Visit our friendly community archive to browse our growing collection of queer books!
Our mission is to collect and conserve LGBTQ+ books, and preserve queer history. We have thousands of queer books in our archive, and we host a variety of events and book groups.
We not only collect queer history, we are queer history! We go all the way back to 1976, when our co-founders Bob and Sigrid first started selling LGBTQ+ books.
Visit in person
You can visit us during our opening hours, every Tuesday and Thursday between 11am and 4pm. You can also join us every second and fourth Sunday between 2pm and 4pm for our Sunday Social Book Café.
Browse online
You can also browse our digital catalogue which lists all of the books in the archive.
Past Shelves exhibition
From 5 March to 3 May 2026, you can visit Past Shelves: Histories of Queer Reading at the Museum of Edinburgh.
The exhibition is inspired by Lavender Menace and West & Wilde, Scotland’s first LGBTQ+ bookshops, community experiences of reading and life in Scotland from 1980 – 2000. Find out more about the exhibition here.
