Terrible news from Alexandria, Va., where fire broke out Sunday night in the building where Friends to Lovers, the romance-only bookstore, had just celebrated its Thursday grand opening with festivities lasting through the weekend. Friends to Lovers and two other businesses in the building--Madame Coco's Emporium and Everything Chocolate--are closed.

On Instagram, owner Jamie Fortin said that the store sustained "extensive smoke damage.... While we're still waiting on details about the full extent of the damage, we do know our current space won't be operational for the rest of the year--and most likely longer.... We're working tirelessly to bring Friends to Lovers back to life because this community means the world to us. Thank you for your kindness and support during this time." Fortin has established a GoFundMe campaign that has already raised $13,000.

In another post, Fortin wrote in part, "To myself and I think to a lot of us, Friends to Lovers isn't about the building. We have already built the foundations for a beautiful, vibrant, and joyful community centered around love and friendship and storytelling and I'm thrilled for everything we've accomplished so far and everything we'll accomplish in the future."

Barnes & Noble has sold Sterling Publishing Company, Inc., to Hachette Book Group. Sterling consists of adult imprints Union Square & Co., Puzzlewright Press, Sterling Ethos, and Spark Notes; the children's imprints Union Square Kids and Boxer Books; and the gift and stationery publishers Knock Knock and Em & Friends. It is the publisher of Mo Willems, Caroline Chambers, Dan Pelosi, Melissa Blair, L.S. Stratton, and Dusti Bowling, among others, and has a program of literary classics. B&N bought Sterling in 2003.

B&N said that all Sterling staff, publishing assets, and trademarks will transfer to Hachette. Sterling will continue to be headed by chief creative officer and publisher Emily Meehan, who will report to Ben Sevier, president and publisher of the Grand Central Publishing Group. Meehan joined the company in 2021 and oversaw its rebranding in January 2022 to Union Square & Co., influenced by B&N's Union Square headquarters in New York City.

B&N CEO James Daunt said, "Union Square has been a tremendous success under Emily's guidance. She and her team have transformed its publishing and, we began to realize, also to outgrow the infrastructure of a bookseller. Union Square will enjoy under Hachette the resources of a great publisher. As booksellers, we look forward to continuing our close relationship with Union Square and to its continued success."

Hachette CEO David Shelley said, "When we make an acquisition, we want to be sure that we can learn a lot from the company, and that we can add value to them with our ability to reach readers internationally. Both criteria are absolutely met in this case. Union Square is an extremely innovative and dynamic publishing house that has seen great growth in recent years, and I can't wait to help get their authors' work to even more readers around the world."

Elephant Ear Books, an all-ages, general-interest bookstore, has opened in Plymouth, Mich., Hometown Life reported.

Owner Melissa Schabel, a librarian for more than 20 years, welcomed customers for the first time last Saturday, November 16. The bookstore resides at 449 S. Harvey St., and its wide-ranging inventory features a particular emphasis on fiction and children's titles. She plans to adjust the selection based on customer feedback, and along with books, Schabel carries puzzles, cards, and other sidelines.

Schabel told Hometown Life that she has dreamed of opening her own bookstore for decades, and decided finally to take the plunge after her father died in 2023. She left her previous job at the Saline District Library earlier this year and began scouting around for locations in downtowns that did not already have a bookstore. Plymouth appealed to her, she explained, because it reminded her of her hometown in New England, and she decided on the bookstore's name because it sounded fun.

"The reason I loved being a librarian is that I love to talk to people about books," Schabel remarked. "I just think books bring people together."

Last Thursday, workers at Barnes & Noble unionized stores in New York City, organized with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, rallied outside the chain's flagship store on Union Square to demand the company reach a contract by the end of 2024.

(photo courtesy RWDSU)

They were joined by other New York City unionized bookstore workers including RWDSU bookselling union members from McNally Jackson, Greenlight, and Book Culture, as well as Strand bookstore workers who are members of UAW 2179, local elected officials, the New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, other area labor leaders and workers, and community members. 

Following the rally, a delegation of workers delivered boxes of letters of support from the public to B&N. Participants also marched in Union Square.

RWDSU president Stuart Appelbaum commented: "If Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt truly wants to create community stores, then he needs to create jobs for workers that mean they can afford to live in their communities--that means fair wages, safe working conditions and stability--all of which only comes with a union contract. The bookselling industry is booming again and people are craving the knowledgeable booksellers and cozy corners of the cafes at Barnes & Noble. It's time the largest corporate industry retailer set the standard and reach a fair contract--let's get it done before the holiday rush sets in." 

On June 7, 2023, workers at the flagship B&N store voted to join the RWDSU. 

Elizabeth Nunez, a Trinidad-born writer "whose novels explored the pressures of family, the queasy legacy of colonialism and the immigrant's longing for home, while often poking fun at American academia and New York City's publishing world," died November 8, the New York Times reported. She was 80.

Elizabeth Nunez

Nunez was raised in a prominent Trinidadian family of Portuguese and African descent and educated in the British colonial system (the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago gained its independence the year she graduated from high school). Growing up, she loved stories by the English children's book author Enid Blyton. In 1963, she was sent to a small college in Wisconsin, where she said she was, for all intents and purposes, "a Black English girl." 

Nunez was the author of 11 novels, most recently Now Lila Knows (2022). When she began mapping out her first novel, When Rocks Dance (1986), "she was planning to write about a contemporary woman, an academic and a feminist like herself, who was island born but living in America. Instead, she ended up writing mostly about the society she had left behind, the clash of modernism and mysticism there, and steeping herself, at last, in her homeland's dark history," the Times noted.

"I had to understand myself, and where I came from," she once said. "Then I was off to the races."

The protagonist of her second novel, Beyond the Limbo Silence (1998), was a young Trinidadian sent to college in Wisconsin who becomes involved with a Black law student and civil rights activist. The male protagonist of Grace (2003), who taught at a small public college in Brooklyn, also shared some of the author's experiences. In her memoir, Not for Everyday Use (2014), Nunez recalled a colleague snapping at her for her ambition. "You can't come here on your banana boat and feel you can take what my people have suffered and died for," she recalled the colleague saying. "Our blood was spilled to get this college. Know your place."

The search for place, for belonging, marked her work, including the critically acclaimed Prospero's Daughter (2006), which reimagined Shakespeare's The Tempest on a former leper colony off Trinidad, with the rumor of a rape and the efforts of a xenophobic and British detective to get to the bottom of it.

From 1986 to 2000, Nunez was the director of the National Black Writers Conference, an annual event she founded with the novelist John Oliver Killens, which was connected to the Center for Black Literature.

Author Marlon James credits Nunez with elevating his work. Years ago, he attended a workshop she led at the Calabash International Literary Festival, in Jamaica. "I read from what would become my first novel--John Crow's Devil (2005)--and Elizabeth said, 'You're a really good writer, but you don't have a clue about women,' " he recalled in an interview. "She wanted to know how many women writers I had read. I'd read a lot, but they were dead authors. She wanted me to read my way into creating female characters." 

James felt a kinship with Nunez's work because she wrote about the legacy of colonial violence, as he did, particularly in her 2000 novel, Bruised Hibiscus, which won an American Book Award. "I like the way she interrogates that legacy," he said. "It's a very haunted book. To be a Caribbean writer is to write about haunted spaces."

"Lovebound hosted its first wedding!" Lovebound Library romance bookstore, Salt Lake City, Utah, posted on Instagram. "Connie wanted to get married surrounded by books and book lovers and we were so honored to be a part of it! This was absolutely the brightness we needed this week and we are so excited for them to start their happily ever after."

Ingram's Publishers Group West is adding McNally Editions to its global distribution network, effective January 1.

McNally Editions is the publishing arm of McNally Jackson Books in New York City and focuses on "unduly neglected books and authors," believing that "often the most enjoyable reading experiences lie off the beaten path, waiting to be rediscovered, and that discovery is what literary culture is all about."

McNally Editions titles are made with high-quality print production materials, including acid-free paper, so that the books look beautiful, last, and can be shared.

Nathan Rostron, associate publisher of McNally Editions, said, "We're drawn to the expertise and energy PGW brings to selling into other indie bookstores, as well as their acumen and passion for great stories, artfully told. We look forward to bringing McNally Editions to the level of success enjoyed by PGW's cohort of superb fellow indie publishers."

PGW v-p Sean Shoemaker said, "We recognize McNally's strong leadership in thoughtful, independent publishing and we are proud to represent them. We look forward to expanding their audience here and around the world."

Erin Kibby has joined Atria Books as a senior marketing manager focusing on nonfiction. She was previously at Flatiron Books, where she worked on fiction and nonfiction. Kibby began her career at Workman Publishing, where she worked on lifestyle nonfiction, before moving to Harper Books to work on fiction and nonfiction.

Tomorrow:
Today Show: Lauren Sanchez, author of The Fly Who Flew to Space (The Collective Book Studio, $19.95, 9781685550639).
 
Also on Today: Hilton Carter, author of The Propagation Handbook (CICO Books, $30, 9781800653108).
 
CBS Mornings: Rebecca Yarros, author of Variation: A Novel (Montlake, $16.99, 9781662514708).

Kelly Clarkson Show: Josh Brolin, author of From Under the Truck: A Memoir (Harper, $30, 9780063382183).

Paramount Pictures has preemptively acquired Two Truths and a Lie, a horror novella by Sarah Pinsker, enlisting Javier Gullón (Enemy) to adapt it into a film, Deadline reported. Walter Hamada will produce via his 18hz. Nathan Samdahl brought the project in and will oversee for the production company, exec producing alongside Peter Dealbert of 42.

Thomas Bunstead has won the $1,000 2024 Cercador Prize for Literature in Translation for his translation of The Book of All Loves by Agustín Fernández Mallo (Fitzcarraldo Editions).

Co-founded by Justin Walls, bookstore partnerships coordinator at Bookshop.org, and Spencer Ruchti, author events manager at Third Place Books in Seattle, Wash., the Cercador Prize recognizes works of literature in translation as selected by a committee of independent booksellers, which this year included Emily Tarr of Thank You Books, Birmingham, Ala.; Thu Doan of East Bay Booksellers, Oakland, Calif.; Riley Rennhack of Deep Vellum Books, Dallas, Tex.; Oscar Almonte-Espinal, formerly of Uncle Bobbie's Coffee and Books, Philadelphia, Pa., and currently public events manager for the Author Events series at the Free Library of Philadelphia; and Ruchti.

The prize committee commented: "The Book of All Loves begins at the precipice of a strange apocalypse, as two lovers parse the many facets of their love with gripping, categorical precision. The novel covers an enormous range of subjects--linguistics, metaphysics, geology, nature, poetry, artificial intelligence, deep time, philosophy--with a quality of thought that propels the reader to the book's surprising conclusion. By no means a traditional novelist, Mallo is a writer for outsiders, his complex prose and style on the cutting edge of literary form, and Bunstead's translation of The Book of All Loves balances the technical, the analytical, and the aesthetic. As Mallo's only English-language translator since Nocilla Dream was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2015 (and eventually brought to American readers in 2019 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, along with Nocilla Experience and Nocilla Lab), Bunstead's commitment to the author is clear, and his vision for the text strikes an ideal harmony. Readers of all kinds will find lasting meaning in these pages. The Book of All Loves is a sheer pleasure, a text that reminded our committee why we read, and what wonderful discoveries are available to us in the trade of bookselling."

Kritika H. Rao (The Surviving Sky) reclaims a character from Hindu tradition and brings her into her own in the epic romantic fantasy The Legend of Meneka, first in the planned Divine Dancers duology.

Meneka is an apsara from Amaravati, the City of Immortals and seat of the god Indra. Indra calls his apsaras "his snakeskins, ready to shed and birth anew," but to Meneka, "we are cobra venom. Our magical dance is lethal. It had felled kingdoms." A celestial being imbued with magical powers of dance and illusion, she is sent by the god to seduce and desert human leaders who forsake worshiping him, leaving them desolate and ineffective. Meneka is only 23, but her long list of missions has left her jaded. She longs to remain in Amaravati with her mentor, a beautiful apsara for whom she has romantic feelings. Her ill-considered request to the god to do so angers him terribly and results in Meneka striking an impossible bargain. A powerful sage named Kaushika is challenging Indra by encouraging surrounding leaders to stop worshiping him, which would lead to the downfall of Amaravati. Already three apsaras have been sent to seduce him and are presumed dead. Meneka volunteers to make the next attempt at distracting the sage from his goals, on the condition that Indra allows her to remain in Amaravati afterward if she succeeds.

Meneka returns to the mortal world braced to match her skills against a scheming, diabolical villain. However, nothing can prepare her for the reality of powerful, arrogant Kaushika, whose abhorrence of Indra comes not from his own ambition but disgust at the god's uncaring attitude toward humanity. Meneka poses as a hopeful acolyte at his hermitage, but Kaushika proves immune to her apsara powers and wary of her to the point of disdain. Still, respect and a powerful attraction begin to grow between them as they verbally spar. Meneka finds her loyalties divided between the home she loves and the man who has captured her heart without knowing her true identity.

Rao's spellbinding prose conjures a cinematic grandeur around each scene, and her worldbuilding brings legends to life in this gorgeous love story perfect for readers of Vaishnavi Patel's Kaikeyi. Meneka's transformation from naive and yearning to powerful and self-assured is inspirational and engrossing, and her journey to love and community feels authentic and meaningful. Gods war with sages as faith is forged and shattered in this dynamic, woman-forward retelling. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Shelf Talker: A beautiful apsara finds herself captivated by the man she's supposed to seduce and betray in this epic, romantic fantasy retelling of a Hindu story.

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

1. Hexed by Emily McIntire
2. The Boyfriend by Freida McFadden
3. Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton
4. Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score
5. Things We Left Behind by Lucy Score
6. Things We Hide from the Light by Lucy Score
7. Hunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton
8. The Striker by Ana Huang
9. God of Malice by Rina Kent
10. How My Neighbor Stole Christmas by Meghan Quinn

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]