Something wicked fun this way comes. The Dark, Unbound, a new and used bookstore, is soon to open in the City of Falls Church.
Described as a “uniquely atmospheric retail and gathering space,” the Little City shop will specialize in underrepresented voices in the fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction and horror genres. Visitors will also find shelves stocked with metaphysical merchandise, such as crystals and tarot cards.
The store’s forthcoming events calendar promises workshops on making spell kit and oracle cards, building a grimoire (a textbook of magic, sorcery or witchcraft) and blending tea.
“We aim to be the largest selection of metaphysical and occult books in the area,” says Margaret Nguyen, who is opening the shop with Annette Gumm, her best friend of 20 years. “We don’t know how to measure that, but a lot of times in metaphysical shops, there are books, but it’s such a limited selection. We’ve got the space. We’ve got the energy.”
Filling a Literary Void
The besties-turned-business-partners say their venture fills a void in the local retail landscape left by Hole in the Wall Books, a used-book shop that specialized in fantasy and sci-fi before closing in 2019 after 40 years.
Many of the titles at The Dark, Unbound will be used. “The collection is basically my collection of books that I have read and loved and are pretty much like-new condition,” says Nguyen, who lives in the Fairfax County part of Falls Church.
Books and merch will be available in a range of price points. “We wanted to be…the kind of place where you come in and even if you don’t have the money to buy a $30 brand-new hardback, you’ll find something at a cheaper price point, or maybe you will walk off with some candles, or some incense or a crystal that you didn’t know you needed when it started talking to you,” Nguyen says.
Along those lines, the store will also offer a lending library stocked with books in unsellable-but-still-usable condition, giving customers the chance to borrow hard-to-find titles for a couple of weeks.
Beyond Bestsellers
The store will sell new books and new releases, too. On Oct. 27, the Gumm and Nguyen plan to host a midnight release party for Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Splintered Harmony, the sixth installment of the wildly popular A Court of Thorn and Roses series.
“We’re taking pre-orders so we’ll have enough books in store,” Nguyen says, but the event is free to attend.
Along with popular authors, “we’re digging deep into the things that people are not necessarily aware of, but they should be,” she adds. That means stocking books by underrepresented voices, including writers of color, queer and nonbinary authors, and women.
Among the titles on the shelves: Far Out: Recent Queer Science Fiction and Fantasy, a short-story anthology featuring LGBTQ+ characters, themes and perspectives, and books by Neon Yang, a nonbinary and queer fantasy author.
Turning a Page
Gumm and Nguyen met as neighbors in Falls Church, where they were raising kids and working in information technology management. A few years ago, they started talking about changing careers.
“Margaret is a lover of all things books and words, and probably has had a dream of having a bookstore for forever,” says Gumm, who now lives in Vienna, “and I’ve always thought in the back of my head, ‘Oh, it would be so cool to have a bookstore.’ We started just jotting down ideas, and eventually we were like, ‘You know what? I think this might actually work.’ We both left our jobs and then started working on this.”
Around the same time, Gumm became interested in metaphysics, yoga, sound baths “and all of those pieces that to us, just felt like they went right along with the kinds of books that Margaret wanted to carry.”
To choose a name for the shop, they made lists of various nouns, verbs and adjectives, cut them out and scattered them across a table.
“We spent a week just sitting there putting words together,” Gumm says. “If we got ones that we really liked, we would jot them down in a book. We just kept doing that for a week until we went, ‘This is it.'”
“Dark speaks to the content of the genres,” Nguyen explains. “And unbound, that’s the best word ever—freeing authors from obscurity, freeing women from expectations—letting all of these things out of the page.”
A Store of Their Own
The shop’s atmosphere is a far cry from the corporate offices Gumm and Nguyen left behind.
“Everything here is thrifted or gifted, from the furniture to the books,” Nguyen says. “If you think about the coziest, welcomingest old library that you’ve ever gone into, and you were like, ‘Ah, could live here,’ that’s the vibe we’re going for.”
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One section of the shop called The Sanctuary “feels like your comfy eccentric aunt’s parlor,” she says. That’s where Gumm finished setting up her sound wall last week, complete with Tibetan bowls, shamanic drums and gongs—all the makings of a sound bath.
“A big part of our business plan is being the space that we didn’t have growing up, and making sure that we have a place for young adults to go and for people to be free to be themselves,” Gumm says.
The exact opening date remains uncertain, even though the owners have been prepping for it since 2023. The Dark, Unbound occupies the storefront that was formerly home to Dominion Camera for 53 years before it closed in September 2024.
“We severely underestimated the amount of effort and time it takes to bring an older building up to code to do something like this,” Nguyen says. “At every step of the way, we’ve been learning new and surprising and expensive things about how to do that process.”
But she and Gumm don’t need a crystal ball to predict customer enthusiasm. “The community that has reached out to us so far has been absolutely fantastic—so supportive, so excited,” Nguyen says. “The doors are not open yet, and they’re standing by the windows, and they’re standing by the doors, and everybody’s so happy.”
The Dark, Unbound is located at 112 W. Broad St., Falls Church.
