The phone rang at 8:55 on a wintry morning at the Merriams, whose 18th-century home in the hills above the village of Conway, in northwestern Massachusetts, doubles as a bed and breakfast. It was Mary Merriam on the line. As my wife and I lingered over an extra cup of coffee, served by her husband, Robert, she'd hurried into town to teach a quilting class. Mary wanted to alert us to a flock of wild turkeys down the road, a sight sure to delight a pair of Upper West Siders.

Nature, however, wasn't on our itinerary. While this charming pocket of the state, known as the Pioneer Valley, may be wild turkey country, as well as the approach to Vermont ski country, it's also used-book country. Our three-day visit was dedicated to browsing and buying amid the valley's rich and collegial network of bookshops and private dealers. More members of the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Antiquarian Booksellers (36) are to be found in this area than in bookish Greater Boston (25).

Some keep regular hours, while others open by appointment. All are within a half-hour's pleasant drive of Northampton, the valley's lively epicenter.

It was only a few steps, in fact, to our first stop of the morning: Robert L. Merriam's pine-sided, peak-roofed shop with a sign in front that simply says, ''BOOKS.'' His inventory of 10,000 volumes leans to American history and culture. Mr. Merriam's particular passion -- almost all the booksellers in the valley do have one -- is for collecting miniature volumes dedicated to stories providing ''moral instruction,'' which were popular in the mid-19th century. Before we left Mr. Merriam's shop, he showed us a slipcased set of tiny moral fables that he'd written and published himself.

Just down the country road from the Merriams, in another pairing of home and shop, is Southpaw Books. The surprising specialty of the proprietor, Eugene Povirk, in this rural and crusty New England venue, is social reform, labor, women's and Afro-American studies.

Just inside the shop's door, beside a stairway narrowed by piled books, was a newly acquired stack of 80 bound volumes (1935-1963) of The Daily Worker, voice of the American Communist Party. Anyone wishing to revisit the day-by-day furies of the McCarthy Era need only open a few of these volumes from the 50's. Each volume, containing three months of the newspaper, is priced at $80. Mr. Povirk also offers a trove of old fliers, handbills and posters: what dealers call ''ephemera.'' For $50, you can own a petition, circa 1926, issued in Boston by the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee in its vain attempt to stop the execution of the two anarchists.

South Deerfield

Graceful New England towns dot the Pioneer Valley, but drab South Deerfield, east of Conway and nestled under Mount Sugarloaf, is not one of them. Its library has no great architectural ambition, as Conway's does; it has no main street lined with old, wide-lawned homes, as can be found in neighboring Whately or Sunderland. But South Deerfield does have two recently arrived used-book sellers. The newest is six-month-old Meetinghouse Books.

''I've always had a neighborhood bookstore, and this is an extension of it,'' said the proprietor, Judith Tingley, whose last shop was in a Boston suburb.

Ms. Tingley and her husband and partner, Ken Haverly, had been ''trolling around'' the valley for a new place when they found this simple, white building on North Main Street, erected in 1850 as a chapel. Later, it became a Grange hall, then a Masonic temple. Slowly, Ms. Tingley and Mr. Haverly are filling the arch-roofed chapel with books, ''carefully chosen and reasonably priced,'' the shop's business card promises. A handsome edition of P. T. Barnum's memoirs, published in 1873, costs $20. A very different memoir, Gottfreid Leske's ''I Was a Nazi Flier'' (1941), is $3.

South Deerfield's former firehouse on Sugarloaf Street, put up for auction two years ago, is now Schoen Books. It specializes in Judaica, the Holocaust, psychoanalysis and books in German and French. The proprietor, Ken Schoen, is a burly, former social worker whose book collecting hobby got the best of him.

Among 15,000 items on the firehouse floor is a rare copy of a mimeographed Hebrew-English dictionary of philosophical and metaphysical terms, compiled in 1940 by Abraham Joshua Heschel, then a young theologian already marked for brilliance only months after his arrival at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. For a recent refugee from Nazi Europe, this document was a tour de force. Signed by Heschel, it's priced at $125.

Mr. Schoen pointed out that most items cost less than that. He picked up a 1940 copy of ''This Is Israel'' by I. F. Stone, a journalist not known in later life for pro-Israel sympathy. It is illustrated with photographs by, among others, Robert Capa. Mr. Schoen has several copies, at $15 each.

Mr. Schoen lives on the second floor of the firehouse with his wife, Jane Trigere, director of the Hatikva Holocaust Center in Springfield, and their two children. Though the shop doesn't keep regular hours, Mr. Schoen encourages visitors. ''Call me and ask what's for lunch,'' he says. ''Come and schmooze. Just remember, we aren't open on the Sabbath.''

Sienna, South Deerfield's one real restaurant, is open on weekends, and it's often named best in the valley. Expect to spend more than $100 for dinner for two, including wine and tip. Now seven years old, Sienna would be long gone if local diners felt they were getting less than their money's worth.

Sunderland

Just across the Connecticut River from Deerfield, at 9 School Street in sleepy Sunderland, is a white colonial house with attached barn. But there's no hay in this barn. It's command central for Oinonen Book Auctions, whose twice-monthly sales attract dealers and collectors from afar.

''I'm not interested in literature,'' says the energetic, opinionated proprietor, Richard E. Oinonen. ''I'd rather sell books that are about something.'' Art, science and sports are strong suits here. On the morning of our visit, a dozen cartons of newly arrived books about fishing were stacked on the floor, consigned by a Florida collector.

For his own reference, Mr. Oinonen keeps on hand a formidable set of about 700 bibliographical volumes of all books in the Library of Congress. Up in the skylighted hayloft, cataloguers were at work. He remains staunchly noncomputerized, insisting that what's in his head is more precise than what's on any hard drive. Books to be auctioned are catalogued if they are valued at $50 or more. Those with lower values are available for inspection on the days of the auctions, which are held at the venerable Hotel Northampton.

Mr. Oinonen distinguishes between ''collectors'' and ''readers,'' much in the way that acquirers of great Bordeaux vintages part company with mere imbibers.

Montague

The valley's most pristine ambiance for just plain readers is the Book Mill, a rambling, recycled mill perched over a cascading stream in the hamlet of Montague, a few miles north of Sunderland.

Along with long aisles of used books on two levels, the Book Mill has recently added a recorded-music section. Purchases can be contemplated in the Book Mill's cafe, where the baked offerings are superior, as is the view of the rushing waters and the evergreens on the opposite bank, sharply edged against the snow.

A former performance space on the lower floor of the mill was transformed last year into the Blue Pheasant, an ambitious restaurant owned by local caterers. It, too, has views of the river, and the hardwood floor incorporates machinery from the last century. Another innovation at the Book Mill is Sunday evening readings by local authors.

Northampton

The Globe, a much loved bookshop in Northampton, expired last year, a reminder of the perils of the trade. But many others in town carry on vigorously. Small but quirky Metropolitan Books, up a flight of stairs on Market Street, is a personal favorite. For a machine-loving friend, we picked up ''Roper's Engineer's Handy-Book'' (1889) for $10, its illustrations of diverse machines as pleasingly graceful as if their subject were flowers. As we browsed, a teen-ager settled on a well-thumbed volume of poems by Emily Dickinson.

''You have a very nice edition here,'' said the proprietor, Lucy Wolff. ''Keep it out of the sunlight.'' That's advice not likely to be offered at your local book superstore.

Raven Used Books, beneath Thorne's Market on the corner of South and Main Streets, is the most trafficked of the city's booksellers. While the emphasis is on workaday books (I bought an unused copy of the Oxford French-English dictionary for less than half price), there are rarities here, like a lovingly designed, two-volume ''Irish American History of the United States'' (1907) for $60. On the ''Not for Sale'' shelf, there's a 1929 edition of Felix Salton's ''Bambi,'' translated from the German by, of all people, Whittaker Chambers.

Hadley

''Quite a few dealers around here are well-kept secrets, including myself,'' said Ken Lopez, a specialist in first editions of post-World War II literature, as he gave directions to his shop over the phone. And directions are needed. There's no sign outside the nondescript commercial complex in Hadley, where his shop is next to a hair-and-nail salon.

Mr. Lopez was led into the book world by his search, as a graduate student, for elusive books on the Vietnam experience. For him, what's important is not the bookbinder's art but the ideas pulsing between the covers. Stronger pulse, higher price. A flimsy British first edition of Paul Bowles's first novel, ''The Sheltering Sky,'' for example, is priced at a startling $3,500.

''Bowles prefigured the Beats and the whole counterculture,'' Mr. Lopez explained.

Copies of John Kerouac's 1950 first novel, ''The Town and the City,'' are $850 to $1,250. Seven years later, with ''On the Road,'' the writer changed his byline to Jack Kerouac.

Most of Mr. Lopez's offerings cost much less. ''Collecting first and signed editions can actually be an inexpensive hobby,'' he said. ''Many are priced under $50.''

Amherst

Amherst Antiquarian Maps, on a quiet residential block of that college town, is another low-profile dealer. The proprietor, Jon Kimmel Rosenthal, insists that he will never sell some items in his collection, like a recently acquired ''Nouvelle Carte'' of France, printed on linen in 1774. It's the first such map to be accurately rendered by triangulation.

''If a map is on bad paper, it will be what we call 'Berniced,' '' explained Mr. Rosenthal, referring to the skills of his wife, Bernice, a paper conservator.

Mr. Rosenthal edits The Antique Map Price Record and Handbook, the collector's bible. The market for old maps, he says, is ''very crude as compared to that for stamps or coins.'' But it remains affordable. A large, tinted map of the Bronx and Manhattan, dated 1890, is $165. Another map, published in London in 1778 and priced at $285, shows ''the Province of New York'' and ''adjoining Colonies,'' as if the declaration of July 4, 1776, had never been issued. Yet a third map, published in France in 1780 and priced at $185, refers to the United States.

Two well-stocked sources for used books, Valley Books and Book Marks, are around the corner from the Rosenthals, steps apart on North Pleasant Street.

South Hadley

Rather than do head-on battle with the superstores, Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, facing Mount Holyoke College, has recently added a vigorous used-book department. Many local private dealers, like Schoen Books and Ken Lopez, stock a shelf of books here. The proprietor, Joan Grenier, has her own offerings, including a 1933 British reprint of Karl Marx's pamphlet ''The Civil War in France,'' first issued in 1871, with hand-added corrections.

Tobacco Country

For a briefer yet intense taste of used-book life in the Valley, travelers on the way home from the ski slopes can duck off Interstate 91 at Exit 22 onto meandering Route 5, where prime tobacco grows in summer. A mile and a half up the road is Troubadour Books, with 20,000 volumes. The literary mainstream runs through this shop, but Robert Willig, the owner, also has his quirks, or what he calls ''books of the weird.'' They include collections on ''human stupidity'' and ''tacky music.'' A recent acquisition is a collection of German nudist magazines from the 1930's.

''They reflect this whole Nazi mythology of the healthy Aryan and their mystical connection to the earth,'' he said. ''It's scary.''

Just up the road, opposite a tobacco-curing barn, is a former elementary school that is now the Whately Antiquarian Book Center, a group shop for more than 50 dealers. It's hard to get beyond the front door, where big cases feature books for a buck. My eye was caught by an ample, if slightly warped, book of State Department documents from 1863-64, including the Annual Message of the President. But I opted to spend my buck, instead, on a collection of Somerset Maugham's short stories.

You expect eclecticism in a big used-book store, and the Book Center doesn't disappoint. A magnificent two-volume history of playing cards, published in France in 1906, is $1,200. The Debutante Register of 1945, with photos of all listed, is $20. A compendium of programs from Harvard's Hasty Pudding theatricals, dated 1899, is $50. And a 1911 Pierce Arrow owner's manual, nicely illustrated, is $75.

As we left the Book Center, in the dark of a Sunday evening, we could see the headlights of southbound traffic crawling on Interstate 91. No doubt, the skiing had been good at Mount Snow, Killington and Smuggler's Notch. But as our sojourn in book country had proven, a weekend of exhilaration doesn't require a lift ticket.

Endless Browsing, Just Down the Road

Here is information about places mentioned in the article about used-book stores in northwestern Massachusetts. The Massachusetts and Rhode Island Antiquarian Booksellers publishes a directory of its 140 member stores and sponsors a book fair each spring and fall; information: (508) 462-0100 or on the Web: http:// www.tiac.net/users/mariab.

AMHERST ANTIQUARIAN MAPS, McClellan Street, Amherst, (413) 256-8900. Subjects: maps and atlases, nautical charts, town plans and related prints and books.

BOOK MARKS, 1 East Pleasant Street, Amherst, (413) 549-6136. Subjects: photography, art, architecture, illustrated books, criticism, music and Emily Dickinson.

KEN LOPEZ BOOKSELLER, 51 Huntington Road, Route 9, Hadley, (413) 584-4827. Subjects: literary first editions.

MEETINGHOUSE BOOKS, 70 North Main Street, South Deerfield, (213) 665-0500. Subjects: social and cultural history, literature, performing arts, fine arts and general stock.

ROBERT L. MERRIAM, 39 Newhall Road, Conway, (413) 369-4052. Subjects: military, American Revolution, Colonial America, Winston Churchill and general stock.

METROPOLITAN BOOKS, 9 3/4 Market Street, Northampton, (413) 586-7077. General interest books and records.

MONTAGUE BOOK MILL, 440 Greenfield Road, Montague, (413) 367-9206. General interest books.

ODYSSEY BOOKSHOP, 9 College Street, Village Commons, South Hadley, (413) 534-7307. General interest and dealer shelves.

OINONEN BOOK AUCTIONS, 9 School Street, Sunderland, (413) 665-3253. Two auctions a month and appraisals.

RAVEN USED BOOKS, 4 Old South Street, Northampton, (413) 584-9868. Subjects: literature, philosophy, cultural studies, history and used scholarly titles.

SCHOEN BOOKS, the Old Firehouse, 7 Sugarloaf Street, South Deerfield, (413) 665-0066. Subjects: Judaica, exile literature, Holocaust literature, psychoanalysis, the Middle East.

SOUTHPAW BOOKS, Elmer Road, Conway, (413) 369-4406. Subjects: reform movements, women's studies and African-American studies.

TROUBADOUR BOOKS, Route 5 at Depot Road, North Hatfield, (413) 247-3028. Subjects: religion, art, literature, the Beats and ''books of the weird.''

VALLEY BOOKS, 199 North Pleasant Street, Amherst, (413) 256-1508. Subjects: history, literature, science fiction and fantasy, vintage paperbacks, Emily Dickinson and general stock.

WHATELY ANTIQUARIAN BOOK CENTER, 13 State Road, Route 5, Whately, (413) 247-3272. Group shop of 50 dealers, with 20,000 books.