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Welcome to Bloomsbury Books

An independent bookstore in downtown Ashland, Oregon


Bloomsbury Books is an independent bookstore on Main Street in downtown Ashland, Oregon, home of the world-famous Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Founded in 1980, we specialize in contemporary fiction and children’s books, but also carry a wide variety of nonfiction and local authors, and, of course, have a large Shakespeare and theater section.

Bloomsbury Recommends

We hope you enjoy our favorite Bloomsbury Picks as much as we have!

  • Death Valley

    by Melissa Broder
    The most profound book yet from the visionary author of Milk Fed and The Pisces, a darkly funny novel about grief that becomes a desert survival story. In Melissa Broder’s astounding new novel, a woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has fled to the California high desert to escape a cloud of sorrow—for both her father in the ICU and a husband whose illness is worsening. What the motel provides, however, is not peace but a path, thank…
  • Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench

    For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra. In a series of intimate conversations with actor & director Brendan O’Hea, she guides us through Shakespeare’s plays with incisive clarity, revealing the secrets of her rehearsal process and inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans.
  • The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson

    The author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War–a simmering crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two. On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slave…
  • Honey by Victor Lodato

    Meet a woman as tenacious as Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge and as irresistible as Andrew Sean Greer’s Arthur Less: Honey Fasinga, the glamorous daughter of a notorious New Jersey mobster, is returning home at last, ready to reckon with her violent past. As a rebellious teenager, Honey managed to escape her father’s circle of influence and reinvent herself in a world of art and beauty, working for a high-end auction house in Los Angeles. Now in her twilight years, she decides to retur…
  • The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides

    From New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides, an epic account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook’s death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day. On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed …
  • Table for Two: Fictions by Amor Towles

    The millions of readers of Amor Towles are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of comprise which operate at the heart of modern marriages. In Towles’s novel, Rules of Civility, the indomit…
  • Somehow – Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott

    Love is our only hope,” Anne Lamott writes in this perceptive new book. “It is not always the easiest choice, but it is always the right one, the noble path, the way home to safety, no matter how bleak the future looks.” In Somehow: Thoughts on Love, Lamott explores the transformative power that love has in our lives: how it surprises us, forces us to confront uncomfortable truths, reminds us of our humanity, and guides us forward. “Love just won’t be pinned down,” she says. “It is in our ver…
  • James by Percival Everett

    From Percival Everett-a recipient of the NBCC Lifetime Achievement Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, and numerous PEN awards-comes James, a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a pla…
  • The Hunter by Tana French

    From the New York Times bestselling author of The Searcher and “one of the greatest crime novelists writing today” (Vox), a spellbinding new novel set in the Irish countryside. It’s a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die. Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He’s found it, more or less: he’s built…
  • The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

    Cassie Andrews, a mild-mannered bookseller in New York City, inherits the mysterious eponymous volume from a deceased customer. Discovering its magical ability to transport her to any place she envisions, Cassie, accompanied by her spirited roommate, Izzy, embarks on an adventure. However, as they realize the perilous potential of the book, they find themselves entangled with an enigmatic man known as the Librarian, who protects a collection of similarly magical books, and pursued by malevole…

    More Favorite Books

    Death Valley

    by Melissa Broder

    Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench

    The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson

    Honey by Victor Lodato

    Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

    The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

    The Women

    by Kristin Hannah

    Chain-Gang All-Stars

    by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

    The Curse of Pietro Houdini

    by Derek B. Miller

    Martyr!

    by Kaveh Akbar

    Day

    by Michael Cunningham

    What Moves the Dead

    by T. Kingfisher

    Age of Vice

    by Deepti Kapoor

    The Writing Retreat

    by Julia Bartz

    Fup

    by Jim Dodge

    The Heart of It All

    by Christian Kiefer

    How to Sell a Haunted House

    by Grady Hendrix

    A City on Mars

    by Kelly & Zach Weinersmith

    Let Us Descend

    by Jesmyn Ward

    Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

    by Robert Sapolsky

    North Woods

    by Daniel Mason

    The Vaster Wilds

    by Lauren Groff

    My Name is Barbra

    by Barbra Streisand

    Bookshops & Bonedust

    by Travis Baldree

    Iron Flame (The Empyrean Book 2)

    by Rebecca Yarros

    The Narrow Road Between Desires (Kingkiller Chronicle)

    by Patrick Rothfuss

    Don’t Fear the Reaper

    by Stephen Graham Jones

    White Horse

    by Erika T. Wurth

    The Deadline

    by Jill Lepore

    Mad Honey

    by Jodi Picoult

    Featured Titles

    Below are some of our currently featured titles available at Bloomsbury Books.

    • Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench

      For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra. In a series of intimate conversations with actor & director Brendan O’Hea, she guides us through Shakespeare’s plays with incisive clarity, revealing the secrets of her rehearsal process and inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans.
    • The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson

      The author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War–a simmering crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two. On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slave…
    • The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

      Cassie Andrews, a mild-mannered bookseller in New York City, inherits the mysterious eponymous volume from a deceased customer. Discovering its magical ability to transport her to any place she envisions, Cassie, accompanied by her spirited roommate, Izzy, embarks on an adventure. However, as they realize the perilous potential of the book, they find themselves entangled with an enigmatic man known as the Librarian, who protects a collection of similarly magical books, and pursued by malevole…
    • The Women

      by Kristin Hannah
      When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, Frankie joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path. As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets―and becomes one of―the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost. But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends….
    • Fup

      by Jim Dodge
      I read this little gem at least once every year to laugh at Jake’s moonshine antics and to revisit the strange and tear-inducing adventure of Tiny and his mysterious duck, Fup. Take your whiskey or tea out to the back porch on a quiet evening and sit for an hour or two to relish the wonder wrought by Jim Dodge in this short tale. – Meg
    • The Whalebone Theatre

      by Joanna Quinn
      When we first meet Christabel Seagrave, we know three things: it is the end of WWI, she is 3 years old, and she is a force to be reckoned with. Orphaned yet living on her family’s estate, she is mostly left to her own devices as she grows up exploring the seaside around her home, along with the books in the estate’s extensive library. An eccentric cast of characters come and go: Rosalind, her champagne-loving stepmother; Myrtle, the wealthy American “Poetess;” Taras, the Russian-expat artist;…
    • Young Queer America: Real Stories and Faces of LGBTQ+ Youth

      by Maxwell Poth (Author), Isis King (Foreword)
      PRIDE MONTH PICK Photographer and activist Maxwell Poth has traveled all over the United States, inviting LGBTQ+ youth to share their stories as part of Project Contrast, a nonprofit that amplifies these voices and connects kids and families with the resources they need to survive and thrive. This book collects the stories and portraits of seventy-three queer kids and teenagers from fifteen different states. In their own words, these young people share the challenges they’ve faced comin…
    • Page Boy

      by Elliot Page
      PRIDE MONTH PICK Full of intimate stories, from chasing down secret love affairs to battling body image and struggling with familial strife, Pageboy is a love letter to the power of being seen. With this evocative and lyrical debut, Oscar-nominated star Elliot Page captures the universal human experience of searching for ourselves and our place in this complicated world. The Oscar-nominated star who captivated the world with his performance in Juno finally shares his story in a groundbr…
    • Walking Practice

      by Dolki Min
      PRIDE MONTH PICK  The Left Hand of Darkness meets Under the Skin in this radical literary sensation from South Korea about an alien’s hunt for food that transforms into an existential crisis about what it means to be human. After crashing their spacecraft in the middle of nowhere, a shapeshifting alien find themself stranded on an unfamiliar planet and disabled by Earth’s gravity. To survive, they will need to practice walking. And what better way than to hunt for food? As they discove…
    • A Renaissance of Our Own

      by Rachel E. Cargle
      PRIDE MONTH PICK There are breaking points in all our lives when we realize that the way things have been done before just don’t work for us anymore, be it the way we approach our relationships, our belief systems, our work, our education, even our rest. For activist, philanthropist, and CEO Rachel E. Cargle, reimagining—the act of creating in our minds that which does not exist but that we believe can and should—has been a lifelong process. Reimagining served as the most powerful catalyst…