Hummingbird Books, an independent bookstore with titles for children and adults, will open next month in Chestnut Hill, Mass., Patch.com reported.

Wendy Dodson with her husband at Valley Bookstore

Owner Wendy Dodson and her team will carry books from local authors as well as national bestsellers, along with a variety of nonbook items like candy, games and stationery. Event plans include children's storytime sessions and author signings.

"Hummingbird Books will be a magical place where children discover a love of reading and how reading connects us to others as we search for ideas, wisdom, or just a break from reality," said Dodson, who also owns Valley Bookstore in Jackson Hole, Wyo. "The shop has also given me the opportunity to execute a vision with two exceptional, local women. They are my partners in Hummingbird Books, and I love being part of an all-female, all-star entrepreneurial team."

Dodson told Shelf Awareness that she is planning to open on April 30 with an Independent Bookstore Day celebration.

Kyle Churman and Lauren Shoemaker are the new owners of Werner Books, a new and used bookstore in Erie, Pa. The Times-News reported that Gayle Werner, who "has been living that bookseller's dream for the past 20 years, first as the owner of Tattered Corners in Meadville, and since 2010 as the owner of Werner Books" at 3514 Liberty St., turned the keys over to the husband-and-wife team on Tuesday.

Werner said owning a bookshop had, for the most part, been everything she would have hoped: "It's fun. Honestly, you love coming to work every day. I think I have had only two grumpy customers in 21 years."

Earlier this week, Werner said goodbye in a Facebook post, noting in part: "This week ends an era in both my personal and professional life.... So much has changed, but one that has stayed constant is the unwavering support of the local community. Your actions exemplify the importance of shopping local and keeping an independent bookstore in Erie.... It has been a pleasure working and training Kyle and Lauren the last few weeks. Watching their excitement and energy makes my decision to retire so much easier."

The new owners said no dramatic changes are planned for the shop. Even the name will stay the same. In a post on social media yesterday, they wrote: "We are so excited to be taking over ownership of Werner Books and to continue Gayle's legacy. Lauren and I cannot wait to meet everyone and share our love of reading with the Erie community. There is such a loyal customer base here and we have already met so many wonderful people. 

"Nearly everything you love about Werner Books is going to stay the same including the book buybacks, customer credit, summer book sale, even all of our employees are staying with us. We are also so grateful to the city of Erie for a Flagship grant for new technology. We plan to see many of you out in the community at events including this weekend. Lauren and I cannot wait to meet all of you and hope you'll stop in the store soon."

Rahva Raamat Viru

The winners of the London Book Fair's 2022 International Excellence Awards include Bookstore of the Year Rahva Raamat Viru, in Tallinn, Estonia. Judges cited the store for "demonstrating the importance of sustainability throughout its refurbishment, combining 'fusion environments' that respect their roots, nourish nostalgia, and also provide modern technical services. These all combine to create a wonderful, cultural oasis for its community and customers, regardless of their language, interests or age, served by knowledgeable staff who are inspired to offer a level of service that matches the stimulating environment."

The Library of the Year is "Fran Galovic" Koprivnica Public Library in Koprivnica, Croatia, cited for what it has done to support the local community during the pandemic. Judges said, "We felt that the Croatian submission reflected the work that has been done by librarians everywhere--not just to put information online but to build the digital literacy and skills that users, particularly children and young people, need to stay engaged and keep learning online."

Other winners are:

Audiobook Publisher of the Year: Saga Egmont (Denmark)
Special Commendation: Macmillan Audio (U.S.)
Literary Translation Initiative Award: Institut Ramon Llull (Spain)
Children's & Young Adult Publisher Award: Tulika Publishers (India)
The Educational Innovation Award: Editions Animées (France)
The Rights Professional Award: Anna Soler-Pont, Pontas Agency (Spain)
Inclusivity in Publishing Award (U.K.-only): Bloomsbury

Richard Brown

Richard Brown, currently director of the University of South Carolina Press, is joining Rowman & Littlefield as senior executive editor for religion, focusing on general-interest titles, church leadership books, textbooks and scholarly titles. He will revive Rowman & Littlefield's Sheed & Ward imprint of books for Catholic readers, and will expand offerings through partnerships like the one Rowman & Littlefield currently maintains with Alban at Duke Divinity (formerly the Alban Institute). The appointment is effective April 18.

Brown formerly was director of Georgetown University Press and director of Westminster John Knox Press. He has served on the board of the Association of University Presses, including one year as president, and on the executive committee of the Association of American Publishers/Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division.

Julie Kirsch, senior v-p and publisher of Rowman & Littlefield, said that Brown "brings an impressive range of publishing experience and a deep understanding of the field of religion to Rowman & Littlefield."

Chris Madden, "a lifestyle and decorating author and personality who lent her name to furniture and housewares, including a collection for J.C. Penney, and was an early program host on HGTV," died March 2, the New York Times reported. She was 73. A "telegenic former model and publishing executive who wrote a number of books on decorating," Madden was sometimes compared with Martha Stewart, "but a kinder, gentler version, as Joyce Wadler of the New York Times put it in 2007."

"She helps them impress," Madden said of Stewart. "I help them decompress."

Madden had already written a collection of books on interiors--including Kitchens (1993) and Bathrooms (1996)--when she published what proved to be her most successful book, A Room of Her Own (1997). "The book touched a nerve and sold more than 100,000 copies," the Times wrote, noting that she became a sought-after speaker and guest on television. 

Madden had also worked in the publicity departments at several publishing houses. At 24, she was hired as director of publicity at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and worked in the field until being fired by Simon & Schuster in the late 1970s for, she said, not being aggressive enough. She then started her own publicity company, Chris Madden & Associates, with clients including book publishers, an anti-censorship nonprofit and Ford Models.

At the same time, she began to produce coffee-table books, starting with a cookbook, The Compleat Lemon, with Susan Lee (1979) and Manhattan, with Jean-Claude Suares (1981). After her book on decorators, Interior Visions: Great American Designers and the Showcase House, was published in 1988, she focused on interior design.

BookGive, the nonprofit arm of Denver bookstores BookBar and the Bookies, was honored recently as one of the Denver Post Foundation's Pen & Podium 2021/2022 Literacy Charitable Partners. Presenting at the March 21 event was author Jhumpa Lahiri. BookGive has donated more than 100,000 books to schools and nonprofit organizations throughout metro Denver since its inception March 2020. As public benefit corporations, BookBar and the Bookies donate 10% of all book sales as well as all VIP membership dues to BookGive. Pictured: BookGive volunteers Kimberly Pugliese and Emily Moore.

Posted on Instagram by the Salt Eaters Bookshop, Inglewood, Calif.: "A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of hosting the dreamiest, bookish photoshoot in the shop and we are so excited to share the shots with you all. It was such an intentional shoot, with local models wearing pieces from Barbie Jones of @black_fashionicon, a Black woman fashion designer with a shop just down the street from us (!) with creative direction from @gena_rynae. So much love to the team for making us look so good!! More photos to come."

Chalk one up for Frog and Toad. Gramercy Books, Bexley, Ohio, shared a photo of the bookshop's chalkboard, noting "Springtime! Kick off the season with a good book, come see Daniel and Nikki today 10 a.m.-6 p.m.!"

Janine Perez has joined Grand Central as associate marketing director. She formerly worked in the children's division of Penguin Random House.

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At HarperCollins Children's Books:

Taylan Salvati is joining the company as publicity manager. She was previously senior publicist at Scholastic.

Abby Dommert is joining the company as associate publicist. She was recently editor & marketing associate at Thornwillow Press.

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At Macmillan Children's Publishing Group:

Jordin Streeter has joined the company as marketing manager. Previously, she was associate marketing manager at Scholastic.

Carlee Maurier has joined the company as marketing coordinator. Previously, she was trade sales assistant at Scholastic.

On the Trail of the Jackalope: How a Legend Captured the World's Imagination and Helped Us Cure Cancer by Michael P. Branch (Pegasus Books).

Hello, Bookstore, a documentary directed A.B. Zax about bookseller Matt Tannenbaum and his shop the Bookstore & Get Lit Wine Bar in Lenox, Mass. (see Robert Gray's column below), will premiere April 29 at Film Forum in New York City and be released in other cities around the country soon. It will be available on TVOD and DVD June 28, with SVOD release date to be determined.

Film Forum has extended an offer to booksellers in the area to participate as well: "We are inviting independent bookstores (ideally one per night beginning Monday, 5/2, following opening weekend) to 'co-present' a screening of Hello, Bookstore during our run. Film Forum will promote the film as such via event page on our web site, in e-newsletters (going twice weekly to about 52,000 opt-in recipients) and on the Film Forum social media channels (Twitter, Instagram Facebook). We will provide a discount code for $11 tickets (regular admission is $15) and invite someone from the bookstore staff to introduce the screening at Film Forum and talk about their shop/organization and display any marketing collateral they’d like in our lobby. We would ask in return that the partner bookstore promote the screening on their e-newsletter and social media. If interested contact: adam@filmforum.org or sonya@filmforum.org."

Noting that a number of promising TV series that are in the works are based on great novels, Indiewire showcased "10 upcoming book-to-television adaptations we can't wait to see," including Pachinko, The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Time Traveler's Wife, Conversations with Friends, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Interview with the Vampire, The Sandman, House of the Dragon, Daisy Jones & The Six, and The Power.

Finalists for the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards, sponsored by the Independent Book Publishers Association and celebrating the best in independent publishing, have been announced. Each of the 150 finalists will receive either a gold or silver award at a dinner ceremony April 29 in Orlando, Fla., during IBPA's Publishing University. The finalists can be seen here.

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Finalists have been named for this year's CrimeFest Awards, which are presented in four categories: crime audiobook, crime fiction e-book published in both physical and digital format, humorous crime novel and biography or critical book related to crime fiction. Winners will be announced May 22 during CrimeFest in Bristol, U.K., which will be held in person for the first time since 2019. Check out the complete CrimeFest Awards shortlists here.

photo: Carucha L. Meuse

Kellye Garrett is the author of the Detective by Day mysteries, which have won Anthony, Agatha, Lefty and IPPY awards. She serves on Sisters in Crime's national board and is a co-founder of Crime Writers of Color. Her new novel, Like a Sister (Mulholland Books, March 8, 2022), is about a Black woman in New York City searching for the truth about the death of her estranged reality star sister.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

How did a glam reality star go from partying it up for her birthday in downtown Manhattan to dying alone of an overdose in the Bronx?

On your nightstand now:

Homicide & Halo-Halo by Mia P. Manansala. It's the second book in her Lefty Award-nominated Tita Rosie's Kitchen series. Mia has such a great voice and has created an amazing--and much needed--character in the cozy genre. Lila Macapagal is a Filipina-American Gen-Zer who loves to bake and always seems to run into murder. The second book deals with another guilty pleasure of mine: beauty pageants.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Even as a kid, I loved book series. My favorites were Encyclopedia Brown by Donald J. Sobol, Sweet Valley Twins by Francine Pascal and the Baby-Sitters Club by Ann M. Martin.

Your top five authors:

Barbara Neely, Janet Evanovich, Laura Lippman, Sue Grafton, Walter Mosley.

Book you've faked reading:

I went to high school in the '90s so best believe I had quite the CliffsNotes collection. However, one book I will admit I've never read is Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie. I can fake it pretty well because I do know the ending since it's so iconic. As both a crime fiction writer and reader, I haven't read a lot of Agatha Christie. Okay, I admitted it. I just hope the Crime Fiction police don't come and take my Mystery Author card!

Book you're an evangelist for:

B Is for Burglar by Sue Grafton. I've loved Kinsey Millhone since I first discovered her on my mom's bookshelves when I was a teenager. This is (obviously) the second book in Grafton's Alphabet series and it has the most iconic twist ending. It set my "twist bar" very high at an early age because it was surprising yet still made complete sense because of how she plotted the story. I re-read it every couple years and still manage to be surprised.

Book you've bought for the cover:

My mom used to drop me off at the Barnes & Noble by my house and I'd spend hours looking at book covers in the mystery section. That's normally how I'd make my selections and I still do a lot of time. The first one that pops into my head was The Wife by Alafair Burke. The beauty is in the simplicity, it's literally a close-up of an abandoned wedding ring wedged in beach sand. You immediately have so many questions when you see it. I had to pick it up, then tore through it in a couple of days.

Book you hid from your parents:

My mom is also a huge reader who always gave me free rein with her bookshelf, which meant I was reading Jackie Collins at like 12. So I didn't really need to hide books from my parents. I do know the book I should've hidden from my grandmother--I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie by Pamela Des Barres. I made the mistake of leaving it out for her to find after I went to sleep. I still don't know what she did with that book. I should have never brought it to her house. But what can I say? I was young. (Too young to be reading it, according to her!)

Book that changed your life:

When Death Comes Stealing by Valerie Wilson Wesley. I think if you've always seen yourself represented, you don't realize how much representation matters. This is the book where I first felt seen in the pages of something I read. It's about a woman PI in Essex County, N.J., which is near where I grew up. This book was the first time I read a Black woman in a mystery and the first time I recognized the places in it. I was so excited about both. I believed that I could one day write my own mystery about a Black woman. It's also the reason I have so many real locations in my books.

Favorite line from a book:

" 'Got any kids?' she asked." --from Blanche Passes Go, the fourth book in the Blanche White series by Barbara Neely. Barbara was one of the first Black women to be traditionally published in crime fiction and just an inspiration for both breaking barriers and her ability to write an amazing story.

That line is the callback of all callbacks. In the first book in the series, Blanche on the Lam, she has a brief encounter with an obnoxious, disrespectful white grocery boy that leads her to put a half-serious hex on his private parts.

So when she recognizes him eight years later in book four, of course, she wants to know if her hex worked.

Five books you'll never part with:

Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
When Death Comes Stealing by Valerie Wilson Wesley

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

I'm a mystery lover so I want to read them all again for the first time so I can truly be surprised by a good twist. I'll pick a more recent one because I loved both the story and the ending: The Collective by Alison Gaylin. It's such a high concept about a group of grieving mothers who enact their own revenge on their children's murderers when the law lets them down. Yet she manages to tell the story in such a believable way that I really was like "Why isn't there a group like this?"

In 2013, television writer and actor Tracy Dawson was passed over for a job writing shows because they didn't have any "female needs." Naturally infuriated, she became interested in women over the centuries whose opportunities and options have been limited by their sex. From this curiosity is born Let Me Be Frank: A Book About Women Who Dressed Like Men to Do Shit They Weren't Supposed to Do, in which Dawson profiles several dozen women from the 1400s BCE through the present. In a pithy, one-liner-laden style, she brings these remarkable and little-known histories to light with comedic flair.

Some of the women are classics: Joan of Arc, Kathrine Switzer and a chapter's worth of once-anonymous literary figures who are now household names (Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, the Brontës, George Sand). But the majority are more obscure: Maria Toorpakai, a pro squash player born in 1990 who defied the ultra-conservative norms of her region of Pakistan when she disguised herself as a boy to play sports; Hannah Snell, who served as a Royal Marine in the 1750s; Ellen Craft, who fled slavery in 1848 disguised as a white male slaveowner. A teenaged Dorothy Lawrence, rejected as war correspondent in World War I, took herself to the front by boat, bicycle and soldier's garb. The 1890s entertainer and male impersonator Florence Hines, 1941 comic book creator Tarpé Mills and 1980s miner and entrepreneur Pili Hussein are among these diverse, colorful stories. Others are antiheroes, like witch-pricker Christian Caddell or all-around scoundrel Catalina de Erauso. Dawson is careful to point out that her focus is on "women who dressed as men to gain access and opportunity, not on gender identity," since the latter is notoriously difficult to parse from a historical perspective, particularly since many of the women she profiles have left scant records. Their motivations vary as widely as other aspects of their identities and stories, but each of these women pushed boundaries in ways that remain inspirational for Dawson and her readers today.

Let Me Be Frank is peppered with punchy jokes in an informal, conversational tone that suits Dawson's background in television. Joan of Arc is compared to Beyoncé; U.K.-born Annie Hindle, the first male impersonator to appear on the American variety stage back in 1868, even married other women (dressed as one of her male characters). Dawson delivers these historical profiles, born of research, in a lighthearted voice. Tina Berning's portraits evoke the women's personalities and literally color the narratives. The result is an easy-to-read, eye-opening look at female bravery amid the sexism and misogyny throughout history; it is funny and rousing and proud. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: Humorous profiles of more than 30 women in history who broke gender barriers offer righteous inspiration.

When film director A.B. Zax started telling people he was making a documentary about a bookshop, "I got a few blank stares and bemused smiles. Undoubtedly, they thought, 'well, that sounds like it might be kind of boring.' But they didn't know Matt Tannenbaum. And they didn't know the Bookstore in Lenox, Massachusetts, a shop that Matt has turned into a humble literary institution in the Berkshires."

Tannenbaum purchased the Bookstore in 1976, after working for a couple of years at the old Gotham Book Mart in Manhattan. I learned that and much more when I had the opportunity to get an early look at Zax's upcoming documentary Hello, Bookstore, which premieres at Film Forum in New York City April 29 (see more release details in media notes above).

Matt Tannenbaum

I love the subtle way the film captures specific qualities that make Tannenbaum a gifted bookseller: his intelligence, sense of humor, charm and warmth; his ability to seamlessly weave conversation, storytelling and handselling; the modesty of a longtime bookman who frankly admits in the film: "I'm not a businessman. I've always been doing it by the seat of my pants." 

Having been a patron of the Bookstore for more than 10 years, Zax said he "had become enraptured by the way Matt holds court in the store, turning the art of selling books into a kind of performance.... Buying a book from Matt is not transactional. It's a portal to the ancient human ritual of sharing stories. In the age of Amazon and e-commerce, exploring this kind of connection became deeply moving to me."

Tannenbaum told me that Zax "first fell under the spell when I gave him a copy of a memoir I had put together back in 2009, My Years at The Gotham Book Mart.... I haven't watched the film for a couple of months now, but when I show the trailer to customers every once in awhile, I'm struck by the moment when Adam shoots me in mid-thought, as if I'm just realizing that 'I fell in love with writing....' "

It's a wonderful moment, during which Tannenbaum recalls getting out of the Navy and a buddy introducing him to authors like Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller and Frederick Exley: "I fell in love with writing, that's what happened. I fell in love with writing. So I understood somehow that this world of books was fascinating. It was completely different from my life. The world of the stories I found in books was so far away from mine. It was like [whispers] nobody else knew. I was the only one who knew what these stories were."

A.B. Zax

When Zax began shooting Hello, Bookstore in the fall of 2019, he "became a fly on the wall, chronicling this lost world, and hoping that somehow, what I am able to film might inspire more people to turn back to their own communities. We need bookstores. We need small businesses. We need people to turn away from their screens and into the windows of our towns. So much of the division in our country seems rooted in this loss. Filming before and during the Covid pandemic brought all of these feelings to the surface. Little did I realize that through the eyes of this little bookstore, I was filming the old world becoming the new."

Zax returned during the holidays, then came back in the spring and summer of 2020 "for extended periods, so you also see two periods of Covid with varying severity," he noted. "While editing, I chose to juxtapose these periods, creating chapters that ebb and flow almost seasonally. The prologue shows the store in the midst of Covid, then we jump back to fall 2019 to show the store as it was. From there, we get into Covid over the spring/summer of 2020, before going back to the holidays of 2019 before the pandemic. It then mostly stays in the present, except for the dream sequence, etc. This felt like the right way to handle the timeline, because it heightens the contrasts--the good times, the hard times and deepens the scenes in between."

He was still filming as the pandemic threatened the bookshop's survival, and when an outpouring of community support for a "Save The Bookstore" GoFundMe campaign came to the rescue. (No spoiler alert needed here, since we reported on the campaign.) 

"I wanted to show what we've been missing, and more than that, what we've taken for granted," Zax observed. "It also really highlights the way Matt has to adapt--cracking jokes and selling books through the door. Even on the darkest days, when the fate of the bookstore was literally hanging by a thread, you see him reading Higglety Pigglety Pop to cheer himself up, or reciting the poem 'Dragonfly Days' to honor a departed friend. He leapt into the pandemic, turning it into a kind of ballet. A one-man band, taking orders on the phone, rummaging in the back for a recommendation, and trading stories at the door."

Hello, Bookstore will be available to watch soon. Tannenbaum is still at his station of choice, an all-purpose nook located by the front window of the Bookstore. 

"A few years ago, I had dinner with David Silverstein, the man who started the Bookstore and owned it for just about 10 years," Tannenbaum said. "He told me that when people started referring to 'the Bookstore' as 'David's Bookstore' he knew it was time to get out. He wanted, he said, to do other things. And when he told me that I realized in a flash that after so many years 'the Bookstore" had become 'Matt's Bookstore.' I knew I didn't want to do anything else!"