Lancaster city holds four of the twelve addresses below, close enough together to cover on foot. DogStar Books anchors West Lemon Street up in Chestnut Hill; Read Rose Books on North Prince and the Juliana Bookstore on North Queen sit 0.2 miles apart; the Marshall Street Bookstore waits a mile east of DogStar where Marshall meets Fulton. The other eight want a car and a county map — Millstream Road four miles east in East Lampeter Township, Mountville six miles due west, a barn in Strasburg six miles southeast, then Lititz at eight, Columbia at ten, New Holland at eleven, Ephrata at eleven, and Adamstown nineteen miles up at the top of the county. Where a stop lies beyond the city limits, its first line names the borough or township holding it.
Work out who actually takes books in before you fill the trunk. One address here hands over money: DogStar gives careful consideration to estates, collections and specialist libraries, publishes a long want list, and warns that whoever turns up with a handful of volumes may be offered trade value rather than cash. Aaron's Books up in Lititz states flatly that it will not buy, and posts credit against a trade-in on three weekdays instead, a box or two bags at a time, spendable against half of what any secondhand title in the shop costs. None of the other ten publishes any buying terms; the library rooms, the thrift store and Mennonite Life all run on donated stock, which is also where the rejects from those two counters can go.
Three things date an older Lancaster County roundup. The Book Haven opened in 1978 and the proprietors' own eBay storefront records that they shuttered and liquidated it in 2012 before restarting online down in South Carolina, yet its directory entries have outlived the shop by well over a decade. Half Price Books reaches nowhere near this half of the state: the chain's Pennsylvania page carries three stores, all of them clustered around Pittsburgh, and its store finder answers a hundred-mile search around downtown Lancaster with an empty list. And a hunt for bookshops here throws up several that sell new stock, among them Pocket Books Shop on Wheatland Avenue, a feminist indie with a second room facing the Fulton Theater, and the Barnes & Noble college store on the Franklin & Marshall campus.
Used bookstoresDogStar Books
401 W Lemon St, Lancaster, PA 17603
A corner of Chestnut Hill a short walk from the Convention Center and the Franklin & Marshall campus, diagonally opposite Mandros Imported Foods: Brian Frailey ran DogStar as a web-only operation from 2001, then opened the door as a walk-in shop in October 2006. Its buying page is unusually specific: scholarly work across most fields, philosophy, theology, history, political science, the sciences, fine arts, local interest and good children's books, then classic mystery, true crime, vintage paperbacks, pulps, odd advertising and ephemera, 8mm and 16mm film, original photographs and music on vinyl. Tired copies, hyper popular fiction, recent adventure, romance and military novels and dated reference are all turned down, and anyone bringing a small number of titles may be offered trade value toward stock instead of money, so call before you drive over with a load. The shop's Facebook page billed a weekend of Friday, November 28 and Saturday, November 29, 2025 as its first sale in more than five years, 10 percent off the whole floor on the Friday and 20 percent on the Saturday, and the same feed was still live on September 3, 2026.
Hours : Tue–Sat 10am–5pm, Sun–Mon 11am–3pmWebsite Used bookstoresRead Rose Books
23 N Prince St, Lancaster, PA 17603
A North Prince Street storefront two short blocks from the public library, stocking what the owners call used, vintage and first-edition books, ranging from Russian literature through poetry to historical fiction and hung with large acrylic canvases by local painters. Prices move on colored stickers: a post dated August 20, 2025 on the store's Facebook feed put every orange-sticker hardback at $8 and every orange-sticker paperback at $4, promised to halve both the following week, and threw in tote bags at $10 with postcards two for $1. A rack of fair-trade goods handmade in Peru is sold in the building and nowhere online, which the owners use as an argument for coming in person. Mondays are dark and Wednesday and Thursday open an hour late, so check the grid before an early trip.
Hours : Tue 10am–5pm, Wed–Thu 11am–5pm, Fri–Sat 10am–5pm, Sun 10am–4pm; closed MonWebsite Friends of the Library bookstoreJuliana Bookstore
151 N Queen St, Lancaster, PA 17603
One of two shops the Lancaster Public Library Friends group runs on donated stock, this one folded into the ground floor of the Lancaster City Branch on North Queen Street and staffed entirely by volunteers. A library post of May 10, 2025 went through the room title by title — memoirs, classics, novels, puzzles, a mini Judy Blume library, jewelry, DVDs, cookbooks, even bookish stickers — and noted that the Marshall Street shop carries much the same mix, a shade over half a mile away. Cards are accepted, gift certificates are sold, and a stamp card knocks $5 off a purchase of $5 or more once ten stamps are on it, valid at either shop and limited to one stamp a shopping day. The posted week runs Monday through Saturday, 10am to 2pm, plus extra hours by chance, though the library cautions that volunteer cover can move those times without notice.
Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–2pmWebsite Friends of the Library bookstoreMarshall Street Bookstore
225 N Marshall St, Lancaster, PA 17602
The Friends' second room, out at the junction of Marshall and Fulton with free parking outside, selling used books for readers of every age beside DVDs and CDs. The same address houses the Book ReSort, where volunteers accept donated puzzles, DVDs, board games, CDs, vinyl records and books at the rear door off Fulton Street on most Mondays and Wednesdays between 10am and noon, and refuse Reader's Digest condensed volumes, VHS, music cassettes, magazines and encyclopedia sets printed before 2000. Twice on the Friends' 2026 calendar that sorting space becomes a sale floor: a winter run in mid-February, then the Fall ReSort Book Sale over Friday and Saturday, September 25 and 26, 2026, 9am to 5pm both days, closing on Sunday the 27th from 9am to 3pm at half price. Day to day the shop keeps the same volunteer schedule as its sister on North Queen.
Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–2pmWebsite Indie bookstore with a trade counterAaron's Books
35 E Main St, Lititz, PA 17543
Eight miles north of the city on East Main Street in Lititz borough, a new-book independent whose secondhand shelves are fed by trade rather than purchase — the store puts it bluntly on its own trade page, and will not buy. Trade-ins get looked at on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 10 until 5, a box or two bags a visit, and the credit works as a match: a $10 secondhand book costs $5 in cash with $5 taken off the balance, and none of it can be spent on new stock or a special order. Read the intake rules before loading the car, because they are tight — paperback fiction under ten years old, paperback and hardcover nonfiction under five, picture and children's books under ten in very good shape — while hardcover fiction over a year old, biographies, memoirs, self-help, textbooks, workbooks, magazines and anything with a torn cover or a broken spine go back in the box. Aaron's gives its reading groups the same floor, and the events page lists a Penguin Classics circle on second Wednesdays and a mystery club on second Thursdays, both carrying 2026 dates.
Hours : Mon–Thu 10am–5pm, Fri 10am–7pm, Sat 10am–5pm, Sun noon–4pmWebsite Used bookstoresMoyer's Book Barn
1419 Village Rd, Strasburg, PA 17579
Down a back road in Strasburg Township, six miles southeast of downtown, in an 1810 barn that was converted into a book store in 1985 and credited with 35,000 hardcovers on its own Facebook page, first editions and signed copies among them. A late-August 2026 post on that page fixed the schedule at Fridays and Saturdays only, noon to 3pm, cash or check with no plastic at all, and put the closest ATM under two miles off. The same notice carried three standing deals: 25 percent off once ten or more regularly priced books reach the counter, half off the staircase shelves, and a fill-a-bag at $10 in the garage overstock room.
Hours : Fri–Sat noon–3pmWebsite Where can I find cheap used books in Lancaster?
Start with the library rooms, where the pricing is printed rather than negotiated. Columbia Public Library's Book Nook charges a dollar for an adult hardcover, fifty cents for a trade paperback and a quarter for mass-market or for anything a child or teenager would read, with DVDs at a dollar and CDs at fifty cents. The Juliana and Marshall Street shops run by the Lancaster Public Library Friends sell donated stock at what the library calls extremely reasonable prices, and stamp a card that pays back $5 after ten purchases. Out at the edges, Re-Uzit in New Holland halved every book for one day on August 6, 2026, Moyer's in Strasburg fills a bag for $10 in its garage overstock room, and the August 2026 Bookworm Frolic at Mennonite Life finished on a half-price Saturday.
Where do I sell used books in Lancaster?
Two doors, on two very different terms. DogStar Books on West Lemon Street considers estates, collections and specialist libraries, pays for scholarly, literary, art, local-history and vintage material along with pulps, ephemera, film and vinyl, turns away mass-market bestsellers, newish genre paperbacks and out-of-date reference, and may settle a light load in trade value rather than money. Aaron's Books in Lititz will not buy at any price, but takes trade-ins on three weekdays, capped at a single carton or two bags, and gives credit covering half the price of any secondhand title you then choose in the store. Libraries and thrift shops fill the gap, taking donations only, so triage at the shelf instead: photograph it once, let BiblioScan attach a resale price to every spine it recognizes, and the listable few separate themselves from the box headed for a donation counter.
When is the Friends of the Library sale in Lancaster?
Dates are set library by library here, each Friends chapter working to its own calendar. Downtown, the Friends of the Lancaster Public Library run the Fall ReSort Book Sale at 225 N. Marshall Street across the last weekend of September 2026, open 9am to 5pm for the first two of its three days, then half price on the Sunday until 3pm, following a winter edition in February and the BIG Book Sale that filled the Franklin & Marshall Alumni Sports & Fitness Center from June 20 to 22, 2026. Around it: Mountville in mid-September 2026 in a church hall on Clay Street, and Ephrata from October 14 to 17, 2026 in its multipurpose room. Adamstown skips the event format and simply opens its community room to book buyers each Tuesday, 9am until half past six.
Which day is best for book hunting in Lancaster?
Friday or Saturday, since the Strasburg barn unlocks on those days and no other, noon to 3pm, and every other fixed address is trading as well: DogStar, Read Rose, both library shops until 2pm, Aaron's, Re-Uzit, Mennonite Life and the Columbia Book Nook. Of the pair, Friday stays open latest, with Aaron's to 7pm and Columbia to 5pm, while Saturday gets Columbia going at 8am. Tuesday is the morning to head north, because the Adamstown community room trades on no other day, and Sunday leaves you DogStar, Read Rose and Aaron's. Monday costs three: Read Rose is dark, the barn is locked, and Mennonite Life's Visitors Center waits until Tuesday.