Used Bookstores Near Ann Arbor: A Slow Afternoon in Tecumseh

Eighty thousand used books in one small Michigan town.

That’s not a typo. That Used Bookstore on West Chicago Boulevard in downtown Tecumseh keeps roughly 80,000 titles on its shelves at any given time. And here’s the part Ann Arbor readers don’t expect: it’s not the only used bookstore in town. Tecumseh has two. In a town of about 8,500 people. Which is the kind of math that only works when locals actually read.

If you’ve already worn out the U-M bookstore circuit and you’re looking for somewhere new to spend a Saturday with a paperback in hand, this is your day trip. Thirty-five minutes from Ann Arbor on US-23 South to M-50 East, and you’re parked in front of the kind of used bookstore where you walk in for one thing and leave with a stack.

That Used Bookstore: 80,000 Books and a Genuinely Deep Sci-Fi Section

Let’s start with the obvious. That Used Bookstore is the big one. The kind of place where you lose track of time by aisle three.

Walk in and you’ll smell what every good used bookstore smells like – paper that’s been sitting on shelves, a little dust, a little bit of someone else’s living room. The layout is dense without being chaotic. Fiction takes up a good chunk of the front half, broken out by genre, and the science fiction section in particular is the one that makes Ann Arbor visitors pause. It’s not a token shelf. It’s a real run of titles, deep enough that you’ll find authors you forgot existed and authors you’ve been hunting for years.

Past sci-fi you’ve got history (with a particularly strong Michigan and Civil War shelf), mystery, romance, classics, biography, and a back room that handles the rest. There’s a kids’ section that’s bigger than most independent bookstores carry new. And if you’re the kind of person who buys cookbooks just to read them, the cookbook shelf will eat your afternoon.

A few things to know before you go:

• Cash works best, though they take cards
• They buy books too, so if you’re doing a Marie Kondo pass on your shelves, this is a stop on the way
• The owner is usually around and actually knows the inventory, which is rare at this scale
• Plan on at least 45 minutes. An hour is more honest.

The store sits on West Chicago Boulevard, the main downtown stretch in Tecumseh. Park once and you can walk to coffee, lunch, and the second bookstore without moving your car.

ReRead Used Bookstore: A Curated Counterpoint on Herrick Park Drive

ReRead plays the other side of the used-bookstore game. Where That Used Bookstore is volume, ReRead is curation. Smaller footprint, tighter selection, and a layout you can actually circumnavigate without losing your friend.

Heads up if you’ve been before: ReRead moved. It used to be tucked off Evans Street, but it’s now on Herrick Park Drive. The new space gets more daylight, parking is easier, and the layout makes browsing feel less like a maze. If your GPS is still routing you to the old spot, update it.

The fiction selection at ReRead leans literary. You’ll find current bestsellers a year or two after they were current, which is exactly what you want when you’re paying half the cover price. The nonfiction shelves rotate fast – memoirs, essays, narrative history. The kids’ section is well-edited too, mostly trade paperbacks and picture books in good shape rather than ex-library hardcovers.

What makes ReRead worth the second stop after you’ve already done That:

• Different inventory rhythm. ReRead turns over faster, so the front-of-store table is genuinely different week to week.
• Easier to find a specific title. The smaller volume means it’s organized within an inch of its life.
• The vibe is closer to a curated indie than a stockpile. If That Used Bookstore is a library you can buy from, ReRead is a friend’s bookshelf.

Going to both in the same afternoon is the move. They’re not competing, they’re complementary, and most local readers do exactly this rotation.

Why Two Used Bookstores in a Town This Size?

This is the question Ann Arbor visitors ask out loud about ten minutes into their first trip. Tecumseh has roughly 8,500 residents. Lenawee County around it adds another 99,000 or so. By the math of bookstore demographics, you’d expect zero independent used bookstores. Maybe one. Definitely not two.

The honest answer is that Tecumseh punches above its weight on a few specific cultural markers, and reading is one of them. The downtown is small enough to walk in fifteen minutes but dense enough to support real businesses. There’s a generation of locals who grew up here, left for college, and came back, which keeps the market for paperbacks healthy. And both bookstores have figured out how to coexist by serving slightly different versions of the same hunger.

It’s also the kind of detail that locals stop noticing and visitors immediately clock. If you’re driving in from Ann Arbor and you’ve been told to expect “small downtown, cute shops,” the fact that two of those shops are used bookstores tells you something about the place before you’ve even gotten out of the car.

How to Build a Slow Bookstore Afternoon

Here’s the actual itinerary. Park once in downtown Tecumseh, ideally on West Chicago Boulevard or one of the side streets off it. From there, the day looks like:

1. Start at That Used Bookstore. Go early. The light’s better in the morning and you’ll have more energy for the deep dive. Set a soft timer for an hour.

2. Coffee and a sit. There are a couple of coffee shops within a block. Order something, find a seat, flip through whatever you bought to make sure it was worth the trip. (It was.)

3. Lunch downtown. Pick a spot on West Chicago or one of the side streets. The food scene in Tecumseh is more interesting than the population suggests, and you don’t need a reservation for lunch on a weekday.

4. Drive over to ReRead on Herrick Park Drive. About a three-minute drive from downtown, or a fifteen-minute walk if the weather is good and you want to stretch.

5. Optional third stop: Musgrove and Company. Not a bookstore, but a beautifully curated home goods and gift shop in the same downtown stretch. If you’ve already spent your book money, browsing here is a good palate cleanser.

The whole loop fits in three to four hours. You can absolutely turn it into a longer day by adding dinner, but most Ann Arbor visitors do this as a half-day round trip and head home with a stack.

Getting There from Ann Arbor

The drive is straightforward. US-23 South to M-50 East. About 35 minutes door to door from central Ann Arbor, less from the south side. Parking in downtown Tecumseh is free and almost always available, which after years of fighting for a spot in Kerrytown is a small miracle.

If you’re coming from the Detroit suburbs – Plymouth, Northville, Saline, Novi – the drive is similar in time, just on different roads. M-50 connects most of the way across.

The best months for this kind of slow bookstore afternoon are spring through fall, when downtown Tecumseh has more people walking around and the patios are open. But the bookstores themselves are year-round, and a snowy Saturday with a stack of paperbacks and a coffee has its own appeal.

Two Bookstores, One Afternoon

Two used bookstores. One walkable downtown. Thirty-five minutes from Ann Arbor. If you’ve been looking for somewhere to spend a slow Saturday that isn’t another walk through the U-M campus stacks, this is it.

For more on what to do in Tecumseh, including itineraries, shop spotlights, and seasonal picks, head to mitecumseh.com. Both bookstore listings have current hours and contact info: That Used Bookstore and ReRead Used Bookstore.