For the rest of the week, we're taking a break to give thanks for many things, so this is our last issue until Monday, November 27. Enjoy the holidays, and may all booksellers have excellent Black Friday, Plaid Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Indies First celebrations! (Feel free on Sunday to send reports about Small Business Saturday and Indies First, with pictures if possible, to news@shelf-awareness.com.)

"I was wrong to think that being a bookseller would simply blanket me with the positivity and goodness of bibliophiles, that it would enliven me with that simple magic that comes from being surrounded by others who love pages, and fake worlds, and the words that create them, a kind of magic that I had expected all readers to share. 

"Being a bookseller was more about noticing all of the quiet, and hushed fleeting moments, ones that lasted seconds but were cherished forever, the tiny pockets of beauty and joy hidden within the pages that is the love for books."

New and used bookstore Wild Sisters Book Co. has relocated to a new space in Sacramento, Calif., CBS News Sacramento reported.

Founded in 2021 in Sacramento's Tahoe Park neighborhood, Wild Sisters is now located at 3325 Folsom Blvd. in East Sacramento. The new space is about two and a half times larger than the previous location, and owner Claire Bone will make use of that extra space by adding a tutoring center. She told CBS that Wild Sisters will eventually "have reading intervention and help with reading buddies that are volunteer high school students."

Aside from adding the tutoring center, Wild Sisters will expand its offering of events, including storytime sessions and hands-on activities for children. Bone will continue to sell a similar mix of books, and noted that she's been working on getting the store set up in its new home since October.

A bookstore-cafe called Ren's Coffeehouse & Books is opening in Blackwood, N.J., early next year, What Now Philadelphia reported.

Owner Lauren Meyer has found a space at 26 North Black Horse Pike in Blackwood's historic downtown. The bookstore and coffee shop will encompass two storefronts in the building, and customers will be able to freely move from the cafe to the bookstore via a walkway.

The bookstore will sell both new and used titles, and Meyer plans to host book clubs, writing groups, game nights, open mics, and more. In addition to coffee, the cafe will serve pastries, baked goods, and snacks, and it will feature space for customers to eat, hang out, and work. 

Per the 42 Freeway, Meyer previously worked in corporate retail for around 20 years. With her new business, she wants to forge real connections with the community and create the sort of third space she would have loved to have as a young musician.

“It’s a good spot to come hang out and feel like they’re in a safe environment where they can be themselves and express themselves," Meyer told What Now.

Barnes & Noble will open a new location in the Barn Plaza shopping center in Doylestown, Pa., next year, the Philly Burbs reported.

The new store will not have a cafe and will span roughly 11,500 square feet. The company is eyeing a September 2024 opening for the bookstore.

Herbert Gold at City Lights' 70th anniversary poetry reading in September (photo: City Lights)

Herbert Gold, a San Francisco writer "who became, by attrition, the last of an era to pound away at a manual typewriter in a rent-controlled apartment overstuffed with books and papers," died November 19, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. He was 99. Gold "had lived and worked for 63 years in a one-bedroom walk-up on a block of Russian Hill so steep that it requires stairs. He recently had been in such good health that he said it would take a bolt of lightning to kill him."

During his career, which began with publication of his first novel, Birth of a Hero (1951), Gold released two dozen novels, five collections of stories or essays, and eight nonfiction books of reportage or memoir. He published Not Dead Yet: A Feisty Bohemian Explores the Art of Growing Old in 2011, followed by Nearing the Exit (2018). "He liked to joke that the trilogy would be completed by OK, Finally, but he never wrote the book to support that title," the Chronicle noted. His final book, a poetry collection titled Father Verses Sons, will be published March 9, 2024, which would have been his 100th birthday.

"I don't have a shortage of ideas," he said in an interview when he was 94. "Life is rich for me. I have written about divorce. I've been divorced twice. I've written about being a Jew growing up in a completely non-Jewish world. I've written about my affiliation with the Bay Area beatniks."

He worked as a screenwriter for hire to both Saul Zaentz and Natalie Wood, though no film came from either of the arrangements. He was never able to adapt any of his novels into screenplays, and liked it better when other people would try. The Man Who Was Not With It was optioned 17 times. "I loved people buying the rights to try to make a movie of mine," he said.

During his life, he hitchhiked alone from Cleveland to San Francisco as a teenager ("I had planned to run away since I was very young as an adventure."); was trained to parachute in to aid the Soviets during World War II; was connected to Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac at Columbia ("I was very good friends with Allen Ginsberg. I crossed the street to avoid Jack Kerouac. He was a bad drunk and a liar even then."); and a freelance foreign correspondent in war zones for newspapers and magazines. 

"He is an extraordinary American success story," said Will Farley, a film director and longtime movie-going friend of Gold. "As a young man, he found his fight as a storyteller and he has done it all."

His most successful novel was Fathers, based on his upbringing outside Cleveland. It was translated into several languages. Farley observed: "Fathers allowed me to see my father in a deeper way and had a major impact on my ability to love my father. You can't do that unless you are a writer of deep feeling and great empathy."

Gold's other books include Salt (1963); The Great American Jackpot (1969); My Last Two Thousand Years (1972); Swiftie the Magician (1974); He/She (1980); Family (1981); True Love (1982); A Girl of Forty (1986); Dreaming (1988); She Took My Arm as if She Loved Me (1997); and When a Psychopath Falls in Love (2014).

He always denied being a Luddite, saying his use of a typewriter was pragmatic: "For me, writing is an act of sculpture. I get mad at the words I put on the page and I can rip the page out. I can kick it when I'm annoyed."

On September 3, he participated in a poetry reading at City Lights bookstore in celebration of its 70th anniversary, the New York Times noted. Two days later, Scribner published Best American Poetry of 2023, which includes Gold's poem "Other News on Page 24":

Someone famous will die that day,
My day,
And the newspaper will report:
"More obituaries on page 24."
For the curiosity of some,
the regret of several,
and the grief of a few.

Those few, they matter,
So they have a nice walk
in the Marin headlands
shadowed by a weary and worn mountain
(still green! still fragrant!
with pine and transplanted eucalyptus,
and most important: Still there!),
where I'm proud that the few gather trash,
but drop my ashes downwind,
and remember as I fly away.

This year has delivered some incredible reading material for children and teens. Our 2023 Best Children's and YA Books encompass titles of varying genres across age ranges--including read-alouds, early chapter books, poetic middle-grade, and introspective nonfiction for young adults. Beautifully illustrated picture books feature tasty spreads of bread, dancing literary figures, and trouble-making kittens. Middle-grade readers will find touching memoirs filled with art, hilarious and courageous fiction, and meticulously researched histories. And our young adult picks highlight horror--both fiction and non--as well as adorable first-like stories. Click here to read our reviews of the top kids' picks for 2023. (Shelf Awareness's Best Adult Books will be announced December 1.)

Young Readers
The Only Way to Make Bread by Cristina Quintero, illus. by Sarah Gonzales (Tundra Books)
There Was a Party for Langston by Jason Reynolds, illus. by Jerome Pumphrey and Jarrett Pumphrey (Caitlin Dlouhy/Atheneum)
10 Cats by Emily Gravett (Boxer Books/Union Square & Co.)
Something, Someday by Amanda Gorman, illus. by Christian Robinson (Viking Books for Young Readers)
A Walk in the Woods by Nikki Grimes, illus. by Jerry Pinkney and Brian Pinkney (Neal Porter Books)
The Skull: A Tyrolean Folktale by Jon Klassen (Candlewick)

Middle Grade
Just Jerry: How Drawing Shaped My Life by Jerry Pinkney (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow (Disney Hyperion)
Kin: Rooted in Hope by Carole Boston Weatherford and Jeffery Boston Weatherford (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
102 Days of Lying About Lauren by Maura Jortner (Holiday House)
A First Time for Everything by Dan Santat (First Second)
Nearer My Freedom: The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano by Himself by Monica Edinger and Lesley Younge (Zest Books/Lerner)
When Clouds Touch Us by Thanhhà Lai (HarperCollins)
The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels by Beth Lincoln, illus. by Claire Powell (Dutton Books for Young Readers)

Young Adult
Before the Devil Knows You're Here by Autumn Krause (Peachtree Teen)
Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed by Dashka Slater (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam by Thien Pham (First Second)
Imogen, Obviously by Becky Albertalli (Balzer + Bray)
Stars in their Eyes: A Graphic Novel by Jessica Walton and Aśka (Graphix/Scholastic)
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White (Peachtree Teen)

More than 200 people attended Jedidiah Jenkins's event at Powell's Books in Portland, Ore., in celebration of his book Mother, Nature: A 5,000-Mile Journey to Discover If a Mother and Son Can Survive Their Differences (Convergent Books). He was in conversation with Cheryl Strayed.

WTF? (What the fish?)

"At first, when a pallet of boxes showed up at the Harvard Book Store's Needham warehouse earlier this month, nothing seemed fishy about it," the Boston Globe reported recently. The bookseller was prepping for its semiannual warehouse sale and regularly "gets batches of 'remainder' books... delivered in large quantities, in all sorts of packaging."

"I didn't even look twice at the pallet before signing the delivery acceptance slip," said warehouse manager Alexandra Reid. "It wasn't until we were done chatting with the delivery driver that I turned around and actually focused on what was printed on the outside of the boxes."

What she saw were dozens of green-and-white cardboard packages that read "FROZEN FISH" and "HADDOCK" in block letters. "I was immediately horrified," Reid said. "I was genuinely afraid that I had just casually accepted 600 pounds of frozen fish." 

When she opened one of the boxes, however, it was filled with books. "We were immensely relieved," she said, adding that the store's regular distributor simply had extra boxes lying around and didn't want them to go to waste. 

The bookstore immediately took to social media to have fun with the situation by posting a photo of the boxes and creating a contest, inviting people to come up with captions and offering a $50 gift card as a prize for the best one.

Three finalists were named on Monday and yesterday @lynzely was crowned caption contest winner for: "Available in hardcover, paperback, and fillet." 

The bookstore plans to "send some of its warehouse sale book orders out in the haddock boxes, so customers will be just as confused as they were when their package arrives at the front door," the Globe noted.

"I'm going to encourage the staff to put just a little disclaimer on them so everyone--including the delivery drivers--doesn't have a heart attack," said Alex Meriwether, the shop's chief creative officer, adding that he hopes the mix-up serves as just one more "reminder of what shopping within a local economy's ecosystem looks like.... You don't see this at Amazon."

"Happy Thanksgiving week! We're thankful for good books and all the great readers in our community," Carmichael's Bookstore, Louisville, Ky., posted on Instagram.

At Simon & Schuster operations:

Diane Lalli has been promoted to v-p, warehouse operations and logistics in Riverside, N.J.

Bradley Bratcher has been promoted to v-p, warehouse operations and logistics in Jackson, Tenn.

Mike Schmidt has been promoted to director, warehouse operations in Riverside, N.J.

Lori Perino has been promoted to director, distribution and logistics.

Beverly Hare has been promoted to manager, compliance and QC.

Single at Heart: The Power, Freedom, and Heart-Filling Joy of Single Life by Bella DePaulo (Apollo Publishers).

Tomorrow:
The View repeat: John Grisham, author of The Exchange: After The Firm (Doubleday, $29.95, 9780385548953).

Jeremy Irons has joined the cast of Palme d'Or award-winning director Bille August's (The Best Intentions, Pelle the Conqueror) limited series, The Count of Monte Cristo, a "sprawling adaptation" of the classic novel by Alexandre Dumas, Variety reported. Irons portrays Abbé Faria.

The English-language project is produced by Italian company Palomar (That Dirty Black Bag, The Name of the Rose), in collaboration with French banner DEMD Productions. The five-month shoot will wrap in Malta in December, after having filmed in France and Italy. This marks Irons's third collaboration with Danish filmmaker August, who directed him in Night Train to Lisbon and The House of Spirits. 

Starring Sam Claflin as Edmond Dantes, The Count of Monte Cristo's cast also includes Ana Girardot, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, Blake Ritson, Karla-Simone Spence, Michele Riondino, Lino Guanciale, Gabriella Pession, and Nicolas Maupas. 

Noting that the journey to make the series "started five or six years ago," Carlo Degli Esposti, Palomar's co-founder and veteran producer, said, "The Count of Monte Cristo was my bedside book and it's been my lifelong dream to adapt it into a film or a series," adding that project will have "a modern edge while remaining faithful to the legacy of Alexandre Dumas's work."  

The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer has won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction.

The Guardian noted that the debut novel "tells the story of legal assistant Gary Thorn, who goes for a pint with a work acquaintance, Brendan, who has to leave early. Gary then meets a girl in the pub; he falls for her, but she suddenly disappears. Gary did not catch her name, and only remembers her by the book she was reading, The Satsuma Complex. When Brendan goes missing, Gary decides to track down the girl."

The award honors "the funniest new novels that best evoke the spirit of P.G. Wodehouse's witty characters and comic timing." Prize winnings include a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvée, a case of Bollinger La Grande Année, and a complete set of the Everyman's Library P.G. Wodehouse collection. In addition, a pig is being named after the book.

--- 

The Jane Addams Peace Association has announced finalists for the 2024 Jane Addams Children's Book Award in the picture books category, honoring "children's books of literary and aesthetic excellence that effectively engage children in thinking about peace, social justice, global community, and equity for all people." Winners and honor books will be announced January 12. An in-person ceremony will follow in the spring; location to be announced. The 13 picture book finalists are: 

A Hero Like Me by Angela Joy & Jen Reid, illus. by Leire Salaberria (Frances Lincoln Children's Books/Quarto Group)
A Song for the Unsung: Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind the 1963 March on Washington by Carole Boston Weatherford & Rob Sanders, illus. by Byron McCray (Holt)
Autumn Peltier, Water Warrior by Carole Lindstrom, illus. by Bridget George (Roaring Brook Press)
Hidden Hope: How a Toy and a Hero Saved Lives During the Holocaust by Elisa Boxer, illus. by Amy June Bates (Abrams) 
How Do You Spell Unfair? MacNolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee by Carole Boston Weatherford, illus. by Frank Morrison (Candlewick)
Justice Ketanji: The Story of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson by Denise Lewis Patrick, illus. by Kim Holt (Orchard Books/Scholastic)
My Red, White and Blue by Alana Tyson, illus. by London Ladd (Philomel Books)
Something, Someday by Amanda Gorman, illus. by Christian Robinson (Viking)
Spanish Is the Language of My Family by Michael Genhart, illus. by John Parra (Neal Porter/Holiday House)
That Flag by Tameka Fryer Brown, illus. by Nikkolas Smith (HarperCollins Children's Books)
The Artivist by Nikkolas Smith (Kokila/PRH) 
The Walk by Winsome Bingham, illus. by E.B. Lewis (Abrams)
To Boldly Go: How Nichelle Nichols and Star Trek Helped Advance Civil Rights by Angela Dalton, illus. by Lauren Semmer (HarperCollins Children's Books)

photo: Nina Subin

Katherine Howe is the co-author, with Anderson Cooper, of Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune. She is also the author of the forthcoming The Penguin Book of Pirates. Howe lives and sails in New England with her family. Her fourth novel for adults, A True Account: Hannah Masury's Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written by Herself (Holt, November 21, 2023), features 17-year-old Hannah Masury, who flees indentured servitude only to wind up on a pirate ship.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

A True Account is Gone Girl meets Treasure Island, beginning in Boston in 1726 and ending in a treasure hunt in the Caribbean in 1930.

On your nightstand now:

The Great Illustrated Classics editions of Ivanhoe (Sir Walter Scott), Moby-Dick (Herman Melville), and Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson), which are my son's three favorite books right now to read at bedtime. Each is sort of simplified from the original, but most of the plot points and themes are there. I put on the audio of the original Moby-Dick on our way to Montessori the other day, and my son excitedly said "It's Queequeg!" He's almost four. He also came into the kitchen the other day carrying a long stick and with great gravity announced that he was a harpooner. We are a completely normal family.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes. It's a little embarrassing, how influential that book has been on my entire writing career. Forbes crafts a fictional boy, set in a beautifully rendered version of revolutionary Boston, and has him interact with actual historical figures. It's basically the blueprint for every novel I have written as an adult.

Your top five authors:

Edith Wharton, the master of American social and historical fiction from a hundred years ago. Matthew Pearl, the master of American historical fiction today. Julia Glass, who writes incredibly intimate and detailed character study novels of such depth and nuance. John P. Marquand, a largely forgotten peer of Edith Wharton who couldn't write women to save his life, but whose portraits of the interior life of men cling to me for years at a time. And Mary Beth Norton, the most important colonial American historian of her generation.

Book you've faked reading:

Before I answer this, I have to say that I have read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. It's just that I was a TA in grad school while I was still in coursework, and it was very overwhelming, and I had to lead discussion section on it before I had actually finished the book. But I've read it now! I swear! Really!

Book you're an evangelist for:

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Not that Wharton needs me to be an evangelist. This was the first novel written by a woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and is an emotionally devastating, perfectly wrought example of historical fiction. Whenever I encounter someone who hasn't read it, I immediately start ranting about how perfect it is.

Book you've bought for the cover:

The Portable Beat Reader, edited by Ann Charters. It has a black-and-white photo of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg on the cover, and reading it launched me into a pretty intense phase of loving Beat fiction and poetry. That's one reason I wanted to go to Columbia for college, as it's where the Beats met each other in the late '40s. My freshman year, right before he died, Allen Ginsberg did a reading at Columbia, and then he came and led the meditation at the Buddhist student group. I got to see Allen Ginsberg chanting in his socks sitting cross-legged on top of a desk. All because I liked the picture on Ann Charters's book.

Book you hid from your parents:

The Story of O by Pauline Reage. In high school I subscribed to the New Yorker through my creative writing class, and one week the magazine had a long article revealing the real identity of the author, Anne Desclos, who had written it as a love letter to her paramour Jean Paulhan. It's a spare, modernist novel of sexual domination and submission, and a really challenging book. I read it when I was about 16 or 17, and yet somehow I grew up to be a reasonably well-adjusted adult who contributes to society. Take note, purveyors of moral panic about what children and teenagers are reading.

Book that changed your life:

Probably Possession by A.S. Byatt. I read that book when I was first trying to imagine how to structure my first novel, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, which came out in 2009. Possession tells interwoven stories across time, with an academic protagonist and with gorgeous, lush settings. I dream of being able to write as well as A.S. Byatt.

Favorite line from a book:

"Of that which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence." The final proposition in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. I know, I'm the worst, but I was a philosophy major.

Five books you'll never part with:

This question is unanswerable. The Houston Junior League Cookbook from 1968 with my grandmother's critical notes in the margins. My copy of Plato's Republic. H.W. Janson's History of Art. Valley of the Dolls (Jacqueline Susann!). The Autobiography of Captain Zachary Gage Lamson even though it's on HathiTrust. All of my son's picture books except Richard Scarry who drives me nuts. All the pirate books I read for A True Account. The Beautiful and Damned (F. Scott Fitzgerald). Chapman's Piloting, Seamanship, and Small Boat Handling. And Everyday Life in Early America, and... and... and....

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

Eloise by Kay Thompson, which I first read when I was very small, with my mother. She died this summer, just as I was in first-pass pages on Astor. I miss her very much.

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:

Hardcover
The Liberators: A Novel by E.J. Koh (Tin House, $27.95, 9781959030157). "E.J. Koh tells an epic saga with poetic grace: four generations deal with the legacy of Japanese and American colonization in South Korea, divisions within Korea itself, and with various loves and betrayals along the way." --Rick Simonson, The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, Wash.

The Happy Couple: A Novel by Naoise Dolan (Ecco, $28.99, 9780063330467). "A funny, perceptive study of a couple hurtling toward marriage for reasons unclear to everyone involved. Told by the couple as well as family and friends, The Happy Couple observes a (doomed) modern relationship from all sides." --Julia Lewis, Fountain Bookstore, Richmond, Va.

Paperback
We Are the Light: A Novel by Matthew Quick (Avid Reader Press, $17.99, 9781668005439). "Matthew Quick scores a perfect 10 in this deeply stirring, gorgeously hopeful novel that shines a brilliant beam on the path out of grief and toward healing. May we all learn the way to be such lights from this remarkable guide." --Beth Stroh, Viewpoint Books, Columbus, Ind.

Ages 4 to 8
The Wishing Machine by Jonathan Hillman, illus. Nadia Alam (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, $18.99, 9781665922302). "A tremendously sweet journey of wishing for things that are out of your control, hope, and what really matters. The Wishing Machine embraces reality in an honest way without feeling crushing, allowing for magic." --Carrie Koepke, Skylark Bookshop, Columbia, Mo.

Ages 8 to 12: An Indies Introduce Title
Tagging Freedom by Rhonda Roumani (Union Square Kids, $16.99, 9781454950714). "Where Kareem is toying with jail and near-death, Sam is just trying to stay out of her bully's way. But art brings everyone together in a way that made me breathe a sigh of relief. A fantastic road map for useful activism, and great storytelling!" --Jamie McCauley, R.J. Julia Booksellers, Madison, Conn.

Teen Readers
The Scarlet Alchemist by Kylie Lee Baker (Inkyard Press, $19.99, 9781335458018). "I fell in love with The Scarlet Alchemist. Zilan was a wonderful, terrible delight to read. She is ambitious and unflinching; her callus personality stands out, yet she's someone I unerringly rooted for. I eagerly await another installment." --Anna Koennecke, The Open Door Bookstore, Schenectady, N.Y.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

Her Dark Wings is a fierce and fanciful tale wherein a spurned young woman's accidental interaction with Hades causes a mythically sized shift in her life as well as massive changes in the Underworld.

Corey Allaway has been betrayed. It's always been "Bree-and-Corey, Corey-and-Bree," but the summer they're 17, Bree cuts Corey out of the picture and takes up with Corey's ex-boyfriend, Ali. Corey, hurt, humiliated, and extremely angry, kisses a "random" boy at a bacchanal to honor Demeter while wishing with her "whole heart" that Bree would be "dragged to the Underworld and left there to rot." When shortly thereafter, Bree's body is found in the lake "flirting with the weeds," Corey feels confused, outraged, and completely without closure.

Then Corey looks "over [her] left shoulder, out to the west." This, legend says, is a way to catch a glimpse of the Underworld. Not only does Corey see into that forbidden place, but she also observes Bree's shade with "impossible, awful" Hades himself. The king of the Underworld sends messenger-god Hermes to warn Corey to forget she's seen the afterlife but, when Corey learns the "random" boy she kissed is Hades himself, she realizes her desperate wishing may have caused Bree's death. Though Corey would like nothing more than to be left alone to process her feelings, she is dragged to the Underworld, where three winged Furies want her to join them in their "inhumane" punishment of "guilty" shades. Corey, who is still furious with Bree, must fight to keep her anger in check, as she struggles to keep from becoming a monster.

Her Dark Wings is a feisty, compelling modern-day retelling of the Persephone myth. Melinda Salisbury's riveting plot may serve as an excellent entry point for readers not overly familiar with the Greek pantheon: Hades, Hermes, the Furies, the Boatman, and Hecate all populate these pages and stealthily impact the humans they encounter. Salisbury (The Sin Eater's Daughter series) smoothly shifts between Corey's unlikely, god-filled present and her recollections of the lies and betrayals she suffered at the hands of her two exes. These deceptions continue to shape her future as she navigates harsh and unforgiving landscapes in the Underworld. There are gods and magic, yes, but above all looms the question of what it means to be human. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author

Shelf Talker: The fierce and fanciful Her Dark Wings is a modern retelling of the Persephone myth wherein a young woman kisses Hades and her ex-best friend winds up dead--perhaps consequently.