Eileen Dengler, who will retire as executive director of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association in December, and as president of the Professional Booksellers School in 2027, is this year's recipient of the NAIBA Legacy Award.

Eileen Dengler

Dengler entered the bookselling world in 1984 to run the meetings & convention department at the American Booksellers Association. When ABA sold the convention to Reed, she worked for other organizations before returning to the book industry in 1999 to head NAIBA. In 2020, with the support of NAIBA, she incorporated the Professional Booksellers School.

"When I asked the NAIBA board who we were giving the Legacy Award to, and they said 'you,' I started to cry," Dengler said. "This award is a big hug from the booksellers I have served so faithfully for 30 years. Every day with the people of NAIBA has been an opportunity to collaborate and create programs, services, events, and experiences for our booksellers. There's no better work in the world." Her charity of choice is the Book Industry Charitable Foundation. She will accept the award during the New Voices New Rooms conference Awards Dinner on August 5.

NAIBA also revealed the winners of the 2026 NAIBA Book Awards, recognizing an author who was born or has lived in the region and/or a book whose story takes place in the region. The winners are:

Fiction: The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
Nonfiction: Forest Euphoria by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian
Young Adult Literature: Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray
Middle Grade: The Trouble with Heroes by Kate Messner
Picture Book: If You Make a Call on a Banana Phone by Gideon Sterer

Bell Bird Books opened Monday in Nashville, Tenn., the Tennessean reported. Located at 1208 Martin St., the store carries general-interest titles for all ages, along with embroidery kits, scented candles, stationery, and gifts. Owner Mary Ann Weprin said she wants Bell Bird Books to be a "bookstore for everybody," where everyone feels comfortable and "everyone can find something they like here," no matter what their interests.

She built the opening inventory based on her own taste as well as the recommendations and top-10 lists of friends and family members. Going forward, she plans to adjust things based on community interest. "I hope we'll be able to keep building it by who comes in here and what's important to them," Weprin told the Tennessean. "I don't know what will work, but I'm going to find out."

Prior to opening Bell Bird Books, Weprin had a career as a high school English teacher. She is a lover of bookstores, and she pointed to Nashville's Davis-Kidd Booksellers, which closed in 2010, and Lemuria Book Store in Jackson, Miss., as being particular inspirations.

Per the Tennessean, Bell Bird Books is the third indie bookstore to open in the Nashville area in the last six months, after Slow Burn and Duckbill Bookshop.

From the Ground Up Books, a new and used bookstore with locations in La Grange, Ky., and Shepherdsville, Ky., has expanded with the addition of the Pinkies Out Tea Parlor, the Oldham Era reported. 

At both the La Grange and Shepherdsville locations, customers can now enjoy scones and a variety of teas during regular store hours. Customers also have the option of having afternoon tea, which requires a reservation and includes tea, sandwiches, scones, and desserts. 

Store owner and author Lynn Tincher opened the La Grange store in 2023 before opening the Shepherdsville store in 2024. From the Ground Up carries a wide range of titles with a specialty in paranormal literature. It also runs an author mentorship program called PenCrafters. 

The La Grange store resides in an historic building that is reportedly haunted, and the bookstore does monthly ghost tours. The Shepherdsville location, meanwhile, leans into the culture and history of bourbon.

The Library of Congress, in association with the American Library Association's ALA Editions, have published two new educational books in the Discover and Learn with the Library series. Released on June 1, The American Revolution and Immigration and Migration in U.S. History "provide timely resources to help both learners and educators explore the unparalleled collections of the Library of Congress to understand different aspects of U.S. history," the LOC noted.

Discover and Learn with the Library books provide classroom-ready materials for teachers, librarians, and home educators working with grades 6-12 and are intended to support state curricula and teaching standards. They include full-color facsimiles of primary sources along with source citations, information about the sources' origins, teaching strategies and guides to additional online resources. Designed for educators and students, the books feature perforated pages on each primary source for ease of sharing.

Immigration and Migration in U.S. History and The American Revolution join previously published books in the series covering topics such as the Civil Rights Movement as well as invention and innovation. Discover and Learn with the Library is a product of the LOC's Center for Learning, Literacy and Engagement. 

Mark Singer, a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine "from the age of 23 who extended the magazine's franchise of rich reporting and witty prose about offbeat, complicated and quintessentially American characters," died June 19, the New York Times reported. He was 75. Singer wrote "urbane 'Talk of the Town' pieces... reflected on serious national matters like the Affordable Care Act, and did a hitch traveling the country as the correspondent for the 'U.S. Journal' column."

He was best known, however, for his profiles of subjects like magician Ricky Jay; a set of four doorman brothers in New York; and "a braggadocious real-estate developer, Donald Trump, years before he ran for office," the Times noted.

Singer's books, many of them collections of pieces from the magazine, include Funny Money (1985); Mr. Personality: Profiles and Talk Pieces (1989); Citizen K: the Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin (1996); Somewhere in America: Under the Radar with Chicken Warriors, Left-Wing Patriots, Angry Nudists, and Others (2004); Character Studies: Encounters with the Curiously Obsessed (2005); The Rise and Fall of Bear Stearns (with Alan C. Greenberg, 2010); and Trump and Me (2016).

"He came out of the tradition of A.J. Liebling and Joseph Mitchell and Calvin Trillin, which is to say he combined meticulous reporting and a very distinctive comic voice, which is extremely rare," said New Yorker editor David Remnick.

"Singer's voice is pitched perfectly to the register of the New Yorker: cool and intelligent, with a wry and artful skepticism uncorrupted by cynicism," Jeff Macgregor wrote in the New York Times Book Review. "Neither aloof nor Olympian, he maintains instead an efficient distance from his subjects. He is a terrific reporter, with a receptive ear for dialogue and a painter's eye for the salient detail."

In 1997, Singer was less than excited when then editor Tina Brown assigned him to profile Donald Trump. "Observing him over several months on construction sites, in his Trump Tower office and on a private plane, Mr. Singer concluded that Mr. Trump, in the period before he became a reality TV star, was a man 'who had aspired to and achieved the ultimate luxury, an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul,' " the Times noted.

"That profile," Remnick said, "got everything about Trump 20 years before he ran for president: the vanity, the casual cruelty, the outsized selfishness. It was all there."

"Trump Solo" was included in Singer's Character Studies collection. After a mention of it in the Times review, Trump wrote a letter to the editor attacking Singer, who, in turn, sent a mock thank-you note to Trump for the publicity, along with a check for $37.82 for the Amazon sales boost. 

Trump was not amused. The Times noted that he "returned the letter with an all-caps note at the bottom, reading, in part, 'MARK--YOU ARE A TOTAL LOSER.' " Singer later said that Trump did, however, cash the check, a framed photocopy of which the writer displayed in his apartment. In 2016, Singer expanded and updated his essay into the book Trump and Me. 

"Mark and I would talk about, What is writing?" said Ian Frazier, who shared an office with Singer. Their conclusion: "When you can sense a real wind and just keep going with it."

Jonah Zimiles, co-owner of [words] Bookstore in Maplewood, N.J., which has a branch at LifeTown, a facility in Livingston, N.J., that helps individuals with special needs, was honored recently by the Autism Science Foundation. At a luncheon where he received the Autism Science Foundation Leadership Award, Zimiles purchased a Karl-Anthony Towns jersey, which he wore a few days later when he and his daughter, Liz, attended Game 4 of the NBA finals at Madison Square Garden.

"Hereby changing our name from Loganberry Books to The Bookstore Paul Simon Shopped At Whilst in Cleveland," the Shaker Heights, Ohio, bookseller posted on Facebook. "We are starstruck!!! Thank you, Paul, for your wonderful music and for graciously snapping a pic with these utterly charmed Loganberries. See you at Blossom on Tuesday."

"Walk straight through the blue door for more books!" Excelsior Bay Books in Excelsior, Minn., posted on Facebook, along with a sidewalk chalkboard "eye test" message, just to make sure you're ready for the adventures inside. 

Posted on Facebook by Between the Covers in Rigby, Idaho: "Kids upstairs having a playdate while Moms get to have adult conversations, seriously does it get any better than this on a summer day???"

Simon & Schuster will handle worldwide sales and distribution for Bindery Books, effective February 1, 2027.

Bindery Books focuses on "the next generation of voices in speculative, genre, and contemporary fiction" and works with "influential bookish tastemakers, who identify stories that resonate and promote them to massive audiences of readers who love their taste." The company's platform includes hundreds of book influencers. Bindery's most recent bestselling title is Our Sister's Keeper by Jasmine Holmes.

Matt Kaye and Meghan Harvey, Bindery's cofounders, said, "We built Bindery around a hypothesis that tastemakers--who reach huge audiences of readers directly--were the key to selling books in a media landscape that has completely disintegrated over the last decade. In just over two years, we've watched that play out with incredible success. Joining with Simon & Schuster distribution offers us the global infrastructure we need to match our distribution to our ambition."

Tomorrow:
Kelly Clarkson Show: Lauren Tarshis, author of the I Survived children's book series (Scholastic).

A series adaptation of Alix E. Harrow's fantasy novel The Everlasting is in development at Netflix, which won the rights to the book "in a competitive situation," Variety reported. Daphne Ferraro will write the project, executive producing alongside Harrow, Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Katy Rozelle, and Lea Cuello.

The Everlasting "is a time-loop fantasy about a female knight, Sir Una Everlasting, whose legend built a nation, and a not-so-heroic historian sent back through time," Variety noted. The TV adaptation is from Universal Global Television. 

Essayist, cultural critic, and poet Hanif Abdurraqib has won the C$75,000 (about US$57,000) Weston International Award, honoring "career achievement of an international author whose body of nonfiction work, written in English or widely available in translation, has advanced our understanding of the world." The prize is sponsored by the Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation and administered by the Writers' Trust of Canada.

The jury said it "was enchanted by Hanif Abdurraqib's ability to create a chorus of Black life through the shared languages of performance, music, and athleticism, that is utterly and authorially distinct. Whether writing on basketball, dance, music, or policing and violence, he calls out falsehoods, canters the marginalized, and affirms that 'they can't kill us until they kill us.' 

"Across Abdurraqib's masterful and genre-bending work, the local and specific are spun inward and outward in ways that manifest a deep connection to people, place, and the world. He combines searing insights into Blackness and social inequality in the United States with themes of love and belonging, life and death. The work sings and stings and brings truths, both personal and communal, as he voices culture and its complexities with bold, compassionate lyricism and a real sense of love."

photo: Jes Nijjer

Shasta Grant grew up in New Hampshire and now lives in Indianapolis, Ind. She was an Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow, Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest winner, recipient of writing residencies from Hedgebrook and the Kerouac Project, and holds an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the author of the chapbook Gather Us Up and Bring Us Home and her stories and essays have appeared in cream city review, Epiphany, wigleaf, and elsewhere. When We Were Feral (Regal House Publishing, June 9, 2026) is her debut novel.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Feral girls search for answers about missing mothers in 1990s New Hampshire. A novel about friendship, longing, and the dangers of girlhood.

On your nightstand now:

It's a messy pile right now but these are at the top and I can't decide which one to read first!

Hemlock by Melissa Faliveno
Whidbey by T Kira Madden
Ibis by Justin Haynes

Favorite book when you were a child:

Oh, this is a hard one. I devoured books as a child. All of Judy Blume's books, of course. The Baby-Sitters Club series by Ann M. Martin. Sweet Valley High books by Francine Pascal. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. If I had to pick just one, it would be Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery. I adored Anne Shirley and still do. When I was 11 or 12, a family friend gave me a boxed set of all the Anne books. How I treasured that collection!

Your top five authors:

This is also a hard one, but these are the writers I always return to: Ann Patchett, Joan Silber, Elizabeth Strout, Elena Ferrante, Jenny Offill.

Book you've faked reading:

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. It was the only book we had to read in one of my M.F.A. elective classes and I just couldn't get through it. It's way too long!

Book you're an evangelist for:

Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton. I've been recommending this book for years. Very few people take me up on my suggestion and one or two have come back to tell me they didn't like it. But for me this book has so much to admire: New Hampshire, solitude, nature, the life of a writer.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Us Fools by Nora Lange. I love how the cover is nodding to the books I loved as a girl in the '80s and '90s, but it's also very modern looking at the same time.

Book you hid from your parents:

I was lucky that books were one of the few things I didn't have to hide. I remember one summer when a neighbor's granddaughter was visiting--she was maybe a year or two younger than I was--and I gave her a book I'd just finished reading. I can't remember the name of it, but it was about a high school girl who made up a long-distance boyfriend to impress the girls in her class. The next day the granddaughter gave it back to me and said she wasn't allowed to read it. I was so confused. Being forbidden from reading a book had never occurred to me.

Book that changed your life:

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. Plath was wrestling with so many big questions about writing and ambition, about falling in and out of love, about life in general. I was in my late 20s and about to turn my life upside down to get an M.F.A. and all those themes resonated so deeply with me. I carried that book around the whole summer before moving to New York, underlining passages, making stars in the margins. I felt so alive while reading it.

Favorite line from a book:

"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." --John Steinbeck, East of Eden

I should probably confess I haven't actually read East of Eden (the only Steinbeck I've read was Of Mice and Men in high school and I was not a fan). But, as a perfectionist, this quote resonates with me so much. It was my screen saver as I drafted my novel.

Five books you'll never part with:

Besides all the books I own by my favorite writers named above (including a few signed copies) I'll add these titles: We the Animals by Justin Torres. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn. Equal Love by Peter Ho Davies. Self-Help by Lorrie Moore. Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood. I learned so much about writing from all these books.

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

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. I sobbed when it ended and then I passed it to my husband and told him I was jealous that he was about to read it for the first time. It's such a brilliant book and the way it unfolds and develops is incredible.

Kaela Rivera's The Hungry Forest is a tightly edited, cinematic middle-grade treat that pulses with action, horror, and humanity.

Situated across from the middle school in Traveler's Rest, S.C., is "a missing persons black hole"--a dense forest into which countless people have disappeared over the decades. Brothers Ryan, 12, and Teddy, eight, know especially well not to wander into the forest thanks to their search-and-rescuer father. He maintained a trove of research about those lost to the woodland until he died four months ago. Ryan works to be like his perfect, macho dad while Teddy, who has been embarrassing Ryan by carrying a stuffed bear, has secretly begun looking through his father's notes. One day after school, the brothers hear their father calling to them from the "death-forest." They follow the voice into the trees and must work together to defeat the monsters within, lest they be trapped inside the wood forever.

Rivera, known for her Cece Rios adventure trilogy, deftly constructs a fanciful and genuinely scary (though not gory or overwrought) middle-grade horror tale with themes of grief, acceptance, and identity. Her secondary characters have clear motivations and feel as deeply lived in as her primary ones. (Examples include giant, grotesque brothers who zip and unzip from each other like two vertical halves of one person, and a mysterious figure who shoots arrows that turn their targets into rubies.) Beyond the scares, Rivera centers the story on the tender, beating heart of a family. Teddy asserts himself more directly and begins to shed the shame he felt around his father's death. Ryan is forced to learn he can love a sometimes annoying brother; he also confronts hard truths about his Mexican heritage and how his father passed down the generational trauma of assimilation: "He always told me the way people perceive you can control your life if you let it. So you have to control how they see you first."

The art by Neil Swaab (Time Twisters series) adds to the fantastical frights with individual chapter headers featuring faces warped into trees and creepy masks, as well as a map of the Hungry Forest at story's start. Rivera grounds what could be a silly romp through a magical forest with genuine emotional stakes and gracefully balances realism and fantasy. The Hungry Forest--quickly paced and full of monstrous scares and human heart--is sure to leave readers ravenous for more. --Luis Rendon

Shelf Talker: In this cinematic middle-grade treat, brothers Ryan and Teddy follow the voice of their dead father into a forest that is a "missing persons black hole."