Reading List
Katherine Arden
Novelist
Katherine Arden spent a year in Moscow after school and later read Russian and French at Middlebury, which is the groundwork for the Winternight trilogy: The Bear and the Nightingale and its sequels, set in a medieval Rus where the household spirits of folklore are real and are being driven out. She started writing while working on a farm in Hawaii, out of boredom. She also writes the Small Spaces horror books for younger readers.
01
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The Last Unicorn
by Peter Beagle · Classics
“It’s funny, unicorns are obviously very prominent creatures in the magical pantheon, but there aren’t a ton of books that feature them. There are children’s books, but fewer books for adults. Peter S Beagle is at the pinnacle, the classic of them all.” — via Interview, June 2026
02
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The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
by Stephen Graham Jones
“Stephen Graham Jones is one of my favourite writers. I thought about this a while, because I had made my rule that I was going to stick to quadrupeds, and this is vampires.” — via Interview, June 2026
03
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His Dark Materials
by Philip Pullman
“When I read the series I was younger, and like many people, I fell in love with that world, with Lyra and with the life in it; and with the idea that you could be born with an animal companion that is you, but also is not you.” — via Interview, June 2026
04
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The Hero and the Crown
by Robin McKinley
“This was another younger childhood favourite. I was into it when I was in my early teens, and it was very formative for me. It was my first dragon book, and it was also my first book where the heroine had a sword.” — via Interview, June 2026
05
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The Silver Wolf
by Alice Borchardt
“This was the book I loved when I was a teenager. Alice Borchardt passed at a fairly young age.” — via Interview, June 2026