Most Ardently Books, a romance-focused bookstore in Eugene, Ore., held a grand opening celebration Saturday, July 25, the Register-Guard reported.

Jamie Markwell

Located at 1670 W. 11th Ave., Most Ardently debuted on June 18 and sells a variety of romance titles with an emphasis on diversity and representation. Alongside books, owner Jamie Markwell carries stickers, totes, and an assortment of bookish gifts. 

The grand opening festivities on Saturday included cupcakes from a local baker, a free raffle for all attendees, a prize wheel and giveaways, an appearance from a pop-up soda shop, and a signing with local romance author Janine Amesta. 

A romance reader since she was 13, Markwell said she'd dreamed of opening a romance store for years but did not think it was feasible until she saw the wave of romance bookstores opening around the country. Initially she planned on opening a mobile bookstore and even bought a trailer, but when she and her husband found an ideal space on 11th Ave., she decided to go the bricks-and-mortar route.

Looking ahead, Markwell intends to increase the store's selection of books by LGBTQ+, indigenous, and local authors, while expanding the store's events program. The signing with Amesta was actually the store's first author event; she plans to host more, and she'll debut two new book clubs in August, with one focused on contemporary romance and another on historical romance. At a later date she would also like to add a sports romance book club and an LGBTQ+ romance book club.

Markwell said the bookstore has been well-received so far. "It's been so rewarding for me having people come in and enjoy the space already and tell me, like, 'Thank you for doing this. Thank you for being here.' I've almost cried a few times because people have just been so lovely, and it just makes me feel so good. 

"That's what keeps me going. There's definitely been nights where I've cried because it's stressful and it's hard, but then having people come in and be so happy that I'm here has just been the biggest gift."

Following its debut in late May, Fiction Addiction Mobile Bookstore has been making appearances around Redding, Calif., the Redding Record Searchlight reported.

The bookstore, which is built out of a renovated trailer, carries around 400 books and focuses on adult genre fiction. Owners Kayla Rhodes and Falen Shaw place a strong emphasis on working with local independent authors, and they've taken Fiction Addiction Mobile Bookstore to coffee shops, breweries, and Redding's Pride festival. 

Shaw, an EMT, and Rhodes, a paramedic, decided to open the shop in order to bring a bookstore to Redding that was more in line with their tastes. They went the mobile route because there was a much lower barrier to entry, and they still have full-time jobs.

Looking ahead, Rhodes and Shaw would like to host book signings for local indie authors, and future stops for the mobile bookstore include the Redding Retro Market and the Flows by the River music festival.

Read It & Eat Bookshop will be moving this fall from its space in Buffalo's Valvaere Collective to a 1,700-square-foot flagship location, with a dedicated demonstration kitchen, at 5526 Main St. in Williamsville, N.Y. Buffalo Business First reported that owner Kimberly Behzadi started her business about five years ago as an online book and food subscription operation out of her Chicago apartment. After relocating to Western New York in 2021, she gradually expanded to become a full-fledged culinary bookstore. 

"That commercial kitchen will enable and unlock for us the ability to host cooking classes, private events and it will be certified so that it can be rented hourly for those that might be a small business, that are part of maybe the farmers' market, which enables job opportunities and helps community engagement," she said.

In building her business, Behzadi researched culinary bookstores in America and independent bookstores in the Buffalo area. "I think people sometimes have the impression that bookstores, we are these magical places, which we are, but it's a business and it's very serious," she said.

Behzadi has an MBA with a concentration in marketing and consulting from the University at Buffalo. She became a certified bookseller through the Professional Booksellers School. In 2022, she participated in the UB's Emerging Entrepreneurship Accelerator program. More recently, she has taken a class on profitability for bookstores and financial planning for bookstores. "I'm someone who fully believes in the long-term investment and also continuing education," she said.

While looking for a flagship location, her research told her the highest concentration of her biggest customers was in North Buffalo, which narrowed her search to Kenmore or Williamsville, and eventually to the space she will occupy. Her goal is to have the kitchen be continually booked, including people teaching classes to those holding private events to smaller businesses who need kitchen space.

"A bookstore, as magical and whimsical as I love my store and want it to be, you know, there are lots of calculations that go into this," she said. "I believe in risk, but I'm also trying to take a calculated risk."

BookMarx in Springfield, Mo., has opened an expansion called the Footnote, the Springfield News-Leader reported. Located at 325 E. Walnut St., BookMarx now occupies both Suites 101 and 102. The expansion has allowed the used and new bookstore to nearly triple its book inventory, create an events space, add a used book buying station, and give more room to its video rental store, Mr. Googorium's Movie Emporium. 

Co-owners Josh Arnett and Harvey Day-Arnett signed the lease for Suite 102 in May. "The opportunity to move into the space next door opened up for us," Day-Arnett told the Springfield News-Leader. "And so we asked if we could knock a hole in the wall and the landlord said yes."

They celebrated the Footnote's opening with a ribbon cutting (by store cat Ms Cyrano) on Friday and a local author showcase on Saturday. The first Footnote Salon event will be held on Wednesday, and going forward the space will be used for author talks, storytime sessions, and more.

Day-Arnett said there are no plans for future additions, aside from the possible addition of a new store cat or two. "We're definitely ready to chill here for a second, take a breather, and enjoy all of this," she said. "But we still have lots of room to add on, and we see ourselves just continuing to grow into this space and continuing to layer things. So we want to keep bringing really fun and interesting events to the community."

Simon Trewin, a British literary agent who established the Garage Press and a volunteer-run community education center, died June 25. He was 60. In the Guardian, author Matthew Sweet wrote: "Some agents are fair-weather friends. Not Simon Trewin. He represented me for 30 years, taking on my first book when I was still a postgraduate student. Like all his clients, I could depend on his honesty, his loyalty, his wit, and the poker-faced negotiating skills that belied his natural shyness."

During his career, Trewin "gathered a community of writers who followed him from company to company, and finally, to independence," Street noted. He was the first and only literary agent for John Boyne (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas). He signed YA novelist Catherine Banner when she was 16. He gave Chloé Esposito the titles for her trilogy of thrillers, Mad (2017), Bad (2018), and Dangerous to Know (2020)--and helped her secure deals worth £2 million (about $2.7 million).

Trewin began his career at Sheil Land Associates before moving on to Peters Fraser and Dunlop. In 2007, he founded United Agents with a group of colleagues and represented the Ian Fleming estate. In 2012 he "baffled some of his colleagues by leaving United to head the London office of the global talent agency William Morris Endeavor. The move satisfied his restless instincts and allowed him to acquire two vintage sports cars (one red, one Yves Klein blue), but the office culture did not delight him," Street wrote. 

After founding his own independent agency in 2019, he developed a passion that began at the age of 10 when his father took him to the Times printworks on the Gray's Inn Road. "The acquisition of Gloria, an 1870s platen press of the type once used by Virginia and Leonard Woolf, was key to the inky turn in his life. He established a workshop, the Garage Press, and subsequently, the Print Room at Bell House, a volunteer-run community education center in Dulwich, south London," Street noted. At Garage Press he ran printing workshops, collected block type, made his own ink from oak apple gall, risked his fingers in the mechanism, and gathered a community of like-minded "inkaholics" to join the writers he had already assembled. 

In 2016, Trewin received a copy of a manuscript by Paul Lynch, a Limerick-born author of two respectfully reviewed novels who had found little interest in his third. "I want to save your career," Trewin told him. "It took 14 months to make the deal," Street wrote. "Grace became the Kerry Group Irish novel of the year 2018. Five years later, his confidence boosted, Lynch won the Booker prize for his dystopian parable Prophet Song. Trewin was the first person he acknowledged: 'Thank you for being my consigliere.' "

London children's book publisher Do Re Mi Books, distributed by Consortium, visited Seattle recently and met up with some local booksellers. Pictured at Queen Anne Book Co.: (l.-r., back row) Laura Sager (Third Place Books Ravenna), Haley Stocking (Phinney Books), Tegan Tigani (Queen Anne Book Co.), Lise Solomon (Consortium sales rep), (front) Anna Watanabe and Sam Voulters (Do Re Mi Books), Christy McDanold (Secret Garden Books), Lily Clay (Eagle Harbor Books), Katherine Ransiear (Secret Garden Books), Nicole Rader (Queen Anne Book Co.).

Congratulations to Paper Hearts Bookstore, Little Rock, Ark., which celebrated its fifth anniversary this weekend. 

The two-day celebration included a community service project, teacher wish lists, a community art project, prizes and giveaways, and a happy hour on Saturday afternoon. The Paper Hearts team also unveiled new store-branded shirts and a new book club. 

Owner Beth Quarles told KATV the store is "continually looking at" ways of getting out into the community and bringing books to people directly, rather than "just making people come to our brick-and-mortar."

Quarles launched Paper Hearts Bookstore in 2021 with co-founder Adrienne Autin. The pair had worked at the same nonprofit for years and eventually decided to create a space where they could swoon over books and make new bookish friends while fostering community and literacy.

Big Hill Books in Minneapolis, Minn., posted a photo of bookseller cat Goose in an appropriate pose, noting: "What the box says--and we didn't even prompt him to lay down in the box!"

Posted on Instagram by Anthology for Books in Geneseo, Ill.: "What happens when Waldo looks for Waldo? Sometimes, success! Sometimes, not! How's your search going? #FindWaldoLocal ends this Friday 7/31 in Geneseo. You still have time to get in the game!"

Today:
Fresh Air: Mike McIntire, author of Ricochet: Guns, Greed, and the American Way of Violence (Atria/One Signal, $29, 9781668063064).

Tomorrow:
The View repeat: Joan Lunden, author of Joan: Life Beyond the Script (Lasega Books, $32, 9781637634929).

Kelly Clarkson Show repeat: Jen Hamilton, author of Birth Vibes: Stories and Strategies for an Empowered Birth (Grand Central, $30, 9781538771471).

"Just nine months after Heated Rivalry premiered and became a worldwide phenomenon, gay adult entertainment company Falcon | NakedSword is getting into the book business," Variety reported. The company, with headquarters in San Francisco, is launching FalconInk, a publishing house with a focus on erotic fiction that will consist of three imprints: Falcon Books, NakedSword Books, and Raging Stallion Books.

FalconINK has published two novellas: Hard Ball, an original sports romance from Falcon Books, and Wild Game: Open Season, a prequel to the gay adult film Wild Game, from NakedSword Books, releasing July 28. A launch party for the publishing house will take place at Book Soup in West Hollywood on August 29.

"This exciting venture reflects our commitment to expanding beyond our traditional audience while staying true to the storytelling and sexuality that have defined Falcon for more than five decades," Falcon | NakedSword CEO Tim Valenti said. "For the first time, we're also creating content for one of the largest audiences in the M/M romance space: women. No company is better positioned to tell accessible romantic and erotic stories than the one that has been doing it so successfully since 1971."

Sisters in Crime Australia has released a shortlist for the Davitt Awards, recognizing the best crime and mystery books by Australian women. The shortlists are presented in four categories: adult fiction, nonfiction, YA, and children's books. Check out the complete shortlist here.

Judges' coordinator Ruth Wykes said, "The shortlist showcases everything that’s exciting about Australian women crime writers in 2026. These stories are beautifully written. They are highly original and thought-provoking and reflect many of the challenges, conflicts and often the things we love best, about contemporary Australian culture."

Winners of each category, along with recipients of additional awards for best debut and Readers' Choice, will be named on September 12.

Imbolo Mbue's immersive Every Story Is a Love Story begins with a letter from Victoria Snow, the white woman who was driving the car that killed Wolo Lifafa's wife, Yoma, who was pregnant with twins.

It has been three years since Wolo lost his entire family when his wife went out for a jog one morning and never returned. He is convinced an "African immigrant getting justice meant nothing to the police; protecting white people was their priority." And he is still angry. Wolo's mother, Keka, is adamant that Wolo not open Victoria's letter. But there are things Wolo wants "to say to her face."

The chapters alternate between Wolo's present in New York City and the past--from his courtship of Yoma up to the morning of her death. Through these juxtapositions, Mbue makes clear the opportunities available in the U.S. to the Lifafas, but also the trade-offs in leaving their homeland and support system in Cameroon. Keka's recognition of the freedoms for women especially, and for the education of her two sons, compel her to remain in the U.S. when her husband returns to Cameroon for a position as a professor at the University of Yaoundé. Wolo even suspects Keka may have orchestrated the duration of her stay--to complete her own education--by nudging her husband into the arms of another woman; he impregnates a student, whom he marries and with whom he has additional children. Mama Jokeh, as Wolo calls his father's second wife, is both from an "eminent family" and "[knows] she could never be equals with the sophisticated, American-educated senior wife"; she and Keka become close, keeping the family together.

Years later, when Osi, son of Jokeh, sexually assaults Mary Lambi, a young woman from a lower class, Keka and Jokeh ask Wolo, as the eldest son, to help them. Wolo is moved by the way Mary's father handles Osi's transgression. This stays with him, so that when Victoria sends him the letter, he finds himself thinking of the elder's ability to forgive. Wolo's father-in-law, too, models for Wolo the capacity to forgive; he tells Wolo: "Some people want your grief to look the way they think it should look, the way they would do it if they were you...."

Mbue (How Beautiful We Were; Behold the Dreamers) explores with grace and nuance in the numerous ways people experience loss, anger, and sorrow. Through the examples of Victoria and Osi, she demonstrates that the perpetrators of harm also need to heal. Her tender novel allows readers to see they are not alone in their desire to move through grief and assures them that they will. --Jennifer M. Brown

Shelf Talker: In Imbolo Mbue's profound exploration of how different people move through grief, she affirms that there is indeed life after loss.