Rendering of HarperCollins's Brownsburg facility

HarperCollins, which is in the process of building a huge, state-of-the-art supply chain logistics facility in Brownsburg, Ind., has decided to close its Buffalo, N.Y., warehouse early in 2028. The new Indiana warehouse, near Indianapolis, is scheduled to open next year and will handle distribution for all North American titles.

In August 2025, HarperCollins announced plans to build the Brownsburg warehouse, saying it will be a 1.6 million square feet facility that will use "the most advanced technology available to improve efficiency, enhance fulfillment accuracy, reduce waste, and increase visibility and control over the supply chain." The warehouse will have the capacity to ship more than 300 million books annually.

For about 15 years, HarperCollins outsourced distribution and logistics, unlike other major U.S. publishers, and had consolidated to one warehouse from five. That approach changed last year.

St. Martin's Publishing Group is launching Tytora, an imprint dedicated to puzzles and games. The first titles will appear in fall 2027; Tytora plans to publish 24-30 titles per year. The imprint's name refers to Tyto, a genus of owl, and Ra, the Egyptian sun god, encompassing "the idea of mystery and darkness giving way to illumination and understanding."

Tytora will be overseen by Nichole Argyres, associate publisher, and Courtney Littler, editorial director, the publishing team behind the bestselling Murdle series by G.T. Karber; the brain-stretching phenomenon Minute Cryptic by Angas Tiernan and Liam Runnalls; and St. Martin's Publishing Group's longtime partner, New York Times Games crosswords.

The company said that Tytora plans to cover "a wide range of clever analog entertainment for curious minds: puzzles, games, logic, and wordplay, as well as interactive and game-related fiction and nonfiction. From the quick-hit satisfaction of a daily wordplay puzzle to immersive, story-based murder mysteries, Tytora is dedicated to finding and creating books that are engaging, thought-provoking and, above all, just really fun."

Jennifer Enderlin, president and publisher of the St. Martin's Publishing Group, said, "We're seeing a real appetite for smart and engaging puzzle books that allow people to unplug and exercise their minds. We're excited to create a home for books that are smart, challenging and a pure delight."

Argyres and Littler added: "At its heart, Tytora is a sanctuary for the curious, operating at the intersection of intellect and play. We're excited to invite readers to find peace in a pattern, adventure in a challenge, and revel in the thrill of solving the next big thing."

The Infernal Annex, a horror-focused bookstore, held a grand opening earlier this month in Olympia, Wash., Thurston Talk reported. Located at 100 4th Ave. E, the Infernal Annex carries a variety of horror subgenres along with horror comics and graphic novels, books on witchcraft and the occult, and an assortment of art and gifts. Owners and married couple Chelsia and Chris Boyer plan to host author signings, readings, game and craft nights, writing groups, book clubs, and more.

"It's always been difficult to find a good horror selection at any bookstore, and we wanted to give people a place to browse a wide range of horror options," Chris Boyer told Thurston Talk. "We also wanted to create a space for horror lovers to gather and build community."

Chelsia Boyer said she's been an avid horror fan for ages. "I started reading Stephen King at a very young age and just never looked back. I've always found it to have some of the most vivid worlds and invokes the most intense emotions."

Both Chelsia and Chris Boyer continue to work their day jobs: the former works for a dental company while the latter is a manager at an IT company. They soft-opened the Infernal Annex over Labor Day weekend and held a grand opening on October 2, in time for Halloween season and Olympia's Fall Arts Walk.

The Boyers said the community has been extremely supportive so far. "We are grateful for such a warm embrace from community members and surrounding business owners. Olympia is such a unique and special place. We feel so lucky to share our strange little corner of the world with you all."

Elephant Ear Books, which sells "new books for readers of all ages," reopened last weekend in its new space at 445 S. Harvey St., Suite 19, in Plymouth, Mich. Located just four doors down from the original store, the new shop boasts 50% more retail space and room for hosting small events.  

Owner Melissa Schabel, a former librarian, said she is excited to see what the new space offers, adding: "I always joked that the first location was my starter store, and when the new location opened up, I decided the time was right. We had outgrown our original space and customers commented on the tiny size."  

Schabel added that Elephant Ear Books, which opened in 2024, serves a vibrant downtown area in a Metro Detroit suburb. With more display opportunities and a new corner location, she "looks forward to more comfortably serving the gracious community of book lovers."

Barnes & Noble will host a grand opening tomorrow, October 23, for its new store in Laredo, Tex., and will open a new store in Albany, N.Y., next Wednesday, October 28.

The Laredo store, which soft-opened at the end of September, occupies a 19,000-square-foot space at 5300 San Dario Ave., Suite 240, in Mall del Norte. It includes a B&N Cafe. Author Sofia Segovia will cut the ribbon and sign copies of her novel The Murmur of Bees. The LEGO Minifig costumed character will also make an appearance. This is the 20th new B&N to open in Texas since 2023.

Located in the Crossgates Mall, the Albany store features a B&N Cafe and spans more than 18,000 square feet. Laurie Gilmore, author of Big Bad Wolf, will be on hand for the ribbon cutting and signing. The costumed character Arthur will also appear. The Albany store is the first of three new B&N locations to open in upstate New York this year.

B&N will open eight stores in the month of October, and 60 by the end of 2026.

Lyn Wendon, founder of phonics publishing program Letterland, died September 13. She was 98. The Bookseller reported that Wendon's creation was a "pictogram-based phonics teaching system featuring characters including Annie Apple, Bouncy Ben, and Clever Cat who lived inside their letters and explained letter shapes and sounds in child-friendly ways. The program grew from her tutoring a handful of struggling young readers at her kitchen table in Cambridge before she developed it into an early-reading program."

Wendon wrote and illustrated the earliest materials, publishing her first Pictogram System manual in 1968, and built sales by word-of-mouth among teachers, with no sales force and no advertising. The Letterland ABC (1985) by children's book packager Templar and illustrated by Jane Launchbury became a U.K. bestseller and has sold more than a million copies worldwide.

In 1995, Wendon and her husband, John Wendon, founded Letterland International Ltd. after granting a U.K. publishing license to HarperCollins that ran from 1995 to 2003. Letterland products have since been sold to schools in more than 100 countries, the Bookseller noted. Wendon remained involved in developing new material into her 90s. The company is now run by her son, Mark Wendon, and two of her grandsons.

Robert Snuggs, managing director at Bounce Sales and Marketing, said: "Bounce started representing Letterland in 2008, 40 years after Lyn first developed the first Letterland characters and titles. While at that stage she was no longer managing the business, Lyn was still very much involved and keen to share her expertise and passion for helping children to learn to read, and always with the sense of fun which was the trademark of Letterland.

"Through her imagination and skill as a brilliant teacher and author, Lyn changed millions of children's lives, not just in the U.K. but across the world, where she inspired new generations of teachers as well as readers, a legacy very few could even attempt to match. There are very few truly great pioneers in publishing and education, and Lyn was without doubt one of them."

Catherine Stokes, U.K. and export sales and marketing director at Nosy Crow, commented: "Lyn's passion for enabling (and enthusing) children to read was infectious, extraordinary and pioneering. She is, due in large part to her own modesty, an unsung hero of recent primary education across the world."

Father-and-son authors Jack Zinsser (l.) and John Zinsser launched The Terrible Baby Name Book: More than 3,500 New Ideas for the Modern Child (Ulysses Press) at the Barnes & Noble on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, N.Y., to a standing-room-only crowd.

Click here to see the latest Independent Press Top 40, the weekly bestseller list celebrating the bestselling 40 fiction and 40 nonfiction titles from independent publishers, as sold by independent bookstores across the country. The list is sponsored by the Independent Publishers Caucus and the American Booksellers Association.

This week's debut fiction titles:

15. Solace House by Will MacLean (Grove Press)
16. Rottenheart by Kat Dunn (Zando)
30. Caught Up (Collector's Edition) (Into Darkness Series) by Navessa Allen (Slowburn)
31. Cloud Runner: Poems by Joy Harjo (W. W. Norton)
36. The Spirits: A Novel by Bonnie Jo Campbell (W. W. Norton) 

This week's debut nonfiction titles:

6. The Game by Peter King (W. W. Norton)
12. Bogland: The Secret World That Defies Death and Protects Life by Merritt R. Turetsky (W. W. Norton)
14. Animals Taught Me Everything by Pam Houston (Torrey House Press)
18. Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson (Dalkey Archive Press)
21. A Brief History of Cities in 32 Inventions: The Ideas and Technologies That Made Modernity Possible by Jonn Elledge (The Experiment)
37. A History of the World in Twelve Beans by Joël Broekaert (Greystone Books)

Martha Bucci is joining Abrams as senior v-p, sales and subsidiary rights, effective November 9. She has been senior v-p, sales, at Quarto Book Group and earlier held senior sales leadership roles at Hachette Book Group, including v-p, mass merchandise and chain sales; sales liaison to Grand Central Publishing; and executive director overseeing chain sales for Little, Brown adult books. She also served as executive director, sales & marketing, for Hachette Book Group Canada.

The Piano Teacher of Montparnasse by Heather Morris (Blackstone Publishing).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Jasmine Guillory, author of It's Only Dancing (Scholastic, $15.99, 9781338749434).

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 this weekend from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Sunday, October 25
8 a.m. Eric Jay Dolin, author of The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail (Liveright, $27.99, 9781324096320).

10 a.m. Kerry Kennedy, author of Ethel Kennedy: The Extraordinary Life and Bold Legacy (HarperOne, $36, 9780063454958).

11 a.m. Fergus Bordewich, author of Centennial: The Great Fair of 1876 and the Invention of America's Future (Knopf, $35, 9780593803363), at Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.

1 to 6:40 p.m. Coverage of the 2026 Mississippi Book Festival, which took place during September in Jackson, Miss.

• 1 p.m. A discussion on the lives of writers with David Streitfeld, author of Western Star: The Life and Legends of Larry McMurtry; and Todd Goddard, author of Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Writer's Life.
• 1:55 p.m. A discussion on the Mississippi Delta, race, and religion with W. Ralph Eubanks, author of When It's Darkness on the Delta: How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land; Eddie Glaude, author of America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation's Anniversaries; and Robert P. Jones, author of Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turn Against Democracy.
• 2:49 p.m. A discussion on second chances after prison with Stanley Andrisse, author of Breaking Chains, Building Futures: Pathways to Redemption, Education, and Excellence.
• 3:49 p.m. A discussion on Mississippi politics from 1976 to 2026.
• 4:46 p.m. A discussion on the history of civil rights in Mississippi.
• 5:41 p.m. A discussion on art, activists, and the American Dream.

8:15 p.m. Brad Meltzer and Chris Eliopoulos, author and illustrator of We are the Wright Brothers (Rocky Pond Books, $16.99, 9798217005529).

Audition by Pip Adam (Coffee House Press) has won the $25,000 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, honoring "a single work of imaginative fiction" and recognizing "writers who can imagine real grounds for hope and see alternatives to how we live now."

Organizers described the winning book this way: "In Audition, a spaceship is hurtling through the cosmos. Squashed immobile into its largest room are three giants: Alba, Stanley, and Drew. If they talk, the spaceship keeps moving; if they are silent, they resume growing. Talk they must, and as they do, Alba, Stanley, and Drew recover their shared memory of what has been done to their former selves--experiences of imprisonment, violence, and disempowerment."

The judges said, "Adam uses innovative narrative structure and impeccable prose to do what SFF--what only SFF at its best--can do: make metaphor concrete to completely change our understanding not just of what is happening in the narrative but also how today's society works. [Audition] gradually assumes the urgency of survival as three people whom society has deemed worthless find their way back to themselves, each other, and hope. An astonishing and ultimately joyful work."

Adam, who lives in New Zealand, has written three other novels--Nothing to See (2020), The New Animals (2017), which won the Acorn Foundation Prize for Fiction, and I'm Working on a Building (2013)--and the short story collection Everything We Hoped For (2010).

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, October 27:

A Court of Splintered Harmony: The Valkyrie Cycle, Movement I by Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury, $32, 9781639739134) continues the A Court of Thorns and Roses romantasy series.

The Hollow by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown, $32, 9780316563857) is the 21st Harry Bosch thriller.

Public Access Afterworld: A Novel by Jane Schoenbrun (Hogarth, $33, 9780593978382) is horror/fantasy spanning multiple decades about a surreal secret TV network.

The Brightness: A Novel by Chad Harbach (Little, Brown, $32, 9780316455695) follows two young women in college and into their 20s. 

Code and Codex by Yoon Ha Lee (S&S/Saga Press, $29, 9781668059975) is a space opera set in an evil empire whose power relies on erasing other languages.

Mortal Things by Marie Lu (Roaring Brook, $20.99, 9781250381590) is a YA fantasy novel featuring a young woman beholden to the god of death.

This Is a Door by Daniel Nayeri (Stonefruit Studio, $19.99, 9781464246029) is an unusual and experimental middle-grade bildungsroman about a boy, a mouse, and a dog seeking purpose. 

Abandoning a Cat: A Personal Story by Haruki Murakami, trans. by Philip Gabriel (Knopf, $26, 9798217208692) expands a New Yorker essay about the author's father and a cat.

We Thought They'd Never Leave: Musings on Food and Family by Tony Shalhoub and Josie Adams (Gallery, $30, 9781668227725) chronicles decades of annual family gatherings in Wisconsin.

In My Own Time: A Memoir by Christopher Lloyd (Grand Central, $32.50, 9781538776544) is the memoir of an actor best known as Doc Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy.

Tyrant Lizard Queen: The Love, Life, and Terror of Earth's Greatest Carnivore by Riley Black (St. Martin's Press, $29, 9781250403483) is narrative nonfiction about the life of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

Sound Tracks: An Archaeological Journey Through Our Musical Past by Graeme Lawson (Knopf, $35, 9780593320365) traces the ancient history of music-making through 60 archaeological discoveries. 

Paperbacks:
Writing, the Other Life: Texts and Art by and About Annie Ernaux by Annie Ernaux, edited by Pierre-Louis Fort (Seven Stories Press, $35, 9781644214152).

The Keeper (Gods of the Game Book 3) by Ana Huang (Bloom Books, $19.99, 9781464223341).

The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon (Liveright, $21.99, 9781324147435).

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:

Hardcover
Bad Words: A Novel by Ríoghnach Robinson (St. Martin's Press, $30, 9781250431295). "A book about books, publishing, writing, the internet, and the very best, truly enemies to lovers, unexpected romance. What a timely read--from the constant pressure online to the ways AI is changing publishing. An incredible look at the power of words." --Leighellen Landskov, Fabled Bookshop & Café, Waco, Tex.

The Court of Venus by Bel Banta (Tor, $29.99, 9781250437136). "Combining historical inspiration from the Tudor era with a zodiac-infused magic system provides such a unique fantasy world to immerse yourself in. I loved the court politics, the murder mystery, and the rich, layered romance." --Brooke Williams, Beanbag Books, Delaware, Ohio

Paperback
The Given World by Melissa Harrison (Biblioasis, $18.95, 9781771967365). "Via lulling and compelling nature-documentary narration, each chapter exposes characters in an exhibition which over time becomes overgrown in vast vegetation. A relaxing primer of the waxing storm before the waning calm that is humankind's brief time on this planet." --Ian McCord, Rec Room Books, Athens, Ga.

Ages 4-8
The Little Stone Buddha by Grace Lin (Alvina Ling Books, $18.99, 9780316478403). "The Little Stone Buddha tells such a sweet story of a community coming together to create a home. This is the story everyone needs to read right now as we lean on our communities!" --Rajean Erbar, The Novel Neighbor, Webster Groves, Mo.

Ages 8-12
Starting Now by Janae Marks (Quill Tree Books, $19.99, 9780063427686). "Janae Marks has such a delicate touch with the problems kids face--this book about a girl navigating the growing chasm between her best friends and the temporary guardianship of her estranged brother is no exception. I loved the relationship between Addy and Julian." --Chloe Purton, Books & Company, Oconomowoc, Wis.

Ages 13+
What Feeds Below by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne (Boozhoo Books/Bindery Books, $17.95, 9781967967247). "What Feeds Below is a dark miracle of a book. Schlote-Bonne masterfully weaves together fantasy and horror in a way that left me captivated and disturbed (a compliment). She does an amazing job creating characters who feel REAL--which just made the experience all the more chilling." --Sarah Sedor-George, Bookish, Modesto, Calif.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

Jared Young's devious thriller, This Will Be the End of Me, warps the standard country-house mystery around a perversely playful take on quantum theory.

While most people expect to experience a midlife crisis or two, Joshua Hoffman is undergoing 10 simultaneously. His imminent 40th birthday prompts him to rally 10 versions of himself from alternate realities by way of a slick new technology from the OtherSelf Corporation. The plan is to spend the milestone occasion at the host's luxurious home in the woods outside Ottawa, Ontario, drinking, playing video games, and reflecting on the decisions that spurred each iteration off from the others.

To better differentiate one another, they assume "absurd... fifth-rate superhero code names," such as "the Argentinian" for the jet-setter based in South America, "the Philosopher" for the enterprising podcaster, and perhaps most inanely, "the Penciller" for the one who became a comics artist. Each presents himself with his best foot forward, highlighting his successes in career, family, and sexual prowess. It's the exact sort of masculine chest thumping that tends to stir envy and tempt hostility among those who feel inadequate--which is all of them. Some are hiding marital strife, some abuse allegations. It's not long before Joshua Hoffmans start turning up dead.

What begins as a surreal premise fit for an episode of television's Rick and Morty expands dimensionally into a pensive murder mystery contending with knotty dilemmas around free will, ambition, and regret. By understating the situational physics and instead submerging in each Joshua's consciousness, Young relentlessly interrogates why a modern man might thoroughly unravel himself despite everything he has going for him.

There is no doubt that the killer is Joshua Hoffman, but which one and why are questions made all the more provocative by how readily one version can assume the identity of another. "We are... not capable of strangling a man to death" is a protestation undermined by every Joshua's powerful predisposition toward self-loathing, self-sabotage, and suicide ideation. This Will Be the End of Me excels when it confronts this particular darkness dead on.

Young tugs the suspense taut as a garrote. His introspection cuts like a blade. It's a ruthless combination perfect for armchair sleuths as well as fans of life-affirming multiverse reckonings like Blake Crouch's Dark Matter. --Dave Wheeler, senior editor, Shelf Awareness

Shelf Talker: Jared Young's ingeniously warped murder mystery interrogates one man from 10 different angles to uncover why he might do himself in.

"I think if you live long enough," Nico said, "you become a migrant from another timeline. There's the world you learn to navigate as you enter adulthood, and then that world slips away from you by degrees, and after a while there's nothing left of it, but you're still here. That's what I mean."

--Emily St. John Mandel, Exit Party (Knopf)

As a reader, bookseller, and aging human, I've had many time travel guides during my, well, time in this particular dimension. Certain authors have cast particularly edifying light along my speculative path. Mandel is a contemporary one; others include Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward: 2000-1887), H.G. Wells (The Time Machine), and Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five). I've read and reread them during my time. 

Time travel is an undefinable yet essential part of the human experience. Even in writing Exit Party, Mandel had to return to 2010 and The Singer's Gun (Unbridled), retrieving her villain Ari, now the protagonist in the new book that explores the devilish complexity of intersecting timelines. 

In a recent interview with the Guardian, Mandel recalled: "I just couldn't stop thinking about her. I found myself thinking: what would that character be like at the other end of an 18-year prison sentence?" Ari is like a time traveler, she added, echoing the lines from Exit Party quoted above: "If you stick around long enough, you kind of become a migrant from a different timeline."

Cranking up my own time travel portal, I remember being introduced to Mandel in 2011. At the end of another crazy BookExpo America day in New York, I had grabbed a taxi to Housing Works Bookstore in the West Village, where the Indie Booksellers Choice Awards, co-sponsored by Melville House Publishing and Shelf Awareness, were to be presented. The festivities drew a big crowd for the announcement of five books from indie publishers that had been selected by independent booksellers. The Singer's Gun won and Mandel was the only author among the winners to be in attendance that night.

Her connection to the world of indies is traceable through time. Last month, she told Bookselling This Week that independent bookstores "have been very important to my career, and they've also always been magical spaces to me."

Emily St. John Mandel (r.) and Laura Barisonzi's wedding at Greenlight Bookstore

In her Guardian interview, Mandel mentioned that last year she had married photographer Laura Barisonzi in a "wedding [that] was the stuff of book nerds' dreams, held in Brooklyn's Greenlight Bookstore, which has been 'hosting my launch events since before Station Eleven--and I didn't sell many books back then! They had an open book bar and her daughter, now 10, was a 'ring bearer-slash-flower girl.' It was just lovely."

The earlier recollection of BookExpo now sends me off on another time traveling quest, courtesy of Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888). I purchased my first of many copies of the Penguin paperback edition at a library book fair when I was in high school. Rereading it over the decades has always messed with my perspective, but perhaps never more so than after I entered the book trade. 

In the utopian novel, Julian West wakes up from a 113-year snooze to discover that, among other notable shocks, the future of books is POD self-publishing (He wasn't quite tuned in to the future enough to anticipate e-books or AI authors) for the masses. 

Bellamy predicted a 21st-century book trade that had freed itself from the shackles of hype, greed, and uncertainty, writing that "the universally high level of education nowadays gives the popular verdict a conclusiveness on the real merit of literary work which in your day it was as far as possible from having.... Every author has precisely the same facilities for bringing his work before the popular tribunal."

The printing department, he wrote, "is bound to print all that is offered it, but prints it only on condition that the author defray the first cost out of his credit. He must pay for the privilege of the public ear, and if he has any message worth hearing we consider that he will be glad to do it."

Sitting at his writing desk in the 19th century, Bellamy couldn't envision a future publishing industry that once gave us the trade show formerly known as BookExpo, which annually offered up the vision of a promising future in the midst of a muddled present. The illusion of a clear, unspoiled book path lying just ahead of us is more than just idle speculation in our business, however. We do time travel to the future daily as readers, via manuscripts, catalogs, ARCs, and other tools of the trade. At BookExpo, a utopian vision was always grandly on display. Books that would be published in the fall hadn't failed yet; first-time authors were always promising; any book might grow up to be a bestseller.

Where does the book time go? 

In The Time Machine, a brief foray into the future is also a fitting image for the act of reading as time travel: "I stopped. No Change. Everything exactly as it had been before. But no, the clock said 6:31 when I started, and now it was 8:09. And the candle! Shorter by inches. And yet, by my watch, which was in the machine with me, only a few seconds had passed."

Likewise, no matter the genre, reading time passes unmarked as we live in an alternate dimension that is nothing like our concept of "real time." Aging performs the same trick, subtly altering our timeline as we go. "You're saying if you live long enough, your life turns into sci-fi?" asks a character in Exit Party. Well, yes, it does.