20 Best Bookstores in New York City
Twenty of the best bookstores in New York City, covering every neighborhood and every kind of reader.
Climax Books | Photo by Jacob Lillis
There are days in New York when the best plan is no plan at all, just a neighborhood, a good coffee, and enough time to get lost in a bookstore. The city has no shortage of them, from photography specialists with museum-quality inventory to century-old shops with six floors of rare finds. A good bookstore rewards the kind of wandering that the rest of the city rarely allows. These are our favorites, scattered across Manhattan and Brooklyn, for whenever you need an excuse to slow down.
The best ones feel like extensions of their owners' obsessions. They are the kinds of places where you walk in looking for one thing and leave with something you didn't know existed. Below, twenty of our favorites across Manhattan and Brooklyn, from century-old institutions to newer arrivals that have already become essential.
1. The Corner Bookstore
The Corner Bookstore | Source: The Corner Bookstore
Where: 1313 Madison Ave, Carnegie Hill, Upper East Side
If you have ever wandered up Madison Avenue and found yourself wanting to slow down, The Corner Bookstore has been the reason to stop since 1978. Lenny Golay and Ray Sherman opened it in the ground floor of an 1890s brownstone, with a terrazzo floor, tin ceiling, and original wood cabinetry that Ray, a craftsman by trade, repaired and restored himself. The selection covers current fiction and nonfiction, travel, cookbooks, poetry, and a children's section that draws in the neighborhood's school kids most afternoons. It is the kind of bookstore that a neighborhood builds its identity around, and Carnegie Hill has been doing exactly that for nearly fifty years.
2. Albertine Books
Albertine Books | Source: Albertine Books
Where: 972 Fifth Ave, Upper East Side
For anyone who has ever wanted a reason to walk into one of the most beautiful buildings on Fifth Avenue, Albertine provides it. The bookstore sits inside the landmark Payne Whitney mansion, a Stanford White-designed Italian Renaissance building that now serves as the cultural services headquarters of the French Embassy, and it is the only French-language bookshop in New York, with more than 14,000 titles in French and English from 30 French-speaking countries. The second-floor reading room has a hand-painted mural of constellations, stars, and planets overhead, and the kind of atmosphere that makes a weekday afternoon feel like a reasonable thing to spend there. Even if you do not read French, it is worth going in just to look up.
3. Argosy Book Store
Argosy Book Store | Source: Argosy Book Store
Where: 116 East 59th St, Midtown East
Argosy is the kind of place that reminds you what a bookstore can actually be. Founded in 1925 by Louis Cohen and now in its third generation of family ownership, it occupies an entire six-story townhouse on East 59th Street, with floors devoted to Americana, modern first editions, antique maps and prints, autographs, and a wide selection of bargain books stacked out front. It appeared in the 2018 film Can You Ever Forgive Me? and has been written about by Janet Malcolm in The New Yorker, the kind of institution that accrues that sort of attention simply by being itself and staying put for a hundred years.
4. The Drama Book Shop
The Drama Book Shop | Source: The Drama Book Shop
Where: 266 West 39th St, Garment District
Whether or not you work in theater, The Drama Book Shop is a genuinely special place to spend an hour. Founded in 1917 by the Drama League, it was saved from closure in January 2019 when Lin-Manuel Miranda, director Thomas Kail, producer Jeffrey Seller, and theater owner James Nederlander purchased it and found it a new home. The current space on West 39th Street, which reopened in June 2021, was designed by Hamilton scenic designer David Korins as a nod to 20th-century European cafes and reading rooms. Miranda has said he wrote songs from In the Heights in the store's original basement, and the current space still carries that particular energy of somewhere things get started.
5. Rizzoli
Rizzoli | Photo by Scott Frances
Where: 1133 Broadway, NoMad
If the idea of browsing art, fashion, and architecture books in a room with 18-foot ceilings appeals to you, Rizzoli delivers exactly that. Angelo Rizzoli opened the original New York store on Fifth Avenue in 1964 because, as he put it, there was nowhere in the city to find the beautiful books being published in Italy. The current NoMad location occupies the ground floor of the historic St. James Building, a Beaux-Arts building with 18-foot ceilings, and carries illustrated titles covering fashion, interior design, art, architecture, and photography, alongside literature in Italian, Spanish, French, and English.
6. Ursula Bookshop
Ursula Bookshop | Source: Hauser & Wirth
Where: 443 West 18th St, West Chelsea
Tucked inside Hauser & Wirth's West Chelsea gallery complex, Ursula is the kind of bookshop that rewards the detour. It takes its name from the gallery's award-winning magazine of contemporary culture and functions as the U.S. headquarters for Hauser & Wirth Publishers, stocking the gallery's own publications alongside carefully chosen fiction, children's art books, and titles selected by the magazine's contributors. For anyone already making their way through the galleries, it is a natural and very good last stop.
7. 192 Books
192 Books | Source: 192 Books + Paula Cooper Gallery
Where: 192 Tenth Ave at 21st St, Chelsea
Paula Cooper, one of the most significant gallerists in New York, and editor Jack McRae opened 192 Books in Chelsea in 2003, and the store's origins in the art world are immediately obvious from the selection. Literary fiction, translation, art, photography, film, poetry, and current affairs are all represented, curated with the kind of precision you would expect from its founders. It also sits directly across from Printed Matter on Tenth Avenue, making the two an easy and very satisfying double stop on any given afternoon.
8. Printed Matter
Printed Matter | Photo by Blair Beusman
Where: 231 11th Ave, Chelsea
For anyone serious about artists' books, Printed Matter is essential. Founded in 1976 by a group of artists and critics that included Sol LeWitt and Lucy Lippard, it was built on the conviction that artists' books deserved to be treated as legitimate artworks rather than promotional afterthoughts. Nearly 50 years later, it is a nonprofit publisher and the organizer of the New York Art Book Fair, one of the largest events of its kind in the world, and its Chelsea store carries publications from artists and small presses that you will not find anywhere else.
9. Three Lives & Company
Three Lives & Company | Source: Three Lives & Company
Where: 154 West 10th St, West Village
Three Lives & Company has been on the corner of West 10th Street and Waverly Place since 1978, when three women opened it and named it after the Gertrude Stein novel. What it has is an exceptionally well-read staff, a rigorously maintained collection of literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, poetry, and travel, and the kind of regulars who stop in four or five times a week just to talk about what they have been reading. For anyone who wants a West Village afternoon done properly, this is the first stop.
10. Bookmarc
Bookmarc | Photo by Paul Warchol
Where: 400 Bleecker St, West Village
Marc Jacobs opened Bookmarc on Bleecker Street in 2010 in the former home of the Biography Book Shop, as part of a cluster of Marc Jacobs storefronts that opened simultaneously in the West Village. The inventory covers art, photography, fashion, film, and rare titles alongside branded stationery and accessories, and the store has hosted events with Carine Roitfeld, Nan Goldin, Grace Coddington, and Anjelica Huston, among others. It is less a traditional bookstore than a cultural extension of the brand, but the selection is genuine and it has become a reliable destination for the fashion crowd.
11. Dashwood Books
Dashwood Books | Source: Dashwood Books
Where: 33 Bond St, NoHo
If photography books are what you are after, Dashwood is the first place to go in New York. David Strettell, formerly the cultural director of Magnum Photos, opened it in NoHo in 2005 with a very specific inventory in mind: limited-press runs from Japan, Germany, and the Netherlands, artists' self-published editions, and collectible postwar titles that are genuinely difficult to find anywhere else. Art directors, fashion houses, and serious collectors all make the trip, and the store's reputation in the photography world has only grown in the twenty years since it opened.
12. McNally Jackson
McNally Jackson Seaport | Photo by Bianca Rosa
Where: 134 Prince St, SoHo (plus four other NYC locations)
McNally Jackson is one of those bookstores that makes you glad independent retail still exists. Sarah McNally opened the original location in Nolita in 2004, and the store has grown steadily since, now running five locations across Manhattan and Brooklyn, with the flagship relocating to a larger space on Prince Street in SoHo in 2023. One of its more distinctive touches is organizing international fiction by geography rather than alphabet, which makes browsing less like an errand and more like a discovery. McNally Jackson also runs its own publishing imprint, McNally Editions, devoted to bringing overlooked books back into print.
13. Climax Books
Climax Books | Photo by Jacob Lillis
Where: 56 East 4th St, East Village
Climax is what happens when someone with impeccable taste and a background in fashion decides to open a bookstore. Isabella Burley, former editor-in-chief of Dazed and current chief marketing officer at Acne Studios, started it as a passion project in London in 2020 and opened the first New York location in the East Village in September 2024. The store carries rare and overlooked books on art, photography, and counterculture alongside VHS tapes, vintage erotica, ephemera, and limited-edition merchandise from collaborations with Chopova Lowena, Marc Jacobs, and Simone Rocha. It has become as much a fashion destination as a bookshop, which is entirely in keeping with its founder.
14. Sweet Pickle Books
Sweet Pickle Books | Source: Sweet Pickle Books
Where: 47 Orchard St, Lower East Side
Leigh Altshuler worked at the Strand before opening Sweet Pickle Books on Orchard Street in October 2020, in a neighborhood that was once known as the pickle district of the Lower East Side. The store sells used books and its own line of house-made pickles, and you can donate books in exchange for a jar, which is either the best or the most New York policy a bookstore has ever had. Fran Leibowitz is a regular. Harry Styles has come in. Olivia Wilde showed up in a Sweet Pickle Books hat in an Elle photoshoot in 2022 and the store's reach has never quite returned to earth since. The selection is eclectic, the atmosphere is warm, the pickles are good, and the quirky branded merch is not to be missed.
15. The Mysterious Bookshop
The Mysterious Bookshop | Source: The Mysterious Bookshop
Where: 58 Warren St, Tribeca
If you have ever gone down a mystery rabbit hole and come out the other side wanting more, The Mysterious Bookshop is the logical next stop. Otto Penzler opened it in Tribeca in 1979, and it has been the city's definitive address for the genre ever since, stocking everything from new releases to signed first editions, rare collectibles, and what is widely considered the largest Sherlockiana inventory anywhere. It is also the oldest mystery-specialist bookstore in the country, which tells you everything about how seriously it takes the job.
16. High Valley Books
High Valley Books | Source: High Valley Books
Where: 882 Lorimer St, Greenpoint, Brooklyn (by appointment only)
Bill Hall came to New York to be a painter, ended up working for a rare book dealer on the Upper East Side, and opened High Valley Books in 1999, eventually settling it into the Greenpoint home where it operates today. The store is named after his grandmother's Massachusetts farm, and to get in, you book an appointment through Instagram or by phone. Nothing on the exterior of the building announces that anything unusual is happening inside. The collection runs to more than 50,000 items: vintage Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, issues of i-D and The Face, Japanese photography books, architecture monographs, look books, and catalogs that have long since gone out of print. It was featured in the 2024 Louis Vuitton City Guide as one of twelve things to do in New York if you only have 24 hours, which tells you everything you need to know.
17. Books Are Magic
Books Are Magic | Source: Books Are Magic
Where: 225 Smith St, Cobble Hill and 112 Montague St, Brooklyn Heights
Books Are Magic arrived in Cobble Hill in May 2017, opened by novelist Emma Straub after the beloved neighborhood bookstore BookCourt closed the previous December. The pink storefront has become as much a community institution as a retail space, with author events nearly every night, a genuinely good kids' section, and a selection that reflects Straub's sensibility as a novelist. A second location opened in Brooklyn Heights in 2022, and the two together have made Books Are Magic one of Brooklyn's most visited literary addresses.
18. Unnameable Books
Unnameable Books | Source: On the Grid
Where: 615 Vanderbilt Ave, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
For poetry readers especially, Unnameable Books in Prospect Heights is essential. It appeared on the cover of The New Yorker in 2008 in an Adrian Tomine illustration about small bookstores holding their ground, and it has been holding its ground ever since, carrying a strong selection of small press titles, including work from publishers like Ugly Duckling Presse, alongside an eclectic mix of used books that rewards slow, unhurried browsing. It is the kind of store that makes the trip to Prospect Heights feel entirely justified.
19. The Ripped Bodice
The Ripped Bodice | Source: The Ripped Bodice
Where: 218 Fifth Ave, Park Slope, Brooklyn
For anyone who loves romance and has ever struggled to find good recommendations in a general bookstore, The Ripped Bodice exists specifically for you. Sisters Leah and Bea Koch opened the first location in Culver City, California in 2016, making it the first romance-only bookstore in the Northern Hemisphere, and the Park Slope location followed in August 2023. The store carries everything from Regency historical romance to contemporary LGBTQ+ titles, with staff who know the subgenres in genuinely useful detail and can point you toward exactly what you are in the mood for.
20. Lofty Pigeon Books
Lofty Pigeon Books | Source: Lofty Pigeon Books
Where: 743 Church Ave, Kensington, Brooklyn
Briana and Davi, who met working together at The Corner Bookstore more than fifteen years ago, opened Lofty Pigeon Books in Kensington in September 2023. Briana had been an editor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Davi had spent most of his working life as a bookseller. They chose Kensington because it was close to the Brooklyn neighborhoods Briana grew up in, and because there was no bookstore there. The space is fully accessible, with multiple seating areas, an outdoor area, and a shelf dedicated specifically to authors from the immediate neighborhood, and it is exactly the kind of bookstore that a community builds itself around.
Most of these stores maintain active events calendars, and many ship nationwide. For High Valley Books, an appointment is required; book ahead through their Instagram or by phone. The Drama Book Shop and Albertine both host free public programming throughout the year, and Printed Matter's New York Art Book Fair, held each fall, is an event worth making time for.