Long Dark House, a Black-owned bookstore focused on science fiction and horror, will open September 1 in Alexandria, Va., Axios reported.

Located at 501 King St. in Old Town Alexandria, Long Dark House will carry a wide variety of horror and sci-fi with an emphasis on independent authors, small presses, and underrepresented voices. Event plans include themed book clubs, silent reading groups, author signings, writing workshops, tabletop gaming nights, cookbook potlucks, and more. The bookstore will share the space with Madame Coco's Emporium, which will sell chocolates, fragrances, and other items.

Owner Chanthal Harris described herself as a lifelong reader whose love of sci-fi and horror came from television shows like Tales from the Crypt and The Twilight Zone. She explained that while she is a fan of the other independent bookstores in the area, she wanted to create a third space and hub for lovers of horror and sci-fi.

"Readers are looking for more than just a place to buy books," Harris told Axios. "They're looking for a curated experience and a sense of belonging."

Prior to the September 1 opening, Long Dark House will make several pop-up appearances around Alexandria, including a "witchy summer soiree" at a local bar and a cocktail party themed on the Apple TV series Widow's Bay. 

The store has an active membership program, and Harris has a preview night celebration planned for founding members. Details about a grand opening celebration will be announced.

Booktique Unlimited will open a bricks-and-mortar store in Summit, Ill., later this summer, the Regional News reported. The new and used bookstore will carry general-interest titles for all ages and will occupy a space at 7420 W. Archer Ave. Spanish-language titles will be available, and owner Amanda Maria Barrios will also carry mugs, bookmarks, e-reader accessories, and other book-related items.

Barrios will host a grand opening for the bookstore on August 29, which will include a ribbon-cutting ceremony, raffles, giveaways, and treats. Looking ahead, she plans to create book clubs as well as a Little Free Library, teacher wishlists, and a loyalty program for frequent customers. 

After debuting as a mobile pop-up store, Booktique Unlimited opened a location inside of Painted Tree Boutiques in Naperville, Ill. In April, however, that business closed and filed for bankruptcy, leaving Barrios searching for a new home for her store.

"I found a rental on Facebook Marketplace," Barrios told the Regional News. "I reached out with my idea and they loved it."

Barrios added: "We plan to be open for as long as the community will have and support us."

Riverstone Books, Pittsburgh, Pa., is closing its McCandless Crossing store on August 10 after nine years and will be relocating "two stoplights north" on McKnight Road to a standalone building in Pine Creek Center, the Pittsburgh Business Times reported.

Riverstone's future location

Owner Barbara Jeremiah, who founded Riverstone after a 30-year career at Alcoa, said customers can still shop at Riverstone's Squirrel Hill location, which opened in 2021, or online during the transition. The new store is expected to debut about two weeks after closing its previous space.

The company began looking for new space last year when facing "a significant rent increase" at McCandless Crossing, its home since 2017. "But looking at different store fronts also gave us the chance to think about what we wanted Riverstone to be in the future," Riverstone said. "So what is that vision? A new home with more space for events, a flexible space that can host a variety of new kinds of events, a space that still welcomes everyone with even more spots to sit and read, a true third space to grow our Riverstone community and a space that will serve a darn good cup of coffee.

"We hope you will embrace our new location," Riverstone added. "We are choosing to grow in space and in the services we offer at a time when reading books continues to be challenged by so many other forms of entertainment and spending time together is less appealing for many than spending time alone with your phone. But we think having a place that's available for your book club or a craft night or a birthday party or shower or mahjong classes is exactly what we are here to offer and once you get to see the new space, we would love to hear your thoughts on what else we can do together."

Krew's Books & Brews has closed its bricks-and-mortar store in Lake Charles, La., as it pivots to an online and pop-up model, the Advocate reported. The last day in business for the physical store at 1413 W. Prien Lake Rd. was June 30.

Going forward, owner Karri Hill plans to sell books online while hosting pop-up events in partnership with businesses and other organizations around Lake Charles. In October, Hill will host a midnight release party for the sixth A Court of Thorns and Roses book, and she hopes to find venues for monthly craft clubs and book clubs. Also in the works is a "Hot Girl Walk" book club. 

Hill, who opened the bookstore and coffee shop in October 2024, attributed the closure to broader economic conditions. She told the Advocate: "Unfortunately, just a few short months after we opened, the economy took a major dip, so that was really unhelpful because it's hard to ask people to spend $20 on a book when they can't afford eggs, and coffee (at a) shop is unfortunately a luxury because you can make coffee at home." 

She noted that she might have been able to reduce some overhead and keep the physical store open if she turned the business entirely into a coffee shop or entirely into a bookstore, but she decided against it. At the end of the day, Hill said, "that's not what Krew's Books and Brews is."

Charles Burchell, one of Canada's most recognized booksellers, died July 10. He was 84. Burchell was born in Halifax, N.S. After attending Mount Allison University, he moved into retailing with Easton's of Canada department stores, where for the next five years he was a troubleshooter for many departments and helped direct advertising and promotion. 

In 1966, he took a job managing the Book Room Limited in Halifax. Shortly after joining the bookshop, he was elected a director of the Canadian Booksellers Association, a position he was re-elected to for more than 18 years, the longest director ever to serve. 

Burchell became president of the Book Room in 1977, and served the company for a total of 44 years. In 1982, he was named Bookseller of the Year, the highest honor presented at that time to the Canadian bookselling industry. He was the first bookseller in Atlantic Canada to be so honored. 

That same year, he accepted an appointment to serve on the N.S. government's Committee on Publishing. The results of the committee recommendations helped shape publishing policy in Nova Scotia. Burchell was asked in 1997 to appear in Ottawa before Senator Michael Kerby's Banking Committee on HST-Tax-In pricing. The result was a new 15% tax imposed on all goods sold in Canada (food exempted), with only books receiving a partial exemption. In Canada, this was considered an understanding by the federal government regarding the importance of books in Canadians' lives. 

A founding member of the Atlantic Booksellers' Association, Burchell served as its president. He joined nine other bookseller cooperatives across Canada for a task force to help develop an electronic ordering system for the Canadian industry. He also served as a founding director of Booksellers Co-operative, an independent buying group for booksellers in Canada. In addition, he presented commentaries on the book industry and small business, as well as book reviews, for radio, newspaper, and TV. 

Burchell was supportive of authors, especially Canadian writers. In his 44 years as a bookseller he hosted authors from across the country and around the world. On his retirement, he was honored with the Canadian book industry's Libris Award for dedication and excellence in the book trade.

Bookselling was not in his early plans, but he found it to be a wonderful profession, Burchell's obituary noted, adding: "He was grateful to have spent his working career as a bookseller. He met so many wonderful people in that time; authors, fellow booksellers, publishers, the reading public, and those people who could advance the interest in books and make them available to more people." 

As the book world changed in the early part of the century with the arrival of online competition, the Book Room, which had been founded in 1838, closed in 2008. 

On his 82nd birthday, Burchell reflected on his life, describing it as a "wonderful experience" that gave him the opportunity to meet so many authors from all walks of life and many parts of the world. He enjoyed being able to bring writers and readers together.

Rainy Day Books, Fairway, Kan., hosted James Patterson and Mike Lupica for their new thriller, Country Road Murders (Little, Brown). The dynamic duo came on stage early to tell jokes to the audience before having a fascinating conversation with moderator Steve Kraske, local journalist for KCUR. Pictured (front, from l.) Kraske, Patterson, Lupica.

Registration is open for Books Across Borders' Hot Translation Summer Book Buzz, which will be held virtually on Wednesday, July 22, at 8 p.m. Eastern. The event features presentations about upcoming translated titles from Europa Editions, the Other Press, NorthSouth Books, Princeton University Press, Deep Vellum, New York Review Books, Tapioca Stories, and Grove Atlantic. To register, click here.

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:

9. We Were Forbidden by Jacqueline Harpman (Transit Books)
39. A Real Animal: A Novel by Emeline Atwood (Catapult) 

This week's debut nonfiction titles:

16. A Philosophy of Shame: A Revolutionary Emotion by Frédéric Gros (Verso)
35. Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War by Jane Rogoyska (W. W. Norton & Company)
38. The Wisdom of the Odyssey: Twenty-Four Life Lessons from Homer's Epic by Phil Cousineau (New World Library)

I Swore I'd Burn This Book by Andrew Lewis Conn (Simon Six), the first novel to be published by Jonathan Karp's new imprint. In this video, he introduces the title, "the ultimate Nabokovian puzzle."

Today:
Fresh Air: Nephi Craig, author of Our Knives Will Save Us: Dispatches from a White Mountain Apache Chef (Penguin Press, $30, 9780593831908).

Tomorrow:
Today: Colson Whitehead, author of Cool Machine: A Novel (Doubleday, $30, 9780385550505).

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, July 19
8:45 a.m. C.L. Max Nikias, author of American Trojan: Leadership, Resilience, and the Renewal of Higher Education (Encounter Books, $39.99, 9781641774932). (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m.)

11:45 a.m. David Silverman, author of The Chosen and The Damned: Native Americans and the Making of Race in the United States (Bloomsbury, $35.99, 9781635578386), at Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C.

12:20 p.m. Michael Edison Hayden, author Strange People on the Hill: How Extremism Tore Apart a Small American Town (Bold Type Books, $30, 9781645030607). 

1:25 to 4:20 p.m. Coverage of the 2026 Gold Coast Book Festival in Oyster Bay, N.Y.

• 1:25 p.m. A discussion on free speech and book bans with Christopher M. Finan, author of Freedom of Speech: A People's History of Democracy's Most Essential Right, Colleen Jaurretche, author of Language as Prayer in Finnegans Wake, and David Levithan, co-author of The Fight of Our Lives: AIDS in America.
• 2:25 p.m. A discussion on the environment and climate change with Trent Preszler, author of Evergreen: The Trees That Shaped America, Neil Shea, author of Frostlines: A Journey Through Entangled Lives and Landscapes in a Warming Arctic, and Mike Tidwell, author The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue: A Story of Climate and Hope on One American Street.
• 3:25 p.m. A discussion on threats to American democracy with Marc J. Dunkelman, author of Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress--and How to Bring It Back, Timothy J. Heaphy, author of We Are the Answer: How to Save Our Democracy, and Clay Risen, author of Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America.

4:20 p.m. Kathleen Duval, author of Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (Random House Trade Paperbacks, $22, 9780812981209).

Finalists have been announced for the 2026 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award. The winners in each category and the top three winners overall will be named at the Killer Nashville awards dinner on August 22 in Nashville, Tenn. Check out the complete list of Silver Falchion Award finalists here.

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, July 21:

Cool Machine: A Novel by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday, $30, 9780385550505) concludes the Harlem Trilogy.

The Mortons: A Novel by Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld (Pamela Dorman, $32, 9798217059492) follows the scion of a murderous crime family attending a cutthroat college.

The Story Keeper by Kelly Rimmer (MIRA, $30, 9781525831669) follows a woman investigating the secrets of her family's crumbling estate.

The Subtle Pleasures of Indiscretion by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon, $30, 9798217207336) is the 16th Isabel Dalhousie mystery.

The Talking Bone by Rene Denfeld (Harper, $28.99, 9780063396890) is a thriller about a woman who frees innocent men from death row.

Monsters Love Brownies by Ben Okon, illus. by Komal Sharma (Flamingo, $12.99, 9798217321056) is an interactive picture book that explains not all monsters love cookies.

I Didn't Do It by Elle Gonzalez Rose (Bloomsbury, $19.99, 9781547618484) features the daughter of a murderer who becomes the prime suspect when some of her teen peers are killed.

This Is the Plan: How to End America's Meltdown and Save Democracy by Ben Wikler (W.W. Norton, $29.99, 9781324131434) explores how to defeat and rebuild after the Trump regime.

Unsayable: A Life in Writing by Michael Cunningham (Random House, $30, 9798217198337) is a memoir by the author of The Hours and Day.

Dad, Love, Me: A Memoir by Matthew Quick (Avid Reader Press, $30, 9781668091753) is a memoir about a novelist's relationship with his father.

The Biggest Lie: The Prehistory of American Fascism, 1818-1915 by Joseph Kelly (Bloomsbury, $33, 9781639732111) traces fascism in the U.S. to the Antebellum South.

Country of Lords: Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America by Kim Phillips-Fein (W.W. Norton, $35, 9781324074441) charts the anti-egalitarian streak in American history. 

Paperbacks:
Yes, Chef by Grace Reilly (Avon, $18.99, 9780063384811).

If Books Could Kill: A Novel by Kate Eberle (Penguin, $18.99, 9780143139102).

My Friends: A Novel by Fredrik Backman (Atria, $20, 9781982112837).

This startlingly inventive novel following an American woman's first trip to the Middle East, Deena Helm's Our Cut of Salt is an unforgettable revenge drama with a supernatural twist. It is part of an emerging genre of fiction by writers reckoning with the history of their grandparents' lost Palestinian homelands by crafting intimate narratives of families and dreams ravaged by the mass displacement that occurred in 1948, now known as the Nakba (the Arabic word for catastrophe).

In the summer of 2002, in Chicago, Marina is a recent college graduate who lives with her mother, Haifa. It is the eve of her departure for her late grandmother Nuhad's ancestral home in present-day Israel. Once there, Marina hopes to find the "small stone house overlooking the Mediterranean Sea" where generations of her grandmother's family grew up breathing the salt air and which Nuhad was forced to flee during an attack by Israeli soldiers. The only things Nuhad carried with her were a heartbreaking secret she took to her grave and the name of her beloved city, Haifa, which she bestowed on her daughter.

Helm elegantly juxtaposes Nuhad's girlhood seaside adventures with the more recent narrative of Marina's arrival in Haifa, while the wounded spirit of Nuhad's stone house maintains a haunting, restless presence throughout the story. Once upon a time, generations of families and friends gathered there to celebrate Christmas, Easter, and Eid. Since the Nakba, however, it "drips saltwater from ceiling to floor in a never-ending cycle of remembrance" and "kills... those who live over the dead." Even "the street cats give the house a wide berth."

Salt functions in Helm's intriguing plot as both a healing power and a poison, revealing clues to Nuhad's past. Upon meeting Rania, her grandmother's childhood friend, Marina realizes just how much family history Nuhad concealed from her descendants. It makes her determined to uncover not only the missing pieces of her grandmother's life but also the mass graves of Nakba victims under a parking lot in Haifa. Marina's is an audacious plan to reclaim the past, to tame the tormented spirit of the house stolen in 1948. It's high time, she decides, to steal it back.

Fans of Hannah Lillith Assadi's Paradiso 17 and Isabella Hammad's Enter Ghost will be captivated by Our Cut of Salt. As a debut effort, it is a significant achievement, deploying fabulism to dark, impressive effect to convey historical horrors that, as Helm asserts, are still repeating. --Shahina Piyarali

Shelf Talker: In this haunting revenge drama with a supernatural twist, a young American woman travels to the Middle East in search of her grandmother's ancestral home by the Mediterranean Sea.

Bookselling is a global, aspirational profession (the "lifelong dream fulfilled" syndrome, according to medical experts), but for those of us who have labored in the bookish fields, the ideal is inevitably tempered by day-to-day realities. Everybody has good dreams... and bad dreams.

So is bookselling a dream job or an illusion easily shattered? I think that if you are meant to be a bookseller, you find a way to blend fantasy with reality productively. The best booksellers do this at a high level, every day. Well, most days. 

One way booksellers gain perspective about their calling is to seek counsel from their peers. In the not-so-distant past, these conversations were a bit more challenging and somewhat limited by geography. Some of the best exchanges often happened at regional or national trade shows.  

One of the primary ways we learn about other booksellers, however, has always been to use the best tool we have: reading. Perspective is everything, especially when you're feeling a little isolated behind the counter in your bookshop on a hot, quiet summer day. So, here's an international sampling from a few bookselling voices I've been reading lately:

British bookshop Main Character Books opened earlier this year in London. A few days ago, owner Cassie Simmons shared some thoughts on Instagram about her journey thus far: 

1. "So many people contribute to Main Character on a daily basis. From friends who flew in from afar for the opening to rants about business rates with my sister, a strong support system is essential.
2. Reading? Don't know her. I didn't read a book for 3 months around opening--yikes! And I now have to be intentional about what I read. There's simply not enough hours in the day for all the good books!
3. Who you hire matters! I can't do it all, and I have to trust my team's abilities. You'll see our booksellers on the socials, leading bookclubs, moderating panels, planning events, choosing our stock, and keeping me (and the accounts) in order.
4. You're going to be in front of a crowd and the camera! I was simply a passionate reader, so it's been a new world to learn how to share online, not ramble in interviews, and host events.
5. Something will go wrong. Did I forget to place the bubbles order for our opening? Yes. Did we have an event where the books didn't show up in time? Yes. Have I accidentally used the wrong pronouns for an author? Mortifyingly, yes. Mistakes happen: acknowledge them and ask for help! Extending grace to others goes a long way, too.
6. You can't do everything you'd like (or be everything to everyone). We have big dreams but I've had to be realistic about our capacity and what is feasible."

In Australia, Teo Jing Xuan and Marina Sano, who in 2020 launched Amplify Bookstore, West Melbourne, Vic., wrote in the Griffith Review ("Confessions from a Bookstore"):

"It's a funny thing to work a highly romanticized job--especially when that job is one you created to combat the deep-seated systemic failures of your industry. Customers and visitors to our shop... often sigh with jealousy at the idea of owning and operating an independent bookstore. It's a career often viewed as quietly aspirational, a perceived embodiment of the 'slow life,' made complete by the image of a bookseller who's surrounded by books and able to read all day. We've seen these assumptions time and again in the persistent subtropes of 'cozy fiction' and romance novels set in and around bookstores....

"What those who work outside of publishing don't factor in is that, ultimately, bookselling is a niche form of retail work. You are working in a bookshop. The curatorial process is certainly unique, but the basic business premise of a bookshop is that it's a place of commerce. And unfortunately, as much as we'd love to live in a world free from the shackles of capitalism, businesses need to make money to survive. 

"Bookstores hold the promise of creating a cultural and communal hub. When things are going well, they're centers of knowledge and exchange, places where readers can keep up with contemporary thought and trends and be exposed to the stories and ideas that are shaping our societies. Publishers might be the gatekeepers of whose knowledge and story gets to be written down, but it's up to booksellers to ensure that these stories reach the hands of the people."

In South Korea, Han Mi-hwa, author of An Exploration into the Sustainability of Neighborhood Bookstores, considered the social meaning of neighborhood bookstores in a recent interview with Seoul Economic Daily at Ihu Books in Mangwon-dong, Seoul.

"Most neighborhood bookstores have a structure where selling books alone cannot cover rent and labor costs. It is a situation where every bookstore must create its own business model to survive," Han said, adding: "Lawyers, teachers, designers, architects, copywriters, and various other people start bookstores despite those around them trying to dissuade them. Many jump in dreaming of a less competitive life accompanied by the books they love.... If bookstores become bases that create content directly and present it to readers, they will be able to play far more diverse roles.... Running a bookstore should be done by people who like people, not by people who like books."

What is a day-to-day bookselling life like? Main Character's Simmons offered this analogy: "I joke that I feel like two kids in a trench coat running a bookshop. Every day is a new challenge, and we're learning as we go."