4. James Cummins Booksellers, 699 Madison Ave., 7th Floor
James Cummins Booksellers is invisible from the street. Located on the 7th floor, sandwiched between two designer stores, it’s not the place one goes for a paperback thriller. But Mr. Cummins has managed to fit an impressively diverse collection of rare books into a small space. The store has the air of a lost age— the walls are lined with the kind of stately, hefty tomes that Beauty and the Beasts’ Belle might have wanted in her library. Take a look around – you might be surprised what you see: children’s books a hundred years old and memoirs of the Civil War are just a few of the treasures that are stored here.