ORBIS
Books & Paper
909 shops · 19 Icons & Heritage Houses first. Hand-checked. Walk in.
Books & Paper by city
Craft guide
ORBISTHE BOOKS & PAPER ISSUEContemporary Algerian and Maghrebi literature is published by Editions Barzakh, an independent house based in Algiers. Amman's books@café combines bilingual books with a café, also selling journals and paper goods across its locations. Graphic designer Andrea Atalla founded Limited Addition in 1999, using traditional silk-screen techniques to make stationery. Its workshop and showroom sell notebooks and sketch pads alongside cards, with handmade money envelopes also included in the range.
This plate lists 909 shops in 100 countries. Paris has the most with 27, followed by Tokyo with 15. Among these shops, 5 offer repairs, 63 sell online and 3 work by appointment, going by their own descriptions.
Search by ISBN before you travel: ask the shop to confirm that the exact edition and language you want are on the shelf.
Ask about signed or limited copies: ask how a signed or numbered copy is documented and how it will be packed.
Ask about collection or delivery: an online listing is not proof a title is in the shop, so ask before making the trip.
Check access before you go. The American Book Center says every floor of its Amsterdam shop on the Spui is reached by lift, while only the ground floor of its shop in The Hague is accessible.
Use the city plates when they appear below, or open any store for its official door and related ORBIS city and craft links.
Booksellers & Stationers · 909 shops, the best first
Bordeaux / Online
Since 1896, in the house where Montesquieu once lived, Mollat has grown into France's largest independent bookshop — 300,000 titles and the beating heart of literary Bordeaux.
Best for France’s first independent bookshop, 1896
Anna Salai (Mount Road), Chennai
Founded in 1844, this Mount Road bookseller stocks fiction, academic titles and Tamil-interest books. The house once ran the railway station bookstalls across the south and still trades under the name of its Victorian founder, Abel Joshua Higginbotham.
Best for Historic bookshop and general reading
Higginbothams is a bookshop at No. 116 Anna Salai, the road once called Mount Road, in Chennai. It describes itself as trading since 1844. Abel Joshua Higginbotham reached Madras by ship in the mid-1800s, by his company's account without ticket or papers. He found work as a librarian at the Wesleyan Book Depository. When the mission closed the shop in 1844 he bought the stock and moved the books to Mount Road under his own name. Copies of Queen Victoria's 1858 proclamation were distributed from the store. Sir Charles Trevelyan, Governor of Madras, praised its shelves of philosophy and classical literature. The firm supplied European books to Prince Edward VII on his visits and earned a place in John Murray's Handbook of the Madras Presidency. Higginbotham served as Sheriff of Madras and died in 1891. His son Charles Herbert Higginbotham took the firm onward, opening in Bangalore in an 1897 Palladian building on South Parade and setting up bookstalls at railway stations across the south. The house published Culinary Jottings for Madras in 1884 by Colonel Arthur Robert Kenney-Herbert, who wrote as Wyvern. It was awarded Royal Booksellers in 1875. Higginbothams has been part of the Amalgamations Group since the 1940s, with branches at Chennai Egmore and Chennai Central stations and the airport. Scroll.in told the founder's story at length in 2018.
Paris / Online
Paris bookshop dating to 1708 near the Palais-Royal; relocated to 155 rue Saint-Honore in 1906 after a fire, owned by Gallimard since 1986. About 25,000 titles across literature, art and history in a 90 sqm space.
Best for Literature, art books, and gifts at a historic bookshop near the Palais
Librairie Delamain traces its origins to 1708, when it was established at the Palais-Royal by Andre Cailleau, making it one of the oldest bookshops in Paris still operating. A fire at the neighboring Comedie-Francaise theater forced a move in 1906 to its current address at 155 rue Saint-Honore. The shop has been owned by publishing house Gallimard since 1986. Within its compact 90-square-meter space, Delamain stocks roughly 25,000 titles spanning literature, art, history, science and the humanities. The shop has literary associations dating back generations: writers including Guy de Maupassant and Michel Foucault are recorded as having frequented it.
Rue de Rivoli / 1st
Founded in Paris in 1801 by Giovanni Antonio Galignani — a family in the book trade since 1520s Venice — and at 224 rue de Rivoli since 1856, Galignani is an English-language bookshop. Six family generations on, its wood-panelled rooms hold three departments: English, French, and the Fine Arts section added when English books were banned under the Occupation.
Best for English-language books and fine-arts volumes in Paris
Florence / Online
Founded by publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who released Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago in 1957 ahead of any other country; the bookshop chain opened its first store in Pisa that same year.
Best for Italian books and music floors.
The Feltrinelli name traces to Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who established his publishing house, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, in Milan at the end of 1954 as an explicitly antifascist imprint. In late 1956, an Italian journalist brought him the manuscript of Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, smuggled out of the Soviet Union; Feltrinelli published it in 1957, publishing the novel in 1957 ahead of editions in both the United States and France, and the book became an international bestseller. The same year, Feltrinelli opened his first bookshop in Pisa, the beginning of what grew into Italy's largest bookstore chain, still operating under his name today. He also published Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Leopard. Feltrinelli died in 1972 under still-disputed circumstances involving an explosion near a Milan pylon. The bookshop chain that carries his name today spans locations across Italy, including this store, and continues the general-interest bookselling model he founded alongside the original publishing house.
Florence / Online
Florentine stationer since 1774 — Napoleon and Byron ordered here; engraved paper and pens still do the talking. first shop was Piazza della Signoria (1774); left that square in 2011 for Piazza Rucellai, then moved to Lungarno Acciaiuoli in 2022.
Best for Engraved stationery and leather desk goods.
56-58 Dawson Street, Dublin
Hodges Figgis sells books from its Dawson Street premises in Dublin, with a dedicated Irish range. That range covers Irish fiction and history alongside poetry, travel writing and Irish-language books. The business traces its beginnings to 1768 on Skinner's Row, rather than to the current building.
Best for Irish writing and general books in Dublin
Teramachi, Kyōto
Kyūkyōdō began in Kyoto in 1663 and specialises in incense and Japanese paper goods. Its range includes writing paper and gift envelopes, alongside supplies for calligraphy. Seasonal paper designs offer a smaller purchase than a complete set of writing equipment.
Best for Incense and Japanese paper stationery
Kyūkyōdō dates to 1663 in Kyoto, where it opened as a pharmacy before turning to incense, brushes, and paper. Its imperial connection is specific and documented: in 1877 the chancellor Prince Sanetomi Sanjō passed the shop his family's incense-blend formulas, secret recipes reportedly kept for nine centuries and favored within the Imperial Household, and Kyūkyōdō has produced them since. From 1891 to 1945 the company held the position of official stationer to the Imperial House of Japan. When the capital moved to Tokyo, Kyūkyōdō followed, opening a Ginza branch around 1880 on a street that leads toward the Imperial Palace; the current flagship building dates to a 1924 renovation. Today the shop still trades in the same three categories it built its name on — incense sticks and raw aromatic wood, calligraphy brushes and ink, and washi stationery — serving both the ceremonial incense-appreciation crowd and anyone buying a box of good writing paper. Few Japanese incense houses can point to a specific, named imperial gift as the source of their formulas rather than a vaguer claim of court patronage; Kyūkyōdō's 1877 transfer from Prince Sanjō is the kind of detail that separates a provable court lineage from marketing.
83–84 Marylebone High Street, London / Online
Daunt Books' Marylebone shop is a general bookseller with a particular interest in travel and books about places. Its ranges extend from fiction to travel guides, with books arranged by country forming part of the wider offer. The business began on Marylebone High Street in 1990, before expanding into other London neighbourhoods over subsequent years.
Best for Travel writing and general books in Marylebone
Daunt Books began on Marylebone High Street in 1990, before the business expanded into other London neighbourhoods. The Marylebone shop remains associated with travel reading, while operating as a general bookseller rather than selling guidebooks alone. Its wider catalogue includes fiction and books about places, giving travellers several ways to prepare for a destination.
Books by country form one route through the range, alongside conventional categories for novels and nonfiction. That distinction helps when the subject of a trip crosses several kinds of writing. A reader can consider a travel guide together with fiction set in the same place or an account of its history.
The store also serves readers who have no journey planned, through its general book selection and bookselling advice. A practical visit might begin with a particular author or subject and widen from there. Marylebone is a specific branch, so descriptions of the company's other shops need not apply to the same premises. The travel association is useful as a starting point, without restricting what someone can reasonably look for on its shelves.
Milano / Via Bonvini
Milan stationery-printing shop opened 9 July 1909 by brothers Costante and Luigia Bonvini in the Corso Lodi/San Luigi district, and restored to working order in 2014 with its original treadle press, 1930s Imperia platen press and wooden type drawers intact. Today it operates as a working letterpress and bookbindery, running typography and traditional paper workshops.
Best for Working 1909 Milan letterpress shop and bookbindery with original presses
Fratelli Bonvini opened as a stationery shop on 9 July 1909, when siblings Costante and Luigia Bonvini set up along Corso Lodi in Milan's then-industrial San Luigi district. The business quickly expanded into printing to serve the growing neighborhood, turning out everything from letterheads to price lists on machinery that included a late-19th-century treadle press, a 1930 Imperia platen press and a 1950s Heidelberg Stella -- all still on site today. Costante's daughter Leila Bonvini and her husband Luigi Cambieri kept the family workshop running for decades afterward.
In 2014, the associates of FBM S.r.l. carried out a conservative restoration of the premises at Via Tagliamento 1, preserving the original layout, printing machines, bookbinding equipment and wooden typographic drawers rather than converting the space. Bonvini 1909 reopened as a working shop and cultural venue combining a functioning letterpress, a bookbindery and gallery space for exhibitions.
The workshop today runs typography and bookbinding services alongside courses -- including a paste-paper (carta colla) workshop teaching the centuries-old technique for decorating book endpapers and covers -- positioning Bonvini 1909 as one of Milan's few surviving working print-and-bindery botteghe rather than a museum piece.
Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II 12, Milan / Online
The Bocca bookselling house began in Turin in 1775; its surviving Milan branch trades under the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.
Best for Art books beneath the Galleria dome.
Milan / Online
Historic Milan paper specialist selling antique prints, maps, stationery, notebooks and paper-based decorative objects. founded 1881 after Francesco Pettinaroli moved from Lake Orta to Milan, first beside Galleria Vittorio Emanuele; now on Via Brera.
Best for Historic handcrafted stationery and notebooks; traditional Milanese paper craft heritage
Munich / Germany
Buchhandlung Lentner has sold books in Munich for over 328 years and runs its online catalogue of some four million titles alongside branches at Marienplatz, in Haidhausen and in Neubiberg. Customers can order online for next-day collection, and each shop lists its own phone line for special book requests.
Best for Bookshop, click-and-collect
New York / 828 Broadway at 12th St
Strand Book Store combines new titles with used and rare books at its Broadway shop near East 12th Street. Benjamin Bass founded the business on Fourth Avenue in 1927, before the move to its present Broadway location in 1957. The mix gives readers room to compare recent publications with older editions across a broad selection of subjects.
Best for New, used and rare books near Union Square
Austurstræti, Reykjavík / Online
An Icelandic bookshop, founded 1872 — the national living room where a book-mad nation browses, sips and buys for jólabókaflóð. Every Icelander has stood in these aisles.
Best for Iceland’s bookstore since 1872
Rome
Italy's largest bookstore chain, and the Via del Corso flagship is the biggest in Rome. Three floors of Italian and international books, music, and gifts.
Best for Three floors of Italian and international books, music, and gifts
Pike Place, Seattle / Online
Metsker Maps sells printed maps and atlases alongside globes at Seattle's Pike Place Market. The business traces its roots to Charles F Metsker's work in Tacoma in 1901, later developing into a Seattle map shop. Its selection serves travellers and map collectors as well as people looking for a wall map or a different way to explore a place.
Best for Printed maps, globes and atlases in Seattle
Metsker Maps puts physical geography back into the shopping experience at Seattle's Pike Place Market. Maps and atlases share the selection with globes, making it possible to compare a place at several scales rather than viewing it only through a phone screen. The shop serves travellers and collectors as well as people choosing a wall map for home. Its history began with a different audience: Charles F Metsker founded the business in Tacoma in 1901, producing maps for industries such as surveying and logging.
The company's own history describes its later development in Seattle, followed by a move to Pioneer Square and eventually Pike Place Market in 2004. The current shop is in the Sanitary Market Building. Those changes matter because the long business history should not be mistaken for more than a century at the present address. Today the range extends beyond the Pacific Northwest, while the business retains ties to local cartography through Kroll Map Company. For a purchase, start with what the map needs to do: help plan a journey, show a region in detail or serve as an object to study on the wall.
Fabriano / Marche / Online
Paper since 1264 — the Marche mill that taught Europe watermarks, still making artist paper and notebooks. Official + inItaly: a 1264 notarial deed now at Matelica records purchase of notebooks of Fabriano paper. Official history dates Fabriano watermarks to 1293 (inspired by wool-makers' marks).
Best for Artist paper from the oldest mill in Europe.
120 O'Connell Street, Limerick
O'Mahony's Booksellers is a family bookselling business founded by J. P. O'Mahony on Limerick's O'Connell Street in 1902. Its Limerick shop carries children's books alongside general reading and specialist non-fiction, with an online store extending the business beyond the city. The shop has also hosted author visits and book launches, connecting its retail shelves with local literary events.
Best for Independent book browsing and specialist non-fiction in Limerick
O'Mahony's Booksellers began in Limerick in 1902, when J. P. O'Mahony opened a shop after working in the haberdashery department of Cannock's. The family history estimates that the first shop had three staff and occupied about 550 square feet. Frank O'Mahony later joined the company around 1918, carrying the business into a second generation. The official account describes trading through the First World War and the changes that followed, giving the present bookseller more than a century of documented family continuity. That history supports a catalogue with unusual depth. General books sit beside Irish fiction, Irish history and books as Gaeilge. School and academic sections add law and medicine alongside nursing and education. Agriculture and veterinary subjects form another specialist group. Children's books are divided by reading stage and age. Maps and stationery, together with professional titles widen the practical range. Author visits and signing photographs form part of the shop's own archive. O'Mahony's identity is therefore grounded in both place and duration: a Limerick business founded by a named bookseller, expanded through family succession and sustained by a catalogue that serves general readers and students alongside specialist professions.
Place Emir Abdelkader, Algiers
An independent Algiers publisher of contemporary Algerian and Maghrebi literature, and a fixture of the city's literary life.
Best for Contemporary Algerian and Maghrebi books
Jabal Amman and Abdoun / Online
Books@café is an Amman bookshop and café whose original Jabal Amman branch opened in May 1997. It offers books in English and Arabic, with journals and gifts also listed. The website gives separate Jabal Amman and Abdoun addresses, which should be checked when planning a visit.
Best for English and Arabic books with café dining
Books@café combines a bookshop with places to eat and drink in Amman. The original Jabal Amman business opened in May 1997, according to its own history. Its current website lists that branch at 12 Omar Bin Al-Khattab Street and a separate Abdoun address at 10 Fawzi Qawoqgy Street. Keeping those locations distinct matters when arranging a visit or meeting someone for a meal. The bookshop offers books in English and Arabic rather than limiting the choice to one language. Paperblanks journals and gifts appear alongside the books, giving shoppers an alternative to choosing a title for somebody else. Art associated with Jacaranda is also featured on the site. Food menus belong to the café side of the business and should be checked separately from the book catalogue. The combined format makes it possible to plan browsing and a meal at the same venue, without assuming identical stock or menus at both addresses. Its Amman location does not establish where the books or stationery were manufactured.
Jabal Amman, Amman
Limited Addition is an Amman stationery house founded in 1999 and led by chief designer and part owner Andrea Atalla. Its cards and notebooks, along with gift boxes, carry Arab heritage motifs and are hand-printed by silk screen. Custom stationery and graphic design are offered alongside the standing range. The workshop and showroom are at 79 Ibn Khaldoun Street, Jabal Amman.
Best for Stationery workshop and showroom selling silk-screened notebooks, sketch pads, gift boxes, cards
Limited Addition opened in 1999 in Amman and is led by chief designer and part owner Andrea Atalla. The company makes handmade paper products designed to reflect Arab heritage and natural elements, finished in soft pastels or vivid colour and then hand-printed by silk screen. The range runs from greeting cards and notecards to notebooks and albums, plus gift boxes and wrapping paper, with card sets named Icon, Orient and Hand of Fatima. Customers can design their own notecards, and the studio offers customised stationery together with full graphic design services. Baby sets and desk and table pieces extend the line into gifts. The workshop and showroom stand at 79 Ibn Khaldoun Street in Jabal Amman. Orders within Amman are delivered in two days, with a further four days when customisation is involved. Retail partners are listed on the site, and every item is printed by hand in the Amman workshop.
Spui
A family-owned English-language bookstore founded in Amsterdam in 1972 by American entrepreneurs Sam Boltansky and Mitch Crossfield; its Amsterdam flagship moved to a 160-year-old former gentlemen's-club building on the Spui in 2006.
Best for English-language books and magazines
The American Book Center began in 1972, when American entrepreneurs Sam Boltansky and Mitch Crossfield opened what they initially called the American Discount Book Center on Amsterdam's Kalverstraat, importing remaindered English-language books from the United States to sell in the Netherlands. The business grew from that single import-focused shop into a multi-store, family-owned chain that has stayed independent for over five decades, adding locations in The Hague and Leidschendam alongside Amsterdam. Its best-known address today is on the Spui, a small square in central Amsterdam near the Begijnhof, where the store relocated in October 2006 into a building with its own layered history: over roughly 160 years it had previously housed a gentlemen's cultural club, a luxury jewelry store, and a grand piano showroom before becoming a bookstore. The Spui shop spans multiple floors stocked with English-language fiction, nonfiction and periodicals and has appeared on various 'most beautiful bookshops' lists compiled by travel and design publications. The business has stayed under the same family ownership structure since its 1972 founding, a continuity that is unusual among Amsterdam retail businesses of its size and age.
Accra
City Reads is an indie bookstore with a physical shop at Adenta, Accra, selling books and stationery. The shop offers same-day delivery on weekday orders placed before 8:30am GMT and calls its readers BookBorgas.
Best for Books and stationery with same-day delivery
Addis Ababa
YA Coffee Roasters sources and roasts Ethiopian coffee beans directly from smallholder farmers, offering blends including Addisalem, Mesgana, Tefetro and Fiki'ir. It also operates Cherish Addis Coffee & Books, offering Ethiopian coffee ceremonies, and runs training in roasting, sensory evaluation, barista skills and Q-Grading.
Best for Ethiopian coffee beans and blends
Akureyri town centre
Sjoppan vöruhús is a family-run design shop in Akureyri that has sold through a small hatch since 2014. Its range includes porcelain and gifts, with stationery and books also listed online. The shop is at Kaupvangsstræti 21 in Listagilið, and its website carries changing opening information.
Best for Design gifts and small homewares
Sjoppan vöruhús is a small family business in Akureyri's Listagilinu district. The shop says it has sold design goods through a hatch since 2014, an operating detail that gives the business an unusually compact physical identity. Its address is Kaupvangsstræti 21, placing the project within a creative quarter rather than in a conventional shopping centre. The first-party description emphasises varied and playful products made to a high standard. That combination supports a focused editorial: Sjoppan is less about covering every household category than about presenting a closely scaled design stop. The hatch is not decorative folklore; it is part of how the business describes its actual retail format. Family ownership and the 2014 starting date supply a second layer of continuity, while the Listagilinu location connects the shop to local art activity. Sjoppan offers a small-format encounter with contemporary design in Akureyri, with its setting and method of sale as important as the individual objects.
Spui
Independent Amsterdam bookshop at Spui 14-16, opened in 1966 by Johan Polak and Rob van Gennep; known for its classical antiquity section and, since 1969, a large newsstand of Dutch and international magazines and periodicals.
Best for International magazines, literature and serious periodicals
Athenaeum Boekhandel en Nieuwscentrum occupies a Dutch Baroque building at Spui 14-16 in central Amsterdam, on the square that hosts the city's weekly book market. It opened in 1966, founded by Johan Polak and Rob van Gennep, and in 1976 restructured to offer staff co-ownership, a step that anchored its identity as an independently run shop rather than a chain outlet. The store is known for Dutch and international literature, history and politics titles, and a well-regarded classical antiquity section; since 1969 it has also run a large newsstand carrying Dutch and international magazines, newspapers and zines. In 2024, Athenaeum Boekhandel BV took over the shares of the older Amsterdam bookseller Scheltema (founded 1853), and the two now operate together as the Athenaeum | Scheltema group.
Oud-West
Labyrinth focuses on vintage and second-hand, books, vinyl, and retro items.
Best for Translated fiction, poetry and English-language books
Berenstraat, Amsterdam / Online
MENDO calls itself a candy store for book lovers and the Nine Streets shop proves it — photography, fashion and design volumes stacked in black-walled perfection, plus MENDO's own published titles.
Best for The candy store for book aficionados
The Nine Streets, Amsterdam
MENDO is a bookseller and publisher specialising in visual books that place art and design among their central subjects. Photography and architecture sit alongside fashion and lifestyle titles, while the publishing business works with creative collaborators on new books. Customers can browse published titles online or contact the business about its publishing work and editorial support.
Best for Visual books on art, photography and design
MENDO combines bookselling with publishing, specialising in visual books across art and design rather than a general reading catalogue. Architecture and photography share space in the selection with books about fashion and lifestyle subjects. The physical book matters to this selection as an object, as well as a way to carry images and text.
The publishing side works with brands and other creative collaborators to develop books, including collector's editions and editorial support. That is a different service from buying a finished title through the shop. A commissioned publication calls for a project discussion, whereas a retail purchase starts with the subject and format of an existing book.
For a purchase, compare the treatment of the subject as well as the cover that first attracts attention. A photographic volume may suit a different reader from a book focused on architecture or interiors. For a physical visit, check MENDO's current contact information rather than assuming that an earlier shop address is still in use today.
Rokin
Amsterdam bookshop tracing to 1853, when Jacobus Hendrik Scheltema opened his first shop; moved into a five-storey, 3,200-square-metre store on the Rokin in 2015, and since 2024 has operated as Athenaeum | Scheltema under new ownership.
Best for Multistorey Dutch and English book browsing
Scheltema traces to 1853, when Jacobus Hendrik Scheltema opened a bookshop in Amsterdam at the corner of Kromelleboogsteeg and Beursstraat. The business changed hands and names repeatedly over the following century: it became Scheltema & Holkema's Boekhandel under Tjomme van Holkema, was sold to Klaas Groesbeek in January 1882, and moved to a new building at Rokin 74 three years later. The store operated independently until 1970, when it became part of the publishing group Kluwer. It later relocated to Koningsplein, where it remained from 1985 until May 2015, when it moved into a new five-storey building on the Rokin — a 3,200-square-metre store that became one of the largest bookshops in Europe, stocking roughly 120,000 titles at any time and receiving over 1,000 new books on busy days. Ownership changed again in 2014, when Novamedia (parent of the Dutch Postcode Lottery) acquired the business; Novamedia held it until 2024, when Athenaeum Boekhandel took over and began operating the store under the combined name Athenaeum | Scheltema. Despite the ownership and branding change, the shop continues to trade from its Rokin address under the historic Scheltema name in everyday use.
Antwerp
Luddites opened at Hopland 34 in Antwerp on 5 March 2020, a project of Richard Bolte and Jorien Caers. The shop carries the largest range of English books in the city with a strong Dutch selection, and a wine bar waits up the stairs. Special editions and workshops fill the calendar, with tastings.
Best for Books and natural wine, one counter
Luddites was dreamed up by Richard Bolte and Jorien Caers on a dark and stormy night in October 2018. After months of planning and renovating, the shop opened its door at Hopland 34 in Antwerp on 5 March 2020. The name reaches back to the English textile workers of the early nineteenth century who broke the machines that made their skills redundant. They also wrote poems and songs while they were at it. The owners apply the term loosely to their own aim, a bulwark of paper and glass against the Information Age. Housed in a historic building in the centre of the city, the shop stocks the largest range of English books in Antwerp alongside a strong Dutch selection. Fiction runs from literature and poetry through graphic novels to romance and horror. Non-fiction takes in philosophy and history, with a shelf on food and wine. Luddites Special Editions put new covers on Pride and Prejudice and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Hidden up the stairs is a wine bar where customers can take a glass with their book. The calendar carries events such as a Sprayed Edges Workshop and a History of Wine Tasting. The owners insist the name is pronounced luh-daits, not like crudites.
Downtown Asheville, NC
Founded in 1982, Malaprop's is an independent bookstore and cafe in downtown Asheville known for its literary events and curated staff picks. It champions regional and diverse authors.
Best for Independent bookstore browsing; Author events and readings; Regional and diverse voices
Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe has traded in downtown Asheville, North Carolina since 1982. Emoke B'Racz opened it without business loans in a 2,000 square foot space on Haywood Street. B'Racz came to the United States from Hungary at fifteen, her father having left as a political exile in 1956. She spent nine years working at a Waldenbooks in Connecticut before moving to Asheville. She took the name from malapropism, the comic misuse of a word, and stocked shelves of international literature and poetry while paying staff wages with health insurance. Downtown Asheville in the 1980s had boarded-up storefronts and little foot traffic, and cheap rent went into inventory. After fifteen years the store moved three doors down into a historic building that had been an Elks club, with community members helping carry the stock. It now stands at 55 Haywood Street. In 2000 Publishers Weekly named Malaprop's Bookseller of the Year and the city gave it a Seal of the City recognition. Gretchen Horn, on staff since 2001 as barista and later financial manager, became majority owner in January 2019. The shop carries books for adults and children as well as young adults, along with gifts. The cafe serves pastries from local bakeries and locally roasted coffee. Hand-lettered signage and event posters line the walls, and the store makes room for emerging regional writers. Our State magazine profiled B'Racz in 2011 and Blue Ridge Public Radio in 2019.
Solonos 105, Athens
Greek mountain, island and hiking maps — topographic sheets for walking the country. What hikers and climbers actually carry.
Best for Topographic maps of Greek mountains and islands for hikers and climbers
Athens / Greece
The Herakleidon Museum in Athens's Thissio district houses a shop just off its exhibition halls dedicated to ancient Greek technology and art, open the same hours as the museum, Wednesday through Sunday from 10am to 6pm. Located at 16 Herakleidon Street, the museum lists the shop directly among its visitor information alongside admission and contact details.
Best for Museum-shop, ancient-greek-technology, books, gifts
Monastiraki, Athens
An independent art, architecture and visual-culture bookshop and publishing space. Established 2021.
Best for Art, architecture, and visual-culture books plus its own publishing space
Downtown
Operating in downtown Austin since 1970, BookPeople is Texas's largest independent bookstore. It hosts author events and children's storytimes and runs an in-house cafe, CoffeePeople.
Best for Texas's largest indie bookstore, author events, kids' storytimes, and its CoffeePeople cafe
Baghdad / Iraq
Zuqaq13 in Baghdad produces high-quality Iraqi-designed apparel and paper prints including postcards and notebooks.
Best for Iraqi-designed prints and apparel
Bald Head Island, NC
The gift shop of the Old Baldy Lighthouse and the Smith Island Museum of History is run by the Old Baldy Foundation. The non-profit preserves the lighthouse at 101 Lighthouse Wynd on Bald Head Island, North Carolina. Visitors reach the island by ferry from Southport, climb 108 stairs to the top of the tower and tour the museum in the keeper's cottage. Purchases in the shop go toward the foundation's preservation work on the site.
Best for Lighthouse heritage gifts and books
The gift shop at Old Baldy belongs to the Old Baldy Foundation. The non-profit preserves the Old Baldy Lighthouse on Bald Head Island, North Carolina, and interprets the island's history. The lighthouse stands at 101 Lighthouse Wynd, a five-minute walk from the ferry landing. The island is reached only by boat, on the passenger ferry from Southport. Visitors climb 108 stairs and five landings to the top for a view over Bald Head Island and the Cape Fear River estuary. Climbs are self-guided and unscheduled. The keeper's cottage beside the tower houses the Smith Island Museum of History. Artifacts from the foundation's collection rotate on exhibit there and orient guests to the island's past. More artifacts sit inside the lighthouse foundation. The grounds hold picnic tables and the old Oil House, with interpretive signs and a very old live oak. The foundation also runs a two-hour guided history tour by golf cart that covers four centuries of island history. The tour includes lighthouse admission and a ten percent discount in the gift shop. Its education work extends to a Junior Keepers programme and an archival collection. A monthly newsletter is called The Keeper's Times. Supporters fund the site through a Brick Walkway Program and Passholders for Preservation. The shop is the foundation's retail arm, and buying there supports the upkeep of the tower and the museum. The site closes in January and February and keeps seasonal schedules for the rest of the year.
Hampden, Baltimore
An independent Hampden bookstore focused on indie comics, small press, zines and graphic novels. It is also the receiving address for John Waters' fan mail.
Best for Indie comics, zines and small-press books
Fells Point & Remington, Baltimore
An independent neighbourhood bookstore with shops in Fells Point and Remington. Careful curation and local events define both locations.
Best for Curated independent bookstore
Lake Falls, North Baltimore
The Ivy Bookshop occupies a house on Falls Road in Baltimore, with books and events at the centre of its programme. Readers can browse in person or use a subscription in which a bookseller selects titles for them. Book clubs also meet at the shop, extending its role as a place for conversations about reading.
Best for Bookseller-selected reading and book clubs in Baltimore
The Ivy Bookshop is a Baltimore bookstore whose physical setting is part of its cultural programme. The business has operated for twenty-two years and spent its first two decades at Lake Falls Village Shopping Center. In 2020 it moved into the former Divine Life Church in Mt. Washington, a nineteenth-century building surrounded by three acres of gardens. Those grounds support reading and gatherings as well as the shop itself. Author events and book clubs turn books into public conversation, while rentals use the building and gardens as community spaces. A subscription programme gives an Ivy Personal Shopper responsibility for choosing books for a reader or recipient. School-book services add an institutional role beside the public catalogue. The Ivy also identifies Bird in Hand as a sibling shop in Charles Village, where coffee and books have shared a locally sourced programme since 2016. Together these facts describe a bookseller shaped by continuity and place. The merchant joins staff selection with events and education, all supported by outdoor space, using a converted church and its gardens as infrastructure for Baltimore's reading communities.
Bamberg / Germany
Mein BAMBERG Laden is a shop on Geyersworthstrasse in Bamberg selling souvenirs and Bamberg merchandise, with books too.
Best for Souvenirs and Bamberg books
Khlong San
Candide Books is an independent Bangkok bookstore that predates The Jam Factory complex by two decades. Run by 'Padd' Duangruethai, it stocks readable Thai titles both old and new.
Best for Thai-language literary titles, old and new, at Candide Books
Candide Books takes its name from Voltaire's satirical novella and has operated in Bangkok for more than two decades, predating by roughly twenty years its current home inside The Jam Factory, the converted riverside warehouse complex in Khlong San near the Chao Phraya's western bank. The shop is the project of Duangruethai Esanasatang, known locally as "Padd Candide," a writer, editor, and publisher who also serves as managing editor at Betweentheline Publishing. That editorial background shapes the inventory: rather than chasing bestseller lists, Candide stocks Thai-language fiction and nonfiction from small independent presses alongside translated titles Duangruethai selects herself, treating the shelves as a curated reading list rather than a general retail assortment. The bookstore-café format lets it double as a gathering point — Duangruethai periodically books a live jazz band to play among the shelves and hosts talks on subjects she considers relevant to the moment, extending the shop's role beyond bookselling into something closer to a small independent cultural venue. Within Bangkok's shrinking population of independent bookshops, Candide's longevity and its founder's own standing in Thai publishing circles have made it a reference point for readers seeking work outside the mainstream English-language and chain-bookstore circuit.
Barcelona / Spain
Laie's Museu Picasso branch sits inside the Picasso Museum on Carrer de Montcada in Barcelona's Born district, stocking books on Picasso, twentieth-century art, and city history alongside museum merchandise and jewelry. It follows the museum's own seasonal hours and can be reached directly by phone or email.
Best for Books on Picasso and 20th-century art, museum merchandise
Gran Via, Barcelona / Online
Barcelona's temple of travel literature — maps, guides, anthropology and every geography a shelf can hold, curated since 1979. Travelers plan whole journeys standing in its aisles on the Gran Via.
Best for The great travel bookshop of Europe
Sant Cugat del Vallès (near Barcelona)
A village of antiques and vintage — over 200 dealers in a collection of historic buildings near Barcelona, selling furniture, records, books, and curiosities. The Sunday market is vintage hun.
Best for The Sunday market, the vintage finds, and the village atmosphere.
Barcelona / Spain / Online
Run by the Fundació Joan Miró, this online shop sells reproductions, catalogues, and objects drawn directly from the artist's work, including pochoir prints and homeware printed with Miró motifs such as L'or de l'azur and Mai 1968. Its catalogue mixes serious scholarship, like exhibition catalogues for the Miró-Picasso and Paul Klee shows, with playful items such as a Mironins activity book for children.
Best for Museum-shop, art-prints, books, design-objects
Basel
Bergli Books is a Basel-based publisher and bookshop, at Mittlere Strasse 4, specialising in books about Swiss life and culture, from cookbooks to children's titles. Its children's book Swisstory received the International Crystal Kite Award from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.
Best for Books about switzerland
Bath / United Kingdom
Berdoulat is a shop in Margaret's Buildings in Bath selling dining and kitchenware, with cookery books and furniture too.
Best for Kitchenware, cookbooks and furniture
John Street, Bath
Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights is a Bath bookshop on John Street with a strong emphasis on personal recommendations. Its booksellers offer reading subscriptions and an online recommendation service alongside browsing in the shop. The building has books on several levels, with staff offering to bring titles from the stairs-only areas to customers on the ground floor.
Best for Personal book recommendations and reading subscriptions
Baytown, Texas
Sterling Wadzinski's shop on North Main pulls weekly Marvel, DC and Image comics, manga, anime figures, and tabletop games from Dungeons & Dragons to Pathfinder. Wednesday nights are for D&D; other evenings run card tournaments.
Best for New comics, manga, tabletop games, cards and scheduled play
Baytown, Texas
Office supplies, technology and print services.
Best for Office supplies, technology and print services at a verified Baytown door
Nahhass Building, GF, Jalloul Street 77, El-Horge 57, Kaskas, Beirut, Lebanon / Beirut / Lebanon
Hussein Halabi opened a grocery on Jalloul Street, Kaskas, in 1958; son Abdullah turned it into a bookshop after the civil war; granddaughter Lana relaunched the independent shop in 2016.
Best for An independent family bookshop relaunched by its third generation.
Achrafieh, Beirut / Online
Librairie Antoine is a Beirut bookseller founded in 1933, offering Arabic and French books alongside English-language titles. Educational books form part of its wider selection alongside stationery and toys available through online ordering or its branch network. Publishing and distribution through Hachette Antoine form another part of the business, separate from the stock at any individual shop.
Best for Arabic, French and English books with educational supplies
Librairie Antoine began in Beirut in 1933 and now combines bookselling with an online shop and a wider publishing business. Its book selection includes Arabic and French titles alongside English-language reading, covering general interests as well as education. That language range is useful when choosing a particular edition or looking for a book for someone else.
Books are not the whole offer: the company also lists stationery and educational toys, together with gifts and craft materials. Those categories serve different purposes, from school supplies to a present that does not depend on knowing a reader's preferred author. The wider business includes a partnership with Hachette Livre through Hachette Antoine, connecting retail with publishing and distribution.
Antoine operates several branches, so the network should not be confused with one shop holding every product shown online. Start with the title and language you need, then identify the relevant branch or online ordering option. A specific edition or school text merits a direct availability check before travelling for that item alone.
Achrafieh / Online
Luanatic is a Beirut house for witty stationery, accessories, home goods highlighting Lebanese culture. Founded in 2009; Worldwide shipping stated.
Best for Witty stationery, accessories, home goods highlighting Lebanese culture
Armenia Street, Geara building, Mar Mikhael, Beirut, Lebanon / Beirut / Lebanon
Editions and publications designed/produced in Beirut with local artists; founders Karma Tohmé and Tony Sfeir (official + mohit.art).
Best for Beirut editions and publications made with local artists.
Makedonska 22, 11000 Belgrade / Serbia
A bookstore in Dom omladine offering literature and other books.
Cara Lazara 12, Belgrade / Serbia
A bookstore and café carrying Booka publications and other literature.
Bergen / Norway
This Bergen bookshop carries the breadth of what is published as Christian literature in Norway.
Best for Christian books published in Norway
Bergen / Norway
Bookshop within Bergen's House of Literature, with book ordering available directly from the shop.
Berlin / Germany
The Berlinische Galerie's museum shop operates from the foyer at Alte Jakobstrasse 124-128 in Berlin, open daily from 10am to 6pm selling exhibition publications, posters, and postcards. Titles no longer in stock remain available to read in the museum's library reading room.
Best for Museum shop, art publications, posters
Berlin / Germany
Buchbinderei Klünder has bound books at Rathenower Straße 60 in Berlin-Moabit since 1923, over a century at the same address — the kind of continuity that survives a city's rebuilding only when a trade keeps being needed rather than merely tolerated.
Best for Hand binding, antiquarian restoration and thesis binding in Berlin
Buchbinderei Klünder has bound books at Rathenower Straße 60 in Berlin-Moabit since 1923, over a century at the same address — the kind of continuity that survives a city's rebuilding only when a trade keeps being needed rather than merely tolerated. The workshop covers books in fabric, leather, or vellum by hand, and makes portfolio boxes and protective cases alongside small-batch work like photo albums and thesis bindings, the last a category that only exists because German universities still require a physically bound dissertation copy.
Restoration of antiquarian books runs alongside new binding as a standing service, not a side offer — a distinction that matters, since a bindery that only restores is a conservator and one that only binds new work has no answer for an owner's existing damaged books. Klünder's own site describes the workshop as "offen und experimentierfreudig" (open and eager to experiment), a self-characterization that sits a little against the century-old address, and the site frames this as willingness to take on unconventional projects without abandoning the traditional binding techniques the business was built on.
The workshop’s own site is the source for the founding year, address, material list and restoration and small-batch services. Its claim of more than a century at one address is a first-party history rather than an archival finding, but the useful visitor-facing facts are current: what it binds, what it restores and where the work is done.
Charlottenburg (Savignyplatz)
Set in the railway arches beneath Savignyplatz station, Bucherbogen is Berlin's specialist bookshop for architecture, art, fashion, film and design, filling several vaults with in-print and hard-to-find titles. Booksellers hand-order any available book and gift-wrap for a devoted Charlottenburg clientele.
Best for Art and architecture books
Berlin / Germany / Online
The C/O Berlin Foundation's online shop sells photography books, limited-edition prints, and posters tied to its exhibitions, including work by Peter Hujar, Walter Schels, and Julian Rosefeldt. Products range from affordable postcard sets to signed collector's editions priced in the hundreds of euros.
Best for Photography books, posters, editions, museum store
Mitte (Auguststrasse)
On Auguststrasse in Mitte, do you read me?! curates several hundred international magazines and books on fashion, art, photography, design and food, favouring independent and small-run titles. The shop is a fixture of Berlin's independent-publishing scene, stocking Japanese magazines and graphic-design journals alongside notebooks and totes.
Best for International magazines and design books
Almstadtstrasse 48, Mitte, Berlin
Berlin design and architecture bookshop focused on theory and practice, with a deep specialist selection of architecture, art, urbanism and design publications.
Best for Design and architecture theory books and Berlin's best design publications
Berlin / Germany
Urban Spree's bookshop, inside its postindustrial compound at Revaler Strasse 99 in Berlin, sells hand-picked graffiti, street art, and photography books alongside zines, screen prints, and t-shirts produced under its own imprint, Urban Spree Books. The shop keeps regular hours alongside the site's gallery, concert room, and biergarten, with an online storefront for checkout.
Best for Street-art, books, zines, prints, apparel
Bilbao, Online
Under Gehry's titanium sails, the Guggenheim Bilbao's tienda carries Basque design, artist editions and the museum's own publications — with a proper online store behind it.
Best for Design and editions under Gehry’s titanium
Birmingham / United Kingdom
Indespoke in Birmingham's Great Western Arcade stocks goods from over 100 independent makers, from candles to stationery.
Best for Independent maker goods and crafts
Ala-Too Square area
Raritet is a Bishkek bookseller and publishing house founded in 1997, its shop near Ala-Too Square carrying maps, travel guides, postcards, and a small English-language selection. Its own imprint produces illustrated gift albums on Kyrgyz nature and traditions along with children's books retelling Kyrgyz fairy tales and epics.
Best for Books and gift albums about Kyrgyzstan
Chapinero, Bogotá
Bogotá bookshop, record store, bar and cultural space established in 2017. Its programme includes listening sessions, literary presentations, concerts, reading clubs, workshops, film forums and exhibitions.
Best for Books
Chapinero, Bogotá
Galería El Museo is a contemporary-art gallery at Calle 80 No 11-42, Local 2. It presents rotating exhibitions, represents artists, and publishes books. A virtual shop sits beside the gallery rooms.
Best for Galleries
Centro & Chapinero, Bogotá
One of Bogotá's longest-running bookshops, Librería Lerner sells across literature, science, the humanities, art and design from its store on Avenida Jiménez in the historic centre and a second on Calle 93. It ships books throughout Colombia from its own online store.
Best for Broad general and Colombian bookshop
Teusaquillo, Bogotá
Bookseller with branches in Bogotá's Teusaquillo and La Macarena neighbourhoods and a further location in Tabio, with an online catalogue spanning fiction, essays and nonfiction.
Best for Books
Chapinero, Bogotá
Bogotá bookshop and interdependent contemporary-art circulation space at Calle 69 #10A-09. It links publishing with the artistic field through its Salvaje and Jardín imprints, exhibitions, workshops and courses, while also presenting itself as a nursery, support group, dance floor and catalyst for collaboration.
Best for Books
Chapinero, Bogotá
An independent bookshop-café spread over three floors of a heritage English-style house on Calle 71, stocking Colombian, Latin American and international literature plus graphic novels and art titles. It runs a reading club, book exchange and workshops alongside its 300-square-metre bookshop.
Best for Three floors of Colombian and Latin American literature, graphic novels
8 Place du Parlement, 33000 Bordeaux, France / Bordeaux / France
Independent bookshop opened October 1979 by Henri Martin and Danielle Depierre; on place du Parlement since 1996 (ALCA directory; Sud Ouest archive feature).
Best for Independent books and literary browsing on place du Parlement.
Downtown, Boston
The Brattle Book Shop dates its founding to 1825 in Boston's Cornhill section. The Gloss family has run it since 1949. It fills a three-story building at 9 West Street with more than 250,000 used, rare and out-of-print books, plus maps, prints and an outdoor lot of bargain carts. Proprietor Ken Gloss appraises for Harvard, Boston University and the FBI and appears on Antiques Roadshow.
Best for Antiquarian and used books
The Brattle Book Shop was founded in 1825 in the Cornhill section of Boston. It has belonged to the Gloss family since 1949. George Gloss and his son Kenneth built it into one of the larger antiquarian book shops in the country, and Ken Gloss remains the proprietor. The shop moved to West Street in 1969. George marked the move by riding through Boston in a horse-drawn covered wagon, handing out books and telling passers-by to go west. The shop still occupies the three-story building at 9 West Street in Downtown Boston. Two floors hold general used books and a third floor holds rare and antiquarian volumes, with an outside sale lot of bargain carts. The stock runs past 250,000 items, from books and maps to prints, postcards and ephemera on every subject. The rare book room keeps first editions and fine leather bindings. An experienced buyer is on hand during the day. The shop buys everything from single volumes to whole estates, by appointment. Ken Gloss is a past president of the New England chapter of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America. He appraises books and libraries for Harvard, Boston University, Boston College, Northeastern and the FBI, among others. He appears on Antiques Roadshow and lectures to library groups and historical societies across New England. The shop produces a podcast called the Brattlecast, and its staff post a find of the week from the shelves.
Pearl Street, Boulder
David Bolduc founded the Boulder Bookstore in 1973 with ten bookcases and five staff at 1133 Pearl Street. Since 1991 it has occupied the Cheney Block of 1899 at 1107 Pearl, on the corner of 11th Street on the pedestrian mall. More than 100,000 titles fill three floors. The upstairs ballroom, once a dance hall, hosts more than 150 author events a year.
Best for New and used books across several floors, author readings
Boulder Bookstore opened in 1973 at 1133 Pearl Street. Founder David Bolduc started with ten bookcases and five employees in the front of a building shared with a Mexican import store and a basement plant shop. In 1991 the store moved along Pearl to the Cheney Block, built in 1899. The building was renamed the Buckingham Block in 1905, as the stone at the top still reads. Bolduc hired a feng shui consultant to place the entrance and the office during the remodel. He fitted a tin ceiling on the main floor to match the building's period while saving energy. The Upper North Room, acquired in 1994, is known as the Annex. The store now employs about fifty people across 20,000 square feet and three floors. It stocks more than 100,000 titles, with a used-book department and an out-of-print service. It reports its bestsellers to the New York Times and the Denver Post. The ballroom upstairs was used from 1899 for lodge meetings and dances, with the orchestra in the mezzanine where the offices now sit. Later a Buddhist congregation met there. It now hosts more than 150 author events a year. The stained glass in its north windows was made to match the original west pair. Bolduc once organised readings for Allen Ginsberg when the poet lived in Boulder. He was a founding member of the Boulder Independent Business Alliance. The corner of Pearl and 11th was once called Pearl and Fight for the bars that stood there.
Main Street, downtown Bozeman
Billed as Montana's largest independent bookstore, Country Bookshelf has anchored downtown Bozeman's Main Street for decades with a deep regional and general-interest selection. It hosts frequent author events and champions Montana writers across its two floors.
Best for Regional books and author events
Avenida Central, Braga
This independent bookshop occupies Casa Rolão, an 18th-century baroque townhouse, pairing shelves of Portuguese and foreign titles with a courtyard café. It hosts readings and cultural events among the building's old stonework and garden tables.
Best for Books and a bookshop café
Kuipersstraat
Raaklijn is an independent Bruges bookshop with a strong foreign-language fiction section alongside Dutch literature and non-fiction. Its staff are known for personal reading recommendations.
Best for Books and foreign-language fiction
Brussels
International house of literature — bookshop, writer residencies, and literary events in multiple languages. Brussels' literary heart.
Best for Writer residencies, multilingual literary events, and a bookshop at Brussels' literary heart
Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert, Brussels
Tropismes is a Brussels bookshop in the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert, specialising in French literature, art and humanities. Its ornate interior adds atmosphere without replacing the strength of the curated catalogue.
Best for French literature and art books inside the ornate Galeries Royales
Brussels / Belgium
WIELS Bookshop sits inside the contemporary art centre's converted brewery building on Avenue Van Volxemlaan in Brussels, stocking a sharp selection of art books, exhibition catalogues, magazines and postcards alongside the WIELS-branded "Goeiedag Bonjour" goodies. The shop is open Tuesday through Sunday and also runs an online catalogue for browsing publications remotely.
Best for Art books, exhibition catalogues, museum shop
Bucharest, Romania
Cărturești is a Romanian bookstore-café chain best known for its Carusel location in Bucharest, built around a landmark spiral staircase. The chain combines books with lifestyle goods and café service across its stores in the city.
Best for Books, lifestyle
Amzei, Bucharest
OTOTO, launched in February 2021, is a Bucharest concept store curating independent brands across specialty coffee, tea, snacks, personal care, stationery and home goods, with a sustainable-fashion floor at its Calea Victoriei 153 location. It uses recycled and recyclable packaging and also operates stores at D.I. Mendeleev 5 and Calea Dorobanți 239.
Best for Independent sustainable lifestyle brands
Terézváros
Atlantisz Könyvsziget is a Budapest bookshop associated with the Atlantisz publishing house. Its catalogue gives space to philosophy and the humanities, with books selected for readers looking beyond general bestseller lists. The shop occupies the corner of Király Street and Anker köz.
Best for Philosophy and humanities books in central Budapest
Atlantisz began in 1990 as the publishing offshoot of Medvetánc, described by the organization itself as the first uncensored though technically legal Hungarian social-theory journal to appear after 1956. When Hungary's political system changed in 1989, the journal's editorial circle -- including Miklós Tamás, László Tengelyi, Magdolna Kolta and László Grób -- converted the publication into a dedicated publishing house in partnership with Eötvös Loránd University, which provided workspace in a building on Váci utca. The name Atlantisz draws on both Plato's Atlantis myth and Francis Bacon's utopian writing, chosen to evoke, in the founders' words, "a world of intellectual dignity and freedom often hidden from everyday view." Both the publishing house and its companion Atlantisz Foundation operate as nonprofit institutions, oriented toward bringing previously unavailable European philosophy, history, religious studies, art theory and psychology into Hungarian translation. The Váci utca workspace grew into the first Atlantisz Könyvsziget (Book Island) bookshop, described as Central Europe's first dedicated book information center. The shop has since relocated to its current premises at the corner of Király utca and Anker köz, where it continues to operate as both retailer and public face of the publishing house's humanities-focused catalogue.
Budapest, Hungary
Atticus Antikvárium is listed in Budapest as a books; its official website and supplied OpenStreetMap place record provide the public-door evidence.
Best for Books
Október 6. u. 11, Budapest
Bestsellers is an English-language Budapest bookstore with fiction, nonfiction and regular author events. Staff knowledge and a focused imported selection distinguish it from broader Hungarian-language chains.
Best for Budapest's best English-language book selection, with author events
Belváros, Budapest
Bomo Art designs notebooks, albums, stationery, kaleidoscopes and printed paper objects in Budapest. Rich illustration and bookbinding make the shop useful for gifts that remain practical rather than purely decorative.
Best for Locally designed notebooks, albums, stationery, and kaleidoscopes
Terézváros, Budapest
An independent bookshop specializing in Hungarian and translated literature, criticism, and cultural publications. Established 1950.
Best for Hungarian and translated literature, criticism, and cultural publications since 1950
Budapest, Hungary
Könyvmentők is listed in Budapest as a books; its official website and supplied OpenStreetMap place record provide the public-door evidence.
Best for Books
Budapest, Hungary
Könyvudvar is listed in Budapest as a books; its official website and supplied OpenStreetMap place record provide the public-door evidence.
Best for Books
1053 Budapest, Múzeum krt. 13-15., Hungary / Budapest / Hungary
Magyar József opened Központi Antiquarium at Múzeum körút 13 in 1891; Magyar Nemzet: after the 1952 merger it became Hungarys largest antiquarian bookshop (200+ sqm selling floor).
Best for Antiquarian books at Múzeum körút 13 in a house opened in 1891.
Budapest, Hungary
LibroShop Bookstore is listed in Budapest as a books; its official website and supplied OpenStreetMap place record provide the public-door evidence.
Best for Books
Erzsébetváros, Budapest
Lúd Labor is a paper and stationery shop at Klauzál utca 31 in Erzsébetváros. It opened in 2019 when bookbinder Mónus Mimi and gallerist Böröcz Laci joined their two ventures. A bookbinding workshop in the back room makes the hand-sewn albums and calendars of Papetri paperworks, Mimi's brand founded in 2012. The shelves also carry paper goods from Hungarian and foreign designers alongside prints and small artworks.
Best for Handbound notebooks and planners made on site, plus paper goods
Lúd Labor opened in 2019 at Klauzál utca 31 when two founders married their existing businesses. Mónus Mimi, an architect by training, had a bookbindery and her own paper brand, Papetri paperworks. Papetri was founded in 2012 as a small manufactory that designs and illustrates paper goods and makes them by hand in short runs. Its materials come only from sustainable sources. Böröcz Laci ran a small design shop inside the 2B Gallery, which he and his brother founded in 2002 and which he still directs. Its exhibitions are built around memory and Jewish identity. The shop's name is local. The district was once home to Jewish poultry and feather traders. The nickname the trade attracted, libások, or goose people, gives the shop its goose laboratory. The main line is paper and stationery. The founders' open approach shows in the accessories and artworks that share the shelves, sourced from Hungarian and foreign designers. In the back room a bookbinding workshop operates in view of customers. The hand-sewn Papetri albums and calendars are made there. Lúd Labor treats the sharing of that knowledge as part of its job and runs regular workshops in traditional graphic and bookbinding techniques. The webshop adds downloadable wallpapers and printable colouring pages, plus planner sheets and daily schedule cards. The same address serves as the Papetri brand store, with orders collected in person or sent by parcel across the country.
Budapest / Hungary
The Ludwig Museum Shop occupies the first floor of the museum inside the Palace of Arts (MUPA) in Budapest, selling exhibition catalogues, art magazines, and gifts by Hungarian designers such as Malinovka and Artkores. The shop can be visited for free even without an exhibition ticket.
Best for Exhibition catalogues and gifts by Hungarian designers like Malinovka and Artkores
Erzsébetváros
An independent English-language bookshop and café selling new and secondhand books. Retained and reverified as open daily in Time Out’s November 2025 Budapest guide; its official Facebook remains the current public destination.
Best for New and secondhand English-language books alongside a café, an independent Budapest fixture.
Massolit Books & Café opened in 2011 in Erzsébetváros, Budapest's historic Jewish Quarter, and has been shaped since by its owner, Judit Pecák, an English-language institution that pairs a used-and-new bookshop with a café. The shop occupies a converted space at Nagy Diófa utca 30 and is arranged around several connected rooms, including a quiet garden courtyard planted with fig trees — an unusual amenity for a central Budapest bookshop and one regularly singled out by visitors. Its shelves mix new titles with a substantial secondhand English-language stock, catering to Budapest's expatriate community, students and travelers as much as to Hungarian readers of English. The café side serves direct-trade coffee, organic tea, and a rotating menu of baked goods — quiches, carrot cake, brownies and other pastries — made on site. Independent listings and travel guides consistently describe it as one of Budapest's enduring English-language literary meeting points, a rarer commodity in a city whose bookshop scene skews heavily toward Hungarian-language stock. It remains open daily, run independently rather than as part of a chain.
Budapest, Hungary
Pirex Papír is listed in Budapest as a stationery; its official website and supplied OpenStreetMap place record provide the public-door evidence.
Best for Stationery
Budapest, Hungary
Stephanus Könyvesház is listed in Budapest as a books; its official website and supplied OpenStreetMap place record provide the public-door evidence.
Best for Books
Palermo, Buenos Aires
Librería del Fondo is a bookshop and cultural centre that trades as Librería del Fondo y Centro Cultura Arnaldo Orfila Reynal. It gives its address as Costa Rica 4568 in Buenos Aires.
Best for Books
Avenida Corrientes, Buenos Aires
On bookish Avenida Corrientes, Hernández has fed Buenos Aires' famous reading habit for decades — Argentine letters, imports and midnight browsers. A porteño institution.
Best for A Corrientes classic for readers
Palermo, Buenos Aires
Founded in Palermo Viejo in 2004, Libros del Pasaje is an independent Buenos Aires bookshop pairing national, independent and imported titles with launches, talks, exhibitions and children’s programming in a high-ceilinged house.
Best for Independent books, imported editions and literary events in Palermo
Villa Crespo, Buenos Aires
microgaleria is a gallery shop that sells contemporary artwork, photography, books, fanzines and letterpress posters. The site lists work by named artists under artwork and photography, and a separate section for letterpress posters.
Best for Contemporary prints, photography, books, fanzines and letterpress posters
Buenos Aires / Argentina
RAMA has worked as a hand bookbinding studio in Buenos Aires since 2011, according to the copyright notice on its own site ("© 2011-2026"), placing it among the longer-running independent binderies operating in Argentina's capital.
Best for Hand-bound notebooks, portfolios and custom boxes
RAMA has worked as a hand bookbinding studio in Buenos Aires since 2011, according to the copyright notice on its own site ("© 2011-2026"), placing it among the longer-running independent binderies operating in Argentina's capital. The workshop's stated line of work is encuadernación — notebooks, notepads, brand books, lookbooks, portfolios, theses, folders and menus — alongside custom boxes and cases (cajas y estuches) built to client specification, with finishing treatments and embellishments applied by hand rather than run through an industrial line.
Beyond commissioned work, RAMA also teaches: its site lists courses and workshops through which the studio passes on binding technique directly, a common structure among the artisanal bookbinding scene documented across Buenos Aires (alongside contemporaries such as Casa Taller in Palermo Soho and Tinta al Tiempo in Monserrat). RAMA maintains an active portfolio and presence across Facebook, Behance, Instagram and LinkedIn, consistent with a working studio that takes ongoing client commissions rather than a one-off maker's page.
What is not established from the site itself is a named founder or a first-person history beyond the operating-since date — the About material available is functional rather than narrative. On the facts that are verifiable — a dedicated bindery, fifteen years of continuous operation, a real service menu spanning books, boxes and finishing — RAMA is a legitimate, currently operating hand bindery, not a general stationery seller with binding as a sideline.
Estados Unidos 617, C1101AAM Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina / Buenos Aires / Argentina
The San Telmo specialist carries new and used English-language books.
Best for New and used English-language books in San Telmo.
Elmwood Village, Buffalo
Talking Leaves is an independent Buffalo bookstore, its Elmwood Avenue shop known for a deep, hand-picked selection across literature, poetry and small-press titles. Staff recommendations and author events have kept it central to the city's reading community for decades.
Best for Independent and literary books, local and small-press titles
Bosu-dong, Jung-gu, Busan
A bookselling alley with independent shops carrying used and new books, including specialist comic-book stores. The bookshops developed after Korea's liberation and the area became known as Bosu-dong Book Street.
Best for Used and new books, plus specialist comic-book stores
Busan
Independent bookstore, micro-cinema and cafe in Busan's Hwamyeong-dong - indie and small-press books, art-house film screenings, reading groups, and drinks including beer and wine, in one basement space.
Best for Books and cultural events in this independent Busan space
Mousai is an independent cultural space in Hwamyeong-dong, Buk-gu, Busan, combining a bookstore, a small independent cinema, a cafe and a meeting/event room in one basement-level location. The name comes from the Muses of Greek mythology and is used locally to suggest a place for losing yourself in thought. It stocks independent and small-press books and screens independent films, alongside running reading groups and arts-education programming; the cafe serves coffee and juice as well as beer and wine. It is reachable from Hwamyeong Station (Busan Metro Line 2, Exit 6), about a five-minute walk away. Public listings describe it as a genuine neighborhood cultural venue rather than a conventional retail bookstore, closer to a small arts center that happens to sell books.
Busan South
A small independent bookstore and slow cultural stop overlooking Busan scenery. The official tourism guide lists its operating hours and official Instagram.
Best for A slow cultural stop with bookshop browsing overlooking Busan scenery
31 Mohamed Abdou Street, behind Al-Azhar Mosque, El-Darb El-Ahmar, Cairo 11675, Egypt / Cairo / Egypt
Family bookbinding shop opened 1936; third/fourth generation still hand-sews and gold-tools leather bindings by hand (Condé Nast Traveller Middle East; Middle East Eye).
Best for Hand-sewn, gold-tooled leather bindings from a family workshop opened in 1936.
Zamalek
Opened in Zamalek in 2002 by sisters Hind and Nadia Wassef with Nihal Schawky, Diwan was Egypt's first modern bookstore and stocks Arabic, English, French and German titles alongside a café, stationery and Arabic music. Its branches carry curated fiction, children's books and Egyptology sections, and the founders published a memoir chronicling the shop's beginnings.
Best for Arabic and English books
13 Road 206, Degla, Maadi, Cairo, Egypt / Cairo / Egypt
Karam Youssef opened the Maadi bookshop-publisher in 2006; Ahram Online interviewed her at the Maadi shop on 5 Jul 2026 after 20 years; OkayAfrica (16 Jul 2025) confirms the still-operating cultural hub and Arabic-language press.
Best for Independent books and paper goods.
1st floor, 36 Abd al-Khaliq Tharwat Street, Downtown, Cairo, Egypt / Cairo / Egypt
Lehnert and Landrock moved their photography business to Cairo in 1924; stepson Kurt Lambelet opened the first brick-and-mortar bookshop in 1936 (Middle East Eye 2021).
Best for Photography and books from a Cairo business established there in 1924.
6 Talaat Harb Square, Downtown, Cairo, Egypt / Cairo / Egypt
Landmark Talaat Harb Square bookshop; Middle East Eye dates the family newspaper kiosk to 1951 and the landmark store to 1958; house published Sartre/Camus and later banned titles after 1967.
Best for Books and publishing from a Talaat Harb Square family shop dating to 1958.
3 Talaat Harb Street, 1st floor, Downtown, Cairo, Egypt / Cairo / Egypt
Opened 2004 at 3 Talaat Harb; CUIP records it as the first bookstore in Egypt approved by France's Centre National du Livre as a Francophone reference bookstore.
Best for A Francophone reference bookstore on Talaat Harb, opened in 2004.
165 Mohamed Farid Street, intersection with Abdel Khalek Tharwat Street, Downtown, Cairo, Egypt / Cairo / Egypt
Founded 1928 as a bilingual English-Arabic bookshop and publisher; still operating downtown in 2025 (Middle East Eye; 2025 visitor note).
Best for English- and Arabic-language books from a shop and publisher founded in 1928.
Inglewood, Calgary
The Next Page is an independent bookstore and coffee shop on Calgary's historic Inglewood main street. It pairs a curated book selection with in-house coffee along a historic commercial strip.
Best for Curated new, remainder and used books plus an espresso bar
The Next Page occupies a bay in the Burn Block, a heritage building constructed in 1912 on 9 Avenue SE in Inglewood, Calgary's oldest commercial strip. Co-owners Jeremy and Richard spent three months hand-picking every title they wanted to stock while they waited for the right space to open up; when a bay in the Burn Block became available, they signed the lease the next day. The store keeps new and remainder books on the main floor, with a basement level given over to used books, alongside an espresso bar and tea shop. Floor-to-ceiling windows and shelves with sliding ladders, vintage furnishings and wooden floors carry the building's original character. The shop is locally owned and dog-friendly, offers free book deliveries and special orders, and hosts regular events. It also makes a point of stocking and displaying titles by LGBTQ+ and BIPOC authors. The Next Page has a sister store, Pages Books on Kensington, elsewhere in Calgary. Its stated motto: "Long live the book."
V&A Waterfront, Cape Town
Art@Africa is a gallery on the 1st Floor of the Clocktower Centre, Silo District, V&A Waterfront, selling paintings, drawings, sculptures, collectable prints, functional art and art books from artists including Barney Bernardo, David Griessel and Kara Schoeman. It also curates art at two wine estates in addition to the waterfront gallery.
Best for Original paintings sculpture and prints
199 Long Street, Cape Town 8001, South Africa / Cape Town / South Africa
Long Street's independent bookshop in Cape Town - books, magazines and paper goods.
Best for Independent books, magazines and paper goods on Long Street.
62 Main Road, Kalk Bay, Cape Town 7975, South Africa / Cape Town / South Africa
Kalk Bay Books continues to host author conversations and launches at its Main Road shop. The events calendar gives the small peninsula bookseller a cultural role beyond shelving new fiction and nonfiction.
Best for Author conversations, launches, new fiction and nonfiction.
Cape town / South Africa
The Botanical Society Bookshop at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden's Visitors' Centre sells books on flora, gardens, fauna, and natural history, plus children's titles, stationery, and gift cards, open daily from 9am to 6pm. A smaller satellite shop at the Centre for Home Gardening (Gate 2) carries the same range, and Botanical Society members get a 10% discount at both.
Best for Books, gifts, stationery, botanical
Kalk Bay, Cape Town
Founded in 1990 and still family-owned, the shop at 64 Main Rd, Kalk Bay sells rare and antiquarian books, art and collectibles covering Africana, natural history, biography, art and architecture, travel and modern first editions, along with maps, prints and ephemera. It also performs valuations and buys consignments.
Best for Rare books maps and prints
Cape Town
Roastin' Records stocks vinyl records across decades and genres, from hard to find pressings to contemporary releases. The shop also sells CDs, cassettes, Pro-Ject turntables, accessories and books, both online and in-store.
Best for Vinyl records, CDs, cassettes and Pro-Ject turntables
56 Surrey Street, Harfield Village, Cape Town 7708, South Africa / Cape Town / South Africa
Official site (visited 2026-08-25) still trades out-of-print Africana and sport books from Harfield Village and prints '1986–2026 / Yes, 40 years of Select Books'; founder member of SABDA. AntiquarianAuctions.com seller page: established on Long Street in 1986; relocated to Harfield Village in 2018; still issues Africana catalogues.
Best for Independent books and paper goods.
71 Roeland Street, Cape Town 8001, South Africa / Cape Town / South Africa
Cape Town's Roeland Street bookshop: independent, with magazines and paper alongside the books.
Best for Independent books, magazines and paper goods on Roeland Street.
Anfa, Casablanca
Librairie Porte d'Anfa's page states that its doors opened in September 2001, under director Amina Masnaoui.
Best for Books since 2001
Taikoo Li, Jinjiang District, Chengdu
Fangsuo Commune's Chengdu store sits below the Taikoo Li quarter beside the Daci Temple, a cavernous design-led bookshop stocking Chinese and foreign titles, stationery and craft objects. Its temple-inspired concrete interior threads reading galleries through a coffee bar and a curated range of homeware and apparel.
Best for Design-led books and international bookstore programming
Fangsuo Commune's Chengdu store sits below the Taikoo Li quarter beside the Daci Temple, its concrete, temple-inspired interior threading reading galleries through a coffee bar and a curated range of homeware and apparel. The Chengdu shop is one node in a wider network -- Guangzhou, Qingdao, Xi'an, Sanya and a Shanghai location among them -- run by Guangdong Fangsuo Cultural Investment Development Co., a company whose ambitions extend past bookselling into publishing culture itself: it organizes the International Bookstore Forum and partners with the Fu Lei Translation Publishing Award, an established prize for literature translated into Chinese. The company has also pushed into adjacent cultural real estate, including reading-themed boutique hotel concepts and rural cultural initiatives, treating the bookstore less as a single retail format than as the visible storefront of a broader publishing-and-culture business. Inside the Chengdu store itself, the emphasis stays on the reading experience -- galleries built to be walked through rather than shelved for browsing, with the coffee bar and lifestyle goods positioned as a stop along that route rather than the main event.
Wicker Park
Three-floor used bookstore in Wicker Park with roughly 70,000 volumes, open daily until 8pm; bought from its founders by longtime staffers Matt Revers and J.R. Nelson in 2022.
Best for Three floors of used books
Myopic Books occupies three floors at 1564 N. Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago's Wicker Park, stocking an inventory the shop itself puts at over 70,000 used volumes. Sources place its opening in the early 1990s, after an earlier spell on Division Street before the move to Milwaukee Avenue. In May 2022, longtime employees Matt Revers and J.R. Nelson-both of whom had spent years selling books on the floor-bought the store from its previous owners, keeping it independently run. It remains one of the larger secondhand bookstores in Chicago, open daily into the evening.
Hyde Park, Chicago
Founded 1961 in a Hyde Park basement, the Seminary Co-op became the scholarly bookstore — front tables that read like a syllabus of everything. Now a not-for-profit owned by its purpose.
Best for The best academic bookstore in America
5751 S. Woodlawn Ave., Hyde Park, Chicago
Independent bookseller in Hyde Park with one of the one of the largest academic book collections in the United States, serving University of Chicago readers and scholars. The co-op curates a staff-picked "Front Table," hosts author events, and publishes its own titles under the Ode Books imprint.
Best for Academic books, staff picks, author events and Ode Books imprint
Hyde Park
Founded in 1961 as a member-owned cooperative by University of Chicago students, this Hyde Park institution runs two shops, the scholarly Seminary Co-op and the general-interest 57th Street Books, and reorganized as a not-for-profit devoted to bookselling as a cultural act. Its shelves run deep in philosophy, history, and university-press titles rarely stocked elsewhere.
Best for Scholarly and academic books
Bucktown / Online
Torn Light Records began in Northern Kentucky in 2014, spent a decade in Cincinnati and moved to Chicago in January 2024. The Bucktown shop at 1855 N Milwaukee carries new and used records alongside books and print, and buys collections of any size.
Best for New and used records, tapes, CDs, books and zines
Wicker Park
Novelty spy-gear storefront at 1276 N Milwaukee Ave in Wicker Park that funds 826CHI, the Chicago chapter of the youth creative-writing nonprofit 826 National, founded by Dave Eggers.
Best for Spy gear, gadgets, and creative writing supplies at this 826CHI shop front
Wicker Park Secret Agent Supply Co. is the retail front for 826CHI, the Chicago chapter of 826 National, the youth creative-writing and tutoring nonprofit co-founded in 2002 by author Dave Eggers and educator Ninive Clements Calegari. Located at 1276 N Milwaukee Ave, the shop's shelves are stocked with tongue-in-cheek spy gear - shaving-cream cans with false bottoms, fake security cameras, tuxedo phone cases - alongside stationery, games, and gadgets, plus published writing produced by students in 826CHI's programs. Every purchase supports the nonprofit's free tutoring, writing workshops, and publishing programs for Chicago youth, following the same disguised-storefront model as the original 826 Valencia pirate-supply store in San Francisco.
Christchurch
Smith's Bookshop was established by A. D. Smith in 1894 and remains a fully independent Christchurch bookseller. It now trades from the Tannery Emporium at 3 Garlands Road in Woolston with more than 40,000 new and secondhand titles listed by category. The stock leans to rare and out-of-print books on New Zealand, from regional history and te ao Māori to farming and the arts, with international titles and children's books alongside.
Best for Secondhand and rare books
Smith's Bookshop anchors its identity in Christchurch rather than treating New Zealand books as a small regional shelf. A. D. Smith established the business in 1894, and the shop states that it remains fully independent. Its current home is the Tannery Emporium at 3 Garlands Road in Woolston. The catalogue contains more than 40,000 new and second-hand books arranged by subject, with rare and out-of-print material given particular weight. New Zealand regional history appears beside te ao Maori, natural history and the arts. Farming, fishing and hunting sit alongside literature, children's books and international titles. That structure explains the shop's practical value: it can support a narrowly local search without becoming only an antiquarian specialist. The bookseller also says it helps source hard-to-find titles, which connects the depth of the catalogue to an active service. Smith's is therefore a strong address for readers building a New Zealand collection, researching Christchurch or looking for a title that ordinary general bookshops no longer carry.
Neusser Straße 63, 50670 Köln, Germany / Cologne / Germany
Rundschau Online: one of two Cologne winners of the Deutscher Buchhandlungspreis 2025, at Neusser Str. 63. Cologne Tourism independently describes a decades-long independent Agnesviertel shop whose range is curated beyond bestseller lists.
Best for Independent books and paper goods.
Limburger Straße 10, 50672 Köln, Germany / Cologne / Germany
House site: antiquarian in the Belgian Quarter since 1982 with more than 100,000 works. ILAB affiliate page independently prints Limburger Straße 10, the same 1982 location language, and walk-in hours Mon–Fri 11:30–18:30, Sat 11:00–15:00.
Best for Independent books and paper goods.
Apostelnstraße 7, 50667 Köln, Germany / Cologne / Germany
Börsenblatt (17 Jan 2018) named it in the 'Deutschlands schönste Buchhandlungen' series: 150-year family firm, fourth generation Götz Mennenöh, Apostelnstrasse 7. Local Shop Guide independently: founded 1865 by Carl Roemke; still independent; same address.
Best for Independent books and paper goods.
Goltsteinstraße 78, 50968 Köln-Bayenthal, Germany / Cologne / Germany
Rundschau Online: Jens and Katrin Bartsch's Bayenthal shop wins the Deutscher Buchhandlungspreis 2025 for the second time; independent of chain buying lists; Goltsteinstraße at Tacitusstraße. Köln-Magazin independently prints Goltsteinstraße 78 and current hours.
Best for Independent books and paper goods.
Albertusstraße 6, 50667 Köln, Germany / Cologne / Germany
Founded 1980; Klaus Bittner trained at Walther König and opened his own literary shop as a discussion house for literature and small presses (Literatur in Köln, 2021 guest essay by Bittner).
Best for Literature and small-press discoveries in a Cologne discussion bookshop.
Innenstadt (Kolpingplatz)
M. Lengfeld'sche Buchhandlung has sold books in Cologne since 1842 and lists its shop at Kolpingplatz 1. Its selection includes classic and contemporary world literature, with poetry and a children's section among its special interests. Book recommendations and a reading programme extend the shop's work beyond the purchase of an individual title.
Best for Literature from classics to modern works, with poetry and classic editions
M. Lengfeld'sche Buchhandlung is a Cologne bookshop with a history dating to 1842 and an address at Kolpingplatz 1. Its selection spans world literature from classic works to contemporary writing, with poetry receiving particular attention. Paperbacks and travel guides sit alongside a children's and young-adult section, giving the shop several distinct kinds of reader to serve.
The bookshop names classic-edition publishers including Manesse and Winkler, making edition choice part of the appeal for literature readers. Its website also offers book recommendations, rather than leaving the visitor with a list of categories alone. A reading programme and the associated Literaturfreunde organisation connect bookselling with discussion around authors and their work.
For a particular title, start with the author and edition you want rather than assuming that all translations are interchangeable. A gift for a younger reader calls for a different choice from a collected classic or poetry volume. Consult the current event information separately if a reading is part of the reason for your visit.
Zeppelinstraße 4, 50667 Köln, Germany / Cologne / Germany
Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger centenary feature: founded 1923 by Erich Ortloff; still the last large-city-centre Schreibwaren house of its kind in the Soennecken group; Zeppelinstraße walk-in with ~40,000 articles, inks mixed to order including Kölner Brückengrün.
Best for Independent books and paper goods.
Kumaratunga Munidasa Mawatha, Colombo 03
M. D. Gunasena began in 1913 and developed from printing into publishing and bookselling in Sri Lanka. Its present business includes educational books alongside general reading, with retail branches and an online catalogue. The company's Olcott Mawatha headquarters is distinct from its other Colombo branches, so a visit should use the relevant branch listing.
Best for Sri Lankan educational books, publishing and general reading
Nugegoda, Colombo
Sarasavi's Nugegoda bookshop serves readers and students with books and stationery alongside educational materials. The branch provides a school-book-list service that lets customers request a collection for pickup or delivery. Its published categories include English and Sinhala books as well as children's reading, making it useful for several kinds of book shopping in one visit.
Best for School books, stationery and general reading in Nugegoda
Sarasavi Bookshop combines a nationwide branch network with an online catalogue serving readers in Sri Lanka and abroad. The company says it has operated for more than five decades and now runs 38 bookstores in major towns. Its range covers Sri Lankan and international books across many disciplines. Separate catalogue paths support children and school readers, with further material for academic study. The book catalogue is accompanied by stationery plus magazines and educational material. The bookseller also describes itself as a major Sri Lankan importer with long-standing relationships with international publishers. Those relationships are intended to bring new releases into the country promptly. Its current directory confirms separate Colombo locations. They include Borella and Colombo 07, plus Colombo Fort and Colpetty. One Galle Face and Narahenpitiya have their own listings. The network extends to Kandy as well as Galle and Negombo. These records establish Sarasavi as a network whose branches can be identified individually. Its scope includes Sinhala and English books, while imported titles sit beside school materials and general stationery across Sri Lanka.
Colombo 03
A Sri Lankan bookseller carrying international and local titles, magazines, stationery and greeting cards.
Best for International and local titles, magazines, stationery, and greeting cards
Indre By, Copenhagen
Denmark's architecture hub — exhibitions on Danish architecture and urban planning, and an architecture bookshop worth the trip. The DAC Passage links BLOX to the harbour, with the views that come with it.
Best for The architecture exhibitions, the bookstore, and the harbor passage.
Multiple locations, Copenhagen
Danish lifestyle on a budget — beautifully designed homeware, stationery, and accessories at affordable prices. The stores are designed as labyrinths that encourage discovery.
Best for The affordable design, the labyrinth layout, and the Scandinavian aesthetic.
Tullinsgade 3, Vesterbro / Online
Shrig Shop is a Copenhagen house for limited edition David Shrigley prints, posters, postcards, photography, books, art installations. International shipping is available.
Best for Limited edition David Shrigley prints, posters, postcards, photography, books, art installations
Vesterbro (Tullinsgade)
A small independent bookshop in Vesterbro that hand-picks fiction, poetry and children's titles chosen for their literary nerve rather than bestseller lists. Staff recommendations and in-store readings anchor a shop that calls itself a delicatessen for books.
Best for Hand-curated books and readings
Cuenca
Palier Café Libro is a bookshop devoted to independent Latin American publishers, with a café serving Ecuadorian coffee. The catalogue lists more than 3,000 titles across poetry, fiction, essay, philosophy, art, comics and children's books, and the shop hosts events.
Best for Books
Córdoba
Córdoba bookshop specializing in the humanities, with strong sections in psychology, literature, sociology, education, philosophy, anthropology, history and theatre.
Best for Books
Jung-gu, Daegu
Ghost Books occupies a third-floor space on Gyeongsanggamyeong-gil in Jung-gu, stocking independent and single-run publications, art books, and prints alongside titles it publishes itself. It hosts a five-week bookmaking workshop and runs a sister illustration label called little room.
Best for Independent zines, art books, and self-publishing
Plateau
Senegal's first online secondhand bookshop, running a curated catalogue of used books with a pickup point in Dakar-Plateau. Orders ship nationwide, and the team assembles reading selections and book bundles for building home libraries.
Best for Secondhand French-language books
Deep Ellum, Dallas
A nonprofit literary organization and publisher in Deep Ellum whose storefront bookshop specializes in translated and independent-press literature. Its publishing arm includes the Dalkey Archive Press imprint devoted to international and experimental fiction.
Best for Literature in translation and small-press titles
Deep Vellum Books is the storefront and headquarters of Deep Vellum Books & Publishing, a nonprofit literary arts organization at 3000 Commerce Street in Deep Ellum, Dallas. Will Evans founded Deep Vellum in 2013. He had found that Dallas readers had few places to talk about books and global literature. The name plays on the historic district Deep Ellum and on vellum, the thick parchment once used for fine books. In its first five years the press published 90 works in translation and hosted dozens of literary events. It has since become the largest publisher of translated literature in the United States. Seven imprints include Dalkey Archive Press, acquired in 2020, and the backlist holds more than 1,500 titles from over 100 countries. The shop stocks everything the press publishes together with a selection of literary fiction and nonfiction and poetry from independent publishers. It calls itself Texas's normalest bookstore and welcomes anyone who would like to read. The Dallas Morning News reported in 2026 on a listing by Condé Nast Traveler. That magazine had included the store on its list of independent bookstores in America. The same report noted that Mircea Cărtărescu's Solenoid, a Deep Vellum title, reached the International Booker Prize longlist in 2025.
Preston Hollow, Dallas
An independent bookstore on West Lovers Lane with hand-curated fiction, nonfiction and children's sections and a busy calendar of author events. It runs subscription programs for children's, young-adult and mystery readers alongside fiction and nonfiction book clubs.
Best for Curated new titles and author events
Oak Cliff (Bishop Arts), Dallas
The Wild Detectives combines an independent bookstore with a bar in Dallas's Oak Cliff neighbourhood. It opened in 2014 in a converted house, with a selection shaped by literature from different countries. Books share the space with coffee and drinks, making it a place to browse and spend time with a new read.
Best for Literary browsing with coffee or a drink in Oak Cliff
Khan Market, New Delhi
Bahrisons Booksellers is a family-run bookshop in New Delhi's Khan Market, with a history beginning in 1953. Balraj Bahri started the business in post-partition India, and its catalogue now ranges from fiction to specialist non-fiction. Readers can browse children's books as well as titles on subjects such as politics and history through its online shop.
Best for Fiction and wide-ranging non-fiction at a Khan Market bookshop
Greater Kailash II, New Delhi
CMYK Bookstore was opened by Kapil and Priya Kapoor of the publisher Roli Books as a shop given over to illustrated titles. The shelves cover art and design, with architecture, photography, fashion titles alongside them. Architectural Digest India called it India's largest retailer of art and design books in 2023. Addresses are listed at Greater Kailash 2 Market and Meharchand Market in New Delhi.
Best for Art, architecture, design, photography, fashion, craft, and illustrated books from international publishers
CMYK Bookstore came out of a publishing house rather than a retail chain. Kapil and Priya Kapoor, who run Roli Books, opened it to give art and design titles a room of their own. The stated ambition was a shop that understood illustrated books well enough to dedicate an entire space to the genre. More than a decade on, the shelves hold illustrated books sourced from publishers abroad, weighted toward art and design. Architectural Digest India described the Greater Kailash 2 shop as India's largest retailer of art and design books, and named the Kapoors as its founders. Kapil is managing director at Roli Books and Priya is editorial director, so the buying comes from inside the trade. The head office address remains M-75, Greater Kailash 2 Market, while the shop also lists 142 Meharchand Market on Fifth Avenue. Stock runs from Assouline travel volumes to Sanskrit compendiums and single-subject design surveys. Prices sit at collector level, which the shop does not disguise. The shop ships within India and abroad, and it takes book requests by phone for titles not on the floor.
Greater Kailash II, New Delhi
India’s first specialist independent children’s bookstore, set up in April 2003 in Greater Kailash II to select and promote children’s books and bring children and books together.
Best for A specialist independent children's bookshop.
Khan Market, New Delhi
Faqir Chand opened this Khan Market bookshop in 1951; it is now run by his great-grandson Abhinav Bamhi, the fourth generation behind the counter.
Best for Multigeneration independent bookselling since 1951.
Greater Kailash-1
A Delhi independent bookseller and publisher long associated with its Cafe Turtle, Full Circle stocks literature, philosophy and spirituality across its shop and online store. Its landmark Khan Market branch closed in 2020, with the Greater Kailash-1 outlet carrying on.
Best for Literature, philosophy and spiritual titles
West Patel Nagar, New Delhi
Left-wing bookstore and cafe in Shadipur, west Delhi, opened in 2012 by LeftWord Books (founded 1999); shares its space with Studio Safdar, the Jana Natya Manch performance venue named for playwright Safdar Hashmi, killed in 1989. Sells progressive titles near cost.
Best for Left-leaning books and a cultural space at an independent bookstore.
May Day Bookstore and Cafe was founded in 2012 by LeftWord Books, the publishing arm of Naya Rasta Publishers, which was itself established in 1999 by a group of leftist intellectuals including Prabhat Patnaik, Aijaz Ahmad, Prakash Karat and N. Ram. The store, located in the working-class Shadipur area of west Delhi, takes its name from International Workers' Day. It shares its premises with Studio Safdar, a performance space run by Jana Natya Manch, the street-theatre troupe co-founded by Safdar Hashmi - a communist playwright and director who was fatally attacked while performing a play in Ghaziabad in January 1989.
Aurobindo Market, New Delhi
Midland Book Shop in Delhi's Aurobindo Market carries general reading alongside academic and reference books. Its range spans fiction and children's titles as well as subjects such as art and the city's history. The family bookselling history is part of its character, but visitors can use it simply as a place to search across genres or ask about a particular title.
Best for General books and Delhi history in Aurobindo Market
Midland Book Shop is an independent bookstore at Shop No. 20, Aurobindo Palace Market in Hauz Khas, New Delhi, that has operated in the area since the mid-1980s (sources place its opening between 1978 and 1985), making it one of the neighbourhood's longest-running booksellers. The shop is spread across two floors and stocks a broad general and academic range: fiction and nonfiction, reference and academic texts, children's books, classics, art and design books, cookbooks, graphic novels, independent-press titles and magazines. A section devoted specifically to 'Delhi and its History' has become a particular draw for both local researchers and visitors interested in the city's past. Midland is frequently cited in Delhi shopping and culture guides as one of the city's notable independent bookshops, alongside contemporaries such as Bahrisons; it has built its reputation on breadth of stock and discounted pricing on academic and general titles rather than a curated boutique selection. The shop remains independently run from its original Aurobindo Market premises near Hauz Khas.
Main Market, 26, Block 13, Lodi Colony, New Delhi 110003, India / Delhi / India
Time Out Delhi (8 Oct 2025): reincarnation of K.D. Singh's 1971 Jor Bagh shop, moved to Lodhi Colony after the 2023 close; curated independent-press and South Asian stock. Vogue India: Sonal Narain and Mahika Chaturvedi still running the Lodhi Colony Market crimson-door walk-in.
Best for Independent books and paper goods.
Multiple Locations
Independent bookstore chain with multiple Denver locations, a Colorado institution since 1971.
Best for Multiple Denver locations of this Colorado bookstore institution since 1971
Illustrative still-life generated for ORBIS; not a photograph of any shop.
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