The best bookstores in Toronto don’t just sell the hottest new fiction or book club best-sellers. These purveyors of pages are stocked with obscure gems to get lost in and staffed by fellow book worms. They might even serve a cocktail or two.
LessPeruse the imaginatively titled genre sections of this indie bookstore chain. TYPE has locations in the Junction, Forest Hill and West Queen West (which, by the way, has a stellar kids' section complete with mushroom stools.)
If you spot the sky blue sign of this longtime brand of bookstores, you're in for a mix of cheap oldies and new titles. Head to Yonge and Eg, Edward Street or the massive flagship in the Annex for a truly diverse selection of reads.
Supplying lovers of the written word since 1976 is this family-owned book biz. A stellar bargain selection and their loyalty card program has created quite the avid community. There are four shops, one of which is tucked inside the Danforth's Carrot Common.
This Leslieville bookstore is stocking its shelves with a steady stream of new monthly releases. Novels run the gamut of genres but there’s definitely a focus on BIPOC authors and stories for and by the LGBTQ community.
Mount Pleasant's iconic store sets a high bar for shops catering to children’s books. Enter this whimsically decorated space and escape into this paradise, where countless kids have undoubtedly kickstarted their love for reading.
Toronto's oldest queer bookstore continues to be the literary hub for the LGTBQ community in Church-Wellesley Village. Glad Day offers everything from plays to poetry. They're also a cafe and snack bar with cocktails. Plus they're known to host some great events.
This Roncesvalles fixture has all the makings of the perfect neighbourhood shop. It may be small but it truly is a delight to hunt for the next book to sink your teeth into in the store’s wide selection of reads.
One of Toronto’s most important Black spaces for literature and culture is this longtime Annex bookstore. For more than two decades, this shop-meets-cultural center has specialized in books written by and for authors from the Global South and the African Caribbean diaspora.
Hardbord Village is home to this longtime sci-fi and fantasy bookstore—the oldest in Canada, in fact. It's an emporium of rare speculative fiction and definitely carried Dune for decades before the blockbuster live action came out.
If you're a diehard for crime and detective novels, this Leaside bookstore is a no-brainer. Toronto's Mystery Bookstore stocks titles from around the world, especially all your fave Sherlockiana, thrillers, detective fiction and crime novels.
This children's bookstore in the Upper Beaches sells reading material and toys for adventurous kids, such as puzzles and anthologies like "Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls."
401 Richmond's resident design-based store carries magazines and books on everything, from graphic design and typography to counter-print packaging and landscape architecture.
This non-profit artist-run center and shop was founded by arts collective General Idea. Today it sits near College and Dovercourt and sells a niche collection of monographs, anthologies and periodicals.