Ruby's Books in Folsom, Calif., which sells new books and gift items, will be moving to 705 Sutter St. in the city's Historic District and more than doubling its size, the Sacramento Business Journal reported. Owner Stacy Gould opened the bookstore in 2020.

"We purchased the building at 705 Sutter Street in April," Gould said. "We are working with a great team of architects and contractors to expand the building by adding an additional 2,000 square feet upstairs. The move won't take place until summer 2027 but we are very excited that we will more than double our store size." She is waiting for the plans to be approved. The building is located just across the street from the current Ruby's Books at 724 Sutter St.

Gould added that the move will help accommodate the bookstore's growth, allowing for "even better inventory" and more event space. "We have such fun plans for our children's section; we imagine it will become even more of a destination than it currently is."

The current Ruby's Books store is 2,000 square feet, while the new space will be more than 6,000 square feet, with about 4,500 square feet planned as retail space.

Betti's, a bookstore and cafe, will open in Anchorage, Alaska, this summer, Your Alaska Link reported.

Located at 3956 Spenard Rd. in Anchorage's Spenard neighborhood, the bookstore will sell titles for all ages and have a particularly large children's section. During the day, owner Emily Klopfer and manager Kylie Welch will focus on children's programming and family events, and at night host things like comedy shows and live music. In the months ahead, they hope to get an alcohol license and add beer and wine to the cafe's offerings.

"I am very excited," Klopfer told Your Alaska Link. "I hope that comes through, but I'm very excited because this feels like a culmination of dreams that I've had for years and years."

"I think this will be a great catalyst for people to come and just enjoy the space and to become closer to Spenard and learn about it," added Welch.

Klopfer noted that with third spaces dwindling, she felt it was very important to support and celebrate places "where you can find locals and community."

She and Welch are hoping to have Betti's open by the end of June.

Kyiv recently hosted the International Book Arsenal Festival, a project of Mystetskyi Arsenal founded in 2011, that is "an annual intellectual event in Ukraine, where the book, literary, visual, musical, and theatrical scenes develop and interact, where the important issues of human existence, as well as society and culture are raised, prompting the proactive position of the participants and visitors."

This year's visitors described the festival as a bit quieter than previous editions, which was partly attributed to the rainy weather as well as the fact that "there had been repeated warnings of an imminent Russian attack of the kind that had struck the previous week, when the invaders let loose 60 missiles and 600 drones, most of them targeted at Ukraine's capital," the Guardian reported, noting that an attack did not come until right after the festival had ended. 

After four years of war, the nature of the book trade has altered in Ukraine. "I'm seeing more and more books describing the experience of those who have joined the army, reflecting a change of status from civil to military and how it has impacted on their sense of selves," said Maksym Butkevych, one of the festival's programmers and a human rights defender who volunteered for the army in 2022 and was captured, tortured, and held prisoner for two years. He had also suggested the tagline for this year's festival, which translates in English to "bear your freedom." 

Butkevych observed: "Reading is a symbol of freedom--something that during most of my time in captivity I was forbidden from doing. It is the place where you have an inner world that cannot be invaded by the captors."

He also called Kyiv Book Arsenal "more than a book festival, it's a laboratory for exchanging ideas.... It's about discussing our values and what we share as a community. Everything is intertwined: the Ukrainian language, book buying, discussing ideas--these are the threads that knit our community together."

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The number of bookstores in Japan dropped to 9,993 at the end of last fiscal year, according to a survey by the Japan Publishing Organization for Information Infrastructure Development, decreasing in fiscal 2025 by 424 from the 10,417 recorded in fiscal 2024. Asia News Network reported that the number of bookstores nationwide had peaked at 24,237 in fiscal 1998 before declining, "driven in part by the spread of the internet and the growth of online retailers."

The Japanese government launched a bookstore revitalization plan in June 2025 that has been promoting operational efficiency, including the adoption of IC tags for books, and some bookstores have begun implementing these measures, ANN noted. Last year, the estimated sales value of printed publications dropped below ¥1 trillion ($6.3 million) for the first time in 50 years. ANN added that the survey may not account for all bookstores, as some independent shops are believed to have been excluded from the data.

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Somelee Booktruck, a mobile bookstore from P.S. Publishing, is on an ambitious journey to visit all 77 provinces of Thailand. Time Out Bangkok reported that "anyone familiar with the publisher's red-doored Somewhere Bookshop or the ice cream-slinging Something Blue Library already knows that P.S. Publishing has a knack for creating spaces people want to linger in. Somelee Booktruck brings that same spirit to the road, transforming cafe forecourts, markets and neighborhood corners into pop-up literary pit stops across the country." In addition to Thai-language books, the white mobile shop also carries English-language editions.

"More than a travelling bookshop, Somelee turns each stop into a temporary community of readers. Books change hands, recommendations are exchanged and strangers end up discussing their latest favourite reads over coffee," Time Out Bangkok noted.

Dutch poet and philosopher Lieke Marsman died June 3. She was 35. DutchNews reported that Marsman was diagnosed with cartilage cancer in 2018, and in 2025 reflected on her illness in Op een andere planeet kunnen ze me redden, a collection of diary entries and philosophical analyses about illness, death and alien life. An English translation is expected in September.

Marsman was the Dutch national poet from 2021 to 2023. Her poetry debut, Wat ik mijzelf graag voorhoudt (2010), was widely praised, DutchNews noted. Her novel Het tegenovergestelde van de mens (2017) combined poetry, prose and essays around climate change, and was labelled by the NRC as "one of the best books of the 21st century." That same year she published the poetry compilation Man met hoed.

She was awarded the prestigious Constantijn Huygens literary prize for her oeuvre. Her last work, De dichter en de duivel, about a storage room that is the gateway to an underground world peopled by "influencers, politicians, opinion makers, and columnists--and the devil," was published yesterday, June 9, DutchNews noted.

In 2019, Liverpool Press published The Following Scan Will Last Five Minutes, translated into English by Sophie Collins, the Bookseller reported, adding that in 2023, Daunt Originals published her novel Het tegenovergestelde van een mens, also translated by Collins, as The Opposite of a Person.

Lisette Verhagen, her agent, said: "Lieke was one of the most original and brilliant Dutch writers of her generation, and it was such a privilege to work with her. She was a remarkable thinker: endlessly curious, fearless in her ideas and just a joy to work with.

"Lieke had greatly hoped to see the English translation of On Another Planet They Can Save Me published in the U.S. and the U.K., and although she remained involved until the very last moment, it is heartbreaking that she will not be here to celebrate its publication. It meant so much to her to reach English-language readers, and she felt deeply honored to be translated by the brilliant Sophie Collins. She leaves behind an extraordinary body of work and a legacy that will continue to inspire readers for many years to come. She will be deeply missed."

Marigold Atkey, her publisher at Daunt Originals, commented: "We are all devastated at this news. Words--in Lieke's hands, so powerful, so playful, so elastic--prove clunky, inadequate. We are so proud to be her English-language home and count ourselves so lucky to have worked with her. She was a singular, blazing talent, but she was also just so fun, always such a delight. I was never in any doubt that here was a truly serious intellect; yet she and her translator Sophie wrote lines that shone with vivacity."

This past week, Shelf Awareness sent our monthly pre-order e-blast to more than 910,000 of the country's best book readers. The e-blast went to 910,076 customers of 280 participating independent bookstores.

The mailing features 11 upcoming titles selected by Shelf Awareness editors and a sponsored title. Customers can buy these books via "pre-order" buttons that lead directly to the purchase page for the title on each sending store's website. A key feature is that bookstore partners can easily change title selections to best reflect the tastes of their customers and can customize the mailing with links, images, and promotional copy of their own.

The pre-order e-blasts are sent the last Wednesday of each month; the next will go out on Wednesday, June 24. Stores interested in learning more can visit our program registration page or contact our partner program team via e-mail.

For a sample of the May pre-order e-blast, see this one from Books on the Square, Providence, R.I.

The titles highlighted in the pre-order e-blast were:

Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
Ransom by Daniel Silva (Harper)
Men in Love by Irvine Welsh (Pegasus)
A Dark Path by Linda Castillo (Minotaur)
Sea of Charms by Sarah Beth Durst (Bramble)
The Intrigue by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey)
Wisdom Corner by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Ecco)
Dominion by Jean Kwok (Putnam)
Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt by Ben Reeves (Avid Reader)

Ingram Content Group hosted the National Association of Black Bookstores (NAB2) at its La Vergne, Tenn., campus as the organization convened its first annual board retreat ahead of its one‑year anniversary. NAB2 board members joined Ingram associates for discussions focused on strengthening Black bookselling, improving access to diverse titles, and advancing data‑driven approaches to discovery and distribution. 

"I've been tracking the patterns for months now. Every time someone comes in 'just to browse,' they end up leaving with like three hardcovers and a tote bag.... I think the shop is trying to get people to buy more books." That was the conspiracy theory addressed in an Instagram Reel from Winnie & Mo's Bookshop in Idaho Falls, Idaho, which noted: "We're not saying the bookshop is trying to make you buy more books.... We're just saying the evidence is starting to add up."

"Luna has Pride!" Reedmor Books & Brews in Portsmouth, N.H., posted on Instagram, noting: "Comment your favorite LGBTQ+ books below and stop by the store any time this month to browse the new ones on display in the window!"

"Summer days are here! Don't forget to take that lunchbox out of the backpack! (You'll thank us in Sept.)" That was the sidewalk chalkboard message in front of the Curious Cat Bookshop in Winsted, Conn., which noted on Bluesky: "As schools start to let out for the summer, let the words of Stacy's grad school friend, Abby the Murderer of Fun (who's also a teacher and parent), ring in your ears now so you don't regret it when pulling that backpack out this fall!"

Lynn Sikora has been promoted to director of international marketing & publicity at Sourcebooks.

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Ebony LaDelle has been named marketing director of Atria Books, marking a return to Simon & Schuster. She began her publishing career at S&S in 2011 through the Associates Program before joining the school & library marketing team from 2012-2013. She later returned to the company from 2015-2017, working at the Simon & Schuster imprint.

Most recently, LaDelle was at Random House as brand marketing director for the Obama publishing properties. Prior to that, she spent four years at HarperCollins overseeing teen marketing. 

She is also author. Her debut novel, Love Radio, was published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers in 2022, followed by This Could Be Forever in 2025. She also edited the anthology You've Got a Place Here, Too.

Tomorrow:
Tamron Hall repeat: Alison Roman, author of Something from Nothing: A Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, $37.99, 9781984826411).

Badd, Gramm-mar, a comedy series following a dysfunctional reading group in Los Angeles with a rotating cast of comedians that have colliding perspectives, will appear weekly on YouTube on Tuesdays, beginning June 30. The series was created by Matthew Medney, founder of GUNGNIR Books, the publishing and entertainment venture that publishes everything from graphic novels to prose, each release "designed to challenge convention, spark conversation, and resonate across audiences. Every story is a new frontier." See a trailer for the series here.

The rotating cast of Badd, Gramm-mar includes Julia Hladkowicz (America's Got Talent, Comics Unleashed), Rama Vallury (Super Pumped), Raquel Woodruff (This Time), Jordan Stidham (The Martian Broadcast), former studio exec Donna Dubrow, and "Ad-Man" Cliff Medney. They play readers, failed creatives, intellectuals, romantasy addicts, comic shop lifers, and people still trying to graduate to adulthood.

Each episode centers on a new "book of the week," from science fiction epics and romantasy to literary classics and underground cult favorites. In its first months, the group will review Fourth Wing, The Ministry of Time, Project Hail Mary, and Absolute Batman, as well as GUNGNIR titles Aeon, Existence Equation, Last Breeds, and Deadweight.

Medney commented: "Badd, Gramm-mar began as an experiment to help readers discover great books, but it quickly evolved into something we believed could be a beacon for the book community. What emerged wasn't a book club. It was a collision of perspectives. Every episode brings together five voices from different walks of life and asks them to debate the same story, revealing as much about themselves as the book in front of them. The comedy is real, the disagreements are authentic, and occasionally the insights are of value. While we may be reviewing books on the surface, Badd, Gramm-mar is ultimately a conversation about the cultural zeitgeist. Books remain one of the last great bastions of subcultural identity, where tribes are formed, ideas are tested, and the future of culture is quietly negotiated one page at a time."

Badd, Gramm-mar was shot by Chris Hadland and edited by Michael C. Morello (The Masked Singer, Beast Games).

Winners of 2026 Nebula Awards, sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, were named at the 61st annual Nebula Awards Ceremony in Chicago, Ill. This year’s categories include the first Nebulas for Best Poem and Best Comic. In future years, the comic award will be called Best Comics Writing. The Nebula winners were: 

Novel: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga)
Novella: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom)
Novelette: "Uncertain Sons" by Thomas Ha (Uncertain Sons and Other Stories, Undertow)
Short Story: "Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything" by Effie Seiberg (Diabolical Plots, 5/25)
Middle Grade & Young Adult Fiction: Into the Wild Magic by Michelle Knudsen (Candlewick)
Game Writing: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 by Guillaume Broche & Jennifer Svedberg-Yen (Kepler Interactive; developer: Sandfall Interactive, Sandfall S.A.S.)
Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation: Murderbot: Season One by Chris Weitz (Apple TV+)
Comic: Mary Shelley's School for Monsters: The Killing Stone by Jessica Maison (Wicked Tree)
Poem: "The World to Come" by Jennifer Hudak (Strange Horizons, 12/22/25)

Marley Dias made headlines as a sixth grader when she started the #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign to collect children's books featuring Black protagonists. Her initiative led to national media attention and served as a springboard to Marley's global literacy advocacy work and social activism. Dias's debut picture book, I Am the Dream Come True (Orchard Books), written with her parents, Janice Johnson Dias and Scott Dias, and illustrated by Islenia Mil, is available now.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

I Am the Dream Come True is a story about the hope each of us holds for our children. It reminds us that we are all products of love and longing.

On your nightstand now:

Ordinary People by Judith Guest. I picked it up because I've always been interested in stories about family, grief, and the quiet emotional worlds people carry.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan. This book stayed with me. I also have a deep love for Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson.

Favorite book to read to a child:

I Am Enough by Grace Byers. It does something quietly powerful, telling a child exactly what they need to hear in exactly the right way.

Your top five authors:

Octavia E. Butler: I love Octavia E. Butler because she offers a chance to see into the future, and that future is rich and includes people like me. Her writing feels like fortune telling and present-day description all at once.

Jacqueline Woodson: I love Jacqueline Woodson's work because it is always filled with hope. It anchors dreams and simultaneously gives wings to possibility.

Zelda Fitzgerald: I love Zelda Fitzgerald because her voice feels like a woman insisting on being seen in a world that tried to write her out. Her work blurs the line between art and survival.

Min Jin Lee: I love Min Jin Lee because she writes about the power of identity, migration, and belonging. Her stories hold generations at once, reminding us that history lives inside of us.

John Green: I love John Green's work because who doesn't love angst and the unraveling of complex emotions? He makes vulnerability feel universal and necessary.

Each of these writers has shaped how I think about story, identity, and what literature can do. Butler and Woodson, in particular, are writers I return to when I need to remember why any of *this* matters.

Book you've faked reading:

Pretty much any romance novel. I've read Romeo and Juliet, and I feel like that counts, but the contemporary love story genre and I have a complicated relationship that mostly involves nodding along.

Book you're an evangelist for:

William Shakespeare, especially Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. King Lear deserves a place too, but those first three are the ones I'll argue for anywhere. I had access to them in high school, and I genuinely believe I'm a fundamentally different person because of it. They taught me about grief, desire, consequence, and magic before I had words for any of those things. More young people deserve that experience.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Severance by Ling Ma. The cover makes you feel something before you've read a single word, which is exactly what a great cover should do. The book delivers, too.

Best book an adult handed to you when you were a child:

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson. Receiving that book from an adult felt like being seen. It's also part of why Jacqueline Woodson holds such a permanent place in my reading life and on my top five authors list.

Book that changed your life:

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson.

Favorite line from a book:

"A woman simply is, but a man must become," by Camille Paglia. I wrote this line down, and it has stayed with me ever since.

Five books you'll never part with:

The Holy Bible: I love the Holy Bible because it is tradition. My grandmothers on both sides always kept it close to their beds, and the stories within offer me a way to stay connected to them. It gives me a language for grappling with big moral questions.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien: I love The Things They Carried because it came to me at exactly the right time, when I was trying to let go and needed a roadmap. It helped me understand what it means to carry, and what it might mean to release.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: I love The Great Gatsby because of the richness of the language and how it showcases the complexity of Black art and its commodification. It also offers lessons about capitalism and love that continue to unfold the more I sit with it.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson: I love Brown Girl Dreaming for what is on the page, what is within the text, and what is left unsaid. It was an opening for me, an awakening. The words, the poetry, the pain, the joy, the hope, the white spaces--all of it stays with me.

Beloved by Toni Morrison: I love Beloved because it pushes me. It asks more of me as a reader, as a thinker, as a person. Toni Morrison is, in my view, the greatest. Beloved is the kind of book that doesn't let you go, and I wouldn't want it to.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Kindred by Octavia Butler. There's something about the way Butler builds a world and a reckoning at the same time that I wish I could experience fresh. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, written by Malcolm X. and Alex Haley, also comes to mind, but I'm not sure I could handle it again.

Boo!: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Fear (But Were Afraid to Ask) is a captivating middle-grade treasury of everything scary, written by Clive Gifford (How Airports Work) and illustrated by Rohan Eason (Wildwitch series illustrator). It delves into the realm of fear, discussing how and why the body reacts to terror; the history of spooky festivals, superstitions, and "scaretainment"; and even how to write scary stories.

Gifford grabs his target audience immediately with a humorously ghoulish introduction to the source of feeling afraid: "we must start by taking a journey inside your bony crash helmet to investigate a cauliflower-sized lump of soggy, wobbly matter with extraordinary abilities." He uses direct, clear language to show the inner workings of the brain as it processes threats and how the body responds to the brain's signals.

Once readers are educated in the science of fear, Gifford takes them through an unsettling maze of spellbinding history and exciting facts, examining new elements at each turn. Readers learn why so many people find clowns disturbing, how some animals respond to threats, and the origins of Halloween and jack-o'-lanterns. Gifford requires no tricks, but he does treat readers to the history of scary stories and, in a section titled "Terror Teaches," explains the roles those stories have in "encouraging people to act in what their group or society thought was the right way." The final chapter offers writing advice, including story starters, grippers, "deadly descriptions," and twists. The "best tip of all" is "to read as many thrilling and chilling stories... as you can."

Eason contributes to the text's disquieting tone with his black, white, and red mixed-media art. Blood drips from the tops of pages, a skeleton hand proffers a meaty red brain for viewing, and full- and double-page illustrations feature frightening images such as bloodied zombies pouring out of a train car. Eason's art, which depicts the straightforward as well as the scary, is realistic, with heavy cross-hatching; it's (fittingly) reminiscent of the work of Edward Gorey.

Whether readers enjoy fear or dread it, they should be intrigued by Gifford's extensive examination of this hair-raising subject. As he states, "If there's one thing your brain dislikes, it's not knowing. If something is unknown or unfamiliar, your brain is instantly on the alert." Armed with all this knowledge about fear, readers may go forth and confidently face all that goes bump in the night. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

Shelf Talker: Clive Gifford and Rohan Eason shine a light on fear and show middle-grade readers how fascinating and entertaining terror itself can be.