About Our Bookshop

River Bend Bookshop was launched in the summer of 2018 as a pop up shop at the Glastonbury Farmers Market.  Our little bookshop came to life in the Fall of the same year in our charming little house on Main Street in Glastonbury.  Since then, we've endured a pandemic - where we spent 13 months closed to browsing, so that our pack & ship operation could carry us through COVID.  We launched the River Bend Book Truck in 2021 as a way to get out into the community that we missed so much during isolation.  In November 2022, our business expanded with a new location in West Hartford.  The shop is bright and beautiful, and has plenty of room for author visits and events all year long.  River Bend Bookshops was named "Best Independent Bookstore" by Connecticut Magazine in 2022, and voted "Best Bookstore" in the Hartford Courant Readers' Poll in 2023.  

In addition to our shops, River Bend runs an annual literary festival - our Author Stage - and hosts a summertime scavenger hunt for Waldo all over town.  We fulfill book orders for businesses of all sizes.  We host dozens of authors for school visits each year, and run some of the cutest book fairs around.  Our shops participate in the Connecticut Book Trail, and the Independent Bookstore Day Passport Program.  We sponsor the Connecticut Lit Festival with Real Art Ways, and have been the proud book vendor of the Connecticut Book Awards.  River Bend also pops up almost everywhere - museums, theaters, libraries, breweries, vineyards, craft fairs, and corporate events.  We will take a book anywhere!  

Our staff includes book lovers with a wide variety of backgrounds and reading interests.  Come in and say hello - we love to talk about books and meet our neighbors!