Beguiled Books, a romance-focused bookstore that debuted as a mobile bookstore earlier this year, will open a bricks-and-mortar location in Seattle, Wash., this fall.

Located in Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood, Beguiled will span about 2,300 square feet in an historic building at 109 1st Ave. S. The bookstore will carry a wide variety of romance sub-genres, including contemporary, romantasy, dark, LGBTQ+, and vintage, which owner Ashley Adair called her "little personal baby." 

Alongside those categories customers will find YA and middle grade options, a small selection of picture books, and sections dedicated to local and indie authors. The store will sell an assortment of bookish goods, many of them sourced from local artisans and creators, as well as ceramics, jewelry, and its own store-branded coffee blend, which Adair described as the "most Seattle thing ever."

Adair's event plans include book signings, classes on book bedazzling and book rebinding, book clubs, and writing groups. The bookstore's main floor, she said, is "going to be great for author events," while she intends to make the store's loft space a "chill out area" that will be a good fit for book clubs and writing groups. Noting that although the store won't have a food or beverage component because of an "awesome cafe next door," she does plan to serve refreshments at events.

Elaborating on the store's location, Adair said that as a "little bit of a history nerd," she's excited to be in Pioneer Square and is pleased that the building is "on the Underground Tour." Those tours, she explained, explore parts of Seattle that were effectively buried underground after the city rebuilt in the wake of the Great Seattle Fire in 1889, and many "go under our building." 

Beguiled owner Ashley Adair

Adair will get the keys to the space on October 1 and is planning to open on November 15, following a six-week build-out. Opening weekend festivities will include snacks and drinks, a photo booth, flash tattoos, and more. "The store is opening whether it's done or not," she added, laughing.

Prior to launching Beguiled Books, Adair had a background in HR, with about 15 years of experience in culture leadership, coaching, and learning and development. In 2022, her father unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack, which caused a "pivotal shift in my mentality," Adair said. 

The loss of her father emphasized that "life is short," and at the same time, she was "definitely ready to get out of HR." Post-pandemic, she recalled, companies didn't seem to want to "invest in employees and culture any more," which was her specialty. Instead, they just wanted her to "do layoffs or write job descriptions," and she was eager to make a change.

A lifelong romance reader who was "stealing my grandma's Harlequins and Johanna Lindseys" from a young age, Adair said she had always had "ephemeral thoughts" about owning a bookstore of her own. The plan was always for a romance bookstore, and those ideas returned to her after the loss of her father and amid her dissatisfaction with the corporate world.

That plan was "solidified" when she found a nice space available in her neighborhood, but she decided not to move on it at the time because she didn't have a business plan and wasn't ready. She set to crafting a business plan in earnest, and she learned a great deal about bookselling from Pegasus Book Exchange in West Seattle, which took Adair and husband Zach Adair "under their wing."

Beguiled Books began operation in December 2024, with Adair and her husband doing pop-up appearances while they built their mobile bookstore out of a cargo trailer. The mobile bookstore debuted Valentine's weekend this year at the Columbia City Night Market and has been "going ever since."

While Adair always intended to open a bricks-and-mortar store, it is happening sooner than she expected. She discovered the space serendipitously while on a trip to look at a different space, and it was "love at first sight."

She and her husband are able to take this leap, she continued, because the response to the bookstore has been "overwhelmingly possible." The biggest surprise, Adair said, has been the number of loyal customers who will "hunt us down in the wild" to attend the mobile bookstore's various appearances. There has been so much enthusiasm from "all of our new followers and friends," and even offers to come help build out the store or assist on opening day.

"The community is being so supportive," Adair said. "It's taken me by surprise, but in the best of ways." --Alex Mutter

Commerce Street Books, Charlottesville, Va., will host its "Big Weekend" grand opening celebration from September 5-7. The bookshop debuted in June at 499 W Main St. in Charlottesville, Va., the Cavalier Daily reported.

Philip Lorish, Commerce Street Books owner.

Owner Philip Lorish hopes to support what he calls the "practice of reading" in the community, noting: "We're creating value for a community and for folks who want to have an in person experience.... What makes us unique is that we want to be easy to use and we want to be as transparent as we can be. We want to get people closer to the prices that they see on Amazon or elsewhere by offering them significant discounts on books with their membership."

The store is located near the Downtown Mall in the back of the Doyle Hotel's lobby, a space that "reinforces the openness and modernity Lorish envisioned for his bookstore, with elevated ceilings, full length windows and a minimalist white finish," the Cavalier Daily noted.

"Bookstores should be places where you lose time.... We want to have comfortable seating around and lots of light," said Lorish. "You should be able to browse without feeling like you're trapped.... I've wanted the store to feel like a relief or a respite, so that's part of what's going on architecturally too."

He hopes that Commerce Street Books will serve as an intellectual conduit for the public, noting: "Charlottesville is a super interesting place for people who want to be around ideas.... There is a really interesting reading public that's not all attached to [University of Virginia] and then there are folks within the UVA world who want places to speak to other folks."

He added: "Reading is a practice in the sense that it requires attention and effort and it's a real skill. A good bookstore can't read books for you, but it can put the right kinds of books in your hands and surround you with people who are helping you develop your own reading practice."

In a recent q&a with UVAToday, Lorish responded to a question about whether anything had surprised him since opening the store by noting: "Honestly, how satisfying it is to see total strangers light up in the space.... I think of bookstores like gyms. You shouldn't be made to feel bad if you're new; you should be welcomed and encouraged. That's what I hope Commerce Street Books becomes."

Loom & Lore Bookmobile, a mobile bookstore with an emphasis on romance titles, hosted a grand opening celebration Saturday in Green Bay, Wis., Fox11 reported.

The bookmobile carries around 900 titles, mostly in the romance genre, with a focus on books written by diverse authors and local authors. Co-owners Erin Sherwood and Sydney Vassal are from Green Bay and plan to bring Loom & Lore to communities throughout northeastern Wisconsin.

The grand opening festivities on Saturday featured appearances from a variety of local vendors and included flash tattoos, jewelry, custom hats, and a bouquet bar. Vassal and Sherwood wrote on Instagram that they were blown away by the reception the bookmobile received, saying the "love, energy, and magic in the air were palpable, and our gratitude is immeasurable."

Upcoming stops include visits to flea markets, breweries, coffee shops, and more.

Vivian Ayers Allen, a poet, playwright and cultural activist "who vigorously promoted minority artists and had three children who had consequential careers in the arts," died August 18, the New York Times reported. She was 102. Her death was confirmed by her daughter, the actress Phylicia Rashad.

In 2002, the Times described Ayers Allen as "a Renaissance woman" for her wide-ranging expertise--from Greek classical drama to African American folk art. She also "had a direct influence" on the artistic lives of three of her children: Rashad, a Tony Award-winning Broadway actress; Debbie Allen, a Broadway actress, director and choreographer; and Andrew "Tex" Allen, a jazz trumpeter, pianist, and composer.

"As children, we were privy to great intellectual and artistic debates," Rashad told the Los Angeles Times in 2012. "My mother included us in everything that she did, and I mean everything. I remember as a child collating pages for her second book. It was wonderful."

Ayers Allen "forged a career in the arts at a time when Black women such as herself were largely invisible to mainstream cultural institutions," the New York Times wrote. Her debut poetry collection, Spice of Dawns, was published in 1953, and four years later saw the release of her verse novel Hawk, which explored racial freedom from the perspective of a hawk that ventures into outer space. In an interview, she called the book a "documentation of the process of transcendence." Her first play, Bow Boly, was "structurally up and out of the Greek drama," she told the Houston Post in 1962. 

Ayers Allen became a fixture in the Houston arts scene, and her work "grew in its urgency and activism as the civil rights movement expanded across the South," the Times wrote, adding that in 1964, with help from the young novelist Larry McMurtry, she launched Adept, a short-lived literary quarterly that published verse by Vassar Miller, the future poet laureate of Texas, and paintings by the Trinidadian-American actor and artist Geoffrey Holder. She later founded the Adept Gallery for New American Folk Art, focusing on mixed-media works by Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic Americans. 

In 1984, she moved to Mount Vernon, N.Y., to serve as director-curator of the Adept New American Museum. "When my heart gets tired of the intellectual work," she told the Mount Vernon Argus, "I can go out and dig in the garden and plant flowers."

Born in 1923 in Chester, S.C., Ayers Allen attended the Brainerd Institute, a boarding school founded in the late 19th century for the children of formerly enslaved people, and was part of its last graduating high school class in 1939.

In 1999, Phylicia Rashad bought the Brainerd Institute property and Ayers Allen converted it into the Brainerd Institute Heritage, which "has since been the site of Workshops in Open Fields, a program based on an initiative that Ms. Ayers Allen had started in Houston to promote the literacy and the arts among low-income minority youth," the Times noted.

From her poem "On Status" (read by Rashad):

So they've got no
tall skyscrapers!
--clowns and nightclubs
cutting capers--

Its home--
the Folk are warm;
And most important--
I belong!

Claire McLaughlin has left Flatiron Books, where she was associate director of publicity, to launch Terrace Public Relations, a literary public relations firm, where she will focus on literary and upmarket fiction, page-turning genre fiction, and narrative nonfiction. Some of the early authors she'll be working with are Nisha Sharma, Liz Lawson, Louise Marburg, and debut novelist Yosha Gunasekera.

To the Moon and Back by Eliana Ramage (‎‎Simon & Schuster) is the September pick for Reese's Book Club, which described the book this way: "Steph Harper dreams of becoming the first Cherokee woman in space, a goal that often feels as unreachable as the moon itself. As her ambition leads her away from the people and community who shaped her, she's forced to confront what she's truly seeking. This debut from Eliana Ramage is a thoughtful narrative that reminds us that identity and destiny are not separate, but deeply intertwined."

Reese called To the Moon and Back "a breathtaking debut about family, identity, and love across generations."

Abalabix Books, Crystal Lake, Ill., shared a video on Instagram "INTRODUCING two new book clubs... The Hopeless Romantics and The Who Crew! Visit the Events page on our website for all the details!"

"I live in two worlds; one is the world of books.' --Rory Gilmore." That was the sidewalk message in front of Grass Roots Books & Music in Corvallis, Ore., which noted in an Instagram post: "With school starting back up again, we figured everyone needs a little Rory energy to dive back in."

The Phoebe Variations by Jane Hamilton (Zibby Publishing).

Today:
Here & Now: Stephen King, author of Hansel and Gretel (HarperCollins, $26.99, 9780062644695).

Tomorrow:
The View repeat: Brian Kelly, author of How to Win at Travel (Avid Reader Press, $30, 9781668068656).

Kelly Clarkson Show repeat: Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of Atmosphere: A Love Story (Ballantine, $30, 9780593158715).

Osun Group production company has optioned its first book, The Catch by Yrsa Daley-Ward, who will be making her TV screenwriting debut adapting the novel, a "supernatural thriller exploring sisterhood, identity, and the radical act of choosing yourself," Deadline reported

Sheila Nortley, Osun's head of drama who first worked with Daley-Ward on the 2011 indie feature David Is Dying and struck the new option agreement, called The Catch "both vast and otherworldly, yet so deeply intimate and tragically human. Yrsa's storytelling has a way of getting under the skin and holding a mirror up to our most uncomfortable truths. To have such a bold and inventive novel as our first scripted adaptation at Osun Group is both an honor and a statement of intent. I can't wait to bring it to the screen."

Daley-Ward commented: "The Catch asks, 'What if the person you fear most and the person you long for most were the same?' I've often wondered what it would be like to meet my mother again, not as she was, but as I am. The TV adaptation takes that unsettling question and spins it into an edgy, psychological suspense about family, obsession, and the terror of recognition."

The winners of the 2025 Heartland Booksellers Awards, who will be celebrated on October 14 at a ceremony hosted by Isaac Fitzgerald during the Heartland Fall Forum in Indianapolis, Ind., are:

Fiction: The City in Glass by Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)
Nonfiction: Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green (Crash Course Books)
Poetry: Anishinaabe Songs for a New Millennium by Marcie R. Rendon (University of Minnesota Press)
YA/Middle Grade: Where Wolves Don't Die by Anton Treuer (Arthur A. Levine)
Picture Book: How the Birds Got Their Songs, written by Travis Zimmerman, illustrated by Sam Zimmerman (Minnesota Historical Society Press).

photo: John Earle

Stephanie Reents's first novel, We Loved to Run (Hogarth, August 26, 2025), is about a women's cross-country team and how far girls will push themselves to control their bodies, friendships, and futures. She's also the author of The Kissing List, a collection of stories that was an Editors' Choice in the New York Times Book Review; and I Meant to Kill Ye, a bibliomemoir chronicling her journey into the strange void at the heart of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. She has twice received an O. Henry Prize for her short fiction. Reents received a BA from Amherst, a BA from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and an MFA from the University of Arizona. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

My novel is for anyone who appreciates the rich messiness of female friendships and women's fraught relationship to competition and their own beautiful, tender bodies.  

On your nightstand now:

Eric Puchner's new novel, Dream State, a family saga set in Montana. Because I love a good sports novel, and table tennis is definitely a sport full of psychological intensity and heartbreak, Underspin by E.Y. Zhao, which will be out in late September. Rosalind Brown's Practice, a kind-of campus novel set at Oxford University about a young woman struggling mightily to lead a life of the mind, which yanked me right back to my own impossible standards for myself when I was a young person striving to be a serious scholar.

Favorite book when you were a child:

As a kid with a fierce independent streak, I was drawn to anything about children making their way in the world without adults. This included The Boxcar Children, Gertrude Chandler Warner's 1924 classic about four orphans leading a very happy and abundant life in a boxcar in the woods. I really loved my parents but, boy, was I intrigued by the idea of testing myself against the world without them.

Your top five authors:

I love so many writers, so it's hard to choose five, but here goes: Haruki Murakami, whose strange imagination is unparalleled; Joy Williams, whose deep and righteous defense of animals and critique of human stupidity reminds me what literature should do; Cormac McCarthy for writing Blood Meridian, just the difficult book I needed to anchor me when I was graduating from college; J.M. Coetzee, whose formal experimentation across his body of work has taught me so much about form; and Aimee Bender for pioneering an American style of feminist magical realism.

Book you've faked reading:

When I was an English professor, one of my colleagues taught a seminar on American literature that included Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, and I took it, thinking I would finally check this American masterpiece off my list. Unfortunately, age has only made me a lazier student, and I found myself skimming a few key chapters before every class in hopes of looking like I was prepared.

Book you're an evangelist for:

M. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn is a gorgeous, devastating, and formally inventive book about an Indian man named Abel returning to his pueblo in New Mexico after fighting in World War II and feeling estranged. While it's a withering critique of the U.S. government's efforts to assimilate American Indians into mainstream American culture, which lasted well into the 20th century, Momaday also translates the visual beauty of the southwestern landscape into prose passages that are completely embodied experiences. I once sobbed in front of the class of first-year college students--like red-faced breathing-through-my-mouth bawled--that's how moved I am by some of the passages in this novel.

Book you hid from your parents:

When I was a teenager, I found The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel on a bookshelf in my Grandma Frances's living room. If you've read it, you know why I hid it from parents as well as why I was scandalized by the idea of my very nice grandma with her nose buried in its pages.

Book that changed your life:

In college, I read Amy Hempel's slender collection Reasons to Live, which includes the brilliant story "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried." The economy of the stories, the manic dark humor concealing real pathos, the depictions of female friendships and vulnerable bodies--Hempel's style and her subject matter spoke deeply to me as a young woman and made me want to write.

Favorite line from a book:

"On an otherwise unremarkable September morning, long before I learned to be ashamed of my mother, she takes my hand and we set off down New Jersey Avenue to begin my very first day of school." --"The First Day" from Lost in City by Edward P. Jones

Five books you'll never part with:

Siri Hustvedt's The Blindfold; Willa Cather's My Ántonia; Aimee Bender's The Girl in the Flammable Skirt; Edward P. Jones's The Known World; and Marilynne Robinson's Lila.

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

I can remember reading Katherine Dunn's cult classic, Geek Love, in a Peter Pan bus coming back to campus early after an awkward Thanksgiving with a friend's family. I was in a weird state of mind--a little lonely, a little sad--and Geek Love only intensified those feelings by holding me in the grip of the baroque tale of Oly, an albino hunchback dwarf and how her circus family created her and her differently-abled siblings. Discovering Geek Love for the first time was like riding a Tilt-A-Whirl that wouldn't stop.

Blood & Breath, a beguiling paranormal revenge thriller, is set against the alluring backdrop of the Jazz Age and laced with horror, forbidden romance, and class conflict.

Three hundred years ago, humans revolted against the devils who cruelly ruled them and all but 100 of the devils were banished back to their realm. The 100 devils left were each bound to a family in the magical ruling Necro class, who give the devils a bit of blood or breath in exchange for protection, luck, or even a curse. In recent years, members of the middle Dun class have been allowed to draw contracts that summon devils, but the lower Magi class, rumors say, are "part devil" themselves and are forbidden from interacting with devils.

Seventeen-year-old Evangeline "Evan" Wilde is a Magi masquerading as a Dun so she can draw contracts for a living. One night after work, the curly-haired, "deep brown"-skinned Evan is attacked by Necros and left to die. She hastily draws a contract in the snow, summoning the devil Jack, and tells him she wants revenge: he can have all her blood and breath if he kills all the Necros. Jack, with "light brown" skin and "blue and gold eyes," helps Evan infiltrate the Necros to bring them down from within. Evan eventually realizes, though, that what she knew about the Necros isn't the whole picture. But Jack has his own revenge plan--one that will return the devils to their rightful glory--and he won't stop just because Evan knows the truth.

In her traditional publishing debut, Qurratulayn Muhammad effortlessly draws real-world parallels by threading in themes of oppression, class struggle, and prejudice. She explores not only the divides between social classes but also internalized oppression passed down through generations. These themes play out in both Evan's and Jack's POVs (chapter headings identifying them only as "Girl" and "Devil"), which are narrative-driving complementary forces. Jack's ruthlessness is balanced with Evan's humanity: while Jack's hands are "gloved in red" and he leaves "blood-soaked sheets" in his wake, Evan is "just a girl" looking for friendship and a little romance (even if it's with the Necro enemy). Jack seeks vengeance, Evan seeks justice.

The darker, often brutal narrative threads are softened by forbidden romances, both queer and socioeconomic, and the appealing Roaring '20s setting. Whether it's first kisses or clandestine hand-holding, speakeasies, or "the frenetic sound of swing" music, a welcome lightness is achieved. This high-stakes series starter is entrancing and brimming with atmosphere. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader

Shelf Taker: In this beguiling Jazz Age-era paranormal fantasy, a lower-class girl makes a deal with a devil to enact revenge on the magical ruling class.

The bestselling Libro.fm audiobooks at independent bookstores during August:

Fiction
1. Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Penguin Random House Audio)
2. The Wolf King by Lauren Palphreyman (Simon Maverick)
3. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab (Macmillan Audio)
4. Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove (Dreamscape Lore)
5. A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna (Penguin Random House Audio)
6. The Night Prince by Lauren Palphreyman (Simon Maverick)
7. Shield of Sparrows by Devney Perry (Tantor Media)
8. My Friends by Fredrik Backman (Simon & Schuster Audio)
9. Fairydale by Veronica Lancet (Simon Maverick)
10. Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager)

Nonfiction
1. Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green (Penguin Random House Audio)
2. Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything by Alyson Stoner (Macmillan Audio)
3. 107 Days by Kamala Harris (Simon & Schuster Audio)
4. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (Penguin Random House Audio)
5. Coming Up Short by Robert B. Reich (Penguin Random House Audio)
6. Are You Mad at Me? by Meg Josephson (Simon & Schuster Audio)
7. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Tantor Media)
8. Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams (Macmillan Audio)
9. The Fort Bragg Cartel by Seth Harp (Penguin Random House Audio)
10. Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (Simon & Schuster Audio)