This post shares four bookstores in Santa Fe, New Mexico to check out beyond George R.R. Martin’s iconic bookshop.  

The floors in Santa Fe bookstores creak. Not always, just sometimes. You’ll hear a snappy sound, springy and echoey and hollow enough that you want to fill it in with rustling paperbacks sliding off shelves and flapping pages and gentle footsteps.   

The creaks force me to pause, to be library silent, to recognize every inhale and exhale. And I don’t want to. I read to escape, to give away my Type-A alertness to loud fantasies and daydreams. So, I ask for recs and get lost in little conversations about books. 

Bee Hive Books

At Bee Hive Books, I request a middle-grade set in New Mexico. Owner Christian Nardi doesn’t hesitate. She leads me straight to a shelf, stoops down, and selects a trilogy, The Gordon Family Saga (Los Alamos, 1943, historical fiction). 

Nardi opened Bee Hive Books in 2011, a response to the lack of children’s bookstores in Santa Fe. So picture this: a bumblebee yellow shop, a room buzzing with middle-grade books, a hive of young adult novels, and a swarm of stories about Georgia O’Keeffe (illustrated read-alouds for kids and Dawn Tripp’s sultry reimagination for adults). 

Beastly Books

Just down the street from Bee Hive is Beastly Books, George R.R. Martin’s bookshop. Beastly is a dungeon of dragon books and Sci-Fi stories and fantasy series so long they are split across multiple shelves. Think hardcore nerdcore, where cinematic music orchestrates the perfect atmosphere for Martin’s signed first editions, his glass case of rare books, and a definitely-not-for-sale statue of The Iron Giant.

Twig Delujé is Beastly Book’s manager. They chat about the shop, brew a fierce cup of coffee (Picacho Roasters!), and help me find my next fantasy read. I admit to Delujé that I’m intimidated by high fantasy series (I’m a commitment-phobe, a standalone stan, a swipe right on one-night reads kind of book lover), so they tell me about an early Martin story (co-written with Lisa Tuttle), published over a decade before Martin began drafting A Song Of Fire And Ice. They mention Windhaven is underrated, and that word alone leads me to plop the novel near the register.   

Big Star Books & Music 

Then, there’s Big Star Books & Music, also in The Railyard District. Big Star Books feels like an old home still in the midst of unpacking. Empty cardboard boxes teeter in a corner; musty books fill dusty shelves. Floppy travel paperbacks cram a closet. A spotlight falls on topics like hypnosis for beginners and crystal guides (woo-woo to some, Santa Fe-style spiritual to others). There are like-new books, thoroughly loved books, and books that are still library-bound because Big Star Books is one of the most welcoming little used bookstores in Santa Fe. 

Collected Works Bookstore & Coffee

Collected Works, one of the most popular bookshops in Santa Fe, is located downtown (on a corner where foot traffic flows freely) and coupled with a cafe that smells like espresso. 

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As Santa Fe’s oldest bookstore, Collected Works has had time to grow into a lit hub, to become a place that holds cookbooks and travel guides and new releases. I sip on a macchiato, feel the sharp hit of coffee grit behind my teeth, and overhear a barista chat about The New Yorker’s Tables For Two series and Daniel Mason’s North Woods.

Garcia Street Books

Yellow light slants down bookshelves at Garcia Street Books, warming face-front fiction. Stories are laid out on tabletops like photo feeds; titles are easy to catch. On shelves, you’ll find art books, Southwestern books, queer books, indigenous books, and artsy Southwestern queer indigenous books (Garcia Street Books is the place to ask for a highly specific book rec).

Basket chairs (they creak – not always, just sometimes) are tucked into a corner, so settle in, flip through a bookseller rec (the staff slipped Shutter by Ramona Emerson into my hands, and it’s becoming a new favorite), and escape.

Which of these Santa Fe bookshops would you visit? What are your favorite bookstores in Santa Fe? Let me know in the comments below!