Spinebound Books / Reading Notes

Find your next story.

Reading guides and a considered selection of horror, dark fantasy, and literary fiction. Written at one desk in Richmond, a new guide every week.

A bookcase of worn paperbacks beside a window in late afternoon light
01 / The latest reading guide All guides

Book Recommendations Written at the desk,

Books Like Mexican Gothic: 8 Novels to Read After High Place

Mexican Gothic works because the house is a body and Noemí argues back. Eight novels that do the same thing, from The Haunting of Hill House and What...

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What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher, the pick from our guide Books Like Mexican Gothic
02 / Further reading All guides
03 / From the desk About Spinebound
A stack of paperbacks, a mug of coffee and a potted plant on a wooden desk by a window

I run Spinebound from a desk in Richmond, Virginia. It started because I kept writing the same long emails to friends about which horror novel to read next, and the emails turned into the reading guides. Every book on the Picks shelf is one I would hand you across a table, and I write a new guide every week. Orders ship new with tracking, and if anything arrives wrong, write to me and I will sort it out.

J. Richmond, VA · hello@spineboundbooks.com · replies within one business day

Spinebound Picks

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  • Project Hail Mary

    Paperback

    Andy Weir's 2021 follow-up to The Martian. One stranded scientist, one dying sun, and the best friendship in modern science fiction.

    $19.99

  • Never Let Me Go

    Paperback

    Ishiguro's 2005 Booker-shortlisted novel. Go in knowing nothing.

    $16.49

  • The Historian

    Elizabeth Kostova · Paperback

    Dracula, old archives and a hunt that spans decades. The slow burn is the point.

    $20.99

  • The Last Unicorn

    Peter S. Beagle · Paperback

    The 1968 fantasy the film came from. The book is stranger and better.

    $20.99

  • Replay

    Ken Grimwood · Paperback

    $17.99

  • This Is How You Lose the Time War

    Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone · Paperback

    A 200-page epistolary novella that won the Hugo and the Nebula. Read it in one sitting.

    $16.49

  • Warbreaker: A Cosmere Novel

    Brandon Sanderson · Hardcover

    $34.49

  • Speaker for the Dead

    Orson Scott Card · Paperback

    Won the Hugo and Nebula back to back with Ender's Game. Start with Ender's Game.

    $17.49
04 / On the shelf
A stack of well-read paperbacks on a shelf in warm light
The to-read stack
An open paperback face down on the arm of a leather armchair beside a mug, bookshelf behind
The reading chair

Reading Notes / Stay in touch

A little more to read.

One email a week, the new guide and what landed on the shelf. No noise.