Your guide to some of the best independent bookstores in Las Vegas

Lou and Myrna Donato, owners of Amber Unicorn Books, pose among the many books in their store.

Amber Unicorn Books features an impressive 20,000-title cookbook collection.

Amber Unicorn owners Myrna and Lou Donato buy, sell, trade and appraise books.

Alternate Reality Comics is the Las Vegas go-to for graphic novels and comics. Selections include history, memoir, biography, fantasy and crime.

Alternate Reality Comics owner Ralph Mathieu stocks a selection of graphic novels and comics on fantasy, crime and more.

Ralph Mathieu, right, owner of Alternate Reality Comics, talks with customer Kory Mack.

Alternate Reality Comics owner Ralph Mathieu has a tattoo of Wonder Woman on his calf.

Bauman Rare Books is located in the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. It offers fine books and autographs in American literature, signed first editions, children’s classics, history, photography and more.

Vintage editions, including Virginia Woolf’s “The Years,” from right, and John Steinbeck novels “Sea of Cortez, “East of Eden” and “Cannery Row,” are available for purchase at Bauman Rare Books.

A framed and matted letter from Ernest Hemingway says, “Just finished a hell of a chapter,” discussing the writing of “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” which is on display at Bauman Rare Books.

A visitor walks behind a display case that holds first printings of E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web” and Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s “Le Petit Prince” at Bauman Rare Books.

A shopper looks through a display case at Bauman Rare Books.

A pedestrian is reflected in the window of Writer’s Block, which carries literature, nonfiction and children’s books.

Drew Cohen, co-owner of Writer’s Block, is surrounded by books that include literary and children’s fiction and works on art and design and business.

A cardboard figure of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer stands inside Writer’s Block.