Trivia nights, two monthly book clubs and tabletop board game nights are just a few reasons to stop into Novel Biblio Brew — or Novel, as it’s called for short — on State Street near Proctors in Schenectady. A casual, literary-themed menu and cleverly named cocktails stretch beyond the confines of a downtown coffee shop to literary cafe, cocktail bar and pint-sized, curated bookstore with the core goal of community engagement. As the second coming of Puzzles Cafe & Bakery, owner Sara Mae Pratt, who closed Puzzles during the pandemic, has shifted gears from a primary focus on hiring and training people with disabilities and autism — the Puzzles name and puzzle-piece logo invoked the symbol for autism awareness — to a broader social mission as a place to linger and connect. 

The role of cafes and restaurants as third spaces outside of work and home and essential to communities as a social hub was suddenly cut during the COVID-19 lockdown, their survival instantly in jeopardy. Businesses that couldn’t pivot to takeout or online gift card sales closed. Some reopened, some changed identity, others remained shut. Remote school and work became the norm and the negative, long-term effects of isolation became so well documented that Japan followed the U.K.’s 2018 lead and in 2021 appointed a minister of loneliness. There was a great need to reconnect people and create spaces where social interactions could thrive.

For Pratt, whose 5-year-old Puzzles Cafe had relied on the newly absent downtown worker crowd, lockdown meant closure in 2020. Focused on gardening, sourcing from local farms and becoming vegetarian during the pause, she also had a new outlet for her activism as an elected member of the Schenectady County Legislature, sitting on county committees for education and libraries, environmental conservation, renewable energy and parks. It is not a stretch to see how she began to percolate ideas for an eco-friendly cafe with limited food waste, a composting program with Cornell Cooperative Extension and a cozy bookstore with free Wi-Fi, where guests would linger over board games at the long communal table in the center of the cafe or curl up with a book in leather armchairs in the window. 

The result is a light-splashed bookstore with enough open space for remote working over espresso drinks, catching up with colleagues over soups and sandwiches and hours — open until 8 p.m. Thursday to Saturday, and Sunday through lunch — for happy-hour cocktails, light meals, music and the social connection of trivia nights and book clubs. Several of Pratt’s former Puzzles staff have stayed on, and the cafe’s popular homemade Linzer cookies, fudgy slab brownies and generously salted chocolate chip cookies still fill the glass case on the counter. In fine weather, the rear patio is a welcome downtown spot to spend part of the day.

A “Grapes of Wrath”-themed cheese board fashioned with crackers and grapes is a simple selection for grazing, while the maple-drizzled butternut squash flatbread with melted cheddar, applewood-smoked bacon, sage and toasted walnuts, or the oversized pretzel with beer cheese (dubbed “Oliver Twist”), are equally sized to share. As far as cafe food goes, the menu isn’t remarkable, but it’s hearty and homemade, capturing the comfort of rustling up lunch for a friend. Spoons disappear into thick, loaded-potato soup and a creamy tomato Beauty and the Bisque; hydroponic salads are leafy and fresh, with the Giving Tree salad topped in tart apple slices, chicken and crumbled blue cheese, and the romaine Julius Caesar crowned in croutons and shaved Parmesan. 

You might find Winnie the Pooh in a honey-drizzled Hundred Acre PB&J toast — or upgrade your crispy sourdough mashed avocado toast pre-loaded with pickled red onion, pumpkin seed and microgreens by adding the optional fried eggs and bacon. We share a gooey Big Swiss portobello mushroom and Swiss cheese, admiring the cheese pull as we separate halves and dunk crusts in our soup.

The addition of a liquor license is a fun update on the original format. A tequila-Cointreau Mandrake Margarita with lime juice and homemade ginger simple syrup (heads up, Harry Potter fans) is well balanced; the gin-based Sun and Her Flowers, with honey-sage simple syrup, lemon juice and fresh sage, is as poetic as its namesake book. Those settling in with the multilayer stacked brownie cake might pair it with Butterbeer spiced rum-cream soda topped with vanilla bean cold foam, or a Time Machine espresso martini featuring Counter Culture Cold Brew. Fans of the Spotty Dog in Hudson, another combined bookstore-bar, will know the simple pleasure of turning pages while sipping a Fat Head’s Brewery Oktoberfest Festbier or Harpoon Brewery Flannel Friday amber at the bar.

One long wall carries the books for sale, a well-chosen selection filling floor-to-ceiling shelves, accessed by a sliding library ladder, in a colorful array of special editions and leather-bound classics from Shakespeare to Charles Dickens and modern poets from Amanda Gorman to Rupi Kaur. It’s a collection that captivates with spines bound in pink, yellow and green, while other shelves hold craft gifts and board games you can buy after playing the cafe’s own for free.