Enchanted Children's Bookstore, which opened last month at 1023 W. Main St., Collinsville, Okla., "started as a dream to put a book in every child's hand and that dream is now a reality for retired Green Country teacher Karen Barros," KOTV reported. Barros taught journalism, English and literature in Owasso for nearly 30 years.

"My vision is to bring children to books," she said, adding that her love for reading led her to become a teacher and she wanted to continue that passion in another direction. "Whether they are little bitty or older, there's always something for someone. There's no such a thing as a non-reader, everybody reads, whether it's a TV guide or a restaurant menu. There's always something for everybody and I want to find that."

The shop is "themed like a castle inside a fairy tale," KOTV noted. It features features titles ranging from baby to YA, as well as a small selection of adult general fiction, mystery/suspense and romance.  

"It's just wonderful because I believe there's magic in books," Barros added: "When you're stuck at home, it can take you somewhere else and I love to see that in children."

Beans and Bookmarks, Spartanburg, S.C., will be closing January 28., with hopes of eventually reopening. The business, which sells new and used books and operates a coffee shop serving literary-themed drinks, was launched last April by Callie Yarbrough and her parents, Carrie and Dereck Yarbrough. 

Announcing the impending closure to customers on Facebook, the owners said: "We would like to thank you for all of your support in the last year. You have stood by us and helped us as we navigated the ins and outs of running a small business with just the three of us. We have gotten so lucky to get to know each and every one of you.... We have loved every minute of being open and wish nothing but the best for all of you."

The Yarbroughs did offer some hope for the future however, noting: "That being said, Beans and Bookmarks will not turn into an unforgotten dream. We plan to reopen in the distant future, but at this time we do not have a date. We WILL keep our Mobile Coffee Trailer open for events so don't think you can get rid of us that easily! We got so lucky to meet all of you and want to still have the opportunity to serve y'all the best we can. We are so proud of what we have accomplished since opening, and we will never regret being here for the community to enjoy.... When you see us again, we will be bigger and better than ever!"

The Barnes & Noble store on Rte. 17 in Paramus, N.J., will close permanently next month after nearly 30 years in business, NJ.com reported. 

In a Facebook post announcing the closure, the B&N Paramus team thanked customers for their patronage over the years and explained that the store's landlord "has chosen not to renew our lease and will be redeveloping the site." The company is "doing everything we can to find a new location, hoping to return close to here with a new bookstore before too long." The last day open to customers will be February 11.

Per NorthJersey.com, the site of the Paramus B&N will be turned into an adult daycare center for people with disabilities.

Audiobook publisher RBmedia has bought Ukemi Audiobooks and Dharma Audiobooks. Ukemi Audiobooks will continue as an imprint under RBmedia's W.F. Howes brand, and Dharma Audiobooks will be a sub-imprint under Ukemi Audiobooks.

Ukemi Audiobooks produces previously unavailable fiction and nonfiction classics, ranging from ancient Greek, Roman, and Latin texts to principal works by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Freud and Jung, as well as 20th-century classics, including Thomas Mann's literary masterpieces and the early novels of Samuel Beckett.

Dharma Audiobooks specializes in Buddhist recordings of all kinds--biographies, histories, talks, suttas and sutras, commentaries, and classic literature. The recordings draw on all the main traditions--Theravada, Mahayana, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Western Buddhist--and feature leading teachers and writers.

Nicolas Soames, founder and managing director of Ukemi Audiobooks and Dharma Audiobooks, said, "I started Ukemi Audiobooks and Dharma Audiobooks in 2015 to provide highly specialist titles, most of which were not otherwise available. Seven years later, it's clear that both labels would really benefit from the much larger international distribution and marketing that W.F. Howes and RBmedia can provide. I was encouraged and pleased to find that such a large organization was genuinely interested in these specialist corners of the audiobook community and know that these two labels are in capable hands."

Miles Stevens-Hoare, managing director of RBmedia International, said, "Ukemi Audiobooks and Dharma Audiobooks titles have generated worldwide interest since their inception in 2015. We look forward to significantly expanding distribution of the existing catalog through RBmedia's powerful global distribution network, while also publishing new audiobook titles under our W.F. Howes brand."

Billing itself as "the largest audiobook publisher in the world," RBmedia includes Recorded Books, HighBridge, Tantor Media and is owned by private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

Cai Emmons

Cai Emmons, novelist, playwright and teacher, died on January 2. She was 71 and had ALS, a subject that she wrote about "with eloquence and honesty," after her diagnosis in February 2021, the Oregonian wrote.

Emmons's six novels were His Mother's Son (Harcourt), which won an Oregon Book Award (the Ken Kesey Award) for fiction; Weather Woman (Red Hen Press), which won a Nautilus Book Award, and a sequel called Sinking Islands (Red Hen Press), winner of a May Sarton Award; The Stylist (HarperCollins); and two titles that appeared in September 2022: Unleashed (Dutton) and Livid (Red Hen Press). Her story collection, Vanishing, won the Leapfrog Fiction Contest. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in a range of newspapers and magazines. For the publication of Sinking Islands in 2021, several authors rallied to help with promotion and readings, as Emmons was having difficulty speaking.

Earlier Emmons had written plays, including Mergatroid and When Petulia Comes, which were staged in New York, and screenplays and teleplays, some for CBS's The Trials of Rosie O'Neill.

She taught at several colleges and universities, including the University of Southern California and the University of Oregon, where she taught fiction and screenwriting from 2002-2018. She received fellowships at the Albee Foundation, Ucross Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Playa, Caldera and Moulin à Nef in France.

The family wrote: "Emmons's ever-changing and broad writing bears testimony to a profound love for people and human connection, an acute attention to the internal lives of women, a constant curiosity about the world around her, and hope in our ability as people to set the world to rights."

In a "farewell" letter to friends and readers on January 1, Emmons wrote that she was "planning to depart from life as I've known it through death with dignity" the following day. "I have had a rewarding life and I love everyone who has been a part of it. Remember me with joy."

She noted that "the timing of my demise is odd because my career is currently in an upswing. Since 2018 I have published five books, and I am completing a new one now. There is interest in turning my blog posts into a book; a Hollywood producer is interested in optioning three of my books; and a documentary film is being made about me. It is not a bad way to go out, though I regret that I won't live to see these efforts fully realized."

Emmons's family asked that people "buy her books from independent bookstores and donate to the ALS Association and the research efforts of Dr. P. Hande Ozdinler at Northwestern University."

Inkwood Books, Haddonfield, N.J., shared a photo of the shop's 2023 Reading Resolutions chalkboard on Facebook, noting: "Inkwood booksellers came up with some fun 2023 Reading Resolutions to kickstart the New Year. Come on by and pick a category--we're confident we can help you find something outside your norm that you'll be glad you read this year!"

Reads by the River Books and Gifts, Waterford, Wis., shared photos on Facebook of the shop's "Winter Windows" storefront display. 

Posted on Facebook by Cupboard Maker Books, Enola, Pa.: "Morning Annika. Morning Trains."

Caitlin Mulrooney-Lyski has joined Henry Holt as v-p, executive director of publicity. She was formerly director of publicity at Ecco, overseeing the nonfiction list, for four years, and earlier was deputy director of publicity at Grand Central Publishing.

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Holly Rice has joined Atria Books/Simon & Schuster as a publicist.

Today:
Fresh Air: Lauren Fleshman, author of Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man's World (Penguin Press, $28, 9780593296783).

NPR's Here & Now: Joshua Cohen, author of the introduction to a new edition of The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger (McNally Editions, $28.95, 9781946022332).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Jamie Oliver, author of One: Simple One-Pan Wonders (Flatiron, $35, 9781250871008).

Kelly Clarkson Show: Brad Meltzer, co-author of The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill (Flatiron, $29.99, 9781250777263).

Netflix has acquired a series adaptation of Adam Silvera's 2017 YA novel They Both Die at the End after "a very competitive situation, with five streamers/networks bidding," Deadline reported. The project is from Bridgerton creator Chris Van Dusen, Yellowjackets executive producer Drew Comins and studio eOne as well as music star Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio (aka Bad Bunny).

Van Dusen is writing the pilot script and executive producing through his CVD Productions alongside Silvera, Ocasio and Comins via his eOne-based Creative Engine. Entertainment One acquired U.S. rights to the novel in 2021 for Comins. Van Dusen came on board a year later when he was wrapping his run on Bridgerton and had identified the novel as the kind of project he would like to tackle next, Deadline noted. They Both Die at the End had previously been in development as a series at HBO with J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot and The Other Two co-creator Chris Kelly.

The three finalists for this year's Story Prize are:

Natural History by Andrea Barrett (Norton)
Bliss Montage by Ling Ma (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty (Tin House)

The winner will be announced on the evening of Wednesday, March 15, at a private event that the Story Prize will livestream. The event will feature readings by and interviews with the three finalists, culminating in the announcement of the winner and acceptance of the $20,000 top prize and an engraved silver bowl. The runners-up will each receive $5,000.

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, Roshani Chokshi's first adult novel, is a dual-timeline gothic dripping with fairytale magic and twisted love. In the present, a man described only as the Bridegroom falls for Indigo, a mysterious woman with many secrets. In the past, the young Indigo befriends a girl named Azure, drawing her into her web as the two girls grow into womanhood. Indigo is a darkly charismatic character, skilled in the arts of manipulation and control. She makes Azure and the Bridegroom special by the closeness she allows them, even if she never truly lets them in. She, like Eros with Psyche, makes her new husband swear never to look at her or try to discover her secrets. Once they travel to Indigo's childhood home, the House of Dreams, he begins seeing a brother he never had--and the urge to pull back the veil grows irresistible.

Playing to classic gothic themes, Chokshi (Once More Upon a Time; The Gilded Wolves) constructs an opulent manor falling to ruin, complete with an aunt--Indigo's former guardian--haunted by ghosts unseen. The story is initially bewildering to readers, almost opaque in its structure and mystery. Chokshi wants readers as mystified as the Bridegroom and as entranced as Azure while she embraces the full range of darkness common in gothic fiction. Azure's mother's boyfriend lies in wait, and Indigo's home becomes a refuge to a girl who wants desperately to become invisible. Magical realism in the form of a portal to Faerie, the Otherworld, provides a promised escape for Azure and a lure for Indigo to dangle in front of her. Indigo is as enticing as she is cruel, and she capitalizes on the Bridegroom's and Azure's childhood traumas to exert control disguised as love.

Chokshi writes Indigo as fairytale herself: glittering, terrible and full of false promise. "In the end," she writes, "a fairytale is nothing more than a sense of hope. Hope lures and tricks. It tempts with shining thrones, exquisite nectars, and loving arms. It whispers to us that we are extraordinary. Exempt. Thus lured, we follow its path." The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is as enthralling as Indigo: full of mystery and pain with enough flashes of light to enrapture and ensnare. Beautiful prose, complicated characters and terrible discoveries will captivate readers until the chilling end. --Suzanne Krohn, librarian and freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: Roshani Chokshi adeptly combines classic gothic and fairytale themes in The Last Tale of the Flower Bride, a captivating novel of twisted love, betrayal and magic.

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

1. The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose
2. Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score
3. Brutal Prince by Sophie Lark
4. Ignite by Melanie Harlow
5. One Bossy Date by Nicole Snow
6. Offside by Avery Keelan
7. Do Not Disturb by Freida McFadden
8. Let It Snow by Beth Moran
9. Never Lie by Freida McFadden
10. Untying the Knot by Meghan Quinn

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]