The imperiled St. Mark’s Bookshop, which has been on life support because of declining sales and rising rent, has gotten a reprieve.

The East Village store, which has been in business since 1977, last week signed a lease on a new space at 136 East Third Street, near Avenue A. They expect to move in the summer, said Bob Contant, a co-owner.

The reprieve follows the closing last month of the Rizzoli Bookstore on 57th Street and reports that another East Village literary institution, the Shakespeare & Company store on Broadway, might close or move. A representative for Shakespeare would say only that “things are in transition” and that the owners were “in negotiations on what will happen next.”

St. Mark’s, which has been selling poetry, obscure critical theory and neighborhood-appropriate literature since 1977, moved from the street that gave it its name to Third Avenue between Eighth and Ninth Streets 21 years ago.