"Why I'm Here. Why This Matters. When I first opened The Wandering Soul, I didn't fully know what it would become--only that I needed to create a space where people could feel something again. A space to be curious. To be quiet. To feel seen. What started as a shop filled with local artists and oddities has grown into something that feels like its own heartbeat. A bookstore, yes--but also a sanctuary for stories and souls. A place where the strange and beautiful collide. Where magic hums in the corners, and community feels like a warm light flickering through the cracks.

"I'm still here because this matters. Because there are still books that need to find their people. Still artists who deserve to be seen. Still stories that whisper, "stay a little longer. This shop has carried me through some of the hardest parts of my life--and I've poured that same care back into it, for whoever needs to find a little light in the dark. So if you've ever felt like a wanderer, or a little lost, or a little weird in the most wonderful way--welcome. This space was made with you in mind." 

Jonathan Karp, CEO of Simon & Schuster since 2020, is stepping down and will become the publisher of a new imprint named Simon Six. He will continue as CEO until a successor is found.

Jonathan Karp (l.) and Richard Sarnoff at last year's Frankfurt Book Fair

Karp commented: "Simon and Schuster is on a great growth trajectory right now, and it has been a privilege to lead the company for the last five years. When KKR acquired Simon & Schuster, I agreed to stay on through the transition, but my north star has always been our authors and their books, and I have decided it's time for me to return to the part of publishing that animates me the most. I remain deeply committed to our mission and am excited to remain a devoted shareholder who will support our next leader and the entire team however I can."

And in a letter to S&S employees, Karp added: "Over the past five years, we've brought a lot of new talent to our company. We've become a more international company. We've created an ownership culture and we've achieved some record-setting results that have positioned the company for growth. Most importantly, we've kept our focus squarely on our authors and the books we publish."

S&S board members and KKR executives Ted Oberwager and Richard Sarnoff said, "Under Jon Karp's exceptional leadership over the past five years, Simon & Schuster has demonstrated remarkable resilience and growth in an evolving publishing landscape. His strategic vision and commitment to literary excellence have strengthened the company immeasurably, attracted new/renowned authors and reinforced its legacy as a premier global publisher. We are thrilled to launch the new Simon Six imprint under Jon's leadership. There is no better shaper of books."

Karp began his publishing career in 1989 as an editorial assistant at Random House, where he worked for 16 years, rising to the position of editor-in-chief. In 2005, he joined Hachette Book Group, where he founded and was publisher and editor-in-chief of Twelve. For 10 years he was publisher of S&S's flagship imprint before becoming CEO in 2020.

Partnering with S&S's existing imprints, the Simon Six imprint will publish six books a year, "each with an X-factor," Karp said. He noted that as founding publisher of Twelve, "I published one book per month. For Simon Six, I will acquire and edit half as many books each year and publish them with twice as much emphasis, in partnership with many of the same colleagues I've enjoyed working alongside for years."

During his tenure as CEO, Karp dealt with many challenges, beginning with the sudden death of his predecessor, Carolyn Reidy; the announcement by ViacomCBS, later renamed Paramount Global, that the publisher was for sale; the onset of the pandemic; and a rise in book bannings. Penguin Random House won the initial bidding war for the company but ultimately withdrew the offer in 2022 after the Justice Department won a suit to block the deal. Private equity firm KKR won the next round of bidding, and in 2023 made S&S a standalone company, with Karp continuing as head of S&S. After the sale, the company created an employee ownership program. And during his time the company expanded its publishing operations with new imprints like Simon Element, Boynton Bookworks, Sarah Barley Books and the relaunch of Summit Books; expanded abroad with purchases such as Dutch publisher VBK and distribution agreements such as the one with Urano World Publishing Group; and expanded its distribution services for other publishers. In 2022, the last full year financial results were public, the company's sales rose 19%, to $1.18 billion, and operating profit rose 16%, to $248 million.

Stacks Book Club in Oro Valley

Stacks Book Club, which began as a pop-up bookshop before opening its physical store and cafe in Oro Valley, Ariz., in 2023, will be adding a second location, Stacks Book Club Broadway, in Tucson at 2920 East Broadway Blvd., part of the Mid-Century District within Sunshine Mile. It is also the former site of the iconic Austin's Ice Cream shop, which originally opened in 1959 and served the community for several decades.

Lizzy Jeffrey-Franco, who owns Stacks Book Club with her husband, Crispin, told the Tucson Sentinel they had finalized their purchase recently, adding: "Right now, we've drawn so many people to our tiny Oro Valley bookstore. The biggest piece of advice we've heard from customers is 'you need a location in Midtown.' "

The new space was chosen because of its size, central location and midcentury charm. The owners had been planning to expand the business for more than a year. They hope to have it open by January, the Sentinel wrote.

"We're basically cranking up the volume on everything," said Jeffrey-Franco, adding that the new 4,000-square-foot space will enable them to nearly double their book inventory, add new food and drink options to the coffee bar, continue to keep works from local authors on the shelves and host more events by prominent authors. "We're hoping, with the more central location, we're able to send pitches to more publishers," she added.

The Stacks Book Club in Oro Valley will continue operating as usual. "We loved bringing Stacks to our community," Jeffrey-Franco said. "We're definitely not closing our doors in Oro Valley."

In their social media post announcing the expansion, the owners wrote: "We see ourselves as being a complementary addition to the existing ecosystem of independent bookstores already in central Tucson. We hope to continue to use our platform to motivate more of Tucson to shop indie. We are intentional in focusing on what makes us unique and what we do best at Stacks--cultivating a community hub, hosting banging events, and serving up inventive, and delicious beverages while we're at it."

Visible Voice Books, Cleveland, Ohio is relocating to 4601 Lorain Ave. in the Ohio City neighborhood, with plans to reopen at the new location on November 12. The last day of business at the bookstore's current location--2258 Professor Ave. in Tremont--will be September 14. The new, first-floor location, which expands the shop's footprint from 1,100 square feet to 6,000 square feet, has been completely renovated and designed for the bookstore's exclusive use.

Rendering of Visible Voice's new store

Visible Voice noted that the additional space will enable the bookstore to triple its book inventory/offerings of both new and used books; add a café and a full-service bar, and use a 150-capacity stage to host local and national musicians, along with writers and speakers. The space also features a warmly lit, comfortable mezzanine area conducive to relaxing, working, studying, or reading, as well as three conference rooms.

Owner Dave Ferrante said the decision to move out of Tremont, where the bookstore had been since opening in 2007, was not an easy one: "All of the Visible Voice employees love Tremont. Two of us live in the neighborhood. In my opinion, Tremont has never lost its uniqueness or charm. In fact, it's still one of the most interesting, fun, and beautiful neighborhoods in the city. I am glad I have been located here for so many years and I'm thankful for the support of the neighborhood."

He added: "The opportunities that arose from the additional size and unique architectural details of the new location will allow us to greatly enhance our offerings and programming. It's been something I've envisioned for years, and the new store will be something very special that I hope the entire city can enjoy. I'd also like to point out that the location is only 1.7 miles from Tremont. Hell, you can even walk it.... We are committed to continue providing a great, mindful, and curated sanctuary of knowledge, serendipitist discovery, and fun. That does not change no matter where we are located."

Chapter House Books officially opened in Fayetteville, N.C., on August 16, the Fayetteville Observer reported. The new and used bookstore carries general-interest titles for all ages and resides at 225 Franklin St. Owner Annie Clymer said the opening was "a lot of fun," with many community members stopping by and showing interest in the store. Children's books have been selling well, she added, while adult readers have been flocking to romance, science fiction, and fantasy.

Clymer and her husband, Andrew Ridgeway, with whom she co-owns the store, met at a bookstore and dreamed of someday opening one of their own. Clymer has prior experience in bookselling, having managed Odyssey Bookstore in Ithaca, N.Y. 

Looking ahead, Clymer plans to have the bookstore's online shop up and running within a few weeks and is planning a ribbon-cutting ceremony. She also hopes to start hosting authors at the bookstore.

The Observer noted that Chapter House's opening is part of a "bookstore renaissance" in Fayetteville, with local indie City Center Gallery & Books set to expand into an adjacent storefront and a new bookstore and wine bar, Bound & Vine, slated to open this fall.

Jeff Abraham, COO, PRH US, prepares to cut the ribbon.

Yesterday Penguin Random House held the official ribbon-cutting ceremony for the expansion of its warehouse in Crawfordsville, Ind., near Indianapolis. The expansion adds 650,000 square feet to the existing 950,000-square-foot facility, and makes the Crawfordsville facility the largest of PRH's four distribution centers. (The others are two in Maryland and one in Reno, Nev.) Planning for the Crawfordsville expansion began in 2023, ground was broken last September, and the building was completed in less than a year.

With the expansion, PRH said it will be able to double its annual shipments of print books to retailers nationwide, ensuring faster, more efficient delivery of titles to booksellers and readers.

At the ribbon cutting, Jeff Abraham, chief operating officer, Penguin Random House U.S., said, "Our Crawfordsville facility is at the heart of our mission to connect authors and readers. With this expansion, we are building capacity for the future by helping us serve booksellers and readers more effectively while continuing to invest in our employees and our community."

Crawfordsville Mayor Todd Barton added, "Penguin Random House has proven to be a very strong partner in moving our community forward and we greatly appreciate their continued investment in Crawfordsville. This investment not only positions their Crawfordsville facility in a flagship position, it is reflective of their ongoing commitment to the success and growth of their local operations."

"It is with heavy hearts that we share that our beloved community cat, Kitty Moo moo cow passed away," Libélula Books & Co., San Diego, Calif., posted on Facebook. "Thank you to everyone who loved him with treats, toys, and pets, he truly was the happiest shop kitty."

"Always carry a book in case of an emergency* 

That was the sidewalk chalkboard message in front of Four Pines Bookstore, Bemidji, Minn., which noted: "Don't face a book emergency! Stop in today and grab your next great read."

Posted by Birdie Books, Westerville, Ohio: "A little indie bookstore at almost night... still pretty much my favorite."

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Suleika Jaouad, author of The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life (Random House, $30, 9780593734636).

Live with Kelly and Mark: Chelsea Handler, author of I'll Have What She's Having (The Dial Press, $32, 9780593596579).

A teaser trailer has been released The Man in My Basement, based on the novel by Walter Mosley, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Nadia Latif. The project stars Corey Hawkins, Willem Dafoe, Anna Diop, Jonathan Ajayi, Gershwyn Eustache Jr., Pamela Nomvete, and Tamara Lawrance. The film will be released in early fall.

The logline: "In the African American neighborhood of Sag Harbor, New York, Charles Blakey (Hawkins) is out of work, out of luck and on the verge of foreclosure on his ancestral home. A knock on the door from a mysterious businessman, Anniston Bennet (Dafoe), brings a bizarre and lucrative proposition; rent his dusty stand-up basement out for the summer and receive enough money to clear his debts for good. Once Charles accepts, he finds himself led down a terrifying path that confronts his family's ghosts and locks the men in a terrifying puzzle, at the heart of it race, the source of their traumas and the root of all evil."

Moira Buffini won the £2,000 (about $2,695) YA Book Prize, which celebrates fiction for teenagers and young adults from the U.K. and Ireland, for her dystopian debut novel, Songlight, the first volume in the Torch Trilogy, the Bookseller reported. The winner was named at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in a ceremony hosted by writer and activist Laura Bates.  

Rachel Fox, children and schools program director at the festival (which is a partner with the Bookseller on the prize), said the winning title "pulls you into its brilliantly imagined world from the very first page and refuses to let go.... With a captivating storyline, this novel masterfully explores themes of identity, acceptance and the many forms of love. Packed with mystery, intricate politics, heartbreak, and betrayal, Songlight is an unforgettable journey that will keep you hooked until the very last word." 

Marissa Higgins is a lesbian writer and the author of the novels A Good Happy Girl and Sweetener (Catapult, August 19, 2025), a lesbian screwball comedy that follows two exes who turn to online dating after their dramatic split--only to end up seeing the same woman.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Divorcing wives accidentally date the same woman: an artist who is faking a pregnancy. Only one of the wives knows the baby bump isn't real.

On your nightstand now:

I have a bunch of galleys I'm excited to read, including Brandon Taylor's Minor Black Figures, Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung, and Uncanny Valley Girls by Zefyr Lisowski.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I spent a lot of time reading Choose Your Own Adventure books. I liked being able to change the plot and move things around and read in all directions. I was really fearful as a kid and legitimately worried I would be in trouble if I skipped the order of prompts, like proceeding to a different storyline than the one I'd originally chosen. It eventually felt liberating to read whatever direction I wanted, and I liked seeing how stories change. I read a bunch of Star Wars books like that before I'd ever seen the movies. I read the childhood classics of my grandmother's six kids, the Hardy Boys series, Johanna Spyri's Heidi, and the Nancy Drew series. I loved Goosebumps because my mom liked scary movies, and I wanted her to like me.

Your top five authors:

Edmund White, Sigrid Nunez, Emily Austin, Mia McKenzie, Allegra Hyde.

Book you've faked reading:

Clarissa; or The History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson, for a class I was taking. The instructor was really kind and passionate, but the books were impossibly boring. I think I took it because of the time--Tuesday and Thursday in the afternoon, I think--as did the rest of us disappointments (aka my fellow English majors). We had a lot of discussions about sexual violence and the choices women had (have?) access to within a world run by men.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Grown Women by Sarai Johnson. It's beautiful, about four generations of women who love and hate each other, and the ways they hurt each other and themselves. I'm usually not great about multi-generational stories but this one consumed me, and it changed the way I think about the mothers in my life.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Open Throat by Henry Hoke, which is about a mountain lion. I am so excited to read it because I've heard it's wonderfully experimental and short, but I am saving it for when I can read and watch a bunch of stuff from the POV of animals. I recently watched Flow (2024) and sobbed.

Book you hid from your parents:

No one checked what I was reading, but I was really secretive and private about everything online. I was mortified at the idea of someone reading my AOL chats or searches or essays for school. Any book that was remotely gay was interesting to me, but I'd read (and hide) everything.

Book that changed your life:

It's a cliché answer, but The Stranger by Albert Camus. I read it at the beach the summer after I finished college, before I moved to New York for a job. My lasting impression was one of feeling inspired to live fully, which is kind of a funny takeaway from Camus. I'm pretty sure I picked it because it was short and I vaguely related him to Jean-Luc Godard, whose movies I liked.

Favorite line from a book:

Recently, I think it's "I am always happy to bore the spirits with my thoughts, which I think they can hear" from Sam Heaps's beautiful novella The Living God, out on October 1, 2025. It's about obsession, and reading it feels like living in a poem. I keep starting and stopping it because its brief sentences and strange language move me so much it helps me think and write my own stuff better.

Five books you'll never part with:

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith
The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley  
The Complete Poems of Elizabeth Bishop
A small book that is a special gift
The one I keep in my head

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

American Spirits by Anna Dorn, which I think is so funny and smart. It's about pop culture and music and fandoms, really freaky and endearing, and playful with the reader too. It's out in April 2026 from Simon & Schuster. I want to read all of Anna's books again for the first time, because they feel made just for me. But I feel like they're eventually all going to be movies, and I will live them again that way.

Book you're most excited to read this fall:

Palaver by Bryan Washington and Open Wide by Jessica Gross. I really like all of Bryan's work so I'm going to read everything he puts out, and Gross is new to me, but I love the description of the book as well as the cover.

Book you want to revisit:

I was assigned The Awakening by Kate Chopin in high school and argued vehemently that it was a gay text though I'd only skimmed it and was promptly shut down by my peers (who maybe did read it?) who found it more feminist, less lesbian. I also need to read Maurice by E.M. Forster, which I avoided reading in high school because I thought it was too obviously gay. I ended up reading A Passage to India and having nightmares instead.

Prolific author Jennifer A. Nielsen, best known for her YA fantasy (the Ascendance series) and historical fiction (Lines of Courage), offers readers The Free State of Jax, a funny, fast-paced coming-of-age adventure mystery about one lonely boy's quest to claim agency over his own out-of-control life.

Jaxon Averett is an orphan living in Walkonby, Kan., whose custodial relatives, the Grimmitzes, can't be bothered to get his name right; Jax is certain he needs to escape from his bullying and crude guardians. After posting his personal Declaration of Independence on the bathroom mirror "with the help of some well-chewed bubble gum," Jax sets out to claim eminent domain over a pond on a seemingly abandoned property next door; he establishes a new country he calls the Free State of Jax. As the founder and president of this micronation ("Population: 1"), Jax has obviously done his research about the process: he quotes frequently from a 1933 Uruguay treaty describing how a country can be formed as he industriously works toward that goal. Unfortunately (and mysteriously), the Grimmitzes, with their six mostly awful children (Denise, Dutch, Daisy, Delilah, Danger, and Chet Chet), are working just as hard to keep him from actualizing his independence. To make matters more complicated, the land Jax has claimed turns out to be owned by Owen O'Keefe, a possible thief and murderer, who ends up being one of the only adults who takes Jax's governmental aspirations seriously. Mr. O'Keefe also brings Jax tasty meals, and it's "hard to imagine a coldhearted villain blending [stew] seasonings so perfectly." Still, the man's reputation is clouded by rumors: after the townspeople donated thousands of dollars to Mr. O'Keefe and his brother to turn their property into a hot springs resort, both brother and money went missing.

What with trying to write his constitution, supervising a stream of kids arriving to help fix up the micronation, and engaging in mud- (and stinky sock-) slinging warfare with the Grimmitz brood, Jax barely has time to try to solve the O'Keefe mystery. That is, until a tornado strikes and reveals the answer right under their noses.

Nielsen deftly juggles a lively collection of plots and subplots, including a decidedly unusual main storyline. The outcome of Jax's efforts will likely feel like victory for readers, though they're not exactly what Jax had planned. The Free State of Jax should be a great read for any kid who enjoys Gordon Korman or Stuart Gibbs. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

Shelf Talker: In this lively and unusual adventure-mystery, a boy creates a micronation by claiming eminent domain over a neighbor's pond--and finds friendship, family, and a way finally to be seen and heard.