For Independent Bookstore Day 2021, our editors and our dear authors Priyanka Champaneri and Rajiv Mohabir have written love notes to a few of our most beloved indie bookstores, paired with some favorite indie-press books you should buy from them. Read indie and buy indie, today and always!
Priyanka Champaneri, author of The City of Good Death
Indie book: Deep into 2020 I felt my soul shatter, not because of the pandemic, but because I read The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsey Drager, published by Dzanc Books. This slim book packs a universe inside itself, centered around a core of sibling love and many versions of Hansel and Gretel, and the language is at once stripped and lyrical. Don't worry, you won't be left broken by the end of this book—but you will be transformed.
Indie bookstore: Old Town Books in Northern Virginia is the stuff indie bookstore dreams are made of—they have a shop dog, Scout, a beautiful and bright new space in a former bank (the old vault upstairs houses rare books!), and they even have those slidey bookshelf ladders that let you live out all your Belle-in-Beauty-and-the-Beast dreams.
Order The Archive of Alternate Endings from Old Town Books.
Christine, assistant editor and digital marketing coordinator
Indie book: My pick can only be Abigail by Magda Szabo, translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix and published last year by NYRB Classics. It’s magical, thrilling, morally challenging, and so funny. So, so funny:
“She was so glad that even as she was about to escape she had thought to give her most precious things away, knowing that they would be in good hands, the hands of an orphan whose only possession in the world was a provocative nightdress.”
Indie bookstore: Terrace Books in Brooklyn is my favorite walk destination, and they have a dedicated NYRB Classics shelf, as all the best bookstores do.
Order Abigail from Terrace Books.
Alison, associate editor and grants manager
Indie book: You know when your amazing, creative, ambitious friend starts dating someone who just. . . sucks? Take that feeling of incredulous exasperation, add in some serious power imbalances, a crash course in wilderness survival, and an iron will, and you'll get a sense of what's going on in The Hare, published by Two Dollar Radio. Melanie Finn really knows how to get under your skin, tackling feminine archetypes and male mediocrity with a sharpness that will take your breath away.
Indie bookstore: Joseph Fox Bookshop in Philly is cozy, with some of the best window displays around and an incredible selection of indie presses that pretty much guarantees you won’t leave without an armful of books.
Order The Hare from Joseph Fox Bookshop.
Rajiv Mohabir, author of Antiman
Indie book: For this I have to say All the Rage by Rosamond S. King from Nightboat Books. It marks our current moment with verve that speaks out despite the silence demanded of queer, Black, Caribbean, femme bodies. With a voice that shakes with hurricane force winds, this book comes to blow away the readers’ expectations (cultural and linguistic).
“love our flesh
love under our flesh
do not not love
do not love on their
Elsewhere flesh”
Indie bookstore: The bookstore that I want to show love for is Newtown Bookshop in Newtown, Pennsylvania, who carries a community on their back.
Order All the Rage from Newtown Bookshop.
Nathan, editor and marketing director
Indie book: If you liked Moby-Dick but are looking for sharper, dirtier, and one tenth as long, check out Ottessa Moshfegh’s wicked early novella about a drunken and murderous yet lovable sailor: McGlue, published by Fence Books. If you haven’t read Moby-Dick, take it from the staff at San Francisco’s excellent Green Apple Books: “Do you like your sailor stories booze-soaked, murderous, and whittled to a sharp, graceful point? Do you like novellas so compelling you stay up late despite yourself, knowing that you're riding a beautiful train bound for certain doom?” Why yes, I certainly do.
Indie bookstore: Green Apple Books and its sister store, Green Apple Books on the Park have been pathbreaking champions of indie lit for a long time, and any trip to the bay area is incomplete without a visit to these essential book bastions.
Order McGlue from Green Apple Books. *It’s no longer published by Fence (try this instead), but Green Apple of course carries other great Fence books like Strawberry Fields and many other wonderful indie favorites.