At Lagardère, Hachette Book Group's parent company, publishing division revenue in the first half of the year ended June 30 slipped 0.4%, to €1.34 billion (about $1.53 billion), but rose 1.3% when currency fluctuations, primarily a weak dollar, pound, and UAE dirham against the euro, are taken into account. Overall Lagardère revenue rose 2%, to €4.35 billion (about $5 billion), but rose 2.7% with currency fluctuations. Chairman and CEO Arnaud Lagardère said that in the first half, "the Lagardère Group delivered solid results, testifying to the resilience of its businesses and the strength of its model despite the difficult geopolitical and macroeconomic context. All the Group's businesses reported growth....

"Lagardère Publishing demonstrated its resilience in challenging markets thanks especially to the strength of its diversified businesses. In the trade segment, the portfolio benefited from publishing successes and robust international backlist sales. The division is also enjoying very good momentum in Spain and Latin America, while Board Games and Partworks are continuing to support growth."

In the U.S., Hachette Book Group had "an excellent first half, with revenue up 1.3% year on year, against a notably strong H1 2025, and in a challenging market," Hachette Book Group CEO David Shelley said. "We had a notable number of #1 New York Times bestsellers in quarter two including Liar's Kingdom by Andrew Weissman (Little, Brown), The Land and Its People by David Sedaris (Little, Brown), Birth Vibes by Jen Hamilton (Grand Central), It's My Bird-Day by Mo Willems (Union Square), and Hope Rises by David Baldacci (Grand Central)."

Lagardère added that sales were helped, too, by deluxe editions of Sable Sorensen's Dire Bound and Fury Bound, James Patterson's and Viola Davis's co-written title Judge Stone and Abby Jimenez's The Night We Met. In addition, "the rise in audiobook sales continued to support growth."

Shelley noted that the company has "a very strong slate of releases coming up including American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee (Grand Central), Promise Me, America by Joe Biden (Little, Brown), The Thoroughbreds by Elin Hilderbrand (Little, Brown), The Killer Isn't Alice by Iris Starling (Little, Brown), The Country Road Murders by James Patterson and Mike Lupica (Little, Brown), What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking: Make It Fast by Caroline Chambers (Union Square), The Knave and the Moon by Rachel Gillig (Orbit), The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown), My Battlefield by Joyce Meyer (Hachette Nashville), and PlantYou Quickies by Carleigh Bodrug (Grand Central)."

Shelley added that Hachette is marking its 200th anniversary this year with its Raising Readers initiative, which amplifies the importance of reading with children. "Earlier this month, Hachette celebrated its first Raising Readers Day, mobilizing thousands of employees globally to volunteer in service of the campaign across all English language offices, including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany, Ireland, India, and Australia. Employees dedicated their time to supporting children, parents, and caregivers while helping spread the joy of reading. HBG also donated hundreds of thousands of books to our Raising Readers partners through volunteer opportunities."

And last week HBG launched its Raising Readers public service announcement video with its partners on social media platforms and networks. "The 50-second PSA video had one simple, life-changing message: Read for fun with a child 10 minutes a day to ensure their future success. HBG also provided authors, employees, and Raising Readers partners with a campaign toolkit, empowering them to advocate for building a daily habit of reading for pleasure."

Watermark Books, which aims to be a well-curated space with a wide variety of offerings, opened earlier this month at 131 Turner St. in Beaufort, N.C. Co-owner Laura Benson told the Triangle Business Journal that the goal is to make the bookshop a welcoming third place where people can gather and connect. A former executive director of Durham's Partnership for Children, she and her husband, business executive Walt Sliva, have had a home in Beaufort since 2007.

"We always were committed to supporting the small-business economy in Carteret County and Beaufort," she said, adding that when the Covid pandemic hit they shifted their lives to the coast.

"They started looking to help small businesses with micro-funding through their First Rung Foundation. That led to conversations about what the community needed, and Benson said they learned overwhelmingly that the area wanted an independent bookstore," the Triangle Business Journal wrote.

"There was such a strong outcry for a gathering place, a multigenerational, truly independent bookstore," Benson said.

Sliva, who is from Nashville, Tenn., had a connection to author and Parnassus Books owner Ann Patchett. "We were in Nashville and I did an information interview with Ann," Benson recalled. "I had in mind that Beaufort would have its own independent bookstore."

She followed Patchett's advice and attended Paz & Associates' bookstore bootcamp on Amelia Island, Fla., to learn the business, as did Watermark co-owner Kathy Hollinshed. "So we feel like we've armed ourselves but we are still learning a lot," Benson said.

With a business background and capital to invest, location was the next priority. Through their First Step Foundation they bought the storefront on Turner Street, just a block from Front Street and the waterway. The 2,200-square-foot space can hold 10,000 books and still have room in the back for events.

Two employees, led by general manager Lisa Tuchek, run Watermark Books on a daily basis. The owners have a sense of the revenue they need to make the project work, and that a strong start--and the fact that they control the building--gives them confidence they will be in business for a while in a community that is growing.

"Books connect people," she said. "They add to our learning and literacy and expand our world."

Black Spring Books in Brooklyn, N.Y., has turned to crowdfunding to help recover from a devastating flood on July 18, the Brooklyn Paper reported. 

Launched July 19 with a goal of $22,000, the GoFundMe campaign has already raised $20,500. Money raised will go toward helping store owner Simona Blat repair damage, replace destroyed inventory, and fortify against future flooding.

On July 18, a torrential storm struck New York City that caused widespread flooding and overloaded the sewage system, resulting in approximately three feet of sewage water filling the bookstore's basement. It took days to drain and empty the basement, which had been the shop's storeroom, and Blat and her boyfriend had to wear hazmat suits and N95 masks for the cleanup. 

Blat, who first opened the new and used bookstore in April 2021, has yet to reopen Black Spring Books following the flood. She told the Brooklyn Paper that her immediate goal is getting the doors open again.

"I still don't really know quite how to move forward, and I still feel extremely overwhelmed," she said. "But I feel like so many people want this place to continue to exist, and that it's meaningful to them, and that it's meaningful to the state of the world right now."

Frisco Booksellers will open this fall at 6959 Main St. in Frisco, Tex. The Dallas Morning News reported that owner Jennifer Bischof "has a longtime love for bookstores that she brought to Frisco when she moved from West Virginia roughly a decade ago. And now, she's ready to take that passion into a new place in the heart of her home city."

Having nurtured her company in recent years with pop-up stores and a booth at a now-closed Painted Tree retail site, Bischof noted that the concept of a bricks-and-mortar home was the end goal from day one. The 1,400-square-foot space for the bookstore was purchased in 2022, but the plan was put on hold amid construction and renovation efforts downtown. 

"We need bookstores more than ever now," she said. "We need analog entertainment. We need to learn and grow and foster empathy within ourselves. We need places for our community to gather and collaborate."

The bookstore is part of an effort to revitalize the city's historic downtown and make it a more walkable destination. "With the improvements that have been made to Frisco's downtown, it's now the perfect place for a cozy, unique bookstore," Bischof noted. "Frisco has plenty of the shiny and new--we need more vibey, cool places to gather, and Main Streets are traditionally just that--mom and pop stores with a funky vibe."

Frisco Booksellers will be a general-interest independent bookstore. "We plan to have a thoughtfully curated children's section that will support the child throughout their reading life, starting with board books, and moving through picture books, early readers, middle grade books and graphic novels, and Young Adult reads as well," Bischof said. 

Ian McDonald, who wrote only one novel, but it is still considered a classic of Caribbean literature, died July 24. He was 93. The Guardian reported that The Humming-Bird Tree (1969), set in Trinidad in the late 1940s, "is a gently heartbreaking tale about racial boundaries, and a haunting evocation of postwar Trinidad in all its beauty and ugliness, emerging into a new era with the prospect of independence on the horizon."

McDonald, who was more a poet than a fiction writer, was featured in numerous anthologies and published eight poetry collections, including Mercy Ward (1998), Between Silence and Silence (2003), and The Comfort of All Things (2012). He also edited or co-edited publications like the Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry in English (1992) and two anthologies of West Indian writing: They Came in Ships (1998) and This Bowling Was Superfine (2009). 

In both prose and poetry, "he displayed an ability to celebrate the sensuous joy of Caribbean life in all its complexity, acknowledging the wonder of its dazzling natural world and colorful human relations without skirting over the darker, more brutal side of both," the Guardian noted.

Jamaican poet Ann-Margaret Lim described McDonald's poetry as "irradiated by his celebration of life, his gratitude for happy days and for earth's bounty of joy."

Born in St. Augustine, Trinidad, McDonald returned to the Caribbean after leaving Cambridge in 1955 to take up an administrative post in British Guiana (now Guyana) with the Booker group, the owner of huge sugar estates that "was becoming more enlightened and was trying to make itself into a business with an unusual commitment to looking after its workers," the Guardian wrote. In the 1960s, McDonald began immersing himself in Guyana's culture, eventually coming to consider himself "Trinidadian by birth, Guyanese by adoption." 

In addition to poems, he wrote short stories and a one-act play, The Tramping Man. In 1969, The Humming-Bird Tree won the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje prize (then the Winifred Holtby memorial prize). It was adapted into a film in 1992, starring Sunil Y Ramjitsingh as Kaiser, Tom Beasley as Alan Holmes, and Desha Penco as Jaillin.

The novel's success spurred interest in McDonald's poetry, His first collection appeared in Guyana, and collections of his work followed at regular intervals, including Essequibo (poems about wayfarers he met in the hinterland of the Essequibo river) in 1992 and Jaffo the Calypsonian (1994). 

New and Collected Poems (2018) featured poems written in his 80s, including the opening poem to Mercy Ward, in which he had reflected that death comes "sudden/ quick as light/ skin shine/ then bone white."

Heather Sellers celebrated the publication of her poetry collection Women in Tampa Talking About Alligators (Lynx House Press) at the first event at the newly opened Bookends: Literature & Libations in Ybor City, Fla. Pictured with Sellers (left), are the bookstore's owners, sisters Laurie Rodriguez (center) and Teresa Rodriguez (right).

Laurel Saville and appreciative audience member Bader

Dogs and questions about dogs were welcome during a recent event at Village Books & Paper Dreams in Bellingham, Wash. Laurel Saville spoke about her new essay collection, How to Live with a Dog: Stories and Solutions for Humans with Dog Problems and Dogs with Human Problems (Urano Publishing), to a receptive human/canine crowd. 

Describing Village Books as "a very dog-friendly bookshop," Saville shared photos on social media from the well-attended event, where 40 books were sold, adding: "What an amazing night and crowd we had last night Village Books in Fairhaven. About 50 people and some cute dogs came out on a hot night to listen to me read and to ask questions about their dogs. Several people who are in the book were there and participated in the q&a. Other trainers and a few close friends gave me wonderful support. So many great stories shared and so much laughter.... An author couldn't ask for a better endorsement and a Bellinghamster couldn't ask for better support from her community.... What a night! Thank you all!"

" 'I'm supporting the local economy' sounds so much better than 'I'm addicted to book shopping.' " That was the sidewalk chalkboard message in front of Highland Books in Brevard, N.C.

Sometimes a little change makes all the difference in a bookseller's day: "We've started pulling our translated fiction into a space of its own and it is shaping up nicely. Come check it out!" Skylark Bookshop in Columbia, Mo., posted on Facebook.

Marisa Russell has joined Highlights as marketing & publicity director, books & retail, effective August 3. She was most recently founder of Marisa Russell PR and previously held senior publicity roles at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Penguin Young Readers Group, and HarperCollins Children's Books.

Today:
Fresh Air: Emily Wilson, translator of Homer's Odyssey (W.W. Norton, $18.95, 9780393356250).

Tomorrow:
The View repeat: Christina Applegate, author of You with the Sad Eyes: A Memoir (Little, Brown, $32, 9780316594929).

Tamron Hall repeat: Jess Hilarious, author of 'Til Death Do We Parent: Raising My Kid with His Dad (Atria/Black Privilege Publishing, $28, 9781668059357).

Paramount has released a trailer for Children of Blood and Bone, based Tomi Adeyemi's 2018 novel. Variety reported that the trailer "introduces Thuso Mbedu as Zelie, a woman with the power to command undead spirits. Her homeland, the kingdom of Orisha, is divided into clans with different magical abilities. Under King Saran's (Chiwetel Ejiofor) reign of terror, magic is suppressed."

The cast also features Damson Idris as Prince Inan, Amandla Stenberg as Princess Amari, Tosin Cole as Zelie's brother Tzain, and Regina King as Queen Nehanda. They join Lashana Lynch, Idris Elba, Cynthia Erivo, and Viola Davis. The film hits theaters January 15, 2027.

The logline: "In the epic fantasy world of Orïsha, a young woman goes on a quest to reclaim the magic that was violently stolen from her people. She and her brother ally with the daughter and son of the king to fight back against his brutal rule."

Gina Prince-Bythewood directed Children of Blood and Bone. It was shot in various locations in Africa. Prince-Bythewood "wanted to give the actors a real-life backdrop to adapt the novel into a grounded film, even with magical elements," Variety noted.

The 13-title longlist for the £50,000 (about $66,485) 2026 Booker Prize has been released and includes authors representing seven countries and three continents. A shortlist will be announced September 22, with the authors each receiving £2,500 (about $3,325). The winner will be named on November 9 during a ceremony at Old Billingsgate in London. This year's longlisted Booker titles are:

The Shadow of the Object by Chloe Aridjis
Switzy by Emma Cline
Helen of Nowhere by Makenna Goodman
The End of Everything by M. John Harrison
The Disappearers by Marlon James
Black Bag by Luke Kennard
The Renovation by Kenan Orhan
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry
The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
John of John by Douglas Stuart
All Them Dogs by Djamel White
The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams

Chair of judges Mary Beard said: "Great books have never been written to a single formula. We are confident that our longlist of books has something for everyone. There's the funny and the unsettling (and in some cases the funny and unsettling); there's dystopian fantasy and domestic drama; there's the gritty and the magically mysterious; there are some that will please and some that may shock. And they are set anywhere and everywhere: Ireland and Italy, Mexico and Massachusetts, Jamaica and the Hebrides, universities, private planes and pubs, past, present and future. But there's one thing they all share. Every writer on our longlist brilliantly musters the power of words on the page to take the reader to new places, to see old places from new angles, to change minds.  

"Books are not mirrors: they don't simply reflect ourselves back to us. One of the many important things about fiction is that it helps us see what it might be like not to be us, to begin to understand the perspectives of others, and to imagine what it might be like to see the world differently. Great books are not cozy. In their various ways, the novels we have chosen are (we hope) dynamite."

photo: Michael Brandt

Retired English professor Sandra Jackson-Opoku's fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic works are widely published and produced. She is the author of four award-winning novels. Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes is her Malice Domestic Award-winning and Agatha- and Mary Higgins Clark Award-nominated first cozy. The second book in the series, Savvy Summers and the Po'boy Perils (Minotaur, July 21, 2026), continues following the quick-witted, unforgettable Savvy Summers, owner of a soul food café in Chicago.

On your nightstand now:

I'm alternating between two historical novels in my e-reader book pile. I'm finishing up Catherine Tucker's Tall Cotton, a thriller set in civil-rights era Lowell, Miss. The author is from Leland, Miss., which also happens to be the town where my mother grew up. I also started on Mingmei Yip's Peach Blossom Pavillion. This fictional account of a girl trafficked into sex work in early 20th-century Shanghai puts one in the mind of a Chinese version of Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha.

Favorite book when you were a child:

This is a difficult question, when so many stories gave me so much joy as a child. One of the ones I remember best is the 1950s British fantasy classic The Borrowers series by Mary Norton. These novels satisfied my hunger for stories that endured beyond a single book. The five-book series follows the adventures of a colony of miniature people who've taken up residence inside the walls. They subsist by harvesting scraps from the household's "human beans"--teacups, hat pins, thread, thimbles.

Your top five authors:

In literary fiction, I greatly admire the works of Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, and Gwendolyn Brooks. In crime fiction, I've devoured every one of Sara Paretsky's 22 (and counting) novels featuring working-class Chicago private investigator, V.I. Warshawski. The futuristic and historic science fiction Octavia Butler weaves in her writing gives me life.

Book you've faked reading:

I'm sure there were works of assigned readings I merely skimmed as a student, but generally if I don't like a book, I stop reading. I'm a bit squeamish when it comes to gore and extreme horror, so I couldn't get past the first chapter of Zone One, Colson Whitehead's futuristic zombie novel. I'll probably brace myself and finish it one of these days.

Book you're an evangelist for:

I'm such a fan of Louise Erdrich's novel Tracks. The mystical moose hunt is one of my favorite scenes in all literature.

Book you've bought for the cover:

I was mesmerized by the original cover of Octavia Butler's historical novel Kindred. It features the distorted mirror images of the same Black woman, one of them in modern dress, the other in slave-era garb. The hourglass placed between them is a symbol of the time travel element in this iconic novel.

Book you hid from your parents:

Luckily my parents never censored my reading materials. I did hide an LP of The Last Poets back in the day, because I knew my mother would never approve of all that cussing.

Book that changed your life:

I continually revisit W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk for its groundbreaking analysis of the sociological concept of double consciousness. "One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

Favorite line from a book:

The scene is from Toni Morrison's Beloved. Lay preacher and spiritual healer Baby Suggs preaches a sermon in the wilderness to a community of the recently enslaved: "Here... in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass."

Five books you'll never part with:

Tracks by Louise Erdrich
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
Another Country by James Baldwin
The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Valerie Smith, et al.

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

I encountered Virginia Hamilton's The People Could Fly, illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon, when my children were very young. I've always been impressed with this vivid retelling of a classic African American folktale from the Gullah Geechee experience of the coastal Carolinas, Georgia, and North Florida.

Authors you feel you are following in the tradition of:

I count myself fortunate to follow in the tradition of writers like Rudolfo Anaya, Sherman Alexie, Rita Mae Brown, and Valerie Wilson Wesley--authors who ably traverse the permeable boundaries between literary and crime fiction.

The Voice of the Snow is an exuberant, impeccably child-centered story by Yuko Ohnari and Koshiro Hata, the creative duo behind Downpour, and translated from the Japanese by Emily Balistrieri. The picture book features a child who revels in the wonder of a snowy day by focusing on the joyful sounds--and silence--of the snow.

"It is so bright outside my window that it woke me up.... Snow!" Through the child's window, it looks as if everything is "sleeping under a fluffy blanket." They pull on a red jacket and oversize hat and then go outside, where their breath shows "white in the air." As the kid takes the first boot-sinking step, "the snow says, 'Pfffft.' " Then the bundled-up child begins a trek across the yard, and the snow responds: "Pfft, squeak. Pfft, pfft, squeak, squeak." The snow "is laughing!"

The child makes a huge snowball--"huff-puff, huff-puff"--and the snow counters with "creak-eak, creak-eak." The kid throws the ball into the "sooo cold" air and it breaks apart, hitting the ground with a sound like "crumb, crumb, crumb... Pock, pock, pock." When their "voice gets sucked into the snow," the world goes silent: "Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh." The flakes "scatter and dance," then laugh again as the little protagonist stomps into deep spots. After they take a tumble, they're delighted to make snow angels: "crunch, creak-creak-creak, ha." When the child is flat in the snow, "distant sounds vanish. All I can hear is the snow right next to my ears. It's... talking only to me." On this quiet, magical morning, both the young adventurer and the snowflakes are "listening closely."

The creativity of this storytelling technique gives the picture book's observations a tactility and sense of immediacy. Much of the child's cavorting through the wintry backyard landscape is told through Ohnari's avalanche of onomatopoetic interpretations. The writing is spare and confident, and Balistrieri's translation feels as poetic as it does enthusiastic. Hata's illustrations pull equal weight, depicting the youngster's tramp from their front yard into a neighboring empty lot and back home, where an adult waits. The white space serves purpose and keeps eyes on the protagonist and their play, while soft blue skies and sparse background create a feeling of solidity. These wonder-filled pages should inspire all varieties of wintertime listening. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author

Shelf Talker: The Voice of the Snow is an exuberant, child-centered picture book romp through the joyful sounds--and silence--of a bright snowy day.