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What do you do when you live in a small town and you belong to a book club whose membership grows to a size that makes it no longer feasible to hold meetings in members' homes?

In Tatamagouche, N.S., the Loquacious Compendium Book Club came up with a remarkable solution to that very problem after membership swelled to over 20: They built themselves a bar.

And not just any bar, but a fully licensed, swank literary pub. With nice hardwood tables and upholstered chairs, art on the walls and shelves full of books. And $7 Grey Goose vodka martinis.

The pub – designed on a “speakeasy” model (it's down some stairs and there's no sign on the door), according to co-founder Annette Hunziker – is called Fables. It opened in late November.

“Basically we said why not,” Hunziker recalls. “In our club if you choose the book you have to host the meeting, and a lot of people didn't want to host because they didn't have the room.

“We needed a venue.”

Hunziker, got the ball rolling when she and her husband, Chuck, emigrated from California to Tatamagouche in 2000. Canadian immigration law required them to buy a business that had two Canadian employees, so they purchased the flower store on the main street of the tiny coastal town of 700.

Annette immediately opened Hanna's Books in the same space, and also started the book club, using the name of the club she'd been in back in California. She says she did it for purely “selfish” reasons, and not as an extension of her book business.

“I wanted to discuss books with a glass of wine,” she says.

The club grew quickly over the following years, until it began running into its space problems.

In the intervening years, the Hunzikers had purchased the building that housed their businesses. Downstairs was a 2,000-square-foot space that once housed a butcher shop.

The club members originally discussed using the space simply as a venue for club meetings and author events, but they quickly moved on to the more intriquing the idea of building a bar. The Loquacious Compendium formed a nine-member board to oversee the project, and the Hunzikers put up the money.

Club members performed the labour, says Hunziker. The bar, for instance, was built by a master shipbuilder from the area; others did the decor and the windows.

The board originally hoped to sell 120 two-person memberships at $100 each; they've now sold 340 and are considering capping the number, Hunziker says.

“And this is in a town of 700!” she points out.

Fables is open Thursday to Sunday and operates like a Legion hall: It's for members only, and there's a limit on the number of guests they can bring. “I didn't want to be up at 2 in the morning breaking up fights,” as Hunziker puts it.

The bar's high-end ambitions are a point of pride for Hunziker. It stocks only premium brands and charges a premium for them. The bartender, Matthew Maisey, is another imported American – a musician friend of the Hunzikers who mixed drinks in Las Vegas before accepting an offer to work at Fables.

All the profits go back into the book club and the bar, says Hunziker. Some of the money goes toward paying for the half dozen author events held there every year (Donna Morrissey was the most recent author to come through), and for the bar's regular music events.

A few of the members have branched off into a single-malt whisky club that holds regular meetings there too.

But the focus is still the Loquacious Compendium book club, which gathers at the bar every month. Some meetings, particularly those for controversial books, have drawn more than 120 members, but the average is around 25, Hunziker says.

“It's a requisite to read the book,” she explains. “You have to come ready to express how you feel about the book. There are no [onlookers].”

The club's most recent meeting was held Tuesday, at which they discussed Sara Gruen's bestselling Water For Elephants.

“We read fiction and non-fiction,” says Hunziker, “but draw the line at tractor manuals.”