Windsor, Ontario looks straight across the river at Detroit, and this guide ends at the riverbank: it covers the Windsor census metropolitan area, meaning the city plus LaSalle, Tecumseh, Lakeshore and Amherstburg, and seven of the eight stops that made the cut sit inside Windsor's own limits, the eighth being a library branch sale in the Town of Tecumseh. Walkerville has the two bookshops, Juniper on Ottawa Street and Biblioasis on Wyandotte Street East, 1.4 km apart. A second cluster of charity counters lies in the middle of the city, where WEthrift on Dougall Avenue, the Habitat ReStore on Edinborough Street and Mission Thrift Store on Howard Avenue fit inside 1.5 km. The rest takes a car or a bus: Goodwill's bookstore in Riverside, the Cada library branch in Tecumseh 7.3 km east of it, and St. Matthew's Anglican Church in South Windsor. Prices here are in Canadian dollars.
The city's independents staged their first ever Bookstore Crawl in April 2026, across six Windsor-Essex shops from April 24 to 26 timed for Canadian Independent Bookstore Day, as the Windsor Star reported the day before it began. Juniper and Biblioasis are the two from that list that appear below. Storytellers on Ottawa Street, open since August 2015, says on its homepage that it stocks all new books, River Bookshop in Amherstburg sells new titles, and the Book Nook in Oldcastle receives visitors in booked time slots, so those three are left to the tips.
Two changes date older Windsor lists. The Windsor Public Library shut its central branch at 185 Ouellette Avenue on September 19, 2026 and was due to reopen in temporary quarters at 400 City Hall Square five days later, according to CTV News Windsor. And Mission Thrift Store has moved: its Instagram gave 375 Giles Boulevard East in August 2020, while the chain's store page, as archived in October 2025, puts it in a Howard Avenue plaza, so directories still carrying Giles are out of date.
Rare and used bookstoreJuniper Books
1990 Ottawa St, Windsor, ON N8Y 1R7
What the shop calls Windsor's house of books, in Walkerville, and, by its About page, four floors of books and maps, prints and ephemera, plus a discount annex out back holding over 6,000 mostly marked-down titles. The rooms are themed, mystery and true crime in one, biographies in the basement, fantasy and romance up in the attic and cookbooks in the kitchen, and the homepage counts more than 45,000 books in stock while warning that the website shows a small percentage of them. The shop strongly advises sellers to phone for an appointment, and each book is priced individually for cash or store credit, never by weight or in bulk, while written appraisals are billed at an hourly rate. It turned up on the Windsor Star's list of Bookstore Crawl participants in April 2026, and the grid below comes from the shop's own footer, not the one ABAC and Yelp still print, which keeps Monday as a long day and closes Sunday at four.
Hours: Tue–Sat 10:30am–5:30pm, Sun–Mon noon–5pmWebsite New and used bookshopBiblioasis Bookshop
1520 Wyandotte St E, Windsor, ON N9A 3L2
The retail side of Biblioasis, the award-winning Windsor publisher, on Wyandotte Street East in Walkerville, where new stock shares the floor with what the shop calls its Used Book Room: a Facebook post on August 5, 2026 showed a true first edition of East of Eden arriving there, and one on April 2, 2026 a pair of 1949 Canadian printings of Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island for the vintage children's section. Its buying policy is posted in full, paying cash up to 20% of retail value or store credit up to 30%, credit with no expiry date that can be spent on used books alone, with rare and antiquarian material researched and priced one item at a time. Phone or email before arriving with more than 30 books, leave the damaged copies, computer manuals and Reader's Digest Condensed Books at home, and do not expect an appraisal. The homepage had an evening with Richard Kelly Kemick and Ian Brown booked for Monday, September 28, 2026.
Hours: Mon–Wed 10am–6pm, Thu 10am–8pm, Fri–Sat 10am–9pm, Sun 10am–5pmWebsite Goodwill bookstoreGoodwill Bookstore
298 Lauzon Rd, Windsor, ON N8S 3L6
A Goodwill shop given over to books and media, in Riverside on the east side, run by Goodwill Industries, Ontario Great Lakes, with a donation centre under the same roof. Goodwill Ontario Great Lakes plugged it in a Facebook video on August 19, 2025, announcing half price on everything in the store that Friday, August 22, and pitching fall books and back-to-school reads for the day. In the chain's location list this address is the Windsor Lauzon Bookstore and Donation Centre, while the other two Windsor shops, on McDougall Street and on Tecumseh Road East, are filed as community stores.
Hours: Mon–Fri 9am–8pm, Sat 9am–6pm, Sun 10am–5pmWebsite Church book saleSt. Matthew's Annual Mega Book Sale
St. Matthew's Anglican Church, 1600 Norfolk St, Windsor, ON N9E 1H5
St. Matthew's Anglican Church, at the Glenwood corner of Norfolk Street in South Windsor, where the parish homepage sets the 2026 sale across two sessions, Friday evening, October 2, and Saturday daytime, October 3, and asks for donations of gently used books ahead of it. A Facebook post by the parish in September 2026 called it the fifth annual edition and promised thousands of quality used books, CDs and DVDs, from fiction and history to cookbooks and children's stories. windsoriteDOTca's photo report on the October 2025 edition counted 10,000 books priced between $1 and $3, and took cash, credit and debit. Earlier editions ran under the name Once Upon A Book, with part of the 2023 proceeds going to the Windsor Volunteers for Literacy Foundation, per the same outlet.
Hours: Fri October 2, 2026 5pm–9pm; Sat October 3, 2026 10am–3pmWebsite Where can I find cheap used books in Windsor?
For sheer volume at low prices, start with the October sale at St. Matthew's: the 2025 edition put ten thousand books out at one to three dollars each, and the 2026 one runs at the church on Norfolk Street on October 2 and 3. Between sales, the charity counters do the work. Goodwill runs a store just for books on Lauzon Road, the Howard Avenue plaza branch of Mission Thrift ran a two-for-one weekend on books in July 2025, and WEthrift and the Habitat ReStore can be done together on foot. At Juniper, head straight to the discount annex behind the house before climbing to the rare rooms.
Where do I sell used books in Windsor?
Biblioasis on Wyandotte Street East buys over the counter, with a cash offer capped at a fifth of retail and a credit offer capped at 30%, and wants a heads-up for any load past 30 books. Juniper on Ottawa Street buys one book at a time, paying cash or store credit, and strongly advises an appointment first. Before you go, sort out which copies are worth more listed yourself: one BiblioScan photo of the shelf gives a resale value for each spine it recognizes, and the few worth a listing on Amazon.ca or Kijiji stay home while the rest ride to the counter.
When is the big book sale in Windsor?
St. Matthew's Anglican Church at 1600 Norfolk Street holds its Annual Mega Book Sale over two days, 5 to 9pm on Friday, October 2, 2026, then 10am to 3pm on Saturday, October 3, with the parish collecting donated books for it ahead of time. Over in Tecumseh, the Cada branch held its week of sales from July 20 to 25, 2026, a year after its July 2025 edition, and the Windsor Public Library ran a two-day sale at its Forest Glade branch in September 2025.
Which day is best for book hunting in Windsor?
Saturday lines everything up: Juniper, Biblioasis, Goodwill on Lauzon Road, WEthrift and the Habitat ReStore all open, Biblioasis stays open until 9pm, and the Tecumseh branch sale has closed on a Saturday both times. On Sunday and Monday WEthrift is closed and Juniper does not open until noon. For a weeknight run, Goodwill stays open until 8pm Monday to Friday, the ReStore until 8pm Tuesday to Friday, and Biblioasis until 8pm on Thursday.