Every lesson on this site is free and always will be, but thirty tricks is a beginning, not a career. These are the books working magicians hand to beginners — the ones that keep being recommended decade after decade.
No affiliate links. We earn nothing whichever of these you buy, or if you borrow every one of them from a library — which we would genuinely recommend trying first. The list is short on purpose: these are books we can stand behind rather than everything in print.
If you buy one book after finishing the lessons on this site, make it one of these.
Mark Wilson
Cards, coins, rope, mentalism, and stage magic in one 500-page volume.
The broadest single starting point in print. If you have enjoyed dipping between categories here rather than specialising, this is the natural next step — it teaches a bit of everything with clear illustrations, and it is the book most often handed to a curious beginner.
In print and widely stocked by general booksellers and magic shops. Common in public libraries.
Karl Fulves
72 card tricks that need no sleight of hand at all.
The direct continuation of the self-working lessons here. Every trick runs on procedure rather than finger skill, so you can learn one this evening and perform it tonight — and almost all of them work with a borrowed deck. Dover keep it cheap, which makes it an easy first magic book to own.
In print from Dover Publications, who sell it directly. Fulves wrote several follow-ups in the same series if you finish it.
Pick the one that matches whatever you have most enjoyed learning so far.
Jean Hugard and Frederick Braué
A structured course in card sleights, each followed by tricks that use it.
The standard route into serious card magic for more than half a century, and built exactly like the lessons here: learn a technique, then immediately use it in real tricks. If the card tricks are what hooked you, this is where to go next.
In print in several inexpensive editions, including a Dover paperback. Easy to find second-hand.
J. B. Bobo · first published 1952
The reference work on coin sleights and routines.
Still the coin book, more than seventy years after it appeared. The French Drop you learned here is the doorway; this is the building behind it, with every vanish, production, and transfer laid out and illustrated.
In print as a Dover paperback and stocked by most magic shops.
Demanding books that reward you once the fundamentals are genuinely comfortable.
Roberto Giobbi
The first of five volumes forming a complete course in sleight-of-hand card magic.
The most thorough card course written. It starts from how to hold a deck and works up through controls, forces, false shuffles, and the double lift — with the kind of detail that rewards rereading. Slower going than the Royal Road, and worth it if card magic becomes the thing you care about.
In print from the author and from magic publishers. The five volumes are also sold as a set.
S. W. Erdnase · first published 1902
The classic treatise on card manipulation, written under a pseudonym nobody has ever identified.
The most influential card book ever published, and demanding — the material is difficult and the prose is over a century old. Worth knowing about long before you are ready for it, not least because it is out of copyright and free to read in full, so it costs you nothing to look.
Public domain since it was published in 1902, so free copies are entirely legal. Modern annotated editions are also in print if you would rather have paper.
Read it free at the Internet ArchiveThere are thirty complete lessons on this site, and every one of them is free to read in full.
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