If you consider yourself a library person, you're likely a bookstore person, too. Maybe you like the ones that are brightly lit, have ample signage and a little cafe in the corner. Or maybe, like me, you prefer the ones that are charmingly disheveled, have a cat mascot, and give you a feeling that you may stumble, perhaps literally, onto an obscure book you'll love. Authors have an obvious connection to bookstores so it's no surprise that booksellers and bookstores have provided fodder for some terrific reads. Below you'll find both fiction and nonfiction titles that will take you inside these venerated spaces and into the world of books and those who love them.

Fiction

The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson

Loving her unconventional single life in 1962 Denver, a bookshop owner begins experiencing powerful, reality-challenging dreams of an alternate life where she is a wife and mother.

 

 

 

 

 

No Crystal Stair:  A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson; art work by R. Gregory Christie

A fictionalized biography of the bookseller and civil rights activist who owned the African National Memorial Bookstore in Harlem, New York City.

 

 

 

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

When his most prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, is stolen, bookstore owner A. J. Fikry begins isolating himself from his friends, family and associates before receiving a mysterious package that compels him to remake his life

 

 

 

 

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

Prescribing books that offer therapeutic benefits to his customers, a literary apothecary in a floating bookstore on the Seine struggles with private heartbreak before embarking on a journey of healing at the side of a blocked writer and a lovelorn chef.

 

 

 

 

Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell

Gordon Comstock is a poor young man who works in a grubby London bookstore and spends his evenings shivering in a rented room, trying to write. He is determined to stay free of the money world of lucrative jobs, family responsibilities, and the kind of security symbolized by the homely aspidistra plant that sits in every middle-class British window.

 

 

 

 

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

Years after establishing a literary career through his compilation of the mystery genre’s most unsolvable classics, an unsuspecting bookseller is tapped by the FBI for help solving murders that eerily mimic the books on his list.

 

 

 

 

Midnight at the Great Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan

Lydia Smith, a clerk at the Bright Ideas bookstore, must unravel a puzzle left behind by a patron who has committed suicide, an effort that is complicated by memories of her violent childhood.

 

 

 

 

The Girl Who Reads on the Métro by Christine Féret-Fleury; translated from the French by Ros Schwartz

Dreaming up stories about her fellow readers on the Métro, a French office worker unexpectedly befriends a reclusive bookseller who asks her to care for his store and young daughter while he is away.

 

 

 

Twenty-One Truths About Love by Matthew Dicks

 

 

 

 

 

Non Fiction

Bookshops: A Reader's History by Jorge Carrión; translated from the Spanish by Peter Bush

Love letter, travel-memoir and manifesto, Bookshops is a diverting cultural history of bookstores as spaces of creative energy and social change.

 

 

 

 

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

This charming classic love story brings together twenty years of correspondence between Helene Hanff, at the time, a freelance writer living in New York City, and a used-book dealer in London at 84, Charing Cross Road. Through the years, though never meeting and separated both geographically and culturally, they share a winsome, sentimental friendship based on their common love for books. Their relationship, captured so acutely in these letters, is one that has touched the hearts of thousands of readers around the world.
 

 

 

Sylvia's Bookshop: The Story of Paris's Beloved Bookstore and Its Founder by Robert Burleigh

Presents the history of the Shakespeare & Company bookstore in Paris, describing how its owner Sylvia Beach created a place for great writers to meet, read, and share ideas.

 

 

 

Footnotes From the World's Greatest Bookstores: True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers by Bob Eckstein

A cartoonist from the New Yorker provides an illustrated tour of seventy-five of the world's most beloved bookstores while offering historical information on each and anecdotes from their owners, employees, and customers.

Never Stop: A Memoir by Simba Sana

Never Stop is the wrenching memoir of Simba Sana, the cofounder and former leader of Karibu Books, a major indie-bookselling phenomenon and perhaps the most successful black-owned company in the history of the book industry. In this memoir, Sana reveals how his experience with Karibu jumpstarted his lifelong journey to better understanding himself, human nature, faith, and American culture&;which ultimately helped him develop the powerful personal philosophy that drives his life today.

 

 

The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

The author, who runs a bookstore, offers a memoir of his life running the store in a remote Scottish village, Wigtown, Scotland, famous for being a book town. He relates a year in the life of running The Bookshop, the country's largest secondhand bookstore, telling of difficulties owning a business, the eccentricities of customers, dealing with his staff, buying trips to old estates and auctions, small-town life, and other aspects.

 

 

 

Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores by Jen Campbell

A North London bookshop clerk and blogger describes the inspiration she found in a Twitter question by John Cleese, sharing some of the more absurd exchanges she has overheard in her line of work, from whether or not Beatrix Potter ever wrote about dinosaurs to an inquiry about the edible nature of a book.

 

 

 

 

---

Have trouble reading standard print? Many of these titles are available in formats for patrons with print disabilities.

Staff picks are chosen by NYPL staff members and are not intended to be comprehensive lists. We'd love to hear your ideas too, so leave a comment and tell us what you’d recommend. And check out our Staff Picks browse tool for more recommendations!

Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.