at this while listening to an audiobook and heading to a destination - you just have to make sure you’re the passenger. 

  • Kailey has found herself in all nooks and corners of literature genres. From her early consumption of children's picture books, her day-binges of humorous early readers, her escapism in YA fantasy, to her current love of a variety of genres and tropes, her life stages are reflected in the books she read. 

    Currently, Kailey lives in the Purcellville area and is a Senior attending Loudoun Valley High School. Though she grew up in the small borough of Philmont, spent her weekdays attending Banneker Elementary School and explored Middleburg on weekends with a cookie from Upper Crust in hand. 

    When Kailey isn’t at work, listening to her favorite audiobook, or going to school, she participates in a variety of service based activities for her school, as well as serving as a captain for both her school’s Varsity Lacrosse and Swim team. 

  • Meghan grew up spending summers at her grandparent’s beach house and visiting the local indie bookstore with her granddad who enabled her love of reading. Back then it was mostly summer romance beach reads. Nowadays, she typically reaches for historical fiction (with Kristin Hannah being her absolute favorite author) and thrillers, but has recently expanded into sci-fi/fantasy as well. She especially adores growing her cookbook collection and testing out new recipes each week. When she’s not reading, playing around in the kitchen or dabbling in a new craft project, she’s traveling and exploring with her husband and two doodles. 

  • Her love of books began at Moran Elementary in Osceola, Indiana, where Haley remembers devouring rows of Bobbsey Twins mysteries. These days she dives into just about anything—from weird fiction and horror to memoirs and subtle sci fi/fantasy. Everyone in the shop knows poetry to be Haley’s desert island genre. The blessed order of syntax and grammar colliding with the brilliant alchemy of those same rules broke wide open in the service of a perfect line. Unrivaled.

    At the age of seven, Haley attended the Young Author’s conference with her first book, A Trip to Grandma’s, and has been winding toward the dream of publishing her first book ever since. Haley proudly credits mentors at Purdue University and the Warren Wilson College MFA program for helping her lay the writerly groundwork. From tutoring journeypersons and teaching grant-writing to children in underserved communities to editing in downtown DC, she always found herself connected to the written word. 

    Along the way, Haley forged a circuitous path—living as an expat in North Yorkshire, training as a doula, co-founding the first DEI committee at her children’s school, training as a facilitator for Toward Right Relationship with Native Peoples—she believes each endeavor has led her to a deeper understanding of herself and to a fortuitous book chat with Mary Beth and Miriam on a sunny autumn day. 

    At home, Haley lives in the woods with her husband, three fantabulous children, the family sheep dog, and baskets upon baskets of knitting projects just waiting for an audio book and a free moment. In her spare time, she collaborates with a dear friend on their theatre project, TagRagg Productions.