Indie Bookstore Spotlight: The Mysterious Bookshop (New York City)

Welcome to Akashic in Good Company, a weekly feature highlighting some of the amazingly talented, hard-working, committed people Akashic has had the pleasure of working with over the past fifteen years. This week, we are delighted to feature a virtual tour of our criminally good friends located right here in NYC: The Mysterious Bookshop!

Mysterious Bookshop

Welcome to the Mysterious Bookshop! We specialize in all things mystery, including crime fiction and espionage. We’ve been in business for 35 years and have a large selection of new, used, and rare mysteries.

Otto Penzler

Otto Penzler is the owner, having started the bookshop back in 1979 at our original address on West 56^th. We have since moved to Tribeca and reside at 58 Warren St. Otto is the publisher of Mysterious Press, MysteriousPress.com, and is also the series editor for Best American Mystery Stories, as well as editing Best American Noir of the Century, The Big Book of Pulps, and numerous other anthologies.

Joyce Carol Oates (left) and Ken Bruen (right) signing books at Mysterious Bookshop.

It is not uncommon to have authors such as Joyce Carol Oates and Ken Bruen (pictured above) signing here at the shop. We usually have around 5-7 public events every month and around 10-20 private stock signings. We have seven different collecting clubs that feature a new signed first edition every month: the Crime Collectors Club, the First Mystery Club, Traditional & Historical, Hardboiled, British Import, Thriller & Espionage, and the Unclassifiable Club for the more literary titles.

A sneak peek of a selection of the Sherlock Holmes collection.

We have the largest collection of Sherlock Holmes material in the world! From original first editions to modern pastiches to scholarly works, we try to carry every new item related to the world of Sherlockiana. Every year we celebrate the great detective’s birthday with an open house here at the shop.

We also do a bit of our own publishing, issuing limited editions from today’s hottest mystery authors and commissioning new works. Our current project is a series of bibliomystery short stories crafted by some of our favorite writers, including John Connolly, Anne Perry, Nelson DeMille, C.J. Box, Laura Lippman, Reed Farrel Coleman, and many others.

Books! Books!

Looking for a good recommendation? We can help! Our staff is extremely knowledgeable in the field. We love pairing readers with new authors and helping them discover classic mysteries they didn’t know existed.

Posted: Aug 13, 2013

Category: Akashic in Good Company | Tags: Akashic in Good Company, Indie Bookstore Spotlight, Indie Bookstore Tour, Otto Penzler, The Mysterious Bookshop