Tracy Gates is a children’s book editor and journalist and is often found running or biking the back roads of Sullivan County. Look for her column: Your Next Good Book in the new year.

A chalkboard standing on the sidewalk reads “Everything that Amazon is not.”

Peering in a window, my eye is caught by a red, white, and blue book cover “The United States of Cocktails” and two vintage lowball glasses perched on a wrapped present.

I open a door and the warmth of a cast iron stove curls around my cold fingers.

These are three different stores, but all with something in common: books.

While I was clicking that Buy button from you-know-where, Sullivan County was not-so-suddenly sprouting three wonderful bookstores, tended by owners with a shared passion, but each of slightly different species.

As a longtime book editor raised in a house stuffed with books and garnished with weekly trips to the library, I was embarrassed that it took me so long to discover them. But what better time to make amends: holiday shopping. 

ONE GRAND BOOKS, 60 Main Street, Narrowsburg, NY

The chalkboard is on Main Street in Narrowsburg, just outside a glass door that frames a warmly lit room full of books, many of them greeting you with their covers facing forward. One Grand Books may have one of the most ingenious ways to curate and recommend books. Every shelf displays ten titles chosen by a person of renown (writers, artists, actors, musicians) as if they decamped to a desert island and could only bring their favorites. This is the brainchild of owner Aaron Hicklin who has contacted hundreds of people, although he admits not everyone responds. But those that do — among them actress Greta Gerwig, TV cook and author Nigella Lawson, writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, musician Questlove—are like invisible but enthusiastic staff, recommending their choices with personal quotes you can read alongside. 

What would Lena Dunham read basking in the sun on her island? “Of Human Bondage” by Somerset Maugham. I’m intrigued, but I’m there to shop for others, so I describe my husband’s reading tastes (somewhat different than Lena’s) to Aaron, who takes recommendations quite a few steps further than his celebrity staff, and as a writer, editor, and host of “Shelf Life” on WJFF, I suspect he’s better read than many. Within moments he’s put at least a half dozen choices in front of me.  “Joseph Anton: A Memoir” by Salman Rushdie. “The Good Soldier” by Ford Maddox Ford. “Lessons” by Ian McEwan. Books to sink your teeth into. However, I’m swayed by another part of my anatomy, my eyes love the simple solitary egg on the cover of “The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes. I guess I’m one of those people who judge books by their covers? Aaron wraps it up in handsome gift paper. I could’ve easily checked everyone off my list at One Grand and found many more recommendations on its content rich website, but I was off to Callicoon the next day.

LITT HOME & BOOK, 43 Lower Main Street, Callicoon, NY

If I had thought to bring a flask of something warming, I might be tempted to borrow one of those glass tumblers in the window of Litt Home & Book, sit down on a vintage settee, and settle in with a good book from the thoughtful selection upstairs— from novels to non-fiction. 

“As a child I felt comfort in old things, their history, who might’ve used them,” says owner Rachel Littman who combines her love of things that have stories with stories themselves, decorating the book area with vintage toys, posters, and eye-catching objects, which are all for sale. Her general manager, Rebecca Tharp, is a big reader as well and helps guide the everchanging selection, including the playful collection of children’s books on the first floor. Customers can add ideas to a suggestion box, as well as join their book loyalty program, Page Turner.

I put them to the gift book test, describing my brother-in-law who plays softball, loves baseball, and—sorry bro—whom I can’t remember seeing with a book, but if I did, I tell them, I think it would be non-fiction and have a good story. As a biography fan, Rachel turns to the shelves and pulls out “The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg” by Nicholas Davidoff. Baseball, check. Non-fiction, check. Good story, check. And I think to myself, THIS is why one goes to an actual bookstore.

THE HOUND BOOKS, 3 Union Street, Roscoe, NY

Actually, one goes to bookstores for many reasons I am reminded when I open the door of The Hound Books and am greeted by what smells like mellow pine and spice. Here’s a big reason, atmosphere. The low-slung store on a side street in Roscoe is decorated with fairy lights, plants and pictures, and a reading nook complete with two comfy armchairs set near the orange glow of the cast iron stove. 

“I imagined grandparents sitting and reading to their grandchildren,” the owner Ahu Terzi tells me on a phone call later in the week. She echoes the sentiments of my earlier encounters. “A bookstore is more than just literature, it’s about the space and the community. People meet and start chatting.” Ahu is usually there to chat Friday through Sunday along with Maisie, the store’s part beagle, part basset hound namesake, but had some family commitments the day I stopped by. The young woman behind the counter is wearing a green sweater and a green knit cap the color of her eyes and says that most people call her Mouse. She has about five books going currently, including “Life Was Simpler Then” by Loula Grace Erdman, a book her husband picked up at the local transfer station. If she likes that, I tell her, she might like “Letters of a Woman Homesteader” by Elinore Pruitt Stewart. I also tell her that I’m looking for a book for a sister-in-law, preferably a novel. Something to curl up with on a cold winter night. 

After explaining that the books on the tables are full-priced and those shelved are used and discounted, she circles the tables and points out books that are popular. “I loved this as a movie,” she says, pulling out a paperback copy of “Chocolat” by Joanne Harris from a shelf, “and the book is wonderful.” I think of my dessert loving sister-in-law. Done. I also can’t resist a discounted copy of “Writers & Lovers” by Lily King, whose “Euphoria”, a fictionalized story of Margaret Mead, I couldn’t put down. 

It’s chilly and dark when I finally leave, and the shop windows glow with all the stories within. Driving the winding roads back to my home, I’m happy to have checked three gifts off my list. But if I’m being honest, I can’t wait to go back to each of these stores and find books for myself.