photo: Annie Griffiths

"Everywhere I've gone since, I've found libraries. Those of us launched from bare-bones schools in uncelebrated places will always find particular grace in a library, where the temple doors are thrown wide to all believers, regardless of pedigree. Nowadays I have the normal professional reliance on Internet research, but my heart still belongs to the church of the original source. Every book I've written has some magic in it I found in physical stacks or archives."

Following news about the retirement at the end of the year of longtime Scribner Publishing president and Touchstone publisher Susan Moldow, Simon & Schuster has decided to merge Touchstone operations with two of its other adult imprints, Atria and Gallery Books. In an announcement about the move, Jonathan Karp, president and publisher of S&S Adult Publishing, said that Touchstone's frontlist "frequently overlaps" with other S&S adult imprints, particularly Atria and Gallery. As a result, "I believe that going forward we will be best served by integrating Touchstone's talented staff within these imprints. In making this decision, careful consideration has been given to placing the Touchstone editors, publicity, and marketing staff, in new publishing homes that are the most natural and complementary fit for their sensibilities and titles."

Beginning in January, the following Touchstone staff members will join Atria: executive editor Matthew Benjamin, associate editor Kaitlin Olson, executive editor Trish Todd, editorial assistant Isabella Betita, associate director of publicity Shida Carr, publicity assistant Megan Rudloff, and marketing coordinator Isabel DaSilva.

Touchstone staff joining Gallery are: senior editor Cara Bedick, executive editor Lauren Spiegel, assistant editor Rebecca Strobel, assistant director of publicity Jessica Roth and associate publicist Sydney Morris.

Brian Belfiglio, who has been Scribner's director of publicity while doing double duty with Touchstone, will focus exclusively to Scribner, and will be joined by assistant director of marketing Kelsey Manning.

Associate publisher Meredith Vilarello will manage Touchstone's extensive backlist.

As a result of the restructuring, senior art director Cherlynne Li will leave the company. Karp wrote: "We are grateful for her work as Touchstone's art director over the years, which have made a major contribution to Touchstone's success, and given the imprint's books distinctive and selling covers in all formats."

In a New York Magazine Intelligencer column that should be read in its entirety, Sarah McNally, owner of McNally Jackson, the New York City store that is moving because of a huge rent hike, said that her rent for the 5,700-square-foot space has been "below market" at $360,000 and the landlord wanted to raise it to $850,000 when the lease ends next year. She is finalizing a lease on a new space nearby and hopes to make an announcement about it in the next week or two. She added that the new location is large enough that she plans to fold one of her stationery stores called Goods for the Study into it.

McNally is working on plans for the new store, she said. New York Magazine wrote: "She pictures a rare-books room with a fireplace, and she's already working with an architect on plans for balconies and skylights."

While discussing retail design and deep book selection, McNally gave a shoutout to Paul Yamazaki of City Lights Books in San Francisco, saying, "Paul wants every inch of his shelves to be devoted to books people would probably not otherwise find. I'm not a purist like that at all, but his courage is in my mind, always."

Putnam Six, a new bookstore in Enid, Okla., founded by Chloe Fuksa, held its grand opening last night, the Enid News & Eagle reported.

Fuksa decided last December to open a bookstore, in part to make up for the closing of a Hastings. (The chain went out of business in 2016.) "There was just a big void in the community for a bookstore," she told the newspaper. "I think every community needs a bookstore, just as a gathering place and that's what I want this place to be."

The store carries adult and children's books. "I want strongly a very good kid's section," Fuksa explained. "I want families to come in here, I want kids to fall in love with reading, I want them to grow up with a book in front of their face and not a screen." The store will also have storytimes on Saturdays as well as other events.

Putnam Six is named after Robert D. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Touchstone), among other titles, a professor of public policy at Harvard and founder of the Saguaro Seminar, a program that fosters civic engagement.

The store is located at 610 S. Cleveland St., Suite 212, Enid, Okla. 73703; 580-297-5089.

Four independent bookshops in the U.K. are among the businesses that have been named by the Independent Retailers Confederation to the shortlist for Britain's Best Small Shop of 2018, the Bookseller reported. The winner, selected from a shortlist of 25 retailers, will be announced November 13 at the Houses of Parliament.

Drake the Bookshop, Stockton-on-Tees; Forum Books, Corbridge; Kenilworth Books, Kenilworth; and the Mainstreet Trading Company Books, Café, Deli & Home, St. Boswells, are in the running for the honor, which celebrates "the commitment and creativity of independent retailers on the U.K.'s High Streets and the central role they play in their local communities." Applicants were asked to showcase their "innovation, entrepreneurial spirit and community ethos."

"The fact the book industry has such a healthy chance of being voted Best Small Shop this year is a huge testament to how well and positive independent bookselling is at the moment," said Drake the Bookshop owner Richard Drake. "For little old Stockton, and given that M&S has just shut here, it's a massive boon." His store was voted best independent bookshop in the north of England 2018 by the British Book Awards.

IRC chairman Mark Walmsley said: "Despite all of the bad headlines and the high-profile closures of larger stores, we firmly believe that specialist independent retailers can thrive in this climate by delivering a truly unique retail experience. The Best Small Shops competition enables us celebrate this unique industry, the passion, service, flexibility and knowledge of independent shop owners offer and show customers what makes independent retailers so special."

Sue Hubbell, "who wrote quietly penetrating books and essays about her life as a beekeeper, a curious wanderer and a divorced woman navigating middle age," died October 13, the New York Times reported. She was 83. Hubbell "examined the natural world and her own experiences for insights into relationships, self-reliance and, as she put it in A Country Year, 'where we older women fit into the social scheme of things once nest building has lost its charm.' "

Her books include A Country Year: Living the Questions (1986); A Book of Bees... and How to Keep Them (1988); Far-Flung Hubbell: Essays From the American Road (1995); and Waiting for Aphrodite: Journeys Into the Time Before Bones (1999).

In August, Hubbell, who had been dealing with dementia, was found by searchers 14 hours after she had wandered away from her home in Milbridge, Maine. She subsequently moved in with her son, Brian, who told the Times: "Sue decided that she strongly wished not to descend into dementia under indefinite institutional care. So, on the morning of Sunday, September 9, she ate her last grapefruit and informed her friends and doctor that she intended to stop eating and drinking. She stuck to her plan and died 34 days later, increasingly lucid through the last few days."

"In the end, Sue Hubbell died as she had lived--her way," the Bangor Daily News wrote, adding that a 1998 edition of the newspaper had a feature about Hubbell in which "she was described as not only a hardcore writer, but also a chainsaw kind of woman who liked, bugs, earthworms, katydids and sea sponges and referred to her writing style as biology for English majors. She also wrote about pies, toothpick factories, magicians, truck stops and the National Bowling Hall of Fame."

John Grisham stopped by New Dominion Bookshop in Charlottesville, Va., to sign a few copies of his new novel The Reckoning (Doubleday) ahead of today's release. Mr. G (as they call him around the shop) has been a longtime supporter of New Dominion.

Congratulations to 57th Street Books, Chicago, Ill., which celebrated its 35th anniversary and grand re-opening last Saturday with a story time featuring Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle "followed by reflections on 57th Street Books' storied history and integral relationship with readers, old and young, throughout Chicago, birthday cake, and a ribbon cutting in honor of our grand re-opening. With a vastly expanded children's department, a clearer focus on new releases across genres in Room One, and a renewed commitment to maintaining a top-shelf collection of diverse and delightful general interest books, we are excited to welcome the next generation of enthusiasts to one of the most charming and beloved neighborhood bookstores in the world."

On its Facebook page, 57th Street Books featured a video from the celebration, along with recollections by Seminary Co-op manager Adam Sonderberg, who wrote: "When I started at the Co-op in October 2014, one of the first things I was itching to do was walk over to 57th St. Books and open the door to the back room. I grew up on the Northside, in West Rogers Park, so trips to Hyde Park weren't plentiful, but my dad never failed to take me to 57th before or after a visit to the Museum of Science and Industry. The walls of bookcases looked and felt very much like home--except in a labyrinthine basement with exposed brick vs. the upstairs rooms of a Chicago bungalow--so I was seduced by the environment long before I could fully understand the content of most of the books on the shelves."

Amy Beaudoin has been promoted to associate marketing manager, education & library, at Simon & Schuster Children's Books. She was formerly marketing associate, education & library.

Batman: White Knight by Sean Murphy (DC Black Label).

Today:
Fresh Air: Ari Berman, author of Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (Picador, $18, 9781250094728).

Tomorrow:
Megyn Kelly: Kristina McMorris, author of Sold on a Monday: A Novel (Sourcebooks Landmark, $15.99, 9781492663997).

Dr. Oz: Charlamagne Tha God, author of Shook One: Anxiety Playing Tricks on Me (Touchstone, $26, 9781501193255).

Watch What Happens Live: Ellie Kemper, author of My Squirrel Days (Scribner, $26, 9781501163340).

Tonight Show: Steve Kornacki, author of The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism (Ecco, $29.99, 9780062438980).

CNN's Tonight with Don Lemon: Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger (Simon & Schuster, $27, 9781501181795).

Jake the Fake Keeps It Real, the first title in a series written by author Adam Mansbach (Go the F**k to Sleep) and comic actor Craig Robinson (The Office), and illustrated by Keith Knight, is being adapted for a potential TV series at Disney Channel by Mansbach and Robinson, Deadline reported. Mansbach will write the pilot and serve as executive producer alongside Robinson for the project, which is in very early development.

The winners of the fourth annual $5,000 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prizes are:

Nonfiction: A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History by Jeanne Theoharis (Beacon Press)

Fiction & Poetry: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (Graywolf Press)

Charles Duhigg, nonfiction prize committee co-chair, said that A More Beautiful and Terrible History challenges "us to reconsider all we know about the civil rights movement and the work that remains to be done in this profound study of our nation's history."

Ashley Mihlebach, fiction prize committee co-chair, said that Machado's short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, "tackles difficult subjects head on including sexual desire, female subjugation and violence."

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Fiona Mozley won the Polari First Book Prize for her Man Booker-shortlisted debut novel, Elmet, the Bookseller reported. The prize is awarded to "a writer whose first book explores the LGBT experience, whether in poetry, prose, fiction or nonfiction."

Prize founder and chair of judges Paul Burston said: "Strange, extraordinary and unique, Fiona Mozley's story has a lyrical, ethereal quality and the feel of an old folk tale. Sometimes brutal but often beautiful, the novel expertly weaves together themes of ownership, greed and masculinity, pitching the gentle narrator Daniel against the brutality of his father. It's a remarkable achievement and the judges were united in their admiration for it."

The bestselling self-published books last week as compiled by IndieReader.com:

1. Swamp Spook (A Miss Fortune Mystery Book 13) by Jana DeLeon
2. Five Years Gone by Marie Force
3. Love Sincerely Yours by Meghan Quinn and Sara Ney
4. A SEAL's Resolve (SEALs of Chance Creek Book 6) by Cora Seton
5. Once Upon a Wild Fling by Lauren Blakely
6. Fighter in Lingerie by Penelope Sky
7. Embrace the Passion by Various
8. Rescuing Harley by Susan Stoker
9. And Then You Loved Me by Inglath Cooper
10. Beck Bear (Daughters of Beasts Book 2) by T.S. Joyce

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]