Paragraphs and Pages will open in Liberty Lake, Wash., on June 20, KREM2 reported.

Paragraphs and Pages in progress.

The all-ages bookstore, at 21801 E. Indiana Ave., Suite 102, will focus on community building and events. Owners Nathan and Stephanie Hansen plan to host author events and two monthly book clubs. For the grand opening on June 20, they have appearances from three local authors lined up: cozy mystery author Tamara Berry; children's author Susan Mackenzie; and middle-grade author Lora Senf.

"I've loved books for as long as I can remember," Stephanie Hansen told KREM2. "They transport you to different places and leave their impression on you. I want to create a welcoming space for people to explore books and connect with other readers."

Prior to launching Paragraphs and Pages, Nathan Hansen worked for the Community Library Network. "It was time for a new challenge, but I didn't want to stray from the literary community I've loved supporting," he said. "So, a bookstore seemed like a good next step."

Queer Haven Books will close its bricks-and-mortar store in Columbia, S.C., later this month and pivot to a mobile model, the Post and Courier reported.

In a message posted on the store's website, store owner Baker Rogers said Queer Haven's last day in business will be June 28. After that, Rogers will operate the business out of a donated van, making pop-up appearances around Columbia.

Rogers attributed the closure to being unable to secure a new lease for the bookstore, alleging they were blackballed by local landlords after pulling out of a lease earlier this year. After Queer Haven outgrew its original home at 1332 Main St., Rogers explained, they had signed a lease for a larger space at 1219 Taylor St. and intended to move this spring. 

However, when Rogers learned that an office building across the street would be leasing space to ICE, they felt they could not ask Queer Haven's customers and community members to visit that location and potentially put themselves at risk. Rogers subsequently backed out of that lease and began looking for a new home. They attempted to secure three other locations, with Rogers writing: "I offered each landlord what they asked for, yet all three denied the lease."

The Post and Courier noted that Queer Haven's announcement followed the news that two other queer-owned businesses in Columbia would be closing. 

"With everything going on with queer and trans rights, and especially with trans people right now, the fact that we're losing more queer space in this town, we need to be [sounding] a big alarm," Rogers told the Post and Courier. "This is not good. This is scary.... We're not letting them win, but also, we can only do so much without some support." Rogers added that it is not about a lack of interest or need, but a lack of resources.

Rogers founded Queer Haven Books as a pop-up before opening the store at 1332 Main St. in 2024. They plan to reassess opening a new bricks-and-mortar space in January.

Gita Manaktala has been named executive director of Columbia University Press, effective September 8. She succeeds Jennifer Crewe, who retired March 31 after 40 years at the publisher and led it for more than a decade. 

Gita Manaktala (photo: Gretchen Ertl)

Prior to joining Columbia, Manaktala spent more than three decades at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Most recently, she served as executive editor-at-large, following her tenure as editorial director. 

"Gita is an accomplished publishing leader whose career has been defined by intellectual curiosity, editorial excellence, and a deep commitment to expanding access to knowledge," said Angela V. Olinto, provost and Rutherfurd Professor of Astronomy and Professor of Physics. "Throughout her career, Gita has demonstrated an ability to expand the reach and impact of academic work while upholding the highest standards of intellectual rigor. At a time when universities play an increasingly important role in advancing knowledge and informing public understanding, I am confident that she will build on Columbia University Press's extraordinary legacy and help shape its future with creativity, ambition, and purpose."

Manaktala said: "I am honored to join Columbia University Press and to build upon its distinguished tradition of publishing scholarship that informs, challenges, and inspires. At a time when the world faces complex social, scientific, technological, and political questions, university presses play a vital role in bringing rigorous research into the public conversation. I look forward to working with the Press's talented staff, authors, faculty partners, and supporters to champion exceptional scholarship and bring it to wider audiences around the globe."
 
Olinto also expressed her gratitude to Crewe, whose "leadership strengthened the Press's reputation as one of the world's leading university presses while expanding its scholarly impact and global reach. We are deeply grateful for her many contributions to the University and the broader publishing community. I would also like to recognize Brad Hebel for his steady leadership as Interim Director of Columbia University Press and for his assistance during this important period of transition."

As part of its 30th anniversary celebration, the Book Industry Charitable Foundation has launched a campaign to increase the number of monthly donors to ensure support can continue for the next 30 years. To make a monthly or one-time donation, click here.  

"The foundation was built by support from individual booksellers," said Binc CEO Pam French. "Monthly gifts are the steady support that allow us to plan for annual expenses and ensure no bookseller in need is turned away. The next 30 years depend on a community of monthly supporters who believe books matter, book and comic stores matter, and Binc matters. Please join us in celebrating 30 years of book people helping book people by donating $30 a month."

Historian Gordon S. Wood, "whose decades of research and writing established him as one of the country's pre-eminent scholars of the American Revolution, the personalities of the founding fathers, and the early years of the new republic," died June 7, the New York Times reported. He was 92.

A professor emeritus of history at Brown University, Wood wrote in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992), that "the colonists were not rebelling just against 'taxation without representation' and other supposed injustices imposed on them from across the Atlantic. Whether they knew it or not, they were also rising up against an age-old worldview in which common people were forever divided from those of noble birth," the Times noted.

"Liberty, insubordination and unwillingness to truckle to any authority were what distinguished Englishmen from Frenchmen and all the other enslaved and deprived peoples of the world," Wood observed. "The English were habitually defiant of authority, and no one at the top of any of the English-speaking world's many hierarchies ever felt as secure as he would have liked." He asserted that the colonists "were more English than the English themselves."

In a 2011 review of Wood's essay collection The Idea of America, David Hackett Fischer observed: "Always, Wood's purpose was not to celebrate or condemn these leaders, but to understand them. His results lead us beyond the hagiographers who celebrate the founders as demigods, and iconoclasts who revile them as racists and sexists, an approach Wood believes to be inaccurate and anachronistic."

Wood wrote about a dozen books, including The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (1969), which was nominated for a National Book Award, and Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, a Pulitzer finalist in 2010. He was also presented with a National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama in 2011.

"His name may have been most widely known, though, for being included in a memorable monologue that Matt Damon's title character delivers in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting, skewering a Harvard student's academic pretensions. Soon, Will says, 'you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talking about, you know, the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization,' " the Times wrote.

Wood later told the Los Angeles Review of Books: "That's my two seconds of fame. More kids know about that than any of the books I have written."

A new collection of Wood's essays will be published next year. His most recent book was Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution (2021). 

Godmothers in Summerland, Calif., hosted a standing-room-only launch event for Shannon Algeo's The Power in Your Hands: Liberate Yourself from Attachment to Technology (Broadleaf Books). Algeo was in conversation with author and activist Seane Corn. Pictured: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh (l.), co-owner of Godmothers, Alegeo (c.), and Corn (r.) (photo courtesy Nico Nelson and Broadleaf Books)

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:

7. I See You've Called in Dead by John Kenney (Zibby Publishing)
11. The King in Yellow, Deluxe Edition by Robert W. Chambers (Pushkin Press)
16. The Clock House Murders (The Bizarre House Mysteries) by Yukito Ayatsuji (Pushkin Vertigo)
25. She Walks at Night (Detective Kindaichi Mysteries) by Seishi Yokomizo (Pushkin Vertigo)
29. Puck: A Novel by Samantha Allen (Zando)
32. Homosexual Intifada: A Queer Palestinian Anthology edited by George Abraham (Olive Branch Press)
39. The Fire Agent by David Baerwald (Spiegel & Grau)

This week's debut nonfiction titles:

1. A Resistance History of the United States by Tad Stoermer (Steerforth)
2. The Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Style Government by Barbara McQuade (Seven Stories Press)
5. The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail by Eric Jay Dolin (Liveright)
34. Ulysses S. Cat and Other Animals I Have Known by Scott Simon, illus. by Liana Finck (W. W. Norton)
39. The First All-Star Game: Babe Ruth, FDR and America at the Crossroads by Randall Sullivan (Atlantic Monthly Press)

Here is the June edition of The Poetry Shelf, our suggested poetry assortment, compiled by Michelle Halket of Central Avenue Publishing.

Welcome to the June edition of The Poetry Shelf!

There's a few things I wanted to note this month; the first is that we're seeing a larger-than-normal number of classics editions on the list; think various editions of The Odyssey, Aeneid, The Iliad, and Divine Comedy. Could it be due to the upcoming movie of The Odyssey or is it some softness in the Experienced Readers and Accessible poetry segments? When I drilled into the most popular edition of The Odyssey, sales are up significantly over last year by about 2.5 times for the same week a year ago. The second note is that we are seeing a few old favorites come back on to the bestseller list, books like Bluets by Maggie Nelson, You Are Only Just Beginning by Morgan Harper Nichols, and Richard Siken's anniversary edition of Crush. 

That said, there are a few new little poetic nuggets on the list including: 

David's Crown by Malcolm Guite (a backlist title perhaps revived by his popular Galahad and the Grail?)
Killing Spree by Jodie Graham
Tongue by Chase Hughes
Practices in Apparition by Gabi Abrao

For our feature month in July, this was a tough one! It's a day of celebration for both Canada and the U.S. as we celebrate the birth of our nations, but I didn't want to lean only into the patriotic. So, I thought more about it and the concept of "nation" came to me. These two nations are home to us all, but they evoke such different emotions and senses of place to so many different people. So, I researched some titles that for me represent what Canada and U.S. are: to those of us who were born here of colonial heritage or immigrant parents, to people newly landed, and to those whose land this was before Europeans arrived. I don't know if I got it right, but I do feel as though a day of patriotism can also be marked by recognizing what our countries mean to all of us with different perspectives. 

As always, everything I put on these lists are just suggestions meant to spark ideas of your own. Pick and choose as best fits your store!

Kristen Bianco has joined the Little, Brown Publicity team as senior publicist. She was previously at Putnam.

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Tyler Simon has been promoted to marketing associate at Berkley.

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At Candlewick Press, Holiday House, and Peachtree:

Danicka Joseph has joined the company as publicity assistant. She was previously a publicity intern.

Ismery Pavon has joined the company as part-time social media coordinator. Pavon most recently was program and marketing coordinator and social media manager for the Miami Book Fair.

Chris Reading (Time Travel Is Dangerous) will write, direct, and exec produce a film adaptation of Adrian J. Walker's novel The End of the World Running Club, Deadline reported. Candr Pictures optioned the rights to the book.

The End of the World Running Club "is set after catastrophic asteroid impacts across Europe. The synopsis reads: Edinburgh father Ed embarks on a desperate 500-mile race on foot to reach his family before the last evacuation ships leave Britain's shores," Deadline noted.

"I'm beyond thrilled that Candr Pictures are adapting The End of the World Running Club," Walker said. "I love Chris's work, and his uniquely British blend of dark humor, sci-fi and humanity is a perfect fit for the story. I still receive messages from new readers all over the world telling me how much the book moved them, and I can't wait for them to be able to relive the excitement (and pain) of Ed's journey brought to life on the screen." 

Reading added: "We don't see many British apocalypse stories, which is a shame; all the weird characters it can throw up, the chaos, the gallows humor. Adrian's book has all of that in spades. At its center is a beautifully simple premise: one man trying to get to his family. I want to make something that lovers of the book will recognize and embrace, whilst bringing my own sense of fun, irreverence, and dark laughs to the ride."

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, June 14
8 a.m. Mike Pence, author of What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience (Center Street, $33, 9781546011637). (Re-airs Sunday at 8:10 p.m.)

11:40 a.m. The 2026 Lukas Prizes, presented by Columbia University Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, given to "the best in American nonfiction writing."

1 p.m. Elisabeth Reynolds, author of Priority Technologies: Ensuring U.S. Security and Shared Prosperity (The MIT Press, $24.95, 9780262054294).

2:25 p.m. James H. McCommons, author of The Feather Wars: And the Great Crusade to Save America's Birds (St. Martin's Press, $33, 9781250286895), at Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Mich.

3:45 p.m. Soumaya Keynes and Chad P. Bown, authors of How to Win a Trade War: An Optimistic Guide to an Anxious Global Economy (Simon & Schuster, $30, 9781668221310).

4:55 p.m. Sean M. Wiswesser, author of Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin's Secret War (Naval Institute Press, $36.95, 9781682476017).

The shortlist has been released for the £5,000 (about $6,685) Klaus Flugge Prize, which recognizes "the most promising and exciting newcomer to children's picture book illustration." The winner will be named September 9. This year's shortlisted illustrators are:

Becky Colvin for The Great Green Island 
Laila Ekboir for We Are Like Birds 
Thekla Priebst for The Voyage that Changed the World 
Justin Worsley for Henry the Artistic Dog 
Forest Xiao for Seven Babies 
Circle Yuen for Our Dance 

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, June 16:

Arrivals and Departures: A Novel by Amanda Eyre Ward (Ballantine, $30, 9780593500323) is a globe-spanning family drama featuring characters from The Jetsetters.

Little Wonder: A Novel by Sophie Chen Keller (Ballantine, $30, 9798217094608) follows a Chinese music prodigy separated from his mother as a child.

A Year of Marvelous Ways by Sarah Winman (Putnam, $29, 9798217181117) takes place in 1940s Cornwall, where an elderly woman and young soldier become friends.

Songs of the Dead by Brandon Sanderson and Peter Orullian (S&S/Saga Press, $30, 9781668068144) is the first book in a new contemporary fantasy series called the Strata Wars. 

Wildflower: A Novel by Becky Jenkinson (Del Rey, $29.99, 9798217095216) is romantasy about a magical florist.

Never Tell a Black Girl How to Black Girl: Essays by Amena Brown (Tiny Reparations Books, $30, 9798217044689) contains essays about being a Black woman.

I Eat the Stars: How to Live Fully and Beautifully in a Collapsing World by Sarah Wilson (Penguin Life, $32, 9780593994993) looks at living under difficult circumstances.

Monster of a Land: On the Road in Search of Modern America by Lauren Hough (Pantheon, $30, 9780593686621) is a social commentary travelogue inspired by John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley.

Kingdom of Waves by Melissa de la Cruz (Roaring Brook, $20.99, 9781250361677) is the first title in a new YA series about teen thieves seeking mythical treasure.

Spaghetti Head & Chicken Fingers by Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal, illus. by Erica Salcedo (HarperPop, $21.99, 9780063474154) is a picture book from the creators of Good Mythical Morning. 

Paperbacks:
Dearly Departed by Chip Pons (Putnam, $20, 9798217179558).

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

Hardcover
The Children by Melissa Albert (Morrow, $32, 9780063487437). "Alternating between the otherworldliness of a gothic children's story and a deceptively mundane narrative, Albert expertly weaves two timelines into a thoroughly creepy tale that teases like a cold breath on the back of your neck." --Heather Herbaugh, Mitzi's Books, Rapid City, S.Dak.

Marion by Leah Rowan (St. Martin's Press, $27, 9780593702048). "As a debut, Marion is fresh, daring, and immensely promising. A sharp, gutsy reimagining that delivers tension, atmosphere, and explorations of sisterhood, survival, and reclaiming narrative power." --Keri Matranga, Tide Turners Books & More, Poquoson, Va.

Paperback
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager, $18, 9780063021488). "I'd follow R.F. Kuang anywhere--and that includes hell! Deep, dark, and atmospheric, Katabasis balances academia and danger perfectly, solidifying Kuang as an expert in the genre." --Kassie King, The Novel Neighbor, Webster Groves, Mo.

Ages 4-8
The Dog Who Was (Almost) Perfect by Jack Kurland (Frances Lincoln Children's Books, $18.99, 9781836007753). "A charming, clever, and reassuring tale about loving (and being loved for) your perfectly-imperfect self. I want everyone to meet Doris!" --Chelsea Bromley, Bromley's Books, Marquette, Mich.

Ages 8-12
The Island at the Edge of Night by Lucy Strange (Chicken House, $19.99, 9781338686494). "A brooding tale set on a remote island off the coast of Scotland with courageous kids and nasty villains. Love how a touch of fairytale blends with the science of trees." --Kristine Jelstrom-Hamill, Buttonwood Books and Toys, Cohasset, Mass.

Ages 13+
Encore!: A Graphic Novel by Miles Toriko Burks (HarperAlley, $18.99, 9780063282452). "A charming young adult story with wonderful illustrations. The story is fun and relatable and the characters feel like real teens making real choices. The pacing is great, and the story kept me smiling and rooting for Clay and Aron." --Miracle Lucketti, Ballast Book Company, Bremerton, Wash.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

Thao Thai's tense, luminous second novel, The Seekers of Deer Creek, explores art, love, loss, and family through the complicated story of two Vietnamese American sisters and their connection to an enigmatic French Vietnamese artist.

Growing up in rural Deer Creek, Wis., Vivi and Calla Nguyễn shared a fierce bond. They were wildly different in temperament but devoted to one another and to their art. After their mother left, Vivi, two years the elder, became the caretaker for Calla and their father, Tuấn, a mercurial man who rarely spoke of the family he left back in Việt Nam. The sisters took to the woods whenever their father's temper flared, and Vivi learned to be watchful and prudent, protecting Calla so her sister could flourish.

As adults, the two sisters pursue different life paths: Vivi as a meticulous, respected art conservator at a Chicago museum, Calla as a brilliant artist who moves through the world and her studio with passion and boldness. Months after Calla's latest art opening--site of a dramatic falling-out between the sisters--their father dies, and Calla discovers a mysterious letter and an unfinished sketch among his papers. She convinces Vivi that the letter and the sketch, which bears a striking similarity to a piece called Blue Mirror by the French Vietnamese artist K.P. Lý, prove their family has a connection to Lý. Reluctantly, Vivi agrees to join Calla on a quest that takes them from their native Midwest to the French countryside to their ancestral home in Việt Nam, and--more importantly and more dangerously--into the fraught terrain of their relationship.

Thai (Banyan Moon) deftly captures the nuances of the sisters' complex relationship, contrasting Vivi's need to protect both Calla and herself from harsh realities with Calla's need to explore, to push boundaries, to provoke. The sisters' issues go beyond mere bickering; each of them must confront the childhood memories that have hardened into myth, and each must open up to a new way of relating to one another. As Vivi painstakingly translates a journal left behind by Lý, the sisters also begin to question other accepted narratives: what the art world says about Lý, and what their father told or didn't tell them about the family he left behind. Vivi, especially, is forced to reexamine her conviction that she is the sister with all the answers, as Calla tugs her (sometimes literally) into a world more perilous and more vibrant than her carefully ordered conservator's lab.

Tender and spiky, like the sisters' relationship, The Seekers of Deer Creek mixes art history, family secrets, and psychological insight to create a dynamic portrait of two unforgettable women. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Shelf Talker: Thao Thai's luminous second novel follows two Vietnamese American sisters on a quest to unearth their family's connection to an enigmatic French Vietnamese artist.

We have to start again, from the stones. This would be my contribution to the common good.

--Antonio Romani, The Patient Wait of the Stones: Time and Memory in Lunigiana

Last Friday, my wife and I went to an author reading and reception at the fine indie Battenkill Books in Cambridge, N.Y. That doesn't seem, on the surface, like a newsworthy statement, given that I've hosted or attended countless such gatherings over the past three decades as a bookseller and then editor/columnist. 

But this one was special. We were celebrating the publication of The Patient Wait of the Stones: Time and Memory in Lunigiana by Antonio Romani, translated by the author and his partner, Martha Cooley. They both read excerpts from the book in English and Italian, then fielded questions, including the inevitable one about the popular fantasy of rebuilding an old house in Italy, which they answered with a gentle reality check. 

Some author events have deeper roots than others. Since the 1990s, I have been Martha's reader and, briefly, her student. The Patient Wait of the Stones is the second release from Galpón Press, which was launched by Michael Jacobs and Sheridan Hay, both of whom I've known for a long time. Although I'd only met Antonio once before, I knew he had been a bookshop owner in Italy (always important street cred in my worldview) and I had previously read Time Ages in a Hurry by Antonio Tabucchi (Archipelago Books, 2015), which he'd also co-translated with Martha. But roots is not the key word here, or at least not quite the right word. Stone is... and stone is complex. 

You see, there's this wall. It's located on Martha and Antonio's property in Castilione del Terziere, which lies in the middle of a valley at the extreme north of Tuscany, in an area called Lunigiana. In The Patient Wait of the Stones, Antonio chronicles his efforts to reconstruct the long-neglected, yet "splendid example of a dry-stone wall around thirty meters long and two meters high, elegant and solid--or so it seemed to me. It holds up the entire slope and our house, and the castle too. I started to stroke the wall, wanting to feel its skin, stone by stone.... Dry-stone walls had always captured my attention. Now I had one, and it wasn't a border wall; it was there to support the land, not divide it."

Martha Cooley & Antonio Romani

The physical and mental demands of Antonio's work on the wall become both a catalyst and storeroom for his meditations: "Turning to trace the activity of the crevices in the rocks, I imagined that my wall could become a coded container of my memories--Why not?--along the lines of the brilliant idea of Giulio Camillo, the sixteenth century humanist who looked to the future in order to tap into memories of the past..... 

"I simply liked the idea that my wall could become a theater of my memory. It was up to me to decide how to fill its patterns with meanings and choose which recollections to associate with the shapes I myself had actually created."

And so he does, eloquently, with moving contemplation of the past and present, including his childhood; his life with--and then, tragically, without--his late wife, Valeria; his years as a bookseller (where "books of all types, dimensions, and colors, assumed in my memory the appearance of a vast wall of stones, each different from the others"); and, later, his curious friendship with the Professor, the larger than-life owner of the village's castle. Then there's Antonio's reading life, the sustaining murmurs of favorite writers. 

Antonio's recollections include his and Valeria's friendship with Martha (whom they met in the bookshop), which, with the passing of time, became an unanticipated love story ("To live in solitude, with Martha, as a choice not imposed except by my own will, I hoped, I could find the way to a balance point between anguish and indifference. In that kind of limbo between chaos and necessity, the stones whispered to me: you are free."). 

You also must read this book to explore the extraordinary history of itinerant booksellers in the region seven centuries ago. "Before moving to Lunigiana, I knew nothing of this tradition," Antonio writes. "When I discovered it, naturally the figure of the itinerant bookseller attracted my attention. I too had begun selling books right in the middle of the northern plain."

Martha Cooley, Antonio Romani, & Battenkill Books owner Connie Brooks

It always comes back to the stones, though. "For some time now, wherever I am in the borgo my gaze has been drawn toward stones, almost as if responding to their call," he notes.

I know that call, too. Not from dry-wall stones, but from marble, some of it imported from Italy. My grandfather and my father worked in Vermont marble quarries and mills a long time ago. Stone triggers memories; it's in my blood. I still listen to the murmurs of stone men from my past. 

The Patient Wait of the Stones is a gift for people willing to read... and to listen. As Antonio observes: "I seek a new belonging that binds tradition with an awareness of the sacrifices on which it is based. I seek this while pausing to hear, in the murmur of stones, the voices of those who knew how to pick up that murmur before me, in literature and art."