The Dusty Bookshelf

Books bought, sold, and exchanged

buy

Browse our collections of over 70,000 titles on any subject you can imagine. We will help you find the book you're looking for, but if we don't happen to have it in our inventory, we are always happy to give you a call or e-mail when it comes through.

Our books are priced to please. Mass market paperbacks are priced at half their original cover price. You will find the price on hardcovers and trade paperbacks in the top corner of the first blank page.

The stores are organized just like a new bookstore, divided by subject and alphabetized by author's last name. Plus, each store has a special section or room dedicated to children's books where your child can pull one of thousands of books off the shelf.

sell

We love to buy your books.

We buy high-quality books on topics or by authors that are in demand. We decide what to buy based on condition and what we have in stock at the time. Bring in anything from new fiction titles to cookbooks, art, psychology, kids' books, and everything in between.

However, we do not buy encyclopedia sets, Reader's Digest condensed books, ex-library books, magazines, or videos.

Our book-buying hours vary by day and by store, so it doesn't hurt to call ahead of time to make sure someone will be there to take a look at your books.

By bringing in your books to sell, you're not only helping the community but also the earth by allowing someone else to reuse a book. You're recycling.

And over the years, The Dusty Bookshelf has recycled hundreds of thousands of books that are no longer of reading quality. We make sure the best books go home with our customers, but we also ensure the books that can't be sold eventually get turned into something useful again.

Trade

Oh, yes. One of our favorite things to do is trades. When you bring in a batch of books to sell, you'll get half of what we will sell the book for in store credit. This can sometimes work out in a two-for-one exchange. Just imagine the feeling of walking out with a bag of books without ever having to open your wallet.

So, bring us your books, be it one or one hundred, and we'll give you store credit so you can refill those bookshelves at home without spending a penny.

Bargain books

If you've walked past our storefronts lately, you may have noticed sale carts flanking our front doors. Every book on those carts is $2.00 or under.

And you'll also find a bunch of really cool $1.00 comics  out there, too. You may find The Avengers, Spider-Man, Thor, and X-Men.

Scholarly libraries

We buy scholarly libraries. Please contact us if you have a large estate or library and would like us to look through it.

Literary calendar

Each month, The Dusty Bookshelf collects the community literary events spanning Manhattan, Lawrence, Topeka, and Kansas City into one literary calendar. Here, you can find the date, time, and location of the major literary events in Northeast Kansas.

For the current month's calendar, download it here or pick one up in either Dusty Bookshelf location.

If you have or know of a literary event coming up, please contact us so we can potentially add it to the calendar.

Music and books

From time to time, fantastic musicians reverberate the bookshelves in the Manhattan store. Ever heard of the Golden Shoulders, Margo May, or Bobby Birdman? Yep, they've all played here.

Check out the upcoming shows on our Myspace page.