Peterborough Bookshop

The Peterborough Bookshop has been a quiet intellectual beacon since 1959, occupying a welcoming space on Depot Square in the town that famously inspired Thornton Wilder's Our Town. The drama and theater section is the store's most distinctive feature, stocked with plays, theatrical criticism, and directing guides that reflect Peterborough's rich performing arts tradition, nurtured by the nearby Peterborough Players summer theater. Literary fiction and poetry receive equal attention, and the staff has a gift for pressing the right book into the right reader's hands at just the right moment. A small rare books room in the back holds first editions of New England literary classics and local historical documents that chronicle the Monadnock Region's evolution from farming community to cultural haven. The Peterborough Bookshop embodies the idea that a great bookstore does not need to be large to be extraordinary; it simply needs to care deeply about the words on its shelves and the people who come to read them.