PAPER LANTERN is a bookshop on Ninefold Lane. Walk the rooms below, take a seat at an author evening, or leave us the title nobody else can find.
The shop is one long floor divided by bookcases. Each room keeps its own light, its own chairs and its own staff pick on the lectern. Prices below are what you pay at the counter; members of the reading club take 10% off every line.
Novels and short stories, shelved by house rather than by prize list. The ladder stays out because the top two shelves hold the reprints nobody else stocks. Paperback fiction starts at $14; the signed shelf is priced per copy on the band.
Thin volumes, wide margins, and a plum rug that eats footsteps. We carry eleven small presses nobody in Harlowe carries, plus letters and diaries. The brass shelf plates tell you who chose the shelf.
Oversized folios, rolled charts in a bin, and a globe on a turned stand. Loose chart sheets are $9 each; bound atlases run from $46. We will flatten and sleeve anything you buy from the bin while you wait.
Green cloth boards, gilt tooling, and one case with the lid up. Every item carries a written condition note, and nothing goes out without it. Browsing is free and unhurried; the search desk for anything not on the shelf is in the next section.
Picture books face out because the cover is the whole argument. A step stool that gets moved forty times a day, a rug for sitting, and the lantern room behind the green door for Saturday story hour.
A year on a fishing coast told in weather notes and borrowed recipes. Our Fiction Hall pick for the month.
Fifty short poems about doors, thresholds and the people who stand in them. Small press, 96 pages, sewn.
Folio atlas of an invented archipelago, 44 plates, printed two colours. Flat-packed for carrying home.
A novel about a town that keeps its lights on by committee. Reading club title for November.
Picture book, 32 pages, board-thick paper. Read aloud at story hour every second Saturday.
1962 cloth binding, gilt tooled, light shelf wear at the head. Condition note in the case; one copy only.
The children's room has its own reading circle and its own staff: two snail editors who live on a red cap and argue about endings. Saturday story hour is free; the illustration workshop runs on the last Sunday of the month.
Two picture books read aloud, one of them chosen by whoever sits closest to the lantern. Cushions for twenty, standing room for the rest.
Graded from single words to first chapters, marked with a green band so nobody has to guess. Staff will read a page with your child before you buy.
Two hours with an illustrator, paper and ink supplied, ages 7 to 12. Eight places, and they go in the first week.
The room for ninety minutes, a reader, and a book wrapped for the birthday child. Bring your own cake; we supply plates and quiet.
Next to the till there is a window table of things that go with books: hand-sewn bears, cloth bookmarks, notebooks bound in the same cloth as our rebinds, and gift cards that never expire.
Hand-sewn in four fleece colours, button eyes, felt muzzle, a tag in the side seam. 32 cm tall.
Off-cuts from the bindery, stitched and stamped with the lantern. Six patterns, never the same twice.
A5, sewn sections, 160 cream pages, bound in the cloth we use for rebinds. Lies flat on the table.
Brass clip lamp, warm bulb, folds into a coat pocket. The one the staff actually use on the late shift.
Paper card in a cloth sleeve, written out by hand at the counter. No expiry date, usable on books, events and the window table alike.
The reading club meets twice a month in the Poetry room; author evenings take over the Fiction Hall after closing. Seats are free for members and $8 for everyone else — the fee comes off the price of the book on the night.
Ines Carraway's novel, read in two halves. Bring the book or borrow a club copy at the door; we start with the last chapter and work backwards.
The author of Soup for a Small Dragon reads it aloud and then draws the dragon on the board while forty children correct her.
An hour on The Salt Almanac, weather notes and why the recipes are all borrowed. Signing afterwards; we hold signed copies for anyone who books a seat.
Two hours, ink and paper supplied, eight places. Each child leaves with a stitched eight-page booklet of their own.
Everyone brings one poem by someone else and two minutes on why. Osian Brandt sits in on this one and does not read his own.
Out of print, wrong edition, a translation that only ran once — the search desk in Rare & Bindings takes the title and works the trade lists for it. We quote before we buy, and you are free to say no.
Covers the trade lists, the dealer calls and the condition report. Comes off the price if you take the copy.
Cloth boards, sewn sections, blind or gilt tooling on the spine. Six to eight weeks, quoted after we see the block.
Name an author or a press and we put every new title on your named shelf on the day it lands. Billed per book.
At the desk, by phone or through the form below. Edition, year, translator — anything you remember narrows it fast.
Trade lists, three dealers we trust, and the two auction houses that still print paper catalogues.
Price, condition note and a photograph of the copy before anything is bought. You say yes or no.
We hold it for fourteen days on your named shelf, wrapped, with the condition note in the parcel.
PAPER LANTERN opened in 2017 on the first floor of 19 Ninefold Lane, above a workshop that made street lanterns until 1974. The floor is still the original board, which is why the ladder squeaks and why we left the north window uncovered: you can read a spine properly in that light.
Dorte Aylen buys the fiction and runs the reading club. Samuel Oduya keeps the search desk and the case room, and has written a condition note for something close to four thousand books. Between them they have read almost none of the same ones, which is the point.
“A bookshop is not a warehouse with taste. It is five rooms, and somebody in each of them who has actually read the shelf behind them.”
I asked for a translation that went out of print before I was born. Samuel quoted me in a week, showed me a photograph of the foxing on page nine, and let me think about it for two days. It is on my desk now.
We come for story hour every other Saturday. My daughter has opinions about the snails on the mushroom and will explain them to any adult who stands still. The picture book shelf is priced like a shop that wants children in it.
Joined the club to get out of the house once a fortnight. Stayed because nobody there pretends to have finished the book. The $9 pays for itself the first time you buy a hardback.
Between the bakery and the bridge. The street door is next to the old lantern sign; the shop is up one flight, and there is a lift at the back of the yard.
| Monday | Closed — stock day |
| Tuesday | 10:00 – 20:00 |
| Wednesday | 10:00 – 20:00 |
| Thursday | 10:00 – 21:00 |
| Friday | 10:00 – 20:00 |
| Saturday | 09:00 – 18:00 |
| Sunday | 11:00 – 16:00 |
Sit as long as you like — the chairs are there to be used, and nobody will ask what you are doing. Coffee lives on the window table, not on the shelves; the one thing we cannot fix is a ring on a cloth board.
One form for both: a chair at an author evening, or a title you want put aside. We hold either for fourteen days and reply by email — nothing is paid on this page.
Your request is on the counter book. We will confirm by email within one working day.