Books are your friends, and now there's a new place in Fort Worth to get them: Called Recluse Books, it's an independently-owned bookstore that just opened in the Near Southside at 465 S. Main St. #110, where it's selling books and creating a community with fun events like book clubs and open mic nights.
Recluse Books is from Josie Smith-Webster and James Webster, a book-loving duo who met while working at a bookstore in New York. Josie grew up in Arlington, and so the couple moved to Fort Worth in 2023 to be closer to family — and to open a bookstore, James says.
"Josie and I are both big believers in the idea of a bookstore as a 'space' — somewhere that puts the human touch back, in an age where so much is automated; a space for people to come and interact with other people," he says. "We realized that Fort Worth did not have as many of those as we wanted and decided to go out and do it ourselves."
Size
Recluse is around 1,000 square feet, with a maximum capacity of 5,000 books — compared to a typical bookstore chain that might stock up to 100,000 books. But they're not competing against the chains.
"It used to be that chains were viewed as very much the enemy of the neighborhood bookstore — remember Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks did a whole movie about it — but these days, anybody who is doing an actual store is sort of an ally," James says.
Selection
Their book selection is eclectic and personal, assembled from information they gather from reviews and conversations with other booksellers across the U.S. There's fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, and small-press titles, as well as a small selection of used books, mostly from their personal collection. They also have greeting cards, and merchandise like hats and T-shirts.
"After being in the industry, we have a good knowledge of the landscape of what people are buying right now," he says. "Some of it is people letting us know what they're interested in."
Fort Worth, it turns out, loves horror.
"We've been getting lots of questions about why we don't have a dedicated horror section, and that's something we'll be organizing this weekend," he says. "We do have horror titles, but they've been mixed into fiction or else in our science-fiction/fantasy section. There are a lot of dedicated passionate horror readers in FW."
Events
They do a lo-fi open-mic night — there is no actual mic — where participants can sing or read from a book or their own writing.
They're also hosting a book club meetup on the third Wednesday of every month, with themes. The current theme is called "Our Semester Abroad" which they describe as a literary tour of the world.
"Josie & I read a lot of literature in translation, so we choose a country — in this case, we've chosen France — and for a couple of months we'll read a book from that country," he says.
On their first night, they drew a good crowd of about a dozen people. Anyone can attend.
"We hope our space will become a hideout for the reclusive reader and a community space for storytelling," James says. "Part of the joy of a bookstore is to come in and look around, it's a place to browse. The line we use is, we want to be the type of bookstore where you can come in and find what you're looking for — but also find what you didn't know you were looking for."
