bookshelf speakers

No budget, no ancillary equipment, no musical styles given....... Some very general rules for bookshelf speakers actually placed iin a bookshelf:

sealed cabinets are good, no ports to deal with

if the speaker is ported then of course they must be front ports.

Focal comes to mind for decent monitors with front ports.

Daber Audio speakers. I have the Monitor 3's they are excellent IMO. Under radar American made brand. Also like PSB speakers pending budget. Happy hunting alot to out there.

You should be OK as long as are not putting the speakers on shelves inside of a bookcase, because then you would be putting a box inside a box. Up front realize that the speakers can be made to sound very good, but not their very best.

Sealed speakers or front ported speakers will work better than rear ported speakers, though some rear ported speakers will surprise you with how good they can sound on shelves Rega RS 1 .

Placing speakers vertically, as opposed to on their sides, works better unless the speakers are designed to also work on their sides, like the Ascend Acoustic Sierra 1 Monitors .

Speakers that I have owned that worked very well on shelves: Ascend Acoustic Sierra 1, Rega Ara (now the RS1), NHT SB2 (now the Classic 3). Speakers that did not work very well on shelves: Totem Mites, Energy RC10, Wharfedale Diamond 9.1 (now the 10.1), B&W 302, EPOS ELS3.

Rich

I have the same constraints. I have Von Schweikert VR-1 speakers sitting in bookshelves. They are amazing. Very surprising. One might think the sound would be severely compromised but, in fact, it is holographic. The speakers disappear. The only thing lacking is extreme depth but there is depth, height and width. Voices and acoustic instruments are very real. I added a small closed REL sub which crosses over at 50 Hz. It adds a lot to the realism.