This is the third in a series of reports on great places to find books on the visual arts. Last Sunday was so gray and gloomy that I headed to what has to be New York's coziest bookstore: Alabaster, on Fourth Avenue and 12^th Street. When I arrived, a first edition of one of my favorite cult classics, The Hawkline Monster, by Richard Brautigan, greeted me from the window sill. Alongside were large format art and photography books including Warhol/Makos: In Context (powerHouse, 2007, for $42.).

Alabaster Bookshop carries used and rare books, and after looking around for a few minutes, visitors will note that the shop is carefully curated. Subject headings for the visual arts include art, architecture, and photography; and fashion, graphic, interior, garden and textile design.

Photos: Peggy Roalf

There's a locked glass-front cabinet containing rare books, including a copy of Jean-Michel Basquiat's Amateur Bout N.Y.C. (Vrej Baghoomian, 1989) for $400. They also carry literature, fiction, poetry, and criticism, with nonfiction titles noticeably absent, except for a selection of items on New York and the occult. There is nothing random about this place, which feels like your shabby-rich uncle's library.

Browsing the photography section, I discovered a fresh copy of Marilyn Minter (Gregory R. Miller, 2007, for $36.); a fine copy of Paul Strand Photographs (Aperture, 1990 for $65.); a beautiful copy of the colossal catalog produced by the Amon Carter Museum for their 1986 Laura Gilpin retrospective, for $75; a like-new copy of the catalog for the Philip Trager retrospective at Wesleyan University (Steidl, 2006, for $40); and a nice copy of Steve McCurry's The Path to Buddha (Phaidon, 2003, for $28).

My favorite find was the companion volumes, Good News - always read the fine print and Very Very Bad News by Jordi Bernado (Actar, 1999 and 2003, for $40 each). The Spanish photographer has circled the globe creating panoramic images that represent the side-effects of over-civilization. In the second volume, Bernado pairs photographs of architecture and derelict urban spaces to demonstrate, with a caustic sense of humor, that the dark side of presumed normality is very close at hand - and oddly similar the world over. The condition was less than OK, but it's so unusual that it didn't bother me.

Among the rarities is Visionaire 2, with works by Mats Gustafson, Bruce Weber, Kenny Scharf, Serge Lutens, Todd Oldham, and Isabel Toledo, among others. This hard-to-find volume, #130 in an edition of 1000, is priced at $3000. But fashion fiends take heart; a nearly new copy of Simon Doonan's 1999 Confessions of a Window Dresser is available for around $20.

As I was chatting with store manager Josh Platt about the music (Indian classical, courtesy of Pandora.com), my favorite find was scooped up and paid for by another shopper. "Dash it," as old Uncle Henry would have said. Alabaster's winter hours are 10:00 am - 10:00 pm daily, but opening at 11:00 on Sundays. If you can't get there, Alabaster's website makes it easy to claim your heart's desire.