Emry's Bookshop will be opening next month in the Port Royal Plaza at 95 Mathews Dr. in Hilton Head Island, S.C. The Island Packet reported that co-owners Emily Baker and Rachel Baker "have a very close, mother-daughter relationship. They have learned to separate their 50-50 business partner relationship to their life at home. The two said it was easy for them to work together because, even if they butted heads, they knew they had each other, no matter what." 

Emily Baker originally moved to Bluffton, S.C., for a job at Book Warehouse in the Tanger Outlets, while Rachel Baker was drawn to the Lowcountry to become a local in the "place we would have retired anyway." 

"It is so wonderful opening a store with your family, specifically with my mom, because we have been best friends for the majority of our life," Emily Baker said, adding that the inspiration for launching a bookshop together came from her awareness of the area's need for a local bookstore. "We knew that we both always loved books. She raised me with a huge library in the house." 

Rachel Baker recalled her visits with her daughter at Book Warehouse, where she "noticed how many people came in to talk about the books," the Island Packet wrote. "She said she also noticed how sad many people were that Book Warehouse was closing. As sad as it was for locals, it marked an opportunity in the market for a place where people can come in and read, as if they were in their very own living room."

The owners are designing Emry's Bookshop to be cozy and warm, and are looking for a welcoming, vintage library feeling. "Being someone who is in the younger generation living in the area, I felt that we had a lack of spaces to hang out or to socialize that's not a restaurant or a bar or the beach," Emily Baker said. 

"I just want you to walk in and eventually feel like family, like we know who you are, you know who we are," Rachel Baker added. "We care about more than just you buying books, but like how's your life? What's going on? We want to keep in touch with people like that." 

New and used bookstore Remi Reads will host a grand opening this Saturday, July 26, in Weedsport, N.Y., the Citizen reported.

Michayla Granbois

Remi Reads will reside at 8934 N. Seneca St. inside of a women's clothing store called Live a Little Boutique and will span 200 square feet. The store will carry a curated selection of titles for all ages, including classics as well as books by local authors.

Owner Michayla Granbois told the Citizen she initially wanted to open a mobile bookstore, but concerns about weather and safety led her to reaching out to Erika Van Horn, owner of Live a Little, about filling a vacant space within the store. Currently Granbois works full-time as a nurse, but hopes to devote more time to the bookstore. Its name, she noted, honors the family's late dog Remington.

The grand opening celebration on July 26 will include a ribbon-cutting, refreshments, and a raffle, as well as coffee from another Weedsport business, White Rabbit Roasting Co.

Bird's Bookstore, an all-ages, design-driven bookstore, will open in Dallas, Tex., next month, CultureMap Dallas reported

Located at 6025 Royal Ln. #207, in the Preston Royal shopping center, Bird's Bookstore will carry roughly 3,500 adult titles at opening, along with 2,500 kid's and young adult titles. The store will be "selling everything," said co-owner Drew Dawson, including "incredibly thick history books," genre fiction, and self-help. 

The store will also carry a selection of magazines pertaining to design and fashion. Co-owner Emily Dawson, who owns a wardrobe consulting company, will handle the curation of the magazine inventory as well as the shop's art and design books. She plans to carry around 20 magazines along the lines of Neptune, the Gentlewoman, and L'Etiquette, and expects the selection to be a draw, as there aren't many places to find those magazines in person.

Bird's Bookstore will have a small cafe serving coffee and baked goods, and the store's nonbook inventory will include European and Japanese stationery along with ceramics.

The Dawsons' bookstore plans emerged more than a decade ago, when they were first dating as students at University of Texas at Austin. "Initially, it was an idea that we wanted to explore towards retirement age," Drew Dawson told CultureMap. "But as I saw Emily follow her passion and open her own vintage clothing styling business a year and a half ago, I said, 'It's time for me too. I want to follow my passion and open this bookstore.' There's really no time like the present."

"I think there's a fatigue of everything being online," Emily Dawson said. "And I think there's a yearning for a community space that is beautiful, and feels like a second home--a place where you can get amazing customer service. We're excited to hopefully be that place for some people."

WH Smith will be opening eight new stores at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, where it currently operates two stores in Terminal 5. The new stores will "include the first WH Smith branded store in the world-class airport along with a number of bespoke store concepts, extending its leading travel essentials offer" to more passengers traveling through JFK, the company said.

In March, WH Smith sold its 480 high street--or main street--stores to Modella Capital in order to focus on its travel business, particularly its 1,200 stores in airports, hospitals, railroad stations, and elsewhere in 32 countries.

WH Smith North America "has been significantly expanding its presence across major U.S. East Coast airports... following a series of tender wins and new store openings," the company said, noting that in addition to a "pipeline of stores won and yet to open," WH Smith operates more than 50 stores on the East Coast, including at Newark and La Guardia airports in the New York area, and Ronald Reagan and Dulles International airports in Washington. 

WH Smith CEO Carl Cowling said: "Our win in the iconic JFK airport demonstrates growing demand for our world-class travel essentials offer and why North America is our most exciting opportunity for growth."

Posted on Facebook by Literati Bookstore, Ann Arbor, Mich.: "Congratulations to former Literati bookseller Tara on these fantastic engagement photos at the bookstore! And @djuntunen you are a talent!"

"How many new release book stacks tall are our booksellers?" Buxton Books, Charleston, S.C., asked yesterday, then provided the stats: "Taking our first foray into infographics this New Release Tuesday! We hope this graphic serves two purposes--you can find your next read AND know which bookseller to ask for if you ever need anything off one of the top shelves. Happy new book day!"

The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y., served up a few seasonal bookish vibes courtesy of Henry James ("Summer afternoon--summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.") and the bookshop's sidewalk chalkboard messages: 

Treat yourself s'more summer reading

and...

Summer bucket list:
  □ Read at the beach
  □ Read to your pets
  □ Read by the campfire

Simon & Schuster will handle U.S. and Canadian sales and distribution for Histria Books, effective January 1, 2026.

Histria Books publishes books in a wide range of subjects, including history, politics, the arts, academic scholarship, and children's books, alongside notable works of fiction in genres such as historical fiction, romance, fantasy, and science fiction. Named after the ancient city of Histria, a historic center of culture and trade on the Black Sea, the company upholds its namesake's legacy by publishing books that engage and enrich readers around the world.

Today:
Fresh Air: Vauhini Vara, author of Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age (Pantheon, $30, 9780593701522).

Tomorrow:
Live with Kelly and Mark: Jonathan Van Ness, co-author of Let Them Stare: A Novel (Storytide, $22.99, 9780063346246).

Tamron Hall repeat: Emily Henry, author of Great Big Beautiful Life (Berkley, $29, 9780593441299).

Apple TV+ has renewed the TV series Murderbot, based on the Murderbot Diaries sci-fi book series by Martha Wells, for a second season. Created and showrun by Chris and Paul Weitz, Murderbot stars Alexander Skarsgård, who also serves as executive producer. The season one cast also includes Noma Dumezweni, David Dastmalchian, Sabrina Wu, Akshay Khanna, Tattiawna Jones, and Tamara Podemski.

"We're so grateful for the response that Murderbot has received, and delighted that we're getting to go back to Martha Wells's world to work with Alexander, Apple, CBS Studios and the rest of the team," said the Weitz brothers.

Matt Cherniss, head of programming at Apple TV+, commented: "Chris, Paul, Alexander and the entire Murderbot team have delivered a brilliantly original, addictive, witty and vibrant adaptation that has captured the imagination of audiences everywhere. We can't wait to unveil what's next for Murderbot and, of course, Sanctuary Moon in season two."

Murderbot is from CBS Studios. The Weitz brothers write, direct and executive produce under their Depth of Field banner. Andrew Miano also executive produces for Depth of Field. David S. Goyer executive produces alongside Keith Levine for Phantom Four. Wells serves as consulting producer.

The longlist has been selected for the 2025 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, which "honors the best debut novel of the year and supports emerging voices in fiction." Check out the longlisted titles here.

The winner, who receives $15,000 prize "in recognition of their contribution to contemporary literature and in support of their ongoing creative career," will be named December 9 at the Center for Fiction First Novel Fête in New York City. Each author on the shortlist, which will be released this fall, gets $1,000.

photo: Gunther Campine

Libby Buck earned her BA in English from the University of Virginia, her MA in art history from Columbia University, and Ph.D. in art history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While her general area of expertise is 19th-century France, her dissertation focused upon the Gustave Moreau museum and its challenge to traditional museology. She taught as a visiting lecturer for more than a decade at various institutions, including Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Port Anna (Simon & Schuster, July 1, 2025) is her debut novel, about second chances and blossoming romance in a charming port town in Maine.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Adrift and out of options, Gwen finds refuge in a haunted cottage on the coast of Maine.

On your nightstand now:

Mind of the Raven by Bernd Heinrich is a meticulously researched study, beautifully written. I had never paid much attention to birds or their habits before the protagonist of my most recent work in progress appeared on the page, but now I am hooked. These magnificent creatures form complex social groups and demonstrate great intelligence. I am hanging onto every word.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey. I am in love with this book. I have zero interest in going to space--although my husband would, if only he had a spare million or two lying around--but this book renders the experience tangible. Her descriptions of weightlessness (as well as its attendant challenges) and the never-ending cycles of sunrise and nightfall brushing the Earth's surface are utterly riveting.

Mind Your Body by Nicole J. Sachs. My daughter recommended this one to me. It's an interesting reconfiguration of the mind-body relationship and its connection to pain. This book is helping me rethink how I manage both physical discomfort and the emotions that cause it to flare.

Favorite book when you were a child:

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. The idea of portals that can transport us from the most mundane of places into a magical world peopled with elves and witches captured my imagination. Later, I understood the book as a metaphor for art-making, a meditation on our unique ability to construct and reorganize the world into something both more beautiful and purposeful.

Your top five authors:

Ian McEwan. His novels examine the devastation wrought by one irrevocable, heartbreaking choice. Although I am generally drawn to rosier endings, I love every one of his books. Although Atonement is often the book cited alongside his name, I couldn't put On Chesil Beach down. It tells the story of a honeymooning couple whose lack of experience with intimacy destroys their marriage in a single night--all within a short 203 pages.

Henry James. I read every one of his books in college, and The Golden Bowl remains an all-time favorite. His use of language is far more baroque than McEwan's, but it's incredibly effective. The long descriptions invite the reader to step inside both the spaces and the minds of his characters, all of whom struggle with the suffocating demands of 19th-century social conventions.

Donna Tartt weaves complex narratives better than anyone. From scholars of Greek mythology to snake-handling evangelicals, her characters all speak with a rare authenticity. I only wish she would publish more often than every 10 years.

Barbara Kingsolver. I laughed and cried through The Bean Trees and its sequels. The Poisonwood Bible shattered me, and I think that Demon Copperhead is a work of genius.

Rebecca Solnit. Her essays cannot be read quickly. They command attention, a slow savoring of every phrase. The images she conjures of life in a vast desert are so vivid and so lovingly attended to that I wish I could live in that harsh climate too.

Book you've faked reading:

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Even though I tried for months, I couldn't get through more than 25 pages of this hefty tome. (I had the same problem with David Foster Wallace's The Pale King, although, being older, I cried "uncle" far more quickly.)

Book you're an evangelist for:

Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes poignantly reminds us of the painful realities of war and displacement. Art, in the form of a small netsuke, a small rabbit sculpture, functions as the thread that links the author to a past and a family scattered to the wind. The reader follows the author across the European continent to Great Britain and, eventually, to Japan, where he finds the collection of ivories, a wedding gift to his ancestor, in his uncle's apartment.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Jacques Derrida's Memoirs of the Blind. Although Derrida's philosophy was required reading in graduate school, I bought this purely for the charcoal self-portrait of Henri Fantin-Latour. The image of a young man staring at the viewer, which is to say, at himself, is arresting. I left it on my desk long after I left academic work behind.

Book you hid from your parents:

Erica Jong, Fear of Flying. Yes, for the sex. It seems somewhat antiquated now, given the openness with which we discuss it these days, but in the '70s... wow. I also kept Mario Puzo's The Godfather, snatched from my father's bedside, in my closet. I find the scene of the bleeding horse's head stuffed between the sheets far more horrifying on the page than it was in the film.

Book that changed your life:

Robertson Davies's The Rebel Angels. The female protagonist, a young Romany woman, is a medievalist. My infatuation with this mysterious and highly intelligent character, in large measure, convinced me to study medieval art history in graduate school.

Favorite line from a book:

Rebecca Solnit writes about the color blue: "The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and of desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not."

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

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff. I loved Lamentation's trek across the great, unknown forests of Virginia in the early colonial period. Her bravery amid terrible sickness and grief makes for compelling reading.

Best ghost story you've read:

Without a doubt, Henry James's The Turn of the Screw is the classic--a psychological thriller that never answers the question: Are ghosts real? But, if you want to read a great story about real ghosts, Daria Lavelle's new release, Aftertaste, is a lovely meditation on the power of food to conjure the dead and heal the living.

Bestselling author/illustrator ND Stevenson (Nimona) gifts audiences his first middle-grade fantasy with Scarlet Morning, a suspenseful and exceptional magical illustrated novel that follows two orphans determined to change--and save--a world destroyed by adults.

Once, the world wasn't broken: "the sky was blue, and the spray of the sea wouldn't burn your flesh... you could hear the crying of the gulls and not be afraid." At that time, the people of Dickerson's Sea were ruled by the beloved Queen Hail Meridian. But the "blackhearted" Scarlet Morning killed the queen and brought a dreadful storm that destroyed the sea, the birds, and memory itself. Orphans Viola and Wilmur never knew this world; they only know life with Hestur, their caretaker, on the salt-crusted island of Caveat in Dickerson's Sea. After Hestur vanishes, the dangerous and strange Captain Cadence Chase appears looking for "a specific book... one of a kind, and lost for a long time." She is seeking the single treasure in Violet and Wilmur's possession: the Book, full of secrets and puzzles. Despite Hestur's repeated warnings that the children not part with the Book, they trade it in exchange for safe passage on Captain Chase's pirate ship. It is there, surrounded by a generous ragtag crew, that Viola and Wilmur begin to understand how very many secrets have been kept by the captain, by their long-lost caretaker, and by the other adults crossing Dickerson's Sea.

Stevenson delivers a story full of twists and original genre-blending interpretations of magic in Scarlet Morning. Laced with horror and humor--including both the clever wordplay and the silly chaos often favored by children--the story perfectly balances the whiplash of a traditional high fantasy pirate adventure set in a terrifying world reshaped by adults. More than 100 black-and-white illustrations in Stevenson's signature style set tone and add nuance to the unfolding mysteries.

Clever but quiet Viola, gangly, charismatic Wilmur, and Captain Chase, who alternates between endearing and deadly, are the surefire standouts of this wide cast. But readers will likely pick favorites from the myriad side characters, such as the Book's author (who is slowly descending into madness) or kind, soup-sharing Elvey. Fans of Wilmur may be disappointed that the narrative favors Viola's point-of-view over his, but the shocking, satisfying ending leaves the potential for more time spent with him in book two of the duology.

Give Scarlet Morning to fans of Katherine Rundell and Ashley Mackenzie's Impossible Creatures or Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events; even knowing the dangers, they will surely want to set sail on Dickerson's Sea at once. --Nicole Brinkley, bookseller and writer

Shelf Talker: Two orphans set off into a twisted magical world only to discover how much needs to be changed--and saved--in this stunning illustrated middle-grade fantasy.