"You can find everything online these days, and people know that, but they're tired of picking books from anonymous star reviews,"
"We offer what you can't get anywhere else: community and having a physical space. People can come and find other people."
New niche bookstores have opened across Manhattan and the outer boroughs to provide genre-specific shelves and cozy third spaces for readers with coffee or wine. The Twisted Spine opened in Williamsburg in September 2025; co-owners Jason Mellow and Lauren Komer launched after a successful 2024 pop-up and identified a citywide void for horror books and events. The shop programs horror movie nights, tarot readings, book clubs, flash tattoos and a Death Cafe, and draws regulars from across the city. Shelves prioritize books by and about people of color, queer writers, translations, non-English works, small presses and children's titles, emphasizing human curation over algorithms.
Read at Time Out New York
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]