The Rose Books & Obscurities emphasizes collectible gothic novels for October.

Old Monterey has its fair share of alleyways. Walking down the brick-lined sidewalks as the fog rolls in gives an eerie feel. Head down Bonifacio Place off of Alvarado Street and one storefront can’t help but catch your eye. An old bookshop, with tall single-pane windows, called The Rose Books & Obscurities seems like it was transported from London and mysteriously positioned in the narrow one-way street.

But there is more to this tiny shop than just books, and like several of the tomes that co-owner Ernest Rose has on display, you have to look inside.

The smell of old pages and wood fills the air when stepping through Rose’s door, adorned with tasteful lamps and trinkets on display. This is no ordinary bookshop because placed on the bookshelves and eclectically arranged glass hutches are books that are centuries old, where this October you’ll also find gothic classics fit for a collector.

Rose curated and collected rare books, then built an online business by selling them over a span of six years. He then opened The Rose in 2023, after a previous bookstore there closed post-Covid. Since the location itself has been a bookshop for almost half a century, Rose’s mission is to preserve that experience.

“By honoring physical media, [collectors] dwell on these quiet edges of culture,” Rose says. “In an age where everything is drifting toward digital, book collecting becomes an act of preservation.”

October is a prime time for Rose to emphasize gothic literature. He has copies of classics such as Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and more this year. But collector books like these are not limited to the season – “These are novels that we get requested on a weekly basis,” Rose says.

Rose also acknowledges that people collect books for different reasons. His personal collection includes editions of the classics, but his interests fill his shelves with philosophical works, alchemy and other esoteric subjects such as metaphysics.

“The reason I got into it was discovery of the self,” Rose says. “Why someone collects is an individual question.

“I enjoy the hunt of looking for a collectible book,” he adds.

Bookshops like Rose’s are hard to come by in the modern age. He understands why some booksellers have moved to online book sales, and it’s thanks to a mutual belief from the building owners in preserving the shop that The Rose is able to exist still.

Much like the books he’s displaying for October, the magic is in the place.

“[Gothic literature] is characterized by setting: Haunted castles, ruins, the atmosphere of dread or the presence of supernatural events,” Rose explains.

The setting inside the two-story, stacked high bookshelves that makes up the interior of The Rose wouldn’t necessarily inspire dread or supernatural presence, until you perhaps look inside an edition of Frankenstein published in 1870. Such an old book does require careful handling, but Rose is quick to point out that these antique pages are engineered to be handled.

“No two copies are bound alike,” Rose says. “There’s a personal essence of holding a book of this age when it’s passed through god-knows-how-many hands.”

Aside from 19th-century copies of Frankenstein or the first photoplay edition of Dracula published in the 1930s are other archaeological items, which some would call obscurities – hence the latter part of the bookshop’s name. Some of his books are more than 400 years old, and Rose’s passion for ancient texts inspired him to create his own publication, called The Mystic Rose, which customers can acquire in the shop. In it, Rose writes that the periodical is produced in homage to more cryptic writings from the late 19th and early-20th centuries in the United States and Europe.

To his delight, Rose sees younger generations taking an interest in books as old as his, with gothic novels always in demand. He’s heavily involved in the rare book trade and one of the few Latinos involved in the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America.

“We get to see who is reading these books,” Rose says. “It’s a testament to where collecting is headed.”

THE ROSE BOOKS & OBSCURITIES is located at 136 Bonifacio Place in Monterey. (831) 275-2066, roseobscurities.com.