"It's a genre that doesn't get enough love, since there's this idea that it can't be for everyone. Especially as a children's bookstore, it's something that parents often shy away from with fears of introducing their teens to mature content too early (but not all romance is sex). We signed up to try to break that stigma, and bring a happily ever after (or a happy for now) to everyone who walks through our doors....

"We've also been recommending some of our favorite swoon-worthy reads on social media all month long in celebration of #RomanceAwarenessMonth. We're most looking forward to showing readers that they can find themselves in a romance novel, just like any other kind of book."

A construction permit has been filed for the new home of 44th & 3rd Booksellers, a Black-owned bookstore in Atlanta, Ga., that is moving to a space near Morehouse College. What Now Atlanta reported that the new space is 693 square feet, and located in the Entra West End development, which is adjacent to the Morehouse School of Medicine.

Cheryl and Warren Lee originally opened 44th & 3rd in 2017, in Atlanta's Little Five Points neighborhood. They closed in-store operations in May in advance of the move and have been selling books online in the meantime. The name is both an homage to President Barack Obama and a reference to the types of books the store carries: life, literature and legacy.

Lee told Shelf Awareness last week that she hopes to open the new location some time in October.

Five former employees of Wolfman Books, Oakland, Calif., which announced its closure last month, will collectively take over the lease for the 750-square-foot space in order to build a new BIPOC and QTPOC-led community space in the city's center.

In an e-mail sent to Wolfman's newsletter subscribers Wednesday, the collective, currently known as Wolfemme+Them, announced the transition, noting: "We are launching as a brand new cooperatively run bookstore and resource center for creative collaboration and organizing."

Local poet and artist Jevohn Tyler Newsome said the collective's vision for the space includes, but is not limited to, "hosting events where emerging writers of color share the stage with heavy hitters; where poets and musicians can co-conspire with community organizers; a safe space for community workshops on 'fostering the Black Imagination,' for example, all while providing food and resources for the community. Given the ongoing economic and public health uncertainties, we need to hold space dedicated to our folks."

The new space will carry books by Black, Indigenous, brown, queer, trans, revolutionary, local, and youth writers, in addition to hosting a zine library, a gallery and artist studios, meeting space for education and organizing, as well as access to herbal medicine, free groceries, and resource distribution. Wolfemme+Them envisions "an ever-expanding list of uses for this space, as it will center BIPOC and QTPOC needs, wants, visions, and dreams."

They officially take over the two-story downtown storefront on August 15, "though doors will not be open to collaborators or the public until local Covid guidelines make it clear that it is safe to do so," the collective noted.

Wolfemme+Them is currently crowdfunding the start-up costs for the space, which they estimate to be around $30,000, including one year's rent, as well as renovations, all new fixtures, furniture, and inventory. They are also still seeking additional cooperative members.

"We particularly want to prioritize Black artists, writers, and organizers born and raised in Oakland," said filmmaker and artist Sophia Schultz Rocha.

The future home of Kismet Books

Ryan Kimmet has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help her start Kismet Books, a bookstore and cafe that Kimmet hopes to open in Verona, Wis., Madison magazine reported. Kimmet is looking to raise $55,000, which would go toward her opening inventory, and wants the store to reside in a space in the Matts House, a historic building dating to around 1848.

Kimmet told the magazine she hopes her store and the Matts House will become a hub for the city, saying: "I just really like the idea of preserving a community space in the historic building."

Kismet Books will be a general-interest bookstore with titles for all ages. Kimmet noted that as a mother of two children, she plans to have a very strong children's section. For the cafe, she is working with local entrepreneur Troy Rost, who is one of the owners of the Matts House and has experience turning historic buildings into dining spaces.

Rost and co-owner Jim Hagstron bought the Matts House in 2013 for $1, according to Madison magazine. They then renovated the building to accommodate businesses.

Kimmet has made use of social media surveys to gauge how interested Verona residents are in having a bookstore, and she said they appear supportive. While Kimmet has yet to sign a lease, she hopes to open in time for the holidays.

In Georgetown, Tex., Lark & Owl Booksellers has reopened for browsing six days per week with reduced hours. Co-owner and manager Jane Estes reported that all customers and staff members are required to wear masks. 

One staff member is always stationed at a podium by the door to greet incoming customers and offer them masks if they are not wearing any already. They also take customers' temperatures, and anyone with an elevated temperature is not allowed inside. With the summer heat, Estes added, they've asked a few people to wait to cool off so they can retake their temperatures. Customers are also asked to use hand sanitizer and there is plenty of signage around the store reminding shoppers to stay at least six feet apart.

Estes and her team have installed large sneeze guards around the cash wrap and implemented more stringent cleaning practices, with door handles, key pads restrooms and phones getting cleaned hourly. She also bought aprons for staff members, which have pockets for their own pens and small bottles of hand sanitizer. There are small grocery baskets around the store for customers to place books they've touched but do not want to buy, and the store has invested in a UV light machine that sterilizes viruses.

A few people have refused to enter the store when asked to wear a mask, Estes said, but they have been few and far between. Most people seem happy to see all of the preventative measures that the store is taking, and in general Lark & Owl's customers have been "amazingly supportive in myriad ways" during the pandemic.

On the subject of the protests against police brutality and systemic racism that began in late May, Estes noted that the protests in Georgetown were very peaceful, and the store stocked up on water bottles to offer to protesters seeking to cool off from the heat. Estes and her team have been making an effort to both highlight and carry more books from diverse voices, and they've partnered with the local public library for a Confronting Racism virtual panel, which is scheduled for the end of August. Said Estes: "Our mission is to build community through conversation and books and we believe that is more imperative now than ever."

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Union Ave Books in Knoxville, Tenn., is currently open for shipping, curbside pickup, free bike delivery to areas around downtown Knoxville and, since the beginning of June, for appointment browsing. Buyer and bookseller Chelsea Bauer said the appointment browsing has been going extremely well, with many repeat customers and few complaints about it.

Bauer and the Union Ave Books team are allowing groups of no more than five people in the store for appointments. Masks are required, gloves are offered and hand sanitizer is plentiful. She noted that there haven't been any problems with mask compliance, as they are not fully open to the public. When the store first started doing appointment shopping, there were some customers who arrived without masks, but they readily put on masks offered by the store.

Like many stores around the country, Union Ave Books saw a surge of orders for books about social justice, history and antiracism earlier in the summer. The store set up a window display full of related titles, which is still up, and Bauer said they've received "only positive reactions" from customers and community members.

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Vina Castillo, co-owner of Kew & Willow Books in Kew Gardens, Queens, N.Y., reported that she and her co-owners Holly Nikodem and Natalie Noboa reopened their store for appointment browsing on July 28. 

Due to the store's small size, she continued, they can allow only three customers in at a time. Appointments are 30 minutes long and hand sanitizer and masks are provided, though Castillo said that they have not had to give out any of the latter. Mask compliance has not been an issue, though they have had to remind a few customers to pull up their masks to cover their noses.

The Kew & Willow team has changed the store's layout to make it more open, switched the floor shelves with tables and blocked off the children's area, where there used to be a small picnic table for kids to sit and read at.

From May 29 until Juneteenth, Kew & Willow donated 10% of store proceeds to a variety of organizations, including the Minnesota Freedom Fund, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Bail Project and Know Your Rights Camp. --Alex Mutter

Amazon is planning a new 600,000-square-foot fulfillment center in Temple Terrace, Fla., as well as a delivery station in Lutz. Both Tampa-area facilities are expected to open in 2021. The company currently operates seven fulfillment and sortation centers in the state, in Jacksonville, Davenport, Orlando, Miami, Ruskin and Lakeland.

"We're excited to be growing our operations in Florida and we are excited to open a new fulfillment center in Temple Terrace," said Alicia Boler Davis, Amazon's v-p of global customer fulfillment, expressing gratitude "for the continued support we've received from local and state leaders."

Temple Terrace Acting Mayor Andrew Ross said the city welcomes Amazon as "our newest corporate citizen. Amazon's presence in our amazing city will bring more jobs and opportunities for residents and those throughout the region."

Amazon also announced plans to open its first fulfillment center in Forney, Tex. The one million-square-foot facility is anticipated to launch in 2021. In addition, the company plans to open a 200,000-square-foot delivery station in Forney later in 2020.

Describing the decision as "a huge step for our community," Mayor Mary Penn said, "One of my biggest priorities has been to create more jobs and bring economic opportunity to our citizens. Now more than ever, this is a crucial time for economic growth and I feel confident Amazon will bring that to the City of Forney. I'm grateful to Amazon, city council and staff for making this possible."

Posted on Facebook by Papercuts J.P. in Boston, Mass.: "Just as our owner Kate [Layte] was about to head home yesterday, Ibram Kendi walked by the shop and thanked us for carrying his books. We are SO THANKFUL he wrote them!!"

"School is coming to your home and we are here to help!" Once Upon A Time Bookstore, Montrose Calif., noted in sharing pics of the store's back to school front window display. "We have workbooks, lunchboxes, and notebooks plus some great resources for when you just need to get everyone off of screens. Many teachers and families have been asking to help continue the conversation about justice into the new school year, so we featured titles to continue educating."

"We've turned the Little Oddfellows Cafe into our temporary mail room!" Elliott Bay Book Company posted on Facebook. "This is how we prepare our subscription boxes, Blind Dates with a Book, Book Bundle Add-Ons, and all the countless orders that come through our website. We're still offering free nationwide shipping (and curbside pickup for locals!) and we are so, so grateful for the literary community that keeps us going."

"We have shopping carts! I don’t know about you but I’m excited!" the Vero Beach Book Center, Vero Beach, Fla., posted on Facebook.

Shadows in Death: An Eve Dallas Novel by J.D. Robb (St. Martin's Press).

Today:
Fresh Air: Sister Helen Prejean, author of River of Fire: On Becoming an Activist (Vintage, $16.95, 9780307389039).

Tomorrow:
NPR's Weekend Edition: Madeleine Ryan, author of A Room Called Earth: A Novel (Penguin Books, $16.99, 9780143135456).

Elisabeth Moss and her Love and Squalor Pictures production company are teaming up with Blumhouse to develop Virginia Feito's novel Mrs. March, which will be published in the U.S. by Liveright in August 2021, Deadline reported. Feito will write the screenplay and executive produce, with Moss starring as well as producing with Lindsey McManus. Jason Blum is producing for Blumhouse. Carla Hacken and Bea Sequeira are also executive producers.

Moss said: "I read Virginia's novel in one sitting and was so captured by it I knew I had to make it and play Mrs. March. As a character, she is fascinating, complex, and deeply human and I can't wait to sink my teeth into her. Mrs. March is exactly the kind of engaging and challenging female-led project that Love and Squalor Pictures is built to make. As a company, we are thrilled to make our debut announcement in the features space as partners with Blumhouse. Having worked with Jason on Us and the company on The Invisible Man, I am constantly struck by their creativity and intelligence. Jason Blum is a powerhouse force in the world of storytelling and I am personally honored to be in the Blumhouse family."

Blum added: "Not only is Elisabeth one of the finest actors of her generation but she's an unabashed fan of genre material and an incredible collaborator. Lindsey and Elisabeth have impeccable taste, when they brought us Mrs. March we jumped at the chance to work with them."

Former New Zealand poet laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh's first book for children, Mophead, was named Margaret Mahy Book of the Year at the 2020 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults during a virtual presentation. The title also won the nonfiction category.

"We love this book's design and production. We love that it's part picture book, part graphic novel, part memoir, part poem--its form is exactly what it wants and needs to be, which is the message of the book too," said convenor of judges Jane Arthur. Other award winners:

Picture book: Abigail and the Birth of the Sun by Matthew Cunningham, illustrated by Sarah Wilkins
Junior fiction: Lizard's Tale by Weng Wai Chan
YA fiction: Aspiring by Damien Wilkins
Illustration: The Adventures of Tupaia, illustrated by Mat Tait, written by Courtney Sina Meredith
Te Kura Pounamu Award for te reo Māori: Tio Tiamu by Kurahau, illustrated by Laya Mutton-Rogers
First Book: #Tumeke! by Michael Petherick

photo: Maggie Walsh

Melissa Faliveno is the author of the debut essay collection Tomboyland (Topple Books, August 4, 2020). The former senior editor of Poets & Writers magazine, she has also published essays and interviews in Bitch, The Millions, Prairie Schooner, Diagram, Midwestern Gothic, Essay Daily, Isthmus and Green Mountains Review, among other. Born and raised in small-town Wisconsin, Faliveno lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., and teaches in the graduate writing program at Sarah Lawrence College.

On your nightstand now:

The books on my nightstand are many-stacked and towering, constantly threatening to crush me (not unlike Bohumil Hrabal's Too Loud a Solitude, which would be a great quarantine read), but at the top of the pile right now is Emily St. John Mandel's The Glass Hotel, which I'm super excited about, and Ander Monson's essay collection I Will Take the Answer, which I just finished. Ander is one of my favorite essayists, and this book is so good: weird, funny and tender-hearted, experimental in form and expansive in subject--from mines and rivers to sad pop songs, Michigan's upper peninsula and a giant inflatable Rudolph. In another more permanent stack are books I pick through (or sometimes read again cover to cover) when I'm in-between books, among them Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, Shirley Jackson's Let Me Tell You, Roberto Bolaño's By Night in Chile, Charles D'Ambrosio's Loitering, Stephen King's Night Shift, Alice Munro's Friend of My Youth and Ursula Le Guin's translation of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I read a lot of horror when I was a kid: Stephen King (which I read way too early), Christopher Pike, R.L. Stine. I was also obsessed with Steinbeck's The Red Pony and a weird children's series about a Texas ranch dog with a superiority complex called Hank the Cowdog. Horror, sadness and anthropomorphized animals pretty much sum up my literary origin story.

Your top five authors:

This question is pretty impossible to answer, so I'll list a few that I return to most often these days: Virginia Woolf, W.G. Sebald, James Baldwin, Jo Ann Beard, Annie Dillard, Hanif Abdurraqib. (That's six; I'm sorry). Oh, and Lorrie Moore. (My band is named after her story collection Self-Help.)

Book you've faked reading:

I definitely skimmed some Shakespeare in high school and some Spenser in college. I've also never finished a book by Tolstoy, even though when I was younger I almost certainly claimed to.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Jo Ann Beard's The Boys of My Youth and Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost, which I push on everyone I know, especially my writing students (one of these two dog-eared, underlined paperback copies goes with me whenever I travel); Hanif Abdurraqib's They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, which is some of the best pop-cultural-meets-personal nonfiction out there; Fun Home by Alison Bechdel; and The Carrying by Ada Limón--her poems destroy me in the best way possible.

Book you've bought for the cover:

While I've never bought a book for what's on the cover, I've bought many books because they had a cover--or more specifically, a dust jacket. In a past life, I was a rare book dealer; I scouted used bookstores for first editions/printings in their original jackets, which makes them more valuable. One I can think of offhand, which I've never actually read, is Orhan Pamuk's The Black Book. (I have two copies--both the first U.S. and U.K. editions. The U.K. edition, published by Faber & Faber, has a much cooler cover.)

Book you hid from your parents:

On the subject of reading Stephen King way too early, I'm pretty sure I smuggled my mother's copy of Cujo into my bedroom when I was around seven or eight. It was a terrible idea; that book haunted me for a long time, and I'm still a little afraid of dogs (even though I live with one).

Book that changed your life:

So many! Toni Morrison's Beloved, which I read in high school, was the first book that made me think: "Holy sh*t. This is what books can do?" Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway, and Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, which I read in college, made me fall in love with literature. And Nabokov's Lolita, as complicated as it might be, made me understand the way music can exist in prose, that there's poetry on the sentence level. It changed the way I think about writing.

Favorite line from a book:

There's a line from T.S. Eliot's "East Coker" (from Four Quartets) that has stayed with me for years, and has been a kind of guiding mantra in both writing and life: "I am here/ Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning."

Five books you'll never part with:

I still have a decent library from my book dealer days that I'll take with me wherever I go, even though they are very heavy. But five I'd never let go include W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, Virginia Woolf's The Death of the Moth, Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, Toni Morrison's Sula and Djuna Barnes's Nightwood.

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

I would love to read Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides again for the first time. And Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. I loved both books so hard when I first read them, a long time ago, and wonder what the experience would be like now--what I might notice that I couldn't possibly have noticed then.

Books you read while writing your own collection:

When I disappeared into the woods of Wisconsin for six weeks to finish Tomboyland, I hauled more than 30 books with me (I had a whole suitcase devoted to this). Some were books I've already mentioned, some were books of natural and cultural history. Here are a few others: Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, Edwidge Danticat's The Art of Death, Megan Stielstra's The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, Alexander Chee's How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Lacy M. Johnson's Trespassers, Nick Flynn's Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, Joni Tevis's The World Is on Fire, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo's Cenzontle and Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine. On a whim, I also checked out Anne LaBastille's Woodswoman from the Boulder Junction Public Library. I almost didn't come back.

Swedish author Fredrik Backman has entertained readers worldwide, drawing them into fictional realms with ordinary people facing the absurdities of life and death. In Anxious People, he mines similar terrain, cleverly assembling an ensemble cast of characters, some of them utterly exasperating. He sets them in a darkly comic predicament that will challenge them as a group and personally, opening the story to larger themes about the foibles, pitfalls and traps of living.

Backman's construct is straightforward: an open-house apartment viewing in "a not particularly large town" in Sweden on the day before New Year's Eve. What could possibly go wrong? Everything, especially when a 39-year-old gun-wielding bank robber targets a cashless bank and winds up, through a series of mishaps, at the open house. In bumbling, snowballing desperation, the robber takes eight people, high-maintenance strangers at the viewing, hostage. They include an eager real estate agent; an older married couple at odds with each other, who are interested in the apartment as an investment renovation project; a lesbian couple who are pregnant, first-time homebuyers; a jaded 80-year-old woman more concerned about her tardy husband, who is "parking the car," than the armed robber; a half-clothed man wearing an over-sized rabbit costume head complete with giant floppy ears; and a wealthy, socially isolated bank manager who recently started visiting open houses in an effort to come to grips with her life and its meaning. When the robber ultimately escapes, two police officers--a father and son facing personal struggles of their own--investigate the crime and try to make sense of the who, how and why of this topsy-turvy, totally-gone-awry robbery scenario and all involved.

Backman (Us Against You) skillfully employs an omniscient narrative voice and short, focused chapters that unwind an intricate plot through interspersed--extremely telling and very funny--police interrogation scenes. Readers are kept off-balance by details of the hostage siege as characters reveal their personal dilemmas. This intensifies the narrative tension and drama, upping the literal and figurative anxiousness of the book's title. Backman's signature storytelling wit and wisdom--the way he unravels his puzzle while peeling back layers of complex relationships, personal burdens and secrets carried by all--enables this fresh, quirky, over-the-top comedy to coalesce into poignant profundity. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Shelf Talker: This clever, dark comedy about human nature and relationships starts with a real estate open house that goes dreadfully awry when a bumbling armed bank robber shows up.

Last week, British trade publication the Bookseller was acquired by the publisher of theatre magazine the Stage, "in a move that will see the 162-year-old book trade newspaper join forces with the 140-year-old brand."

It's about time. I don't mean it's about time this particular transaction occurred. I mean books and the book trade are all about time--books of the past, present and future; books that have stood the test of time and many, many more that have not.

Reading the acquisition news inspired me to rev up my trusty time machine and venture back to the August 1920 issue of the Bookseller. What was happening in the book business this month a century ago, so soon after a cataclysmic world war and global pandemic?

My first impression: so many books! Page and upon page of listings and advertisements for autumn titles--the mind-boggling volume of promising volumes, most now long forgotten.

Mills & Boon would be publishing Life Without Money, by the author of Life Without Servants. John Long was hyping an as yet untitled "New Novel" by Beatrice Kelson, author of A Three-Cornered Duel, The Blows of Circumstance, All The Joneses, The Edge of To-Day and Bertha in the Background. "The author is reckoned among the select few recognized as humorous novelists," the publisher boasted. "In eulogizing her work the Observer said of her:--'Miss Kelston has the real gift of delicate farce--a gift that is extremely rare. Her talent causes a perpetual ripple of pleased laughter.' "

Some familiar names were there as well. A new edition of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Women and Economics was promoted with this Globe blurb: "There are few women of to-day who command the attention of the best minds of Europe and America as Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Her book is recognized as the most original and readable volume."

In other news, W.H. Smith & Son would "shortly be leaving their premises at 185, Strand, where they have been housed for 100 years, for new offices in Portugal Street, Kingsway. The premises were built specially for them, but during the war were taken over by the Government and until recently were utilized for the Postal Censorship." The company was also planning to "celebrate their centenary in the early autumn by a dinner at the Savoy Hotel, at which some 400 or 500 of the leading figures in English literature will, it is expected, be present. The firm has, it is said, sold more books than the all of the other firms in Europe put together."

During the latest Booksellers' Provident Institution board of directors meeting, "a member's widow, who was already in receipt of an annuity from the Institution, has recently been granted a cottage at Abbots Langley by the Retreat Committee. In addition to these privileges, she will receive free medical attendance and coal, a plentiful supply of garden produce and a small gift, payable annually in December, under the will of the late Mr. Henry Southern."

Major G.H. Putnam, "who has returned to America from his recent visit to this country.... expresses the opinion that the buying of books and the general interest in things literary is on the increase in Great Britain, and he thinks that the coming year will be very promising from the standpoint of publisher and author so far as sales prospects are concerned. Optimism in trade matters is often the first perquisite of success, and all publishers on this side of the Atlantic will no doubt make up their minds to ensure the successful results which Major Putnam so confidently forecasts."

There was an update on the German Book Trade Exhibition: "In conjunction with the forthcoming Autumn Fair at Frankfurt, arrangements have been made for an exhibition dealing with every industry in connection with the book trade. In addition to the exhibits there will be provided for visitors various attractive features, such as the suggested library for a business man and for a woman of culture, while typical students' rooms, nurseries and music saloons will also be exhibited."

The full text was reprinted of Education and the Book Trade: A Paper Read by Major G. Brimley Bowes, M.A., at the Annual Meeting of the Associated Booksellers of Great Britain and Ireland. It was his contention that, in "these days when we of the bookcraft are constantly engaged in the necessary and anxious problems of a living wage for ourselves and our employees, I venture to think that we might with advantage devote some time to the consideration of the mental equipment of both. If you will bear with me a short time, I will try to suggest some aspects of the case for your consideration under the two heads of-- (a) General Education (b) Specialized Training."

Looking to the future of the bookselling profession, Major Bowes was optimistic: "What I have said to-day is meant to resemble a pebble thrown, I will not say into a pond, for that suggests stagnancy, but into a flowing stream and I venture to hope that the resulting ripples may lead to the establishment of a system whereby we and those who come after us may be more worthy of our calling and of greater use to our country and our generation."

And here we all are, a century later. Time passes, and you can't throw a pebble into the same river twice.