`search`

Pack: google-books · Endpoint: https://gateway.pipeworx.io/google-books/mcp

AUTHORITATIVE book lookup via Google Books — full-text search across ~40M books. Use for “find books about X”, “books by author Y”, verifying ISBNs, finding publishers, getting cover images, or pulling structured book metadata an LLM would otherwise have to hallucinate. Returns title, authors, publisher, publish date, description, ISBN, page count, cover thumbnails, language. Use search_field scoping: intitle:, inauthor:, inpublisher:, subject:, isbn:, lccn:, oclc:.

Parameters

Name	Type	Required	Description
`query`	string	yes	Search query
`search_field`	string	no	intitle \| inauthor \| inpublisher \| subject \| isbn \| lccn \| oclc — applied as a prefix to query
`filter`	string	no	partial \| full \| free-ebooks \| paid-ebooks \| ebooks
`language`	string	no	ISO 639-1 (en, fr, ja, …)
`print_type`	string	no	all (default) \| books \| magazines
`order_by`	string	no	relevance (default) \| newest
`limit`	number	no	1-40 (default 10)
`offset`	number	no	0-based offset (startIndex)

Example call

Arguments

{
  "query": "machine learning"
}

curl

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/google-books/mcp \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"search","arguments":{"query":"machine learning"}}}'

TypeScript (@pipeworx/sdk)

import { Pipeworx } from '@pipeworx/sdk';
const pipeworx = new Pipeworx();

const result = await pipeworx.call('search', {
  "query": "machine learning"
});

More examples

{
  "query": "Knuth",
  "search_field": "inauthor",
  "filter": "free-ebooks",
  "limit": 20
}

Response shape

Field	Type	Description
`kind`	string	Resource kind identifier
`totalItems`	number	Total number of items matching the search query
`items`	array	Array of volume search results

Full JSON Schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "kind": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "Resource kind identifier"
    },
    "totalItems": {
      "type": "number",
      "description": "Total number of items matching the search query"
    },
    "items": {
      "type": "array",
      "description": "Array of volume search results",
      "items": {
        "type": "object",
        "properties": {
          "kind": {
            "type": "string",
            "description": "Resource kind (books#volume)"
          },
          "id": {
            "type": "string",
            "description": "Unique volume identifier"
          },
          "etag": {
            "type": "string",
            "description": "Entity tag for caching"
          },
          "selfLink": {
            "type": "string",
            "description": "Link to this volume resource"
          },
          "volumeInfo": {
            "type": "object",
            "description": "Volume metadata",
            "properties": {
              "title": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "Book title"
              },
              "authors": {
                "type": "array",
                "items": {
                  "type": "string"
                },
                "description": "Author names"
              },
              "publisher": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "Publisher name"
              },
              "publishedDate": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "Publication date"
              },
              "description": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "Book description"
              },
              "industryIdentifiers": {
                "type": "array",
                "items": {
                  "type": "object",
                  "properties": {
                    "type": {
                      "type": "string",
                      "description": "ISBN_10 or ISBN_13"
                    },
                    "identifier": {
                      "type": "string",
                      "description": "ISBN value"
                    }
                  }
                },
                "description": "ISBN and other identifiers"
              },
              "pageCount": {
                "type": "number",
                "description": "Number of pages"
              },
              "printType": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "BOOK or MAGAZINE"
              },
              "categories": {
                "type": "array",
                "items": {
                  "type": "string"
                },
                "description": "Subject categories"
              },
              "language": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "ISO 639-1 language code"
              },
              "imageLinks": {
                "type": "object",
                "properties": {
                  "smallThumbnail": {
                    "type": "string",
                    "description": "URL to small thumbnail"
                  },
                  "thumbnail": {
                    "type": "string",
                    "description": "URL to thumbnail"
                  }
                },
                "description": "Book cover image links"
              },
              "previewLink": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "Link to book preview"
              },
              "infoLink": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "Link to book info page"
              },
              "canonicalVolumeLink": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "Canonical link to volume"
              }
            }
          },
          "saleInfo": {
            "type": "object",
            "description": "Sale and pricing information",
            "properties": {
              "country": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "Country code"
              },
              "saleability": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "FOR_SALE, NOT_FOR_SALE, etc"
              },
              "isEbook": {
                "type": "boolean",
                "description": "Whether available as ebook"
              },
              "listPrice": {
                "type": "object",
                "properties": {
                  "amount": {
                    "type": "number",
                    "description": "Price amount"
                  },
                  "currencyCode": {
                    "type": "string",
                    "description": "Currency code (USD, etc)"
                  }
                },
                "description": "List price"
              },
              "retailPrice": {
                "type": "object",
                "properties": {
                  "amount": {
                    "type": "number",
                    "description": "Price amount"
                  },
                  "currencyCode": {
                    "type": "string",
                    "description": "Currency code"
                  }
                },
                "description": "Retail price"
              }
            }
          },
          "accessInfo": {
            "type": "object",
            "description": "Access and viewability information",
            "properties": {
              "country": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "Country code"
              },
              "viewability": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "FULL, PARTIAL, NO_PAGES, etc"
              },
              "embeddable": {
                "type": "boolean",
                "description": "Whether embeddable"
              },
              "publicDomain": {
                "type": "boolean",
                "description": "Whether in public domain"
              },
              "textToSpeechPermission": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "Text-to-speech permission level"
              },
              "epub": {
                "type": "object",
                "properties": {
                  "isAvailable": {
                    "type": "boolean",
                    "description": "EPUB availability"
                  },
                  "acsTokenLink": {
                    "type": "string",
                    "description": "ACS token link for EPUB"
                  }
                },
                "description": "EPUB format info"
              },
              "pdf": {
                "type": "object",
                "properties": {
                  "isAvailable": {
                    "type": "boolean",
                    "description": "PDF availability"
                  },
                  "acsTokenLink": {
                    "type": "string",
                    "description": "ACS token link for PDF"
                  }
                },
                "description": "PDF format info"
              },
              "webReaderLink": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "Link to web reader"
              },
              "accessViewStatus": {
                "type": "string",
                "description": "FULL, SAMPLE, EXCERPT, etc"
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Connect

Add this to your MCP client config, or use one-click install buttons:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "google-books": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/google-books/mcp"
    }
  }
}

See Getting Started for client-specific install steps.

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