A chess opening book is a book on chess openings. This is by far the most common type of literature on chess. These books describe many major lines, like the Sicilian Defence, Ruy Lopez, and Queen's Gambit, as well as many minor variations of the main lines.

There are several types of opening manuals:

These books cover a wide variety of chess openings. They are in English, except that the Encyclopedia of Chess Openings has minimal text but instead uses universal symbols to annotate moves and ideas that can be understood in many languages (see Punctuation (chess)).