Here’s how it works…

Please note:

We do not provide book repair services.

We are also unable to provide appraisal paperwork for insurance or estate purposes, but we are happy to give you an estimation of value or information on a book if you need guidance. We cannot do this over the phone and it is difficult to do over email, so it’s best to come in and speak with our knowledgeable staff if you have any questions about a book you own.

Books We Don’t Accept

Reader’s Digest Condensed,

Harlequin or Silhouette Romance,

Most textbooks,

Books without dust jackets (if issued with a jacket),

Books with mold, underlining, highlighting, or writing,

Books in poor condition (especially missing pages or boards),

Free Little Library books,

Encyclopedias,

Magazines (some exceptions for local history),

Newspapers (some exceptions for local history).

Books We Want

We carry at least one copy of as many good books as we can in the categories and by the authors listed below — certainly not an exhaustive list.

We buy books that are in at least very good condition.

 In all categories, listed or not, we want (in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins) “all things counter, original, spare, strange.”

CHILDREN’S & YOUNG ADULT

Especially fiction in series: Oz, Anne of Green Gables, Dr. Doolittle, Winnie the Pooh, Little House,

Boxcar Children, Animorphs, Nancy Drew, American Girl, Hardy Boys, Miss Read, Twilight, Harry Potter, etc. 

 Classics (especially older copies); Newbery & Caldecott Medal winners; Pulitzer, Nobel, & Booker Prize Winners;

Children’s poetry;

National Book Award Winners; illustrated books; older books with decorated covers

Also kids’ nonfiction: history (esp. Landmark series), school skills, practical, nature & science, hobbies, woodcraft, scouting

Easy-to-read, esp. Dr. Seuss; Golden books; pop-up books; books with recorded sounds

RELIGION

Especially if scholarly: Bibles and other sacred texts; Greek and Hebrew dictionaries; religious atlases,

encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other works of reference; commentaries and other works of theology; histories of religion

Any C.S. Lewis, Thomas Merton, Francis Schaeffer, Walter Kaufmann, Henry Nouwen, G.K. Chesterton

GENERAL FICTION

The Beats, Austen, Dostoevsky, Salinger, Orwell, Rand, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Palahniuk

GENRE FICTION

Especially books in series: Tolkien, E.R. Burroughs, C.S. Lewis, Conan books; sword & sorcery series books

Also Dungeons and Dragons, and other role-playing books and games

Graphic novels, manga (esp. pre-2011 published by Tokyopop) & volumes of comic books (not individual issues)

SF, Fantasy & Horror classics (Verne, Wells, Capek, Lem, Heinlein, Asimov, Simak, Bradbury, Lovecraft, Ellison,

Vonnegut, Dick, Farmer, etc.); any published by Gnome Press or Arkham House;

any pulps (large old paperbacks on cheap paper w. lurid cover art); pre-1960 paperbacks in VG+ condition

HUMOR

Cartoon books: Pogo, Peanuts, Calvin & Hobbes, Bloom County, Outland, Doonesbury, Far Side, Neighborhood

Charles Addams; B. Kliban; R. Crumb and other counterculture cartoonists

Also humor classics: Twain, Joel Chandler Harris, Ade, Thurber, Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, etc.

Regional or dialect humor; Vaudeville skits and other comedy routines; pun and limerick collections

NATURAL HISTORY & OUTDOORS

 Field & identification guides (esp. in series: Audubon, Peterson’s, Stokes, Golden, etc.)

Classics: Thoreau, Audubon, Muir, Burroughs, Stratton-Porter, Seton-Thompson,

Stewart Edward White, Curwood, Deam, Taber, Teale, Dan Beard, Baden-Powell, etc.

Darwin, evolution, creationism

Most books on hunting, guns and shooting, archery, fishing, tracking, trapping, falconry, taxidermy, prospecting,

hiking, climbing, caving, canoeing, living off the land, edible plants, survival, camping, scouting

FORT WAYNE AND ALLEN COUNTY

 Histories by Brice, Robertson, Griswold, Poinsatte, Ankenbruck, Hawfield, etc.

Most books and magazines published locally, esp. pre-1900; newspapers published pre-1900

Allen County Historical Society or Public Library publications (esp. pamphlets)

Most school yearbooks, sports programmes, church histories, city officers’ reports,

fire and police department histories, local railroad histories and schedules, local company histories and catalogs

Anthony Wayne, Johnny Appleseed, Philo Farnsworth, and other local notables

Old photos, diaries, scrapbooks, letters, and other documents of more than family interest

INDIANA 

State, county, and town histories; atlases, plat books, censuses, directories; pre-1940 maps

Indiana Historical Society publications; state government publications (Dept. of Agriculture, Fisheries, Forestry, etc.)

Outdoor Indiana pre-1960; most Indiana publications pre-1880

College histories, yearbooks, sports programmes, literary magazines

Miami, Potawatomi, Shawnee, and other woodland tribes and languages; Tecumseh, Little Turtle, Richardville, and other leaders.

Local missionaries, settlers, Old Northwest.

Indiana authors: James Whitcomb Riley, Lew Wallace, Theodore Dreiser, Kin Hubbard, Wm. Eggleston, Maurice Thompson,

Meredith Nicholson, Gene Stratton-Porter, Charles Deam, George Ade, Charles Major, Booth Tarkington, Eli Lilly,

Edith Hamilton, Alfred Kinsey, Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Martone, etc.; also T. C. Steele and other Indiana artists

Indianapolis 500, other Indiana auto racing

Indiana basketball

MILITARY

Esp. specific subjects. Civil War, WW I + II. Campaign and unit histories, field manuals, firsthand accounts

Contemporary journalism, esp. if illustrated, political cartoons

Also pacifist material, civil disobedience, Ban the Bomb

SIXTIES

JFK; MLK; Nixon; civil rights and other protest movements; Beats (Kerouac, Burroughs, Kesey, Ginsberg, Snyder, etc.);

Beatles; Stones; The Dead; Rock posters and other psychedelic art; drugs & drug culture; sexual revolution; communes; gurus