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The Shambling Guide to New York City by Mur Lafferty
A travel writer lands a job at a guidebook for the supernatural—covering monster-friendly eateries, safe houses, and nightlife you definitely shouldn’t enter uninvited. Smart, witty, and delightfully urban, The Shambling Guide to New York City turns the city you thought you knew into a secret map of wonders.
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In The Shambling Guide to New York City, did you enjoy ...
... the snarky, modern urban-fantasy workplace full of cryptids and office politics?
Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire
If you loved how Zoë Norris navigates a monster-run travel-guide office and a hidden New York full of coterie neighborhoods—and traded quips with her incubus coworker Phil—Verity Price’s life of researching, negotiating with, and occasionally drop-kicking cryptids will click. Discount Armageddon delivers the same breezy, wisecracking tone, nightclub-and-subway stakes, and "this is just my job" competence porn as Zoë wrangles deadlines and dangers.
... the breezy, irreverent humor that undercuts apocalypses and monsters with wit?
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
You enjoyed how The Shambling Guide keeps things light and clever—even when the plot detours into cults and city-threatening showdowns—thanks to Zoë’s deadpan observations and banter with her supernatural coworkers. Good Omens brings that same nimble, joke-dense charm to world-ending stakes, with Aziraphale and Crowley riffing their way through disaster the way Zoë wisecracks through coterie crises.
... the document inserts and memos that build a secret supernatural bureaucracy around a capable heroine?
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley
If the guidebook excerpts and sidebars in The Shambling Guide made you grin—and you liked watching Zoë learn the ropes of a covert, monster-adjacent workplace—The Rook leans into that pleasure. Myfanwy Thomas pieces together her role in a hidden British agency via letters and files, much like Zoë decoding the coterie through in-text notes; both heroines juggle office politics with eldritch threats and keep it witty under pressure.
... the warm, found-family vibes of a human forming bonds with nonhuman colleagues?
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
One charm of The Shambling Guide is how Zoë slowly turns an office of vampires, zombies, and water spirits into her people—coworkers who’ve got her back when the city gets scary. The House in the Cerulean Sea taps the same vein of heart: Linus is assigned to evaluate magical children and ends up building a tender, fiercely loyal family with them, echoing the way Zoë’s coterie crew becomes home.
... a richly textured hidden city under the everyday one, with rules, markets, and perilous etiquette?
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
If you were drawn to how The Shambling Guide maps New York’s coterie hotspots—turning neighborhoods into secret ecosystems with their own dangers and delights—Neverwhere offers that same deep-dive worldbuilding. As Door and Richard Mayhew traverse London Below’s night markets and knife-edged politeness, you’ll get the same thrill of a city you know reimagined as a layered, perilous, living underworld.
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