Used bookstoresThe Strand at Columbus Ave
450 Columbus Ave, New York, NY 10024
Two floors between 81st and 82nd Streets, and the branch stocks used and rare copies rather than only new releases and merchandise. When the neighborhood outlet I Love The Upper West Side covered the company's newer West 69th Street shop on July 1, 2025, it described this Columbus Avenue store as the sibling that shop had just joined. Doors run 10am–8pm through Saturday and close an hour earlier on Sunday.
Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–8pm, Sun 10am–7pmWebsite Used bookstoresStrand at Lincoln Center
2020 Broadway, New York, NY 10023
This one took the old Shakespeare & Co. space between West 69th and 70th Streets and opened on Monday, June 30, 2025. The neighborhood site ILoveTheUpperWestSide.com walked in the following day and found the previous tenant's sign still hanging and the cafe waiting on permits, with the same blend of literature, used stock and bookish gifts as the rest of the company. Weekday and Saturday doors open at 9am, an hour before either of the other two Manhattan shops.
Hours : Mon–Sat 9am–8pm, Sun 10am–7pmWebsite Used bookstoresBOOKOFF Ani-Lab NoHo
740 Broadway, New York, NY 10003
The chain opened this NoHo offshoot on March 28, 2025 and built it around Japanese-import anime goods rather than general stock. Manga is the book category, bought and sold across the counter alongside collectibles, while trading cards and retro games are taken in but not resold. The floor is open noon to 9pm.
Hours : Daily noon–9pmWebsite Used bookstoresWestsider Rare & Used Books
2246 Broadway, New York, NY 10024
Floor-to-ceiling shelves in a narrow Broadway storefront, on the Upper West Side since 1971 and under the current owners since 2002. The shop advertises more than 50,000 titles skewed toward paperback and hardcover fiction, philosophy, theater, history, science fiction and antiquarian material, and it buys seven days a week. Its Facebook page, active as of March 5, 2026, gives the same used-and-rare mix plus rock LPs, CDs and DVDs; the sister record store sits on West 72nd Street, a short walk south.
Hours : 10am–7pm, seven days a weekWebsite Used bookstoresEast Village Books
99 St. Marks Pl, New York, NY 10009
Cash only, bring your own bag, and open every afternoon deep into the night. The shop buys daily and says it has done so for thirty years, with estate libraries as the specialty and a want list running through mathematics, philosophy, occult and esoterica, critical theory, art and photography monographs; bestsellers, stale textbooks, children's titles and coffee-table filler are turned away. A survey logged on November 9, 2024 confirmed the address on St. Marks Place between Avenue A and First Avenue.
Hours : Daily 1pm–9:45pm (Sun to 9pm)Website Used bookstoresSweet Pickle Books
47 Orchard St, New York, NY 10002
A Lower East Side room that trades books for pickles, and means it: in-store donations are swapped for a jar, and only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The stock spans general fiction and a rare shelf, with estates and large lots handled by email rather than at the door. Opening times were checked against the storefront on May 29, 2026 and match what the shop posts, 10am–9pm Monday through Saturday and an hour less on Sunday.
Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–9pm, Sun 10am–8pmWebsite Used bookstoresCodex Books
1 Bleecker St, New York, NY 10012
One room near the corner of Bowery, selling used and new copies with a pull toward literary fiction and art books, and buying gently used stock over the counter. Boxes set out on the sidewalk start at a dollar. It runs noon to 7pm all week, and the NYC Bookstores index, reviewed on August 18, 2026, lists it as open.
Hours : Daily noon–7pmWebsite Rare & out-of-print art booksMast Books
72 Avenue A, New York, NY 10009
Bryan Leitgeb and James McKee started Mast in 2010 and run it as bookstore and gallery at once, rotating rare and out-of-print titles through the room next to small-press publications from around the world. The shelf headings tell you what it hunts: art, architecture and design, fashion, photography, cinema, theory, ephemera and a rare section, and there is a counter for selling your own. The room keeps a flat noon-to-8pm week. Its About page was rewritten in March 2026 and the stock listing was still turning over in a July 10, 2026 web archive snapshot.
Hours : Daily noon–8pmWebsite Used bookstoresLeft Bank Books
41 Perry St, New York, NY 10014
Erik DuRon and Jess Kuronen buy and sell used, vintage and rare books in literature, culture and the arts from a small room on a tree-lined block between West 4th Street and Waverly Place. The catalog is filed under headings nobody else here uses—Drugs, Eighties, God, Pulp, Sex, Sixties—and takes in ephemera, posters, magazines and signed copies. The pair were still posting from Perry Street on December 31, 2024.
Crime specialistThe Mysterious Bookshop
58 Warren St, New York, NY 10007
Otto Penzler opened what its own site calls the oldest mystery specialist in America in 1979, and it now works out of Tribeca, where new releases share the room with recently acquired rare books and the shop's own imprints. Its calendar was carrying author signings through September and October 2026, most of them at 6pm. Six days a week, 11am to 7pm, closed Sunday.
Hours : Mon–Sat 11am–7pmWebsite Out-of-print cookbooksBonnie Slotnick Cookbooks
28 E 2nd St, New York, NY 10003
Cookbooks and nothing but, most of them out of print, in a shop Time Out New York dated to 1997 in its March 2025 roundup and called the address for antique food writing. Bonnie Slotnick posts her opening times on the site every Sunday night instead of keeping a fixed week, and she was announcing a book party for Tuesday, July 14, 2026 from 6 to 8pm. She is usually shut one day a week, so read the schedule before crossing town.
Art reference & rare booksUrsus Books & Gallery
50 E 78th St, New York, NY 10075
Established in 1972 and stocked with art reference—catalogues raisonnés, artist monographs, museum exhibition catalogs—in new and out-of-print copies, alongside rare books in all fields and decorative prints. Unlike most of the trade at this level in New York, it occupies the first floor of the building between Park and Madison, so you can simply push the door. The map record for the shop was last edited on February 23, 2025; the shop publishes no weekly schedule, so phone ahead.
Rare book galleryBauman Rare Books
485 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10022
The Philadelphia house has traded in New York since 1989 and moved its gallery to 485 Madison, between 51st and 52nd Streets, in September 2024. Where most of the city's high-end trade hides on an upper floor and works by appointment, this one takes walk-ins during store hours and keeps over 4,000 books and documents out on display. Opening times are Monday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm, and the location page carrying them was revised again in May 2026.
Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–6pmWebsite Used bookstoresUnnameable Books
615 Vanderbilt Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11238
Adam Tobin's Prospect Heights shop buys and sells used and new stock and keeps the door open from 11am to 11pm, which is the latest closing time on this page. Time Out New York, on March 31, 2025, pointed at the poetry and philosophy shelves and at the outdoor carts where used copies start at a dollar. Selling caps at two tote bags without prior arrangement, noon to 5pm on weekdays and 1 to 6pm at weekends, and the refusals are explicit: no textbooks, magazines, thrillers, romance, self-help, business or diet books, nothing with a broken spine, writing inside or water damage.
Hours : Daily 11am–11pm; buying noon–5pm weekdays, 1–6pm weekendsWebsite Used bookstoresThe Word Is Change
368 Tompkins Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11216
A Bed-Stuy corner shop at Putnam selling used and new titles and buying for resale, tilted toward social justice writing—Time Out New York quoted Brownstoner describing it as a backer of radical movements. Readings and meetings run in the same room, and local visual artists get wall space. A check of the storefront on June 5, 2026 recorded the published week, Wednesday to Sunday, noon to 7pm.
Hours : Wed–Sun noon–7pmWebsite Used bookstoresDear Friend Books
343A Tompkins Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11216
A few doors up Tompkins Avenue, Anna Sergeeva shelves vintage books by chakra instead of by subject: poetry sits in the crown section, language and communication in the throat one. Time Out New York, writing on March 31, 2025, put the range from $5 to several thousand dollars and described the bar of hot, iced and fermented teas running through the space, plus the backyard used for open mics and readings. Japanese art supplies share the room with the stock.
Used bookstoresTroubled Sleep Books
129 6th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217
Alex Brooks grew this Park Slope shop out of a collective of street-side sellers, and it sets new copies beside used ones with art, leftist politics, history and philosophy at the center. Time Out New York quoted him saying the aim is to keep it radical, and the shelves mix names you know with imprints you do not. A field check on March 5, 2025 logged noon to 7pm from Monday to Saturday, with a 6pm close on Sunday.
Hours : Mon–Sat noon–7pm, Sun noon–6pmWebsite Used bookstoresHuman Relations
1067 Flushing Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237
Shelves run floor to ceiling and jigsaw into every nook of this Bushwick storefront, used and new together, with a local zine rack and a cookbook run regulars come back for. The shop's own listing gives daily hours of noon to 7pm and no day off. Customers were still posting from inside on February 22, 2026.
Hours : Daily noon–7pmWebsite Used bookstoresMolasses Books
770 Hart St, Brooklyn, NY 11237
Part used bookstore, part cafe, part bar, on a quiet Bushwick corner where you can hand over your old paperbacks and stay for a drink. The online catalog reaches well past the shelf trade—signed Bukowski, Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon, a Geography III—so it is worth asking what sits behind the counter. The NYC Bookstores directory, updated on August 18, 2026, still carries it; published closing times disagree from one listing to the next, so call before a late trip.
Used bookstoresHive Mind Books
219 Irving Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11237
A queer-owned bookstore and coffee counter on Irving Avenue that is blunt about the mix on its own front page: new, used and discounted. It holds what it calls Brooklyn's largest selection of books by queer and trans writers, general-interest titles alongside, and programs events most nights—the September 2026 calendar opened with a writers' coworking session on the 3rd. Weekday doors open at 9am, which almost nothing else in the borough does.
Hours : Mon 9am–6pm, Tue–Fri 9am–7pm, Sat and Sun 11am–6pmWebsite Used bookstoresBlack Spring Books
672 Driggs Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211
A woman-owned used bookshop next door to Henry Miller's childhood home, specializing in modern first editions, rare and vintage copies, contemporary literature, poetry, art and erotica. It buys books and whole libraries and takes donations too. The room doubles as a reading venue—the journal 128 LIT booked its fourth-anniversary night here for October 9, 2026—and no fixed weekly schedule is published, so message ahead.
Used bookstoresSpoonbill & Sugartown, Booksellers
218 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11249
Trading on Bedford Avenue since 1999, Spoonbill packs an L-shaped room with new, used and rare copies tilted hard toward art, design and architecture, plus literary fiction and whatever else the staff rate that month. It purchases Monday to Friday between 11am and 4pm, walk-ins welcome without an appointment, and travels for bigger collections; ephemera counts as well, meaning subculture material, posters and cards. That buying page changed between its February and May 2026 archive captures, so the terms above are the current ones.
Used bookstoresleaves
140 Nassau Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11222
A Greenpoint second-hand bookstore trading 10am to 8pm every day, with a catalog broken into antiquarian, esoterica and the occult, mass market paperbacks, periodicals and a one-of-ones shelf, plus French, German, Italian, Polish, Japanese and Arabic sections. Selling and donating both go through the shop. Its rare book room is a separate Bushwick address, 350 Harman Street, open by appointment, and the events calendar was booked into December 2026.
Hours : Daily 10am–8pmWebsite Used bookstoresFreebird Books
123 Columbia St, Brooklyn, NY 11231
Samantha Citrin and Rachel London opened Freebird on the Columbia Street waterfront in January 2004, and Peter Miller has kept it going since November 2007 as a general used bookstore weighted toward New York history and culture. It trades Saturdays and Sundays only, 11am to 7pm, and it does not buy: store credit is offered on some titles, and the house rule is to phone before turning up with boxes. NYC Books Through Bars works out of the basement, and the store was fundraising for the collective's thirtieth anniversary in June 2026.
Hours : Sat and Sun 11am–7pmWebsite Used bookstoresTerrace Books
1624 10th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215
Community Bookstore's Windsor Terrace outpost calls itself a mostly used shop, which is exactly what separates it from the Park Slope parent. The two share one website and one events calendar, and that calendar carried a Terrace Books discussion of Denis Johnson's Train Dreams on Wednesday, May 6, 2026 at 7pm, free and without an RSVP. Come for the browse rather than for a title you have already decided on.
Used bookstoresTopos Bookstore Cafe
788 Woodward Ave, Ridgewood, NY 11385
Out in Ridgewood, Queens, Topos has combined a used bookstore with a cafe since 2014, and it pays cash or store credit for what you bring. Buying happens at this address only, any day between noon and 6pm for one or two bags, by email and appointment for anything larger, and the want list is specific: obscure history, new age and esoteric, Spanish-language, noir, cookbooks, graphic novels, film. Weekday doors open at 8am and weekend doors at 10am; the company's new-books-only second shop, Topos Too on Myrtle Avenue, ran readings on September 3 and 6, 2026.
Hours : Mon–Fri 8am–7pm, Sat and Sun 10am–7pmWebsite Used bookstoresEvery Thing Goes Book Cafe
208 Bay St, Staten Island, NY 10301
Over on Staten Island, ten minutes on foot from the ferry terminal, the owners bill this as the largest and only used bookstore on the island, with the collection running across all three rooms of the place plus a children's corner and shelves of vintage and collectable copies. The pricier material, $15 to over $500, is cataloged on Biblio, so you can look before you board the boat. Coffee is Equal Exchange and the tea is SerendipiTea, the standing deal is buy two books and the third is free, and the place turns into a stage on event nights: the twentieth-anniversary run filled October 8 to 11, 2025, and open mics were booked through September 2026.
Hours : Wed–Sat noon–6pm, later on event nightsWebsite