Bookwise

Bookwise HUGE inventory of used and rare books, fiction and non-fiction. Bookwise has relocated as of Nov. 2, 2020. We're just east of the FAU campus.

Bestsellers, mystery, romance, science fiction, classics, literature and literary criticism, history, psychology, self-help, cultural studies, new age, religion, philosophy, fitness and health, travel, business, economics, political science and law, biography, true crime, film, art, architecture, music, dance, hobbies, chess and games, collecting, sports, military history, science, math, nature, a

nimals, children's, leather-bound books, collectibles and more. We are now at 145 NW 20th St in Boca, between Dixie Hwy and Boca Raton Blvd (NW 2nd Ave). NW 20th St is north of Glades Rd and south of Yamato Rd and Spanish River Blvd, but does not have its own exit on I-95. From the North, exit I-95 at Yamato or Spanish River, go east to Dixie, take a right (south), and then right at NW 20th St. Go over the railroad tracks; we're a couple hundred yards down on your right. From the South, exit I-95 at Glades and go east to Dixie, take a left (north) there and then left over the tracks on NW 20th St.; we’re on the right. There's always plenty of parking.

09/07/2026

We’re open
Labor Day, Sept. 7.

08/15/2026

20% off all books in these overstocked sections: Cookbooks, Kids & Young Adults, Baseball, U.S. Civil War, Christianity.

Erle Stanley Gardner.We get requests for certain older mystery writers — Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers,...
08/08/2026

Erle Stanley Gardner.

We get requests for certain older mystery writers — Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy Sayers, Rex Stout, Josephine Tey, Arthur Upfield — all the time but only Agatha Christie is more requested than Erle Stanley Gardner — and we see his books much less often.

So you can imagine how pleased we were to take in TWO collections of his work in the same week. The first batch (pictured) was of fourteen titles in their fragile dust jackets (the books, alas, are reprints, not firsts — sorry, hi-end collectors). The second batch is twenty+ volumes of the two-in-one editions sold via mail order, issued without jackets.

Today, we think of Baldacci, Grisham, Sanford et al as bestseller machines, cranking out two books a year — but Gardner was there first. Not limited to the Perry Mason books for which he’s best known, he wrote another series with an honest D.A. central character and another based on a P.I. firm, publishing novels, short stories, and nonfiction under a dozen pen names and reviewing movie and tv scripts.

Executives at his hardcover publisher, William Morrow, and its paperback partner, Pocket Books realized at some point in the early-mid 1950s that Gardner — a smoker already in his sixties — accounted for a quarter of all the firms’ revenue and was not going to live forever. They began looking — even advertising — for other writers with the ingenuity and stamina to take up the ESG mantle.

They found one Evan Hunter, then building his literary reputation with books like “The Blackboard Jungle,” later filmed. Hunter proposed a series centered not on one central character but an ensemble cast working together in a never-named big city. Pocket Books liked the idea. His “Cop Hater” appeared as a paperback original in 1956 by “Ed McBain” — Hunter hoping to keep his crime-writing career and reputation separate from his literary one — and the 87th Precinct series was born. It never became the breadwinner that Perry Mason had been, but won critical acclaim, was widely imitated and admired (if not always acknowledged: lookin’ at you, Steven Bochco and Hill Street Blues), and ultimately ran to 55 books, the last appearing in 2005, the same year Hunter/McBain passed.

Pick up some Gardner while you can. And yes, we have some McBain in stock, too, for the moment — as with the other luminaries mentioned above, never as much as we’d like.

Among our new arrivals: Chinese & Japanese art, some newish (2022-2024) travel guides, musicians, and birds.
07/29/2026

Among our new arrivals: Chinese & Japanese art, some newish (2022-2024) travel guides, musicians, and birds.

We’re open, Saturday, July 4, regular hours 10-6. Declare a little independence from Giant Online Retailers; check out ...
07/04/2026

We’re open, Saturday, July 4, regular hours 10-6. Declare a little independence from Giant Online Retailers; check out the prime stuff available locally.

Exceptional scholarly collection of philosophy, literature, criticism, poetry: works by and about Aristotle, Attar, Jac...
06/22/2026

Exceptional scholarly collection of philosophy, literature, criticism, poetry: works by and about Aristotle, Attar, Jacques Barzun, Bergson, Bishop, Bonhoeffer, Canetti, Hart Crane, Dickinson, Stanley Fish, Foucault, Freire, Goethe, Paul Goodman, Sidney Hook, Hume, William James (lots), Randall Jarrell, St, John of the Cross, Kafka, Kierkegaard, Audre Lord, Robert Lowell, Hans Jonas, Richard McKeon, George Herbert Mead, C. Wright Mills, Milosz, Niebuhr, Nietzsche, Pater, Charles Sanders Peirce, Otto Rank, Ricoeur, Rorty, Santayana, Elaine Scarry, Spinoza, Unamuno, Simone Weil (lots!), Wilde, Raymond Williams, William Carlos Williams, Wittgenstein, James Wright, and Zhuangzi … among others. Temporarily shelved together in our New Arrivals section before we disperse to their final destination sections. Don’t wait on these!

Oddly, for a batch of 150+ volumes, not a single author whose surname starts with T. Go figure.

Just added some big runs to our Manga section.
06/22/2026

Just added some big runs to our Manga section.

Among the weekend’s new arrivals: yoga books.
06/22/2026

Among the weekend’s new arrivals: yoga books.

2026 nonfiction in our new arrivals.
06/04/2026

2026 nonfiction in our new arrivals.

Address

145 NW 20th Street
Boca Raton, FL
33431

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 6pm
Tuesday 10am - 6pm
Wednesday 10am - 6pm
Thursday 10am - 6pm
Friday 10am - 6pm
Saturday 10am - 6pm

Telephone

+15613476455

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