Leviathan Bookstore
LightNews LightNews
banner
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
Leviathan Bookstore
@leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
7.9K followers 190 following 210 posts
An independent bookstore for all kinds of independent readers, near Tower Grove Park in St. Louis.

https://leviathanbookstore.com/
Posts Replies Media Videos
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
Text entered into a Zohran Mamdani meme generator reads Leviathan Bookstore for All Kinds of Independent Readers
November 9, 2025 at 7:22 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
Just for you…
A bright blue T-shirt with white letters reading BKMN above four white images of the progressively waxing moon, worn on the torso of a faceless male. Captions read Bookstore T-shirt Day and #onwedmeadayswewearbookstoretshirts [sic] and (Book Moon in Easthampton MA isn’t on Instagram because they have more integrity than we do)
November 6, 2025 at 10:10 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
An evening in honor of the 50th anniversary of the last voyage of the Edmund Fitzgerald! Books, stories, song, and custom cocktails! Button up your pea coat, pull on your watch cap, and join us! @johnubacon.bsky.social

leviathanbookstore.com/events/edmun...
A sepia-toned infographic advertising a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Monday, November 10th from 7 to 9pm at Clements Bar, 2626 Cherokee Street. Featuring books by Leviathan Bookstore and drinks by Truckey.
November 4, 2025 at 10:22 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
Free shipping for online orders today, courtesy of @bookshop.org!

bookshop.org/shop/leviath...
An infographic suggestive of the label on a cardboard parcel. Purple packing tape at the top bears repeated images of the Bookshop.org letter B logo and the phrase "the anti-prime sale." The address label reads "Free Shipping / 13 Hours / 40 Minutes / 45 Seconds" and "Handle with care! This Package Supports Independent Bookstores," also showing a barcode sticker.
October 8, 2025 at 5:22 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
We're one of only 5 stores in the US hosting a midnight release party for Pynchon's SHADOW TICKET, publishing on Tuesday. Join us for festivities starting at 11pm on Monday, Oct. 6!

Details at leviathanbookstore.com/events
An infographic promoting a Midnight Release Party for Thomas Pynchon's novel Shadow Ticket, starting at 11pm on Monday, October 6 at Leviathan Bookstore, 3211 South Grand Blvd. Refreshments, trivia w/prizes, & novels for sale. An image of the book's sepia-toned cover, showing a neon-lit 1930s Budapest street, with title and author name in coral and purple sans serif type appears next to the informational text, along with a cartoon drawing of the author with a paper bag over his face. A copy of Thomas Pynchon's novel Shadow Ticket stands upright on a light-colored wooden tabletop, next to a black canvas tote bag advertising the title and author name in coral and purple, topped by a black baseball cap with Shadow Ticket written on the front in purple.
October 2, 2025 at 4:51 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
ALL the best bookstores…
A photo of Joan Aiken’s Tales of London Town, a book with a bright green spine and a black-and-white sketch of a London square topped by a colorful rainbow, facing out on a bookstore shelf
September 25, 2025 at 5:53 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
Join us at @alamodrafthouse.bsky.social tomorrow night for the 7:30pm screening of One Battle After Another, based on Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland. Your popcorn is on us if we see you wearing our bookstore merch!
Poster for Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie One Battle After Another with Thomas Pynchon’s photo superimposed onto Leonardo DiCaprio’s head
September 25, 2025 at 5:34 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
Who’s hungry?
A glass jar filled with oatmeal cookies rests on the light-colored wood counter of a bookstore next to piles of branded stickers from Leviathan Bookstore
September 18, 2025 at 5:35 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
Here too
Four colorful volumes of Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage series stand spine out on a bookshelf
September 5, 2025 at 8:33 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
Stanza strong! It’s been a big week for poetry sales—this stack had to be replenished, and that’s not all of them.
A pile of poetry books rests on a bookstore counter, with a few scattered face-up in front
September 5, 2025 at 8:30 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
Not our work, but putting in a plug for the amazing artistry of 18th-century innovator Mary Delany (and her biographer, Molly Peacock)!
Cover of the book The Paper Garden by Molly Peacock, showing pink-petaled, green-leaved paper flower collages on a black background
September 4, 2025 at 7:27 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
Pacific Northwest: Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler / Wild Life by Molly Gloss
Cover of Wild Life by Molly Gloss Cover of Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler
September 3, 2025 at 9:49 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
California: I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita / Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin
Cover of Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin Cover of I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita
September 3, 2025 at 9:45 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
World's longest shelf talker? It won't fit even in the alt text!
The one thing everyone knows about Transylvania is that it’s the home of Bram Stoker’s fictional Count Dracula. Most also know that it’s an actual territory in Romania. That’s true now, and has been for many decades, but it’s not the whole story. Did you know that this region was for a thousand years, from the turn of the first millennium to the early 20th century, an essential part of Hungary? The trans-sylvan “land beyond the forest” was wide and wild, and its residents were seen as more rugged and authentic than those closer to the capital city of Budapest—it seems to have occupied much the same place in the Magyar imagination that the American West does in ours. The handing over of Transylvania to Romania in the aftermath of World War I was a devastating blow. That national calamity is what Miklós Bánffy slowly, deliciously works his way toward in his sweeping trilogy. The individual volumes borrow their titles from the famous writing on the wall in the biblical book of Daniel, a prophecy about the collapse of a legendary kingdom—They Were Counted, They Were Found Wanting, They Were Divided—and together they describe the decline of a fascinating real place. The story begins as a young nobleman (a Bánffy stand-in) returns from diplomatic service abroad and is flung back into the social and political Hungarian swirl. Tempted by selfish interests but dedicated to the betterment of his society, he charts a course toward the future, beset on all sides by frivolity and obliviousness. Old ladies gossip and young ladies angle to win marital competitions while generals compare mustaches and bicker pettily about their junior status in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, all unaware that their lives are about to turn upside down. Though written in the 1930s, the trilogy is both in style and substance the last of the great 19th-century novels, grand and stately and ambitious and utterly immersive. The characters, including the upright Count Abady, the captivating Adrienne with …
September 3, 2025 at 6:07 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
Quote of the Day, from THE HIGH HEAVEN by Joshua Wheeler, forthcoming from @graywolfpress.bsky.social.
The cats jumped from the counter to the floor, made their way to the window where they took up posts as lookouts. The bookseller's job was to sell books but really her job was to carefully read books and then quickly read people and then improvise a high form of mental alchemy that resulted in a definitive alteration of a customer's worldview through exposure to ideas or emotions or beauty or savagery or any experience previously unknown or even fathomed by the customer before the purchase of any book she recommended. This man wanted to fix strangeness but she was primarily in the business of purveying strangeness.
September 2, 2025 at 5:54 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
Julio Cortázar's birthday fell this past week and we celebrated by recommending the book he wrote with his wife, Carol Dunlop, AUTONAUTS OF THE COSMOROUTE, in our newsletter. Partner projects like this one are close to our Leviathan's heart! @archipelagobooks.bsky.social

mailchi.mp/dfa85b0f852e...
Author Julio Cortazar, bearded and lanky, sits in a cane chair wearing a turtleneck and reaching up across his chest with his left hand to touch the right hand of his standing wife, Carol Dunlop, who sports stylishly short hair and a menswear-inspired striped top in this black-and-white photo. Superimposed over it is the bright yellow and white cover of the book they wrote together, Autonauts of the Cosmoroute. Additional text announces it was "Recommended in this week's newsletter."
August 29, 2025 at 5:54 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
The internet is awash with orange glitter because we’re all abuzz about long-awaited new work from the leading artist of our age. It’s a new Era and we’re not just on the bandwagon, we’re leading the parade! Man, the first week of October is going to be lit! @penguinbooksusa.bsky.social
The cover art for Taylor Swift's Life of a Showgirl album on a background of orange glitter, but altered so that her body, clad in a scanty showgirl costume, is topped by the heavily made-up face of a young Thomas Pynchon and the title reads "Life of a Recluse." A copy of Thomas Pynchon's novel Shadow Ticket floats on a background of orange glitter, with text below it reading "October 7, 2025."
August 15, 2025 at 3:55 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
At the National Building Arts Center last night selling copies of Carl Elefante’s GOING FOR ZERO from @islandpress.bsky.social. We’ll be downtown with him tonight for an @aiaofficial.bsky.social meeting: leviathanbookstore.com/events/carl-...
A huge, covered open space in a former steel foundry is a occupied at the far end by a group of people seated in folding chairs listening to a presentation A middle-aged man with a white beard and a young, curly-haired woman wearing a long flowered dress sit behind a folding table in which are displayed copies of a book called Going for Zero. A large upright sign next to them advertises Leviathan Bookstore in bold, jumbled letters.
August 7, 2025 at 6:30 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
Our newsletter recommendation for @ronanhession.bsky.social's Leonard & Hungry Paul from @ofmooseandmen.bsky.social
On most occasions when I've read a book and been struck by its uniqueness, it's because of something unfamiliar about it, something strange I've never seen before. This is the first time one has stood out for its relentless and positively brilliant mundanity. The title characters of Irish writer Rónán Hession's debut novel are two meek, ungainly men in their mid-thirties, neither of whom has quite managed to make the leap into independent adulthood. One is a ghost writer of encyclopedias for children, the other is a part-time substitute postman, and both are still trapped in the orbit of their parents, at least until the death of Leonard's mother triggers a minor crisis of identity. It would be all too easy to write this story as a tragedy, or cast these unlikely heroes as sad sacks in a satirical mockery, but Hession has produced a warm comedy that valorizes their simplicity, their gentleness, and their humanity. It's rare that fiction makes true friendship its subject, at least not in a setting without life-or-death stakes, and this novel does it better than any I've read before. As with childhood role model Mr. Rogers, a first glance may leave the impression of mild blandness, but there's surprising power in Leonard and Hungry Paul's refusal to be mean. In the end the effect it leaves is one of strength. Read it—it's good for what ails you.
August 6, 2025 at 6:26 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
John Dos Passos said it well in the overture to his U.S.A. trilogy almost a hundred years ago. Happy Independence Day, if you can keep it.
U.S.A. is the slice of a continent. U.S.A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stockquotations rubbed out and written in by a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a public-library full of old newspapers and dogeared historybooks with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U.S.A. is the world's greatest rivervalley fringed with mountains and hills, U.S.A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bankaccounts. U.S.A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U.S.A. is the letters at the end of an address when you are away from home. But mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people.
July 4, 2025 at 10:33 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
Join us next Thursday as we welcome @naffziger.bsky.social to celebrate the publication of his new Adam Lemp biography. Reserve a seat in advance by purchasing the book through our event page.

leviathanbookstore.com/events/chris...
July 3, 2025 at 9:32 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
It's right outside our door.

www.instagram.com/p/DLNi8pzuymw/
An extremely small red brick planter, seen in closeup, extends from the corner of a red brick building, filled with grassy green plants. A sign at the rear reads "Native Plant Garden" and a charcoal-colored door with an oval glass inset is visible in the background.
June 28, 2025 at 7:43 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
Have you visited Missouri's newest tourist attraction? We've installed the World's Smallest Prairie outside our front door. Sedge, pink, and phlox (we can't get enough phlox).
An extremely small red brick planter, seen in closeup, extends from the corner of a red brick building, filled with grassy green plants. A sign at the rear reads "Native Plant Garden" and a charcoal-colored door with an oval glass inset is visible in the background.
June 22, 2025 at 5:29 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
Our colleagues at 27th Letter Books in Detroit won the internet today.

www.instagram.com/p/DKxKw67xypM/
A screenshot of a much-liked Instagram post from 27thletterbooks showing a gray brick on a bookstand in their store. The caption reads, "Wow! Friends in LA got us hip to this new hardcover that you should distribute to all your friends at ICE!"
June 11, 2025 at 7:07 PM
leviathanbookstore.bsky.social
We've got a power trio playlist pouring through the speakers here in the store today.
Black-and-white drawings of an electric guitar, a drum set, and an electric bass are individually framed in white against a black background
June 7, 2025 at 10:05 PM