About Us

A host of tomes timely & timeless, rare & spectacular

Paper Birch Books is a little local independent used bookstore in Little Italy, Boyle McCauley, Edmonton, which opened in December 2022. We specialize in quality used, rare, and spectacular books: titles timely and timeless, contemporary and historical; tomes that inspire tactile and visual delight; visionary and daring voices; intriguing and zany ephemera. Our curation leans towards the literary, intellectual, eclectic, diverse, and curious. We have nonfiction and fiction, poetry, art and cookbooks, children’s books, graphic novels, and more, at a variety of price points, editions, and conditions (from buttery soft vintage paperbacks to crisp hardcovers!).

Looking for a first edition of Anne of Green Gables? Vintage sci-fi paperbacks? A signed James Baldwin, Ursula Le Guin, Leonard Cohen, Kurt Vonnegut? Billy Ray Belcourt’s poetry? A leather-bound set of the works of the Jewish-Romano historian Flavius Josephus? Ottolenghi cookbooks? Omar El Akkad’s latest novel? That vintage picture book from your childhood whose name you’ve forgotten, the one with meatballs falling from the sky? Erotic art from the seventeenth century? An Agatha Christie mystery? A Penguin Classic or hardcover Everyman’s? ALL OF THE ABOVE? We’ve got you covered!

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Photo by Jordon Hon

About the Owners

Paper Birch Books is a joint endeavor by Benjamin Hertwig and Céline Chuang, long-term life (and now business) partners and lifelong bibliophiles. Residing in the Boyle McCauley neighbourhood, we were both raised in the prairies and have a forever fondness for Edmonton. Benjamin grew up just around the corner!

Both of us have experienced the transformative power of stories and books in broadening horizons and revealing new worlds. We're excited to share this possibility with our community as we make good on brick-and-morter bookstore dreams. We envision Paper Birch Books as a neighbourhood hub and love letter to bookworms everywhere: a warm and inviting cocoon of books for the coldest of days, a micro-museum of print paraphernalia, an artful, expansive collection boasting a wide variety of writers, a treasure trove of the delightfully unexpected.

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