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!

  • The Vaster Wilds

    by Lauren Groff
    OUR FAVORITE BOOK THIS YEAR! It’s the middle of the night, nearing the end of winter, and a young girl slips through the wall surrounding the fort at Jamestown, running, leaving behind something terrible. Gripping from the first page, we follow her as she flees into the unknown, seeking safety. The Vaster Wilds is a taut, breathtaking adventure as we follow her into the wilderness, gradually learning about what has come before. It is a remarkable story of one young woman’s awakening to a d…
  • Foe

    by Ian Reid
    NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE Junior leads a simple life. He loves his wife. He works on their farm. That is all he needs. But Junior has been chosen for a government space program that would take him away from his life for three years. He is told that this is good news, and that he has no choice in the matter. He shouldn’t worry – his wife and the farm will be taken care of in his absence by something that is not him, but thinks it is. As his departure aproaches, and surveillance begins in o…
  • The Fraud

    by Zadie Smith
    From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story—and who gets to be believed. The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman o…
  • The Winners

    by Fredrik Backman
    Return to the close-knit, resilient community of Beartown with this “engrossing page-turner” (Woman’s World) about first loves, second chances, and last goodbyes—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anxious People and A Man Called Ove.
  • Lucy By the Sea

    by Elizabeth Strout
    From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout comes a poignant, pitch-perfect novel about a divorced couple stuck together during lockdown—and the love, loss, despair, and hope that animate us even as the world seems to be falling apart.
  • 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;…
  • Now Is Not the Time to Panic

    by Kevin Wilson
    Frankie and Zeke, two teens in Coalfield, TN, begin and artistic and slightly awkward friendship one summer. The magic of their collaborative creativity is magnified to the point of stirring an unstoppable panic within their community and beyond. It is a delight to watch these two grow up, navigating their strange situation – all told through Kevin Wilson’s witty, simple yet expressive prose. An excellent coming of age story full of mistakes, growth and frustration. I loved it. – Liv
  • Tom Lake

    by Ann Patchett
    In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family’s orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew. Tom Lake is a medit…
  • The Rachel Incident

    by Rachel O’Donoghue
    Rachel is 20, finishing up her English degree, working in a bookstore, and contemplating what comes next as she launchers into adulthood just as the Irish economy begins to crash. But when James is hired as a temp at the beginning of the holiday season, the two become fast friends and Rachel’s world takes twists and turns that she never could have imagined. In this novel, Caroline O’Donoghue mines the messiness of young adulthood as the two characters navigate friendship, loyalty, some rea…
  • Crook Manifesto

    by Colson Whitehead
    CROOK MANIFESTO is a darkly funny tale of a city under siege, but also a sneakily searching portrait of the meaning of family.  Colson Whitehead’s kaleidoscopic portrait of Harlem is sure to stand as one of the all-time great evocations of a place and a time.  

More Favorite Books

The Change

by Kirsten Miller

Cat Brushing

by Jane Campbell

The Vaster Wilds

by Lauren Groff

Foe

by Ian Reid

The Fraud

by Zadie Smith

The Winners

by Fredrik Backman

Lucy By the Sea

by Elizabeth Strout

The Whalebone Theatre

by Joanna Quinn

Now Is Not the Time to Panic

by Kevin Wilson

Tom Lake

by Ann Patchett

The Rachel Incident

by Rachel O’Donoghue

Crook Manifesto

by Colson Whitehead

Thistlefoot

by GennaRose Nethercott

The Marriage Portrait

by Maggie O’Farrell

The Thick and the Lean

by Chana Porter

The Cloisters

by Katy Hays

Edgar & Lucy

by Victor Lodato

The Writing Retreat

by Julia Bartz

Don’t Fear the Reaper

by Stephen Graham Jones

Good Omens

by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty

by Akwaeke Emezi

The Bullet That Missed

by Richard Osman

Bitter-sweet

by Susan Cain

Tracy Flick Can’t Win

by Tom Perrotta

Solito

by Javier Zamora

The Shadow Cabinet

by Juno Dawson

Young Queer America: Real Stories and Faces of LGBTQ+ Youth

by Maxwell Poth (Author), Isis King (Foreword)

Page Boy

by Elliot Page

Walking Practice

by Dolki Min

A Renaissance of Our Own

by Rachel E. Cargle

Featured Titles

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

  • 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…
  • The Late Americans

    by Brandon Taylor
    PRIDE MONTH PICK In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront, and provoke one another in a volatile year of self-discovery. Among them are Seamus, a frustrated young poet; Ivan, a dancer turned aspiring banker who dabbles in amateur pornography; Fatima, whose independence and work ethic complicate her relationships with friends and a trusted mentor; and Noah, who “didn’t seek sex out so much as it came up to him like an anxious do…
  • The Blighted Stars

    by Megan E. O’Keefe
    The first book of an epic space opera trilogy by an award‑winning author. Humanity is running out of options. Habitable planets are being destroyed as quickly as they’re found and spy Naira Sharp thinks she knows the reason why. But her mission is cut short when she ends up stranded on a dead planet, with a member of the family behind the planet shortage. To survive and keep her secret, Naira will have to join forces with the man she’s sworn to hate. And together they will uncover a plot that…
  • Woman, Eating: A Literary Vampire Novel

    by Claire Kohda
    Lydia is hungry. She’s always wanted to try Japanese food. Sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside – the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea and iced-coffee, ice cream and cake, and foraged herbs and plants, and the vegetables grown by the other young artists at the London studio space she is secretly squatting in. But, Lydia can’t eat any of these things. Her body doesn’t work like those of other people. The only thing she can digest is blood, an…
  • City Under One Roof

    by Iris Yamashita
    When a local teenager discovers a severed hand and foot washed up on the shore of the small town of Point Mettier, Alaska, Cara Kennedy is on the case. A detective from Anchorage, she has her own motives for investigating the possible murder in this isolated place, which can be accessed only by a tunnel. After a blizzard causes the tunnel to close indefinitely, Cara is stuck among the odd and suspicious residents of the town—all 205 of whom live in the same high-rise building and are as ic…
  • The Light Pirate

    by Lily Brooks-Dalton
    Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels wreak gradual havoc on the state’s infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker, his pregnant wife, Frida, and their two sons, Flip and Lucas, prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds in search of his children. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gi…

Cafe

After shopping, enjoy organic coffee, food, beer and wine upstairs at Bloomsbury Blends.

Bloomsbury Blends Coffeehouse

Order / Check Stock

Interested in ordering a book or checking our stock?
Give us a call during store hours at 541-488-0029 or use the link below.

Audiobooks

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HOURS: Mon 9am-8pm • Tues-Thurs 9am-6pm • Fri 9am-8pm • Sat 9am-6pm • Sun 10am-6pm

290 E. Main Street
Ashland, OR 97520
541-488-0029

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