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 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 gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm that ushers her into a society closer to collapse than ever before. As Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. Moving from childhood to adulthood, adapting not only to the changing landscape, but also to the people who stayed behind in a place abandoned by civilization, Wanda loses family, gains community, and ultimately, seeks adventure, love, and purpose in a place remade by nature. Told in four parts—power, water, light, and time—The Light Pirate mirrors the rhythms of the elements and the sometimes quick, sometimes slow dissolution of the world as we know it. It is a meditation on the changes we would rather not see, the future we would rather not greet, and a call back to the beauty and violence of an untamable wilderness.
  • Poverty, by America

    by Matthew Desmond
    In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow. Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.
  • American Mermaid

    by Julia Langbein
    Penelope did not write American Mermaid for fame or fortune- she is quite content with her life teaching highschool english. But with one post about her book from a massively popular influencer, suddenly all the major studios want to adapt her quirky tale of a mermaid ecowarrior into the next blockbuster.  Penelope is flown to LA, and dropped into the strange purgatory of adaptation. She’s living in a hotel that refuses to call itself a hotel, arguing about whether fish should be sexy with her team of screenwriters, and struggling to find the bathroom at an endless stream of parties. She’s so far from normal, she almost doesn’t notice when the script starts to make changes to itself, and the characters and events from her novel start to bleed into her real life. A hilarious and trippy fish out of water tale about the creative process, and how much of the artist actually goes into the art itself. – Skye
  • The Creative Act: A Way of Being

    by Rick Rubin
    Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, as he has thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn’t, he has learned that being an artist isn’t about your specific output, it’s about your relationship to the world. Creativity has a place in everyone’s life, and everyone can make that place larger. In fact, there are few more important responsibilities. The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime’s work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments—and lifetimes—of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.
  • It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism

    by Bernie Sanders
    It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism presents a vision that extends beyond the promises of past campaigns to reveal what would be possible if the political revolution took place, if we would finally recognize that economic rights are human rights, and if we would work to create a society that provides a decent standard of living for all. This isn’t some utopian fantasy; this is democracy as we should know it.
  • So Shall You Reap

    by Donna Leon
    In the thirty-second installment of Donna Leon’s bestselling series, a connection to Guido Brunetti’s own youthful past helps solve a mysterious murder. On a cold November evening, Guido Brunetti and Paola are up late when a call from his colleague Ispettore Vianello arrives, alerting the Commissario that a hand has been seen in one of Venice’s canals. The body is soon found, and Brunetti is assigned to investigate the murder of an undocumented Sri Lankan immigrant. Because no official record of the man’s presence in Venice exists, Brunetti is forced to use the city’s far richer sources of information: gossip and the memories of people who knew the victim. As the investigation expands, Brunetti, Vianello, Commissario Griffoni, and Signora Elettra each assemble pieces of a puzzle—random information about real estate and land use, books, university friendships—that appear to have little in common, until Brunetti stumbles over something that transports him back to his own student days, causing him to reflect on lost ideals and the errors of youth, on Italian politics and history, and on the accidents that sometimes lead to revelation.
  • Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life

    by Dacher Keltner
    Up until fifteen years ago, there was no science of awe, the feeling we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that transcend our understanding of the world. Scientists were studying emotions like fear and disgust, emotions that seemed essential to human survival. Revolutionary thinking, though, has brought into focus how, through the span of evolution, we’ve met our most basic needs socially. We’ve survived thanks to our capacities to cooperate, form communities, and create culture that strengthens our sense of shared identity—actions that are sparked and spurred by awe. In Awe, Dacher Keltner presents a radical investigation and deeply personal inquiry into this elusive emotion. Revealing new research into how awe transforms our brains and bodies, alongside an examination of awe across history, culture, and within his own life during a period of grief, Keltner shows us how cultivating awe in our everyday life leads us to appreciate what is most humane in our human nature.
  • Anaximander: And the Birth of Science

    by Carlo Rovelli
    Over two millennia ago, the prescient insights of Anaximander paved the way for cosmology, physics, geography, meteorology, and biology, setting in motion a new way of seeing the world. His legacy includes the revolutionary ideas that the Earth floats in a void, that animals evolved, that the world can be understood in natural rather than supernatural terms, and that universal laws govern all phenomena. He introduced a new mode of rational thinking with an openness to uncertainty and the progress of knowledge. In this elegant work, the renowned theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli brings to light the importance of Anaximander’s overlooked influence on modern science. He examines Anaximander not from the point of view of a historian or as an expert in Greek philosophy, but as a scientist interested in the deep nature of scientific thinking, which Rovelli locates in the critical and rebellious ability to reimagine the world again and again. Anaximander celebrates the radical lack of certainty that defines the scientific quest for knowledge.
  • Age of Vice

    by Deepti Kapoor
    Part crime drama, part family saga, and all money, power and corruption set in modern India, Age of Vice has all the ingredients that you want in a thriller, Bunty Wadia is the ruthless patriarch of the Wadia empire. His son, Sunny, is heir apparent with ambitions of his own. Neda, Sunny’s journalist girlfriend, is caught between two entirely different worlds in her relationship with Sunny, But it is Ajay, Sunny’s right-hand-man, who becomes the lens through which the wealth and corruption that is the Wadia family unspools. Action-packed, with some of the most sinister characters you’ll come across, Age of Vice is an epic modern gangster novel that hooked me form the opening pages. – Diana
  • What Happened To Ruthy Ramirez

    by Claire Jimenez
    The Ramirez women of Staten Island orbit around absence. When thirteen‑year‑old middle child Ruthy disappeared after track practice without a trace, it left the family scarred and scrambling. One night, twelve years later, oldest sister Jessica spots a woman on her TV screen in Catfight, a raunchy reality show. She rushes to tell her younger sister, Nina: This woman’s hair is dyed red, and she calls herself Ruby, but the beauty mark under her left eye is instantly recognizable. Could it be Ruthy, after all this time? What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez is a vivid family portrait, in all its shattered reality, exploring the familial bonds between women and cycles of generational violence, colonialism, race, and silence, replete with snark, resentment, tenderness, and, of course, love.

More Favorite Books

The Light Pirate

by Lily Brooks-Dalton

The Candy House

by Jennifer Egan

Poverty, by America

by Matthew Desmond

American Mermaid

by Julia Langbein

Old Babes in the Woods: Stories

by Margaret Atwood

The Creative Act: A Way of Being

by Rick Rubin

It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism

by Bernie Sanders

So Shall You Reap

by Donna Leon

Give unto Others

by Donna Leon

Boys Run the Riot

by Keito Gaku

Unlikely Animals

by Annie Hartnett

True Biz

by Sara Novic

All My Rage

by Sabaa Tahir

She Is a Haunting

by Trang Thanh Tran

The Pearl Hunter

by Miya T. Beck

The Stars Did Wander Darkling

by Colin Meloy

Hot Dog (2023 Caldecott Medal Winner)

by Doug Salati

Evergreen

by Matthew Cordell

Glory

by NoViolet Bulawayo

French Braid

by Anne Tyler

Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life

by Dacher Keltner

Anaximander: And the Birth of Science

by Carlo Rovelli

The Climate Book

by Greta Thunberg

Age of Vice

by Deepti Kapoor

What Happened To Ruthy Ramirez

by Claire Jimenez

I Have Some Questions For You

by Rebecca Makkai

Enchantment

by Katherine May

Sundial

by Catriona Ward

Ruby Spencer’s Whisky Year

by Rochelle Bilow

Still Life

by Sarah Winman

Featured Titles

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

  • 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 gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm that ushers her into a society closer to collapse than ever before. As Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. Moving from childhood to adulthood, adapting not only to the changing landscape, but also to the people who stayed behind in a place abandoned by civilization, Wanda loses family, gains community, and ultimately, seeks adventure, love, and purpose in a place remade by nature. Told in four parts—power, water, light, and time—The Light Pirate mirrors the rhythms of the elements and the sometimes quick, sometimes slow dissolution of the world as we know it. It is a meditation on the changes we would rather not see, the future we would rather not greet, and a call back to the beauty and violence of an untamable wilderness.
  • Old Babes in the Woods: Stories

    by Margaret Atwood
    The two intrepid sisters of the title story grapple with loss and memory on a perfect summer evening; “Impatient Griselda” explores alienation and miscommunication with a fresh twist on a folkloric classic; and “My Evil Mother” touches on the fantastical, examining a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother purports to be a witch. At the heart of the collection are seven extraordinary stories that follow a married couple across the decades, the moments big and small that make up a long life of uncommon love—and what comes after. Returning to short fiction for the first time since her 2014 collection Stone Mattress, Atwood showcases both her creativity and her humanity in these remarkable tales which by turns delight, illuminate, and quietly devastate.
  • Unlikely Animals

    by Annie Hartnett
    Natural-born healer Emma Starling once had big plans for her life, but she’s lost her way. A medical school dropout, she’s come back to small-town Everton, New Hampshire, to care for her father, who is dying from a mysterious brain disease. Clive Starling has been hallucinating small animals, as well as having visions of the ghost of a long-dead naturalist, Ernest Harold Baynes, once known for letting wild animals live in his house. This ghost has been giving Clive some ideas on how to spend his final days. Set against the backdrop of a small town in the throes of a very real opioid crisis, Unlikely Animals is a tragicomic novel from the acclaimed author of Rabbit Cake about familial expectations, imperfect friendships, and the possibility of resurrecting that which had been thought irrevocably lost.
  • True Biz

    by Sara Novic
    True biz? The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history finals, and have politicians, doctors, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they’ll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who’s never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school’s golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the hearing headmistress, a CODA (child of deaf adult(s)) who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact, but might not be able to do both. As a series of crises both personal and political threaten to unravel each of them, Charlie, Austin, and February find their lives inextricable from one another—and changed forever. New York Times bestseller and Reese’s Book Club pick, this is a tender, beautiful and radiantly outraged novel.
  • Hot Dog (2023 Caldecott Medal Winner)

    by Doug Salati
    New York Times bestseller, and winner of the  2023 Caldecott Medal, this glowing and playful picture book features an overheated—and overwhelmed—pup who finds his calm with some sea, sand, and fresh air. Destined to become a classic!
  • Glory

    by NoViolet Bulawayo
    Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, NoViolet Bulawayo’s bold novel follows the fall of the Old Horse, the long-serving leader of a fictional country, and the drama that follows for a rumbustious nation of animals on the path to true liberation. Inspired by the unexpected fall by coup in November 2017 of Robert G. Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president of nearly four decades, Glory shows a country’s imploding, narrated by a chorus of animal voices that unveil the ruthlessness required to uphold the illusion of absolute power and the imagination and bulletproof optimism to overthrow it completely. By immersing readers in the daily lives of a population in upheaval, Bulawayo reveals the dazzling life force and irresistible wit that lie barely concealed beneath the surface of seemingly bleak circumstances.
  • French Braid

    by Anne Tyler
    The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever leave home, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family’s orbit, for reasons none of them understand. Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts’ influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably through each generation. Full of heartbreak and hilarity, French Braid is classic Anne Tyler: a stirring, uncannily insightful novel of tremendous warmth and humor that illuminates the kindnesses and cruelties of our daily lives, the impossibility of breaking free from those who love us, and how close—yet how unknowable—every family is to itself.
  • Anaximander: And the Birth of Science

    by Carlo Rovelli
    Over two millennia ago, the prescient insights of Anaximander paved the way for cosmology, physics, geography, meteorology, and biology, setting in motion a new way of seeing the world. His legacy includes the revolutionary ideas that the Earth floats in a void, that animals evolved, that the world can be understood in natural rather than supernatural terms, and that universal laws govern all phenomena. He introduced a new mode of rational thinking with an openness to uncertainty and the progress of knowledge. In this elegant work, the renowned theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli brings to light the importance of Anaximander’s overlooked influence on modern science. He examines Anaximander not from the point of view of a historian or as an expert in Greek philosophy, but as a scientist interested in the deep nature of scientific thinking, which Rovelli locates in the critical and rebellious ability to reimagine the world again and again. Anaximander celebrates the radical lack of certainty that defines the scientific quest for knowledge.
  • The Climate Book

    by Greta Thunberg
    In The Climate Book, Greta Thunberg has gathered the wisdom of over one hundred experts – geophysicists, oceanographers and meteorologists; engineers, economists and mathematicians; historians, philosophers and indigenous leaders – to equip us all with the knowledge we need to combat climate disaster. Throughout, illuminating and often shocking grayscale charts, graphs, diagrams, photographs, and illustrations underscore their research and their arguments. Alongside them, she shares her own stories of demonstrating and uncovering greenwashing around the world, revealing how much we have been kept in the dark. This is one of our biggest challenges, she shows, but also our greatest source of hope. Once we are given the full picture, how can we not act? And if a schoolchild’s strike could ignite a global protest, what could we do collectively if we tried?
  • Sundial

    by Catriona Ward
    Rob’s childhood was not normal. It’s taken her years to carefully construct and curate a facade of normalcy, which she uses to protect her children in ways she never was. But you can’t protect your children from themselves. Her daughter Callie whispers to things that aren’t there, collects bones, and hurts her little sister with calculated apathy. In Callie, Rob sees the echoes of all the things she has worked so hard to leave behind. In an effort to avoid history repeating itself, Rob takes Callie to Sundial, her abandoned childhood home in the Mojave Desert. As Callie learns more about her mother, and the literal and figurative skeletons that are buried at Sundial, she can’t help but wonder if the true threat has always been Rob. Ward writes with the pace and insight of Stephen King, and the emotional depth and intelligence of Sally Rooney. A terrifying read you won’t be able to put down. – Skye & Liv

Cafe

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

Bloomsbury Blends Coffeehouse

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