The Martinborough Books & Post is a bookshop and NZ Post agency on Kitchener Street in Martinborough. Alongside a wide general bookshop range, it stocks dedicated sections for New Zealand titles and Te Reo Māori, reflecting its place in a town known for its book culture, including a Booktown Voucher Special range.
The shop's categories span Fiction, Non-Fiction, Biography & Memoir, Crime and Thrillers, Children's books, Poetry, Travel, Architecture, Art and Design, Painting, Photography, Home and Garden, Sports, Food and Drink, Jigsaws, Puzzles & Games, and Stationery — giving it the range of a proper general bookshop rather than a single-genre store.
As an NZ Post agency, the shop also handles domestic and international post, parcels and packing, PO Box services, mail collection, mail redirection and rural delivery, making it a genuine local service point as well as a place to browse books. Customers can shop in person, order online, or use Click & Collect on individual titles.
On Kitchener Street in Martinborough, The Martinborough Books & Post combines two things a small town genuinely needs: a proper general bookshop and a local NZ Post agency, all under one roof. It's a fitting combination for a town that has built part of its identity around books, reflected in the shop's own Booktown Voucher Special range.
Rather than specialising in one genre, the shop covers a broad spread of categories: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Biography & Memoir, Crime and Thrillers, Children's books, and Poetry sit alongside more specialist sections like Architecture, Art and Design, Painting and Photography. There's a Home and Garden section, a Sports section, and a Food and Drink section for cookbook browsers, plus Jigsaws, Puzzles & Games and Stationery for gift shopping beyond books.
Two sections in particular reflect the shop's place in New Zealand: a dedicated New Zealand category and a Te Reo Māori section, giving local and visiting customers a place to find homegrown titles alongside the international new releases that rotate through Fiction and Non-Fiction. Current fiction stock has included titles like Star Gazers, The Things We Never Say and Big Little Truths, while recent non-fiction has ranged from The Finest Hotel in Kabul to Bird of the Year, and biography and memoir shelves have carried titles including Stakes: A memoir and Grand: Becoming my mother's daughter.
What sets this shop apart from a typical independent bookseller is its role as an NZ Post agency. Alongside book browsing, customers can use the shop for domestic and international post, parcels and packing, PO Box services, mail collection, mail redirection, and rural delivery — the kind of everyday services that matter in a smaller town where a dedicated post office isn't always around the corner.
For customers who'd rather shop from home, the shop offers online ordering and postage, and individual titles can be reserved through Click & Collect for in-store pickup, alongside the option to add items to a wishlist for later.
The shop is open every day from 10am to 4pm, closing only on Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Good Friday, Anzac Day (until 1pm), and its annual stocktaking day. That daily availability, paired with the postal counter, makes it a genuine daily-use local business rather than just a destination bookshop.
Customers can get in touch by phone or email, and the shop keeps in touch with its community through Facebook and Instagram, sharing new arrivals and updates from the shop floor. For anyone visiting Martinborough — whether after a new release, a Te Reo Māori title, a jigsaw for a rainy afternoon, or simply needing to post a parcel — The Martinborough Books & Post covers a surprising amount of ground for one small-town shop.