In the first six months of the year, group revenues at Bertelsmann rose 2.3%, to €9.3 billion (about $10.8 billion), and group profit rose 45%, to €292 million ($340 million). At Penguin Random House, revenues rose 2.3%, to €2.376 billion ($2.77 billion), and EBITDA slipped 1.6%, to €251 million ($292 million).

Emphasizing that Bertelsmann had organic growth of more than 5%, chairman & CEO Thomas Rabe said that "nearly all divisions contributed to that growth, particularly Penguin Random House, BMG, Arvato, Bertelsmann Education Group, and Bertelsmann Investments."

In a letter to staff, PRH CEO Nihar Malaviya commented, saying in part, "Driven by strong new releases and the enduring strength of our backlist, we grew revenues despite continued macroeconomic uncertainty. Penguin Random House companies around the world outperformed their markets, whether those markets were growing or softer. That is a significant achievement and a credit to our local teams. Across our business, the United States and Grupo Editorial delivered strong revenue growth, the U.K. and Germany gained market share, and DK continued to grow steadily. While our profitability was slightly lower, mainly due to increased costs and currency effects, we remain on track to meet our financial goals for the year." 

Nihar Malaviya

Malaviya pointed to "just a few of the thousands of remarkable titles you've put in readers' hands around the world this year.... Brian Goldstone's There Is No Place For Us was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary and Emily Henry's People We Meet on Vacation reached new audiences through successful page-to-screen adaptations. Caro Claire Burke's Yesteryear was the book people couldn't stop talking about, and Angela Song's For the Fans! (KPOP Demon Hunters) captured a global pop culture phenomenon. Virginia Evans's The Correspondent became a defining literary success. We also saw standout local bestsellers around the world, including Ferdinand von Schirach's Alexander in Germany, Sudha Murty's How the Chilli Became Hot in India, Charlotte McConaghy's Wild Dark Shore in Australia, and Juan Gómez-Jurado's Mentira in Spain.

He also acknowledged the death this week of Dolly Parton, "one of our authors and one of the book world's most extraordinary champions... Dolly was a singular cultural force, humanitarian, and role model who took particular pride in being known as 'The Book Lady.' Among her many achievements, her dedication to children's literacy will remain one of her most enduring legacies. We look forward to carrying on her vision for many years to come."

In comments about the state of the business in general, he added that "a lot is changing around us. AI is impacting every industry, including ours. The media landscape is increasingly crowded and fragmented. We continue to face geopolitical, economic, and environmental challenges. While many of us may be feeling some uncertainty, I believe we are well positioned to navigate what comes next. Across the company, we are taking practical steps to respond to these changes and prepare for the future. That includes keeping our authors' interests at the center as AI evolves, using technology to help readers discover our books in new ways, and building the capabilities we will need in the months and years ahead."

The Lost Story Bookshop, an all-genre bookstore with a mission to center women's voices, will host its grand opening celebration tomorrow, August 29, at 1001 Avenue B in Katy, Tex., CultureMap Houston reported. Owner and author Afton Seeser said, "I just love listening to women's stories... I'm really interested in women overall, just getting together, sharing their stories."

The spotlight on various genres is highlighted by the store's location in a house, as well as its layout, which features areas separated and color-coded by genre. The combination fantasy and thriller room is purple, the general fiction room is a deep green, and the romance room is pink, Seeser noted, adding that the space is primarily yellow with a few reading areas and writing tables.

This bookstore's welcoming atmosphere is emphasized by couches in the reading areas and bistro-style tables throughout the store. The Lost Story will host events such as book clubs, literary themed nights, astrology-inspired events, holiday parties, and midnight release parties, CultureMap noted.

"I feel like you can't ever have enough spaces for women to gather. I want it to be... more than a bookshop and [a place] for lots of different groups of women to meet," Seeser said, adding: "I'm going to have bookish vendors come in and then sell their products. I want to work with local artists too, local vendors, everybody, just because it really helps, you know, build community."

Seeser said the store's mission to center women's voices includes empowering them generally: "If you're talking, you're meeting with different people... maybe you can be inspired by these other women on how they live their life and you're... more ready to center yourself and just your life to overall I feel like get better just being around more women, and you just step into really, a more powerful version of yourself."

Beans & Bind, a bookstore and coffee shop, opened August 1 in Spokane Valley, Wash., the Spokesman-Review reported. 

Located at 17325 E. Sprague Ave., Beans & Bind carries general-interest titles for all ages, along with non-book items like tote bags, apparel, stickers, candles, kitchenware, and coffee mugs, much of it sourced from local suppliers. The cafe side of the business serves coffee, tea, espresso drinks, Italian sodas, and other hot and cold beverages. The food menu includes panini sandwiches, pre-made burritos, pastries, cookies, and other treats. 

The store's children's section also serves as an event space, and owner Marcella Ferraro and her team have already held book drives, art activities for kids, and author events. Future event plans include things like candle-making classes and Gilmore Girls watch parties, and community members can rent out the space for their own functions.

Prior to opening Beans & Bind, Ferraro had eight years of experience working as a barista and always wanted to open a coffee shop of her own. After finding the space on Sprague Ave., she decided to expand her plans and combine two of her passions.

"I told my husband, 'we should just go check it out,' " Ferraro told the Spokesman-Review. "And then we got in here and saw the space, and I was like, I've got to combine the two things I love the most: reading and coffee, because there's room for it."

Business has been brisk since the August 1 grand opening, with Ferraro noting that the store sold out of many horror and thriller titles that day. Seeing the store's continued popularity has been the "happiest surprise," she added.

"From day one, our grand opening, pretty much every customer we get in here that's local has thanked us for having something like this in the Valley," she said. "Hearing how it's touched people to have a place like this to go…that we've never really had until now is amazing."

After announcing its closure earlier this year, From My Shelf Books & Gifts, Wellsboro, Pa., has halted its liquidation sale and will stay open, NorthCentralPA.com reported. 

In May, owners Kevin and Kasey Coolidge announced they would be closing the new and used bookstore in the months ahead. At the same time, they began a major liquidation sale, with items 30%-60% off. Now, after seeing the outpouring of support from the community, the Coolidges have stopped the sale and have begun reordering books.

Kevin Coolidge said he and his wife couldn't bring themselves to give up "the platform this store provides to local authors, readers, and catalogers of regional history," adding: "Wellsboro needs a real, independent bookstore. We have over twenty years of experience, deep roots that go back generations right here in town, and a couple of cats whose job performance metrics are entirely based on how many laps they can warm."

Coolidge is also the author of the Totally Ninja Raccoons children's series, and he noted that his most recent manuscript has been picked up by a literary agent. While there is still a long way to go, he said, "it is a massive green light, and more importantly, it means we have a fresh wind in our sails."

He encouraged customers to "come on in, grab a book, and help us write the best chapter yet."

Half Price Books has opened a temporary location at 3005 S. Lamar Blvd., Ste. D-113, in Austin, Tex., amid plans for a large-scale relocation project, MySA noted. In March, the chain closed its store at 2929 S. Lamar Blvd., saying that it would be moving to a larger facility "just a few streets eastward. In the interim, though, the chain promised to open a temporary outpost on South Lamar Boulevard so South Austin patrons could continue shopping while the South First location remained under construction."

The temporary shop will remain in operation while the new bookstore at 2607 S. First St. in the Bouldin Creek neighborhood is under construction. 

"While we had initially anticipated opening the new permanent location later this year, the project has had a number of construction delays. We're excited to have this new space for our customers to shop in the meantime," said Kathy Doyle Thomas, president of Half Price Books.

Peter Nadas, a Hungarian author who was best known for A Book of Memories (1986), "a labyrinthine chronicle of life under Communism, and who was often discussed as a potential winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature," died on August 26, the New York Times reported. He was 83.

The interweaving stories in A Book of Memories "involve a young writer's struggles in Hungary--including during the quashed 1956 uprising against the Communists--a love triangle in 1970s Berlin, and much more," the Times wrote. When it was first published in English in 1997, the book garnered acclaim for what Eva Hoffman described, in a Times review, as its "probing, digressive, opulently ruminative style," which she compared to Proust's. Susan Sontag called it "the greatest novel written in our time."

Nadas wrote the book over a 12-year period, from 1973 to 1985. His other works include Love (1979), about a man who gets high and starts questioning reality; Parallel Stories (2005), featuring dozens of tales crisscrossing Hungarian history; and Fire and Knowledge (2007), a collection of short stories and essays.

In a 2007 Times profile of Nadas, Michael Kimmelman noted that "no writer in Europe today has dealt more eloquently with the obligations and moral conundrums of memory, private and collective."

Nadas said in 1997 that he knew by the time he became a teenager he wanted to be a writer. After dropping out of high school, he eventually moved to a small village and tried his hand at writing fiction. The Times noted that Nadas "regularly tussled with Hungarian censors. After he submitted his first novel, The End of a Family Story, to them in 1972, it languished for five years before being published. (It came out in English in 1998.) During the 1970s, the secret police met with Mr. Nadas and implied that his troubles would come to an end if he became an informant for them. He declined the deal. Now, he is more celebrated in Hungary." After his death, the country's Prime Minister Peter Magyar was among those posting tributes to Nadas on social media.

Kirk Fox signed copies of his mystery thriller Palmdale (Meridia Books) in Palmdale, Calif., for a sold-out crowd at Barnes & Noble. 

Katie McGarry

Congratulations to Katie McGarry of HarperCollins Publishers, who is the winner of the 2026 Saul Gilman Award, sponsored by the New England Independent Booksellers Association and presented annually for outstanding service as a sales representative to New England independent bookstores. This award will be presented at NEIBA Fall Conference Awards Banquet on September 16, in Newton, Mass.

Big Little Truths by Liane Moriarty (Crown) is the September pick for Reese's Book Club, which described the book this way: "More than a decade after Big Little Lies swept readers off their feet, Liane Moriarty returns with Big Little Truths. This book brings us back into the world of Madeline, Celeste, Jane, Renata, and Bonnie, a decade later, as their children navigate the drama and complexities of adolescence. But when a mysterious man begins lurking around the school, the quiet beachside community is thrown into an uproar, and secrets held for years threaten to surface."

Reese said: "I can't tell you how fun it is to go back down memory lane with these characters."

The Reading Bug in San Carlos, Calif., will host the inaugural Kids Podcast Festival this Sunday, August 30. The event will bring together four family-friendly podcasts: Reading Bug Adventures, Dorktales Storytime, Folktales from Sudan, and the Ten News. There will be listening stations, giveaways, live performances, and more.

The bookstore launched the Reading Bug Adventures podcast in 2018. It features original stories and music written and performed by co-owner Lauren Savage, Reading Bug staff members, and assorted friends and family. It now has three spin-off podcasts: Lauren's Little Bedtime Stories, the Bookworm's Story Snacks, and the Fact Fly's One Big Question.

Hachette Book Group will sell and distribute to all retail and wholesale accounts the full list of Welbeck Publishing Group in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America, effective March 1, 2027. Hachette UK acquired Welbeck in 2022, becoming part of Headline Publishing Group.

Mari Evans, managing director, Headline, said, "At the point when Hachette UK acquired the former Welbeck business, Ingram Content Group had been supporting strong sales growth for the color publishing in North America and I'm most grateful for their engaged partnership over the past four years. Now we look ahead to fresh horizons with our cousins at Hachette Book Group and to entering a new phase of sustained growth."

Ed Spade, senior v-p of commercial operations, at HBG, said, "Every Welbeck title reflects a commitment to design and production values, from illustrated non-fiction to their gift and children's lists. We are pleased to bring this beautiful catalog onto our U.S. Distribution slate and be a part of their growth story. Placing a list like Welbeck's with the right accounts is exactly what our sales and distribution team is built to do, and we are excited to bring these titles to market."

Kevin Votel has been promoted to associate publisher/director marketing & sales at New World Library.

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Katie Ralston has joined Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing as publicity assistant. She was most recently an account executive at the Consultancy PR.

Netflix's film adaptation of the 2000 novel In a Holidaze by Christina Lauren (pen name for Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings) will debut on the streamer December 2, Deadline reported. Written and directed by Tiffany Paulsen (Winter Spring Summer Fall), the story centers "a directionless twentysomething" who "after making a romantic mistake of epic proportions" becomes trapped in a holiday time loop, "forced to relive the same Christmas at her family's cabin until she discovers what makes her happy."

The movie's cast includes Maddie Ziegler, Rob Lowe, Graham Phillips, and Elias Kacavas, along with Patton Oswalt, Jackie Sandler, Gil Bellows, and Andrea Anders.

"We can't wait for you to see the cabin, the sad but gorgeous Christmas tree (it really is gorgeous!), Maisie and Andrew, Uncle Benny, and the whole gang," Billings and Hobbs posted on Instagram. "Watch party with Christmas cookies and matching pjs yes/yes??"

Winners have been named for the 2026 Heartland Booksellers Awards, presented annually by the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association and Midwest Independent Booksellers Association. The winning authors, who will be celebrated on October 7 at a ceremony during the Heartland Fall Forum in Minneapolis, Minn., are:

Fiction: Angel Down by Daniel Kraus (Atria Books)
Nonfiction: The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon (Liveright)
Poetry: A Suit or a Suitcase by Maggie Smith (Washington Square Press)
YA/Middle Grade: Angelica & the Bear Prince by Trung Le Nguyen (Random House Graphic)
Picture Book: Loops, written & illustrated by Jashar Awan (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)

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Three finalists have been chosen for the $10,000 2025 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Awards, honoring "excellence in long-form writing about the thoroughbred sport." The award is sponsored by Castleton Lyons farm, Lexington, Ky., which will host a reception for the three finalists on November 4, at the Ryan family’s farm in Lexington, Ky., when the winner will be announced.

The finalists:

Reinventing the American Thoroughbred: The Arabian Adventures of Alexander Keene Richards by Gary A. O'Dell, "a rare biography of a pre-Civil War thoroughbred breeder, researched and written by Gary O'Dell, a Morehead State University professor emeritus whose interest in Richards' Blue Grass Park farm was stirred after researching an earlier history of Georgetown, Ky."

The Racetracks of America: From the Pre-Civil War Days to the 21st Century, "a comprehensive coffee table book with essays by 35 seasoned turf writers, edited by Brien Bouyea, and thousands of photos and memorabilia that will entertain readers and serve as a valuable reference for racing fans for years to come."

Death of a Racehorse: An American Story, "CNN reporter Katie Bo Lillis' tough-love letter to the thoroughbred sport that she grew up in, riding with her family and working in the Virginia racing industry. Like her mother, Lillis has a reporter's nose for a good story and she went behind the scenes of recent racing scandals, following leads to barns, drug labs, law enforcement offices and racetrack boardrooms. In concise prose, she told the unflinching story, ending on a hopeful note."

photo: Christine Forbes

Malavika Kannan is a Tamil American writer. Across genres, her work explores identity, power, kinship, and desire in modern, apocalyptic times. Her nonfiction has appeared in New York magazine, the Nation, the Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Autostraddle, the Emancipator, and elsewhere. Her debut novel is Unprecedented Times (Holt, August 18, 2026), about college students navigating love and life during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Handsell readers your book:

A portrait of a generation forged by the twin hellfires of the Internet and the pandemic. It is a love letter to the girls and gays, and it reads like a Facetime call with your worst-behaved friend. If you are a deep-feeling young woman (or love one), this is for you!

On your nightstand now:

Fieldwork as a Sex Object by Meena Kandasamy is forthcoming later this year and is a sharp, exciting Internet novel from the Indian subcontinent about feminism, sexuality, caste, and more. If we thought the stakes of digital warfare against women in the West are high, Kandasamy's portrait of India under fascism is eye-opening!

Favorite book when you were a child:

I was a huge Harry Potter stan and ran a fan account on Instagram with a few thousand followers (which is like a million followers in 2026 inflation).

Your top five authors:

Adrienne Rich; James Baldwin; Arundhati Roy; Viet Thanh Nguyen; and Vauhini Vara, who I especially think is the coolest South Asian American writer at work right now. I chose them because they each have a wide body of work across fiction and nonfiction, an unmistakable voice, and a bibliography that is banger after banger.

Book you've faked reading:

I somehow escaped college without studying many European classics, but that means I have to pretend to understand the hype about Jane Austen.

Book you're an evangelist for:

The Right to Sex by Amia Srinivasan has the smartest and most cogent critiques of patriarchy, choice, and desire in the 21st century.

Book you've bought for the cover:

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell, with its iconic title and subtitle that soft-launched a now generation-defining phrase "Attention Economy," was The Moment in 2019 with its floral pink cover. I love that the softness, femininity, and self-help veneer of the cover belies one of the sharpest indictments of capitalism and technology of our times.

Book you hid from your parents:

It took me a while to work up the courage to give my parents my own book, Unprecedented Times!

Book that changed your life:

My friend Sarah Thankam Mathews's All This Could Be Different is a cult classic among young queer people of color for a reason. Reading a galley of this novel in 2021 changed my life by giving me a model for the kind of coming-of-age novel I wanted to write: with an ensemble cast, overt and earnest politics, and sense of swag! I even wrote a college paper about how it was departing from an older, mustier, neoliberal tradition of South Asian American literature. I felt like this book helped me understand my place within a larger tradition and expand what was possible for myself.

Favorite line from a book:

Few writers move me like the poet Adrienne Rich. A line from her poem "Diving into the Wreck" inspires the final lines of Unprecedented Times, and I'm toying with an excerpt from her heartbreaking poem "on the burning of paper instead of children" as an epigraph for my next book, Rage Bait. Here are some lines that particularly move me from that poem:

"I am composing on the typewriter late at night, thinking of today. How well we all spoke. A language is a map of our failures.... Some of the suffering are: it is hard to tell the truth; this is America; I cannot touch you now. In America we have only the present tense. I am in danger. You are in danger.... The typewriter is overheated, my mouth is burning. I cannot touch you and this is the oppressor's language."

Five books you'll never part with:

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, The Weave of My Life by Urmila Pawar, Zami by Audre Lorde, Valencia by Michelle Tea. All technically perfect, bighearted books about people who love deeply and are very moved by the world.

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

I've reread Chanel Miller's courageous survivor memoir, Know My Name, a couple times since it's come out, in a different headspace each time, and each one has been a revelation. There are few books I've read that are so honest and uplifting about the question of how to metabolize pain and violence we encounter in life.

The heroine of No Such Thing as Monday by Siân Hughes expertly removes laundry stains at the dry cleaners where she works, but it is the memories of her blemished past she can't erase. A poignant, darkly satirical story inspired by a medieval poem called "Cleanness," Hughes's second novel is set in the heart of contemporary, working-class England and is centered on her narrator's search for the sister who ran away from home in her teens.

Steffie Cartwright grew up near Birmingham, her childhood dominated by a violent bully of a father, Stan, who ran dogfights at the local pub. Her mother and older sister, Caroline, bore the brunt of Stan's cruelty while Steffie, his favorite, swallowed her confusion and learned not to peer too closely at the menacing "undercurrent" of family dysfunction, "like a river of dirty water running through our house, tainting everything." If her father declared Monday didn't exist, then "you learn[ed] not to mention Monday." In this same way, her sister was the battered child whose suffering Steffie ignored for her own survival.

Steffie is a chain-smoking, prickly, middle-aged woman when the novel opens. Stan has just died and this sets off in his daughter a much-delayed reckoning with shame and guilt over not helping Caroline when they were children. Even as she describes Stan's coarse cult of personality, Steffie is a master of deadpan humor, her narration spiked with liberal swearing. She borrows a dry cleaning customer's outfit for the funeral, only for it to be recognized as belonging to the registrar presiding over her father's service. Mishaps like these are inevitable--Steffie just can't help herself--and make for entertaining drama.

Hughes (Pearl) is a poet and Booker Prize-nominated novelist from Cheshire, England. She offers a tender portrayal of Steffie's complexities, both the aching vulnerability of a child who doesn't know "which way was up" and her tough exterior as an adult. It's only by finding Caroline and seeking forgiveness from her that Steffie can dismantle her father's horrible legacy. To this end, Steffie steals a posh coat and sets off north in search of a sister who may not want to be found.

As it examines the long-term effects of growing up in a divided household where love and hate so easily coexist, No Such Thing as Monday celebrates its heroine's complicated road to redemption even as she accepts that some memories, like old stains, don't ever disappear. --Shahina Piyarali

Shelf Talker: Set in contemporary working-class England, this poignant, darkly satirical drama centers on a woman's search for the sister who ran away from home in her teens.