Bookstores of the Triangle Pt 1: Quail Ridge Books

Bookstores of the Triangle is a blog series where Redbud highlights bookstores in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Apex, Morrisville, Cary, Pittsboro, Hillsborough, Carrboro, and surrounding environs. Do you have a bookstore you think we should visit? Let us know!

Quail Ridge Books on a recent Saturday. They have a curbside pickup and store browsing policy in place to keep shoppers safe during the pandemic.

A recent QRB purchase.

No bookstore tour of the Triangle would be complete without mentioning Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh's flagship indie store. Founded in 1984, Quail Ridge is currently located in the North Hills area, and is a hub for visiting author events, kids’ story hours, writing classes (ahem), and more. We love how, like the best bookshops, Quail Ridge is more than just a place to buy books: it’s a community gathering place and a venue to give authors a platform. Quail Ridge hosts a weekly author-interview podcast, a blog with staff picks, and a robust social media presence keeping Raleighites (Raleigheans?) informed of new releases and goings-on in the Triangle’s literary scene. Do you ever get the feeling that online book-selling behemoths don’t actually care about books? We get the opposite feeling from everything about Quail Ridge, from its staff to its aesthetic to its digital presence.

Highlights include the vast selection, which includes two floors of genres ranging from Southern fiction to cookbooks to travel; the bathroom wall, which features signed pictures of authors who’ve visited the store over the years; and nooks and crannies featuring strange friends like the mannequin pictured below.

We taught at Quail Ridge for months before noticing this.

Have you visited Quail Ridge lately? What did you buy/what did you notice about the store? Let us know in the comments!