Danielle Mullen at Semicolon

Semicolon Bookstore in Chicago, Ill., is switching to a nonprofit model, Block Club Chicago reported.

The bookstore is temporarily closed while owner Danielle Mullen finalizes the business model change and carries out some renovations to Semicolon's interior. Mullen will bring in more tables and chairs as well as adjust the shelves to allow more people to gather. Once she reopens on August 1, she plans to start hosting at least two events per week focused on community learning.

Supporting public schools and literacy has been a part of Mullen's mission since she opened Semicolon in 2019 but, as she explained to Block Club, those efforts were all supported by book sales and as sales have slowed over the past year, so have the store's community endeavors. It was frustrating, and Mullen felt "like our mission was not being completed."

Now, as a nonprofit, Semicolon will have access to grants and other forms of funding and will no longer have to rely on book sales to support its mission. "It only makes sense. We want to be able to always support the community however we can. And opening ourselves up for grants makes that a lot easier."

In an Instagram post announcing the change, Mullen wrote: "Last year, I found myself becoming increasingly disenchanted by the process of owning the shop because as times got harder we couldn't give as much as I’d become accustomed to. I had to choose what I wanted the future of bookselling in my space to represent and I'm grateful to my bookselling besties who talked me through it and helped me figure everything out."

Read with Me, a children's bookstore and art shop in downtown Raleigh, N.C., will close permanently at the end of the month, ABC11 reported.

Owner Christine Brenner, a former teacher and school librarian who opened the store six years ago, told ABC that she has made the decision to close in order to "open the door to new adventures and opportunities."

The bookstore held its final reading circle event on Saturday, and Read with Me's last day of business will be June 30.

Barnes & Noble has set June 14 as the opening date for its new Sherwood Plaza store in Natick, Mass., MetroWest Daily News reported. The bookstore's previous location at Shoppers World in Framingham closed earlier this year as part of a redevelopment project.

Since the closing on January 24, the store's Facebook page has posted frequent updates, "noting the construction process of converting a former pet supply store into a bookstore, with books slowly being added to the shelves to welcome bookworms when the store officially reopens," MetroWest Daily News noted.

Trinity University Press is launching an imprint called Tinta Books that will focus on Mexican and Mexican American culture, history, and current affairs. Tinta Books will publish five to 10 books a year. Yvette Benavides, a Texas journalist, radio host, and creative writing professor, will be editor-at-large.

"No doubt, U.S publishers offer many wonderful books about Mexico, but for the most part they are one-off titles," Trinity University Press publisher Tom Payton said. "A new imprint makes a broader and bolder statement, a commitment to an area of editorial focus. As a mission-driven nonprofit cultural and educational publisher, this is critical to us, especially since we are based in Texas and committed to our deep shared roots with Mexico."

The first titles on the Tinta Books list, to be published this year, are:

• Witness to War: Mexico in the Photographs of Walter Elias Hadsell by Susan Toomey Frost (August)
• Richard Neutra: Encounters in Latin America by Catherine Ettinger, a look at the architect's travel and study in the Americas (September)
• Mi Cultura: The Photography of Al Rendon, distributed for the Witte Museum (September)
• Mexico City by Alejandro Rosas, an illustrated short history of the city (October)
• A Conversation with Luis Barragán, the Pritzker Prize–winning architect, by Alejandro Ramírez Ugarte (October)
• 100 Moments in the History of Mexico, an illustrated celebration of the 4,000-plus-year history of Mexico by Alejandro Rosas and Sandra Molina (November)
• Weeping Women: In Search of La Llorona, an anthology about the mythic figure, edited by Norma Elia Cantú and Kathleen Alcalá (November)

Mystery Lovers Bookshop, Oakmont, Pa., hosted a CozyCon event celebrating cozy mysteries, featuring a panel of Kensington authors at the Oakmont Carnegie Library. Pictured: (top, l.-r.) Frank Anthony Polito, JD Griffo, Lynn Cahoon, Vicky Delany, Gabby Allan, Alex Erickson; (front) Dianne Freeman, Ginger Bolton, Colleen Cambridge, and Mollie Cox Bryan. (photo: Larissa Ackerman)

At the Crown Publishing Group:

Ashley Alberico has been promoted to director, sales management.

Dyana Messina has been named director of corporate communications.

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Jhonson Eteng has been promoted to creative director, marketing at Kensington Publishing. Eteng was previously the advertising & promotions designer and has been with Kensington since 2020.

"Happy Caturday from the always helpful Morticia!" E. Shaver Bookseller, Savannah, Ga., posted on Facebook over the weekend.

The Hens, a Peacock, and the Enormous Egg by Lester L. Laminack, illustrated by Henry Cole (Margaret Quinlin Books/Peachtree).

Today:
Fresh Air: Rachel L. Swarns, author of The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church (Random House, $28, 9780399590863).

Here & Now: Andrew McCarthy, author of Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain (Grand Central, $28, 9781538709207).

Tomorrow:
CBS Mornings: Frances Haugen, author of The Power of One: How I Found the Strength to Tell the Truth and Why I Blew the Whistle on Facebook (Little, Brown, $30, 9780316475228).

Also on CBS Mornings: Elizabeth Olsen, co-author of Hattie Harmony: Opening Ceremony (Viking Book for Young Readers, $18.99, 9780593351468).

Apple TV+ "will be tapping into France's lavish culinary heritage" with Carême, an original series inspired by the book Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Carême--The First Celebrity Chef, by historian and actor Ian Kelly (The King’s Man), Variety reported. 

Martin Bourboulon (The Three Musketeers: d'Artagnan) will direct the eight-episode French drama, which stars Benjamin Voisin (Lost Illusions, Summer of 85), Jérémie Renier (My Way, Saint Laurent) and Lyna Khoudri (Papicha, November).

Created by Kelly and lead writer Davide Serino (The Bad Guy, M. Son of the Century, Esterno Notte), Carême is executive produced by Vanessa van Zuylen with VVZ Production and Dominique Farrugia with Banijay's Shine Fiction for Apple TV+. Variety noted that the series "is the latest in French programming from Apple TV+, following Liaison, a contemporary thriller starring Vincent Cassel and Eva Green, and French-Japanese drama Drops of God, inspired by the bestselling manga from award-winning Tadashi Agi and Shu Okimoto, starring Fleur Geffrier and Tomohisa Yamashita."

The 35th annual Lambda Literary Awards, celebrating excellence in LGBTQ literature, were presented in 25 categories at a ceremony held in New York City last week. See those winners and the winners of five special awards here.

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We Own the Sky by Rodman Philbrick (Scholastic Press) has won the New-York Historical Society's $10,000 Children's History Book Prize, honoring "the best American history book for middle readers ages 9-12, fiction or nonfiction."

We Own the Sky is set in 1920 Maine and focuses on two orphans who connect with their dare-devil circus performing aunt, the Society wrote. The story touches on themes of community, early 20th-century traveling performers, and anti-immigrant sentiment.

Society president and CEO Dr. Louise Mirrer praised Rodman Philbrick for having "brought to light a little known portion of history. The themes of found family and community created within the context of the book are powerful and an important reminder that we are stronger together, particularly when facing extreme ideologies and hateful rhetoric."

The 15 short stories in Alexandra Chang's insightful second book, Tomb Sweeping, feature Asian and Asian American characters facing lost or altered relationships. In each selection, a conflict arises when technology or a chance of success is at odds with tradition or with valuing one's family.

Chang (Days of Distraction) uses first- and third-person narration roughly equally. "Unknown by Unknown" stars a 30-something California woman who, recently laid off, takes a house-sitting job and becomes obsessed with a particular painting on display. Notebooks full of sketches by the same artist mysteriously arrive on the doorstep. A delicious hint of the magical is also present in the collection's standout, "Farewell, Hank." Adrienne and her mother, Jia, attend a living funeral that Orchid Lady throws for her ill husband. Learning of their hostess's habit of sprinkling loved ones' ashes on young plants as a form of reincarnation, they set their skepticism aside and decide to do the same with Adrienne's late father's remains.

Ling Ling, age 11, narrates the title story as she accompanies her parents on a visit to her grandparents' graves in a Singapore cemetery, which prompts her surviving grandfather to recount the tragedy of his brother being executed by Japanese soldiers. In "Flies," 11-year-old Ying Ying remembers the sordid rental house that seemed to presage her parents' break-up.

Several of the stories are built around before-and-after storylines. For instance, in "Klara," the narrator's meeting with Klara, an old friend, in New York City gives her the opportunity to look back at their college years and ponder the causes of their estrangement. "Cure for Life" muses on the perhaps inappropriate relationship between grocery store colleagues by following up with them a decade later. In the tale with the most innovative structure, "Li Fan," the life of an "Asian recycling lady" unfolds backward from her death.

A pair of stories employ a cautionary element: the fable-like "To Get Rich Is Glorious," featuring FuFu, an unfulfilled housewife who starts working in an illegal casino; and "Me and My Algo," in which the narrator questions whether an algorithm that knows everything about her, including her future, is a great idea after all. In "Persona Development," Patricia Liu uses surveillance cameras to check on her aging parents, but finds it's no substitute for in-person connection.

Chang achieves variety in voice, tone, and topic--including childhood prescience, young adults' poor decisions, death and other losses. What links all the stories, though, is her curiosity about unfolding lives and her keen insight into relationships. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

Shelf Talker: The characters in Alexandra Chang's 15 insightful stories, many of them first- or second-generation Asian American immigrants, turn to tradition or technology as they seek to cope with loss.

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

1. The Family Board Meeting by Jim Sheils
2. Deserving Reese by Susan Stoker
3. Waybound by Will Wight
4. The Unwanted Marriage by Catharina Maura
5. Never Lie by Freida McFadden
6. Double Pucked by Lauren Blakely
7. Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton
8. Royally in Trouble by Meghan Quinn
9. Pucking Around by Emily Rath
10. The Interview by Donna Alam

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]