Anaheim's Booktown USA bookshop is being forced to close after 23 years
Six days a week for nearly 23 years, Thomas Pesce has been selling books at Booktown USA, the used bookstore in Anaheim he's been running since Nov. 1, 2003.
"I don’t get out of the shop, because I only have Sundays off, and my wife wants me to be with her on a Sunday. I’m lucky enough to have a wife that enjoys my company," Pesce says of Carolyn, a retired teacher and his wife of 51 years, with whom he raised three sons.
"She says I talk to the customers too long," the 72-year-old Bronx-born bookseller says with a laugh.
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Aside from occasionally locking up early to mail books to a customer or take his wife to McDonald’s for lunch, as he did last week, he's usually to be found in the shop buying and selling books.
"Oh yeah, I haven't had a vacation," Pesce says, except for a recent road trip he took to visit his 90-year-old sister in Arizona.
"Can you believe I have a sister who's 90? She and I are the last two left," he says. "The drive killed me. I hadn’t driven that far in years, but we went there, had a really nice visit with her and her husband and came back.
"And then this happened," he says.
By "this," Pesce means that he learned on June 20 via certified mail that he'd need to vacate the building in 60 days. And that means moving thousands of books – he estimates close to 30,000 of them – currently residing in his cramped store.
"I don’t want to say anything disparaging," says Pesce about the building's owners, who he says have not responded to a call and a text about the situation. "They’re looking more at the bottom line. I don’t blame them, you know. I had been on a month-to-month lease, which is a shaky thing, as I’m now experiencing."
"When I got this letter, I went on the internet, and I found that they’ve been advertising my store," he says. "Like I was already vacant."
A call to the property manager for comment was not returned by press time.
“I’m just looking for a little leeway,” he says, hoping for additional time to move out so he'll be able to get everything done in time and “not get so stressed out.”
"I’m too busy right now. I mean, my wife and I are just going nuts trying to get the store in shape for a liquidation sale," he says. "I called them yesterday to discuss this and ask for an extension, because 60 days is really not feasible for me to get rid of everything, unless there’s a miracle.
"I am in decent shape at almost 73, but I’m not in good enough shape to … do that."
Where do local booksellers get help when things get tough? Here.
Pesce describes himself as an old-school bookseller who only got a cell phone a few months ago, and he speaks with fondness of the family who previously owned the property.
"The original owners were concentration camp survivors, and their family, when they retired, ran the complex strip center for the mother, who was widowed, and they just loved having a bookstore here," says Pesce.
"She would come in now and then, and say, ‘You remind me so much of the person who ran a bookstore when I was a young girl in Poland,'" he recalls. "Her birthday was September 1, 1939, when the Nazis bombed her village."
"They were very kind, and they loved having a bookstore. I think they felt that it gave the whole complex good karma or good vibes."
Along with all the books, good vibes seem to abound at Booktown USA, which was one of the reasons Pesce left a job in loan servicing – work that involved dealing with foreclosures, bankruptcies and collections. He began questioning his career choice after someone told him it was a “negative way to make a living,” and the comment stuck with him.
These days, he’s got an entirely different relationship with his clients. Take Stan, for example.
"One of my good customers is going to be 94 years old on August 31. He’s a Korean War veteran, can’t drive anymore," says Pesce, who picks up Stan and brings him to the store once a week. "Every Friday night, he calls me up, and he says, “Are you going to pick me up tomorrow?' And he spends all day Saturday with me.
"He’s a widower," says Pesce. “And then I take him on a couple of errands if he needs it.”
The store owner mentions a sign that sits in his window and shares the story behind it.
"I have a little sign on my front door that says, ‘Larry, I found your book,'” he says, explaining further: “Larry was an old-time customer."
According to Pesce, no one knew Larry's last name or how to reach him, per his wishes. Larry would just periodically appear at the store to pick up books he'd ordered or leave some on consignment.
"So the reason that the sign is in the window was that I don’t have a way to contact him, and I have a book for him," says Pesce, who says he'd been searching for a book about Roman coins on Larry's behalf. "The last time I saw him, he opened the door, said, ‘Hi, I’m on my walk,' and that was the last time I saw him.
"I found the book the next day," says Pesce, who says he suspects that Larry might have succumbed to COVID, but he's kept the sign up just in case.
A longtime customer, Justin Jackson-Mann, says he got to know Pesce as he began stopping by the store a few times a week beginning around 2011.
"There's a goodness about him," he says of Pesce. "He's a very trustworthy person. That's one of the reasons I like talking with him.
"When I moved away for another job in South Carolina, he sent me a care package of a bunch of books," says Jackson-Mann, who was surprised to learn that Pesce had been setting aside selections of horror, sci-fi, westerns and general fiction for him. "He didn't say I'm going to be sending you something, you know? It just popped up that I had a package."
"He didn't even charge me for it," he says.
As well as expressing frustration that the store is losing its longtime home, Jackson-Mann, who lives in the Bay Area now but still comes down to visit, says he’s concerned for his friend.
"I think the store is just an excuse for him to be sociable with other people. I mean, it's a business, and he makes his living there," says Jackson-Mann, who is worried Pesce might be isolated if he doesn't have the store to go to each day.
Moreover, Jackson-Mann says he's concerned that Anaheim is losing one more great bookshop – the closure of the Book Baron in 2007 still stings – and doesn't want to see Booktown USA go away.
"It's a great old bookstore … it has a lot of personality and a lot of used books," Jackson-Mann says of the maze-like interior. "This place is really special to me, because I would do down there and I'd find some gem I wasn't even thinking about. That's how I discovered a lot of new authors … It's not like going on Amazon."
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For now, Pesce is figuring out how to get everything done by the deadline and speaks with emotion about the community that built up around the bookstore. Despite the recent events, he feels blessed, he says.
“I’ve got a lot of former customers and friends already volunteering to help me move,” says Pesce. “Monetarily, somehow, we make it, but my wealth has been in family, relationships and friendships. You can’t put a dollar sign on that.
"You get to know your customers. They become your friends," says Pesce. "As one customer said the other day, ‘Where am I going to go for my karma now?'"
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This story was originally published June 29, 2026 at 11:10 AM.