America's Best Bookstores

This three-in-one bookstore spans a triad of post-Civil War buildings on the town square of a charming southern college town once home to William Faulkner and John Grisham. The 3,500-square-foot Square Books, Jr. is devoted to children’s selections; Off Square Books features lifestyle topics such as cooking and gardening; and the main store celebrates regional history and literature, including that of Mississippi natives like Tennessee Williams and Eudora Welty. squarebooks.com

Next door to the University of Iowa and its renowned Writers’ Workshop, this store (est. 1978) is a cornerstone of a literature-obsessed town where embossed sidewalks display quotations from workshop alumni including Kurt Vonnegut and Flannery O’Connor. Owned by a pair of poets, the shop features 40,000 titles leaning heavily toward fiction, travel, children’s, and—no surprise—poetry. prairielights.com

Shelves soar from wooden floors to timbered ceilings inside this 1920s-era Mediterranean-style building, where an array of art titles dominates about half the inventory. The store is one of a handful of Miami-area outposts of B&B, first opened in 1982 by Mitchell Kaplan, 2011 recipient of the National Book Foundation’s prestigious Literarian Award. booksandbooks.com

This Northwest D.C. landmark averages 475 author events each year, welcoming wordsmiths from Salman Rushdie and Bob Woodward to Barbara Kingsolver and Calvin Trillin. A husband-and-wife team of former Washington Post writers Bradley Graham and Lissa Muscatine (most recently a speechwriter and adviser to Hillary Clinton) bought the store in 2011 from the original owner, who opened it in 1984. politics-prose.com

The eclectic spirit of this shop’s hometown lives among its 100,000 titles; alongside bestsellers and general interest tomes reside Boulder-specific sections such as Buddhism and vegan cooking. Locals and tourists alike can get lost in the three-story maze of rooms, housed in a 19th-century structure on the brick-paved, pedestrian-only Pearl Street Mall. boulderbookstore.net

This cozy Greenwich Village spot is located in New York’s literary heart—everyone from Henry James to Edward Albee has lived nearby. French doors open onto the street, where passersby can browse remainders (discounted overstocks of novels and nonfiction), a solid selection of new fiction, and New York-centric reads. bookbooknyc.com

Chances are good Powell’s has what you’re looking for: more than 1 million books crowd this former car dealership encompassing an entire city block in Portland’s revitalized, post-industrial Pearl District. Since opening in 1971, the bookselling giant specializing in both used and new books has grown to include six Portland-area stores and a bustling online sales site. powells.com

The brick floors lining this treasure trove on Pirate’s Alley in the French Quarter are the same that William Faulkner walked when he rented rooms here in the 1920s. Collectors will relish first editions like a well-preserved copy of Faulkner’s first novel, Soldiers’ Pay, in addition to new fiction and regional nonfiction. faulknerhouse.net

In 2010, this nearly 40-year-old landmark moved to its new home in the vibrant Capitol Hill neighborhood, taking over a former truck service center that dates to 1917. Original fir floors, a beamed ceiling dotted with skylights, and an in-house café invite patrons to linger over a cup of the city’s famous joe and browse 120,000 titles. elliottbaybook.com

This fixture on bustling Church Street has a penchant for the unexpected: out-of-print titles, academic publications, and lesser-known efforts by big-name authors. Customers wandering its creaky maple floors and ascending its rolling book ladder will also find strong showings in children’s books, cooking and food writing, environmental studies, science, and travel. crowbooks.com

Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti cofounded this beacon for beatnik culture in 1953, and 60 years on, the three-story North Beach institution retains its alternative edge with subjects ranging from politics and poetry to spirituality and surrealism. Its publishing arm has produced hundreds of titles, including poetry collections by Pablo Neruda, Allen Ginsberg, and Ferlinghetti himself. citylights.com

A half-block off Main Street in a tiny Sun Valley ski town, this cozy, two-story shop invites patrons to curl into an easy chair among stacks of local and regional titles. A large collection of rare and out-of-print Hemingway works pays homage to the author who wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls here and is buried in the local cemetery. chapteronebookstore.com

Opened in 1894 by photographer and philanthropist Adam Clark Vroman, this airy two-story shop in the historic Pasadena Playhouse District continues his charitable legacy by donating a portion of each purchase to local causes. SoCal’s oldest indie bookstore features both local history and counterculture. vromansbookstore.com

Housed in a turn-of-the-century distribution warehouse in Lower Downtown, this Mile High City mainstay oozes historic charm, with soaring timbered ceilings and antique furniture nestled into book-lined nooks and crannies. About 80,000 titles include impressive travel, children’s, and fiction departments, as well as an increasing commitment to self-published authors. tatteredcover.com