"But there is something the powerful have never been able to destroy. Not princes, not presidents, not lawyers, not the grinding machinery of institutional silence. The power of a book.... Virginia [Roberts Giuffre] and Amy Wallace did not write their book so that we would mourn her. They wrote it so we would read it. So that things would change.

"It is on the shelves of beautiful bookstores. It is in libraries. It is on nightstands. It is being read tonight by people who will close it and know--with absolute certainty--that her testimony cannot be ignored. That the world she described demands an answer. The woman can be silenced. The book cannot.

"This is what the greatest acts of witness always do. They do not close a story. They open it outward--into all the other stories that were never told, all the voices that were silenced before they found a page. Books are not monuments. They are instructions. Not merely to record what happened to one person. But to change the way the reader sees the world.

"That is what we do. That is why we write, publish, and sell books. This is what one book can do--when it is written honestly enough, published bravely enough, and read by enough people willing to be changed by it. And the truth, once a book unleashes it in the world, has a way of outlasting everything that tried to stop it. It makes the world a little less safe for the predatory and powerful, and a little more possible for the rest of us."

The Otto Bookstore, Williamsport, Pa., celebrated its first-ever expansion with an open house on May 1. A downtown cornerstone for more than 180 years, the indie bookstore has nearly doubled floor space to 5,000 square feet with the addition of a neighboring storefront along West Fourth Street. The expansion connects the original store to the new space through a custom-built archway. It also increases the book inventory from 21,000 titles to more than 60,000.

(l. to r.) Lycoming County Chamber of Commerce CEO Jason Fink, Otto Bookstore general manager John Shableski, Otto co-owner Kathryn Nassberg, and Lycoming County Commissioner Scott Metzger. (photo: NorthCentralPA.com)

"We are excited to have this opportunity to not only expand the bookstore's physical space, but the kinds of events we can offer," said co-owner Kathryn Nassberg. "We want the Otto Bookstore to be a place of learning, discovery, and community here in Williamsport, and the updated location will allow us to do that with an even greater impact."

Noting that the expansion "represents a pivotal moment for the Otto Bookstore," co-owner Isak Sidenbladh said the additional space allows the bookshop to significantly increase its inventory and programming. New and expanded sections include early childhood literacy, memory support resources for families affected by dementia, and collections centered on regional outdoor activities such as hiking, fishing, hunting, camping, and eco-tourism.

A key addition is a dedicated event space designed to host author readings, book launches, midnight releases, book clubs, private parties and community gatherings.

General Manager John Shableski said the project has been one of the most ambitious in the store's long history: "The expansion means we are literally doubling the size of our operations, and that alone is one of the biggest events in the history of this store. It's going to take a lot of work to complete, but we have the best people here who are all pitching in to make it happen while continuing to serve our customers."

Williamsport Mayor Derek Slaughter said: "Otto Bookstore has long been a cornerstone of our downtown, and its decision to double its footprint speaks volumes about the vitality of our community. Independent bookstores create spaces where people gather, ideas are shared and downtowns come alive."

Keaton Patterson

"I'm looking for one excellent, flagship novel, to plant the press and represent the press," said Keaton Patterson, lead buyer at Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Tex., and founder of Grave Empire, a horror-focused independent press he launched on April 1.

Patterson opened submissions for Grave Empire the same day he publicly launched the press. Submissions will be open until June 30, and he is looking for a literary horror novel ranging from 50,000-90,000 words in length. By literary, Patterson means "the best writing I can find," saying: "I don't want to elevate or transcend the horror genre. I really want to revel in it."

He emphasized that he is not looking for a specific sub-genre or type of horror. "Horror is legion," Patterson remarked. "It's such a vast and elastic genre." It is perennial, with a reliable spike around October every year, and evergreen, as it "gets at a primal aspect of being human." There is "something for everybody in horror," and he is as open to cosmic horror and things that "defy human comprehension" as he is to horror that "delves into the nitty-gritty of everyday evils." 

Rather than point to specific titles as examples of what he's looking for, Patterson offered a list of authors who have influenced him, like Shirley Jackson, Ira Levine, and H.P. Lovecraft, as well as authors he'd like to publish, including Brian Evenson, Victor LaValle, Tananarive Due, and Mariana Enríquez. The most important thing, he reiterated, is "prose quality is paramount." 

Once Patterson finds Grave Empire's debut title, he plans for a print run of around 300-500 copies, the sales of which he'd like to then "convert into another book." Ideally he would like to work up to the point of doing about two titles per year, or something on the scale of the small press Dorothy.

Asked for how long he's wanted to start his own horror press, Patterson called himself an avid, lifelong horror fan and said he's "thought about this for years." He imagined it would be a "nice project if I ever had the time," and around the beginning of this year, he started thinking about it more seriously. Once he started putting things together, such as building a website and getting an LLC, it "all fell into place really quickly." He noted that since the pandemic, his general philosophy has been "now is the time to do things." 

He added that he's known people who run and work at indie presses for quite some time, and they've "really helped me out so far," in particular Paul Oliver at Soho Press and Eric Obenauf at Two Dollar Radio.

About a month and half into it, Grave Empire has met with a strong response, and Patterson has already gotten more submissions than he expected. There are a few that seem promising, and he's looking forward to working with an author.

"This is a super-exciting passion project for me," Patterson said. "Hopefully by this time next year, we have something out in the world for readers to be scared of." --Alex Mutter

The Booksellers Association of the U.K. & Ireland has published the findings of its fourth annual Workforce Survey, conducted in partnership with EA Inclusion. "The survey remains a key part of the association's long-term commitment to ensuring that bookselling is an inclusive, representative and supportive profession across the U.K. and Ireland," the BA noted, adding that "this work is not undertaken for analysis alone, but to inform practical action--enabling the Association and the wider sector to better understand barriers, strengthen inclusion and drive change."

The 2025/26 survey received 347 responses from individuals across 227 bookshops, a 14% decrease year-on-year, but participation remains significantly higher than two years ago, with a 26% increase in respondents and a 44% increase in bookshops represented compared to 2023/24.

BA managing director Meryl Halls said: "This year's survey shows real progress, but also reminds us that there's more to do. For many people already working in bookselling, it continues to be an inclusive, respectful and supportive place to work--and it's encouraging to see that improving in a number of areas. We must continue to celebrate our colleagues in bookselling who find themselves in supportive environments, and who create those spaces in our sector.
 
"At the same time, we can't ignore the gaps. Representation of ethnic minority groups is still below where it should be, and there are clear socio-economic barriers into the industry.... It's also clear that while booksellers feel supported, the pressure of the job--particularly for owners--is very real.... And finally, the rise in abuse towards booksellers is deeply concerning and unacceptable. Booksellers should be able to stock and sell the books their communities need and care about without fear of harassment or violence. Making sure bookselling remains not just inclusive, but safe and sustainable, is essential for all booksellers."

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The Australian Booksellers Association has released shortlists for the ABA 2026 Bookseller of the Year Awards, which recognize "booksellers who demonstrate outstanding commitment to their craft, their customers and their communities. From experienced industry leaders to emerging talent and children's specialists, the shortlisted booksellers represent the depth of passion, knowledge and care found across Australian bookshops."

The categories include the ABA Text Publishing Bookseller of the Year Award, ABA Penguin Random House Young Bookseller of the Year Award, and ABA Hardie Grant Children's Publishing Children's Bookseller of the Year Award. 

Winners will be named at the 2026 ABA Conference, which will be held June 13-15 in Canberra, where the ABA will also announce the inaugural recipient of the Lifetime Achievement in Bookselling Award.

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The Gochang Bookstore Village, Korea's first "bookstore village," was created by six independent bookstores. Korea JoongAng Daily reported that it opened in October 2025, beginning with Lee Yun-ho, "a former culture critic who left Seoul in search of a quieter place to open a bookstore."

Lee met Kang Jun-seok and Hwang Kyeong-sun, a couple who run Mangrove bookstore, which is dedicated to nature and environmental books, through a humanities group. They subsequently offered Lee their unused land in Gochang, "leading six like-minded individuals and families to come together in 2023 to begin building a book village," Korea JoongAng Daily noted.

The bookstore village occupies about five acres and features nine colorful wooden buildings housing bookstores and residences, as well as small gardens. Korea JoongAng Daily wrote that "the six stores operate more like a community than competitors. Shop owners said they take turns watching each other's stores, farm together, and share meals in a communal kitchen."

Philip Caputo, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist "whose bestselling, disillusioning memoir, A Rumor of War, about leading a Marine platoon through the sniper-riddled and booby-trapped jungles of Vietnam, entered the canon of wartime literature," died May 7, the New York Times reported. He was 84.

[Editor's note: NPR's Fresh Air today looks back at Caputo's life and work.]

A Rumor of War (1977) sold two million copies and was translated into 15 languages. "To call it the best book about Vietnam is to trivialize it," novelist and screenwriter John Gregory Dunne wrote in his review of the book for the Los Angeles Times. "Heartbreaking, terrifying and enraging, it belongs to the literature of men at arms." It was adapted into a 1980 two-part CBS mini-series starring Brad Davis.

In the New York Times, author and editor Theodore Solotaroff observed that Caputo "steadily forces you to see and feel and understand what it was like to fight in Vietnam" by "the acuity of his running commentary on the psychological and moral devastation of fighting a 'people's war'; and, most to the point, by placing himself as a Marine lieutenant directly before the reader and giving the American involvement a sincere, manly, increasingly harrowed American face."

Caputo wrote in his book that it was about "the things men do in war and the things war does to them." The Times noted that it "opens with an account of Mr. Caputo's enthusiastic enlistment in the Marine Corps as a 24-year-old Midwesterner, driven by a need to prove his courage and manhood, followed by his 16-month tour of duty as a platoon commander and infantry lieutenant.... Caputo soon realizes that the destruction is not an act of madness but of retribution." 

After troops under his command intentionally shot two civilians suspected of having Vietcong loyalties, Caputo took responsibility for the killings and in 1966, before the charges of premeditated murder were dropped, he left the service with an honorable discharge. 

A Rumor of War's commercial success allowed Caputo to quit working at the Chicago Tribune, where in 1973 he had shared a Pulitzer for general or spot news reporting, to become a novelist.

His 10 works of fiction include Acts of Faith (2005), set in war-torn Sudan, where "a swaggering American aviator who plans to fly food, medicine and clothing to starving rebels... is soon caught up in romantic and political complications that challenge his idealism," the Times wrote.

Former television talk show host Charlie Rose asked Caputo in 2005 about his often returning in his work to the idea of a character in a foreign country "where there's something interesting going on and having him or her go through some interesting journey of self-discovery."

"That's my thing, that's what I do, that is always on my menu," Caputo replied. "In these states of extremes--which are both geographical states and states of mind--the truth of a human character is revealed and starkly revealed."

In 1975, as the war in Vietnam was ending, Caputo returned to the country as a correspondent and was in Saigon when the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong captured the city. He was evacuated by helicopter and later reflected on the American experience in an epilogue to A Rumor of War.

"My mind shot back a decade, to that day we had marched into Vietnam, swaggering, confident and full of idealism," he wrote. "We had believed we were there for a high moral purpose. But somehow our idealism was lost, our morals corrupted and the purpose forgotten."

Rain Taxi Review of Books hosted a conversation with poet Mark Nowak at Moon Palace Books, Minneapolis, Minn.; Nowak’s fifth book, titled . . . AGAIN, was published by Coffee House Press in April. Pictured left to right: Moon Palace owner Angela Schwesnedl, Rain Taxi editor Eric Lorberer, and Mark Nowak. (photo: Kelly Everding)

Noting that "we take the content very, very seriously here," Friends to Lovers Bookstore in Alexandria, Va., shared an Instagram reel showing what happens "when when the social media girl is here and it's content day."

"Hop in for a wicked good book." That was the eminently logical message on the sidewalk chalkboard in front of Wicked Good Books in Salem, Mass.

Noreen Herits will join TvS Media Group as v-p, publicity, effective June 1. She has more than 20 years of marketing & publicity experience specializing in children's books. She was most recently v-p, executive director of publicity and media strategy, at Random House Children's Books.

Yesterday's Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers list omitted one title making its debut on the list. It's a fiction debut appearing in the No. 2 spot: John of John by Douglas Stuart (Grove).

Today Fresh Air looks at the life and work of Philip Caputo, who died May 7 at age 84 and is best known for his Vietnam War memoir, A Rumor of War. (See obituary above.)

The first trailer has been released for the new USA Network series Anna Pigeon, based on the bestselling novels by Nevada Barr. Morwyn Brebner is showrunner and Tracy Spiridakos stars in the series that "follows Anna, a former city slicker who becomes a park ranger after a devastating loss that changed the trajectory of her life forever. While Anna tries to outrun her demons, her focus turns to solving crimes that have taken place within national park grounds, no matter who or what gets in her way," Deadline reported. The show is set to premiere August 7.

The cast also features Kim Coates, Ronnie Rowe Jr. as FBI Agent Frederick Stanton, and Paulina Alexis, with a recurring cast that includes Tricia Helfer, Cooper Levy, Jordan Sledz, Ryan Northcott, Manuel Rodriguez-Saenz, Crystle Lightning, Melanie Scrofano, and Nikki Hallow. 

Spiridakos said the pilot is based on Track of the Cat, the first novel in the Anna Pigeon series: "I hope that audiences can really immerse themselves in the wilderness, which is definitely its own character. It's so stunningly beautiful. Every day we were working, and I looked around, pinching myself and wondering, 'How is this my life?' " 

American poet Sasha Debevec-McKenney's debut collection, Joy Is My Middle Name (W.W. Norton), won the £20,000 (about $27,000) Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize for "the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under. The Prize celebrates the international world of fiction in all its forms, including poetry, novels, short stories and drama."

Chair of judges Irenosen Okojie said, "Incredible. An exuberant, blistering collection full of life, humor and ideas. Debevec-McKenney is a ferociously gifted talent. The book is remarkable in the way it galvanizes the reader with a sense of intimacy that is authentic and a voice that feels like an antidote to our tricky times."

Peter Wohlleben is one of the world's most notable foresters and a passionate advocate for tree conservation. Wohlleben lives in Germany, where he founded the Forest Academy for education and advocacy, and teaches forest owners to manage ecologically conscious forests. His books are bestsellers around the world. The Hidden Life of Trees (Greystone Books, May 5, 2026) is an anniversary edition celebrating the original from 10 years ago, an illuminating account of the forest, and the science that shows us how trees communicate, feel, and live in social networks.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

If even trees help one another and use their intelligence to cooperate, the world can't be all bad. The book is a dose of optimism.

On your nightstand now:

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. After the end of humanity on Earth, survivors try to re-create the same thing on another planet. This goes completely wrong and reminds us that we had better protect our current planet. Also, it's fantastic to see the world through the eyes of ants and spiders. And I've been meaning to read Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. That's up next!

Favorite book when you were a child:

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. When I was young, reading was the only way to dream of distant worlds. But at the time, I wasn't aware of the colonial mindset and racist stereotypes present in the novel. Historical texts like these, and even contemporary children's books, can be important educational tools to help young readers better understand and contextualize issues like racism, representation, colonialism, and point of view.

Your favorite book now:

Watership Down by Richard Adams. It's a novel that warms my heart. It depicts a hero's journey (with a happy ending!). Hazel and the rabbit gang make me sympathize, hope, and rejoice with them--that's what a good book should do. I loved it so much that we named our pet rabbits after the heroes in the book, and in 2010, I visited the actual locations with my family in the English hills of Watership Down--where, of course, you can't really find anything from the book.

Your top five authors:

Ray Bradbury, especially The Martian Chronicles, in which human society flees to Mars and takes its problems along with it--I can read this book over and over again; Bernard Cornwell and his historical novels, which are light and easy to read and provide the best relaxation; Margaret Atwood, who anticipated some current developments with The Handmaid's Tale that I never would have thought possible; David Suzuki, the author of many books including The Sacred Balance, whom I admire for his fight to protect the ancient forests of the West Coast, and Alexander von Humboldt, who discovered the interconnections in nature over 200 years ago and at the same time championed human rights.

Book you've faked reading:

The Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen. The book is about the Thirty Years' War that ravaged Europe. Von Grimmelshausen wrote it in 1668, and the "modern" version is very similar to the original, so it is difficult to read. As a schoolboy, I didn't enjoy it, but my German teacher promised me a good grade if I read it and gave a presentation on it. I gave the presentation and got the good grade, but I never read the book.

Book you've bought for the cover:

I'd like to turn that question around: I'm often interested in the smell of a book. What do the pages smell like, what does the glue smell like? I love books that have that special, almost indescribable scent and feel good to the touch. These are usually paperbacks, and I always smell them before I read them. That's why I also like to be the first to read a new book--it smells particularly intense. Why on earth doesn't book printing take this into account? I'd love to know how many readers do the same--I estimate 50%.

Book you hid from your parents:

My books came from the school library--there weren't any books there that I wasn't allowed to read. And for Christmas and my birthday, I always asked for nonfiction books about animals and plants, so I didn't have to hide those either. Oh, no, there is one more that I've forgotten the title of. It was about puberty for teenagers, and I used to secretly take it from my older sister's room from time to time.

Book that changed your life:

A school atlas. As a child, I liked to leaf through it in the evenings, looking at the thematic maps to see what was happening where and how the world was changing. I was particularly interested in where there were still large, undestroyed forests (at the age of 10, I know, that's a bit nerdy). In my mind, I traveled around the world, and I realized how small our planet is and that I absolutely want to protect it. Later on, I put that into practice consistently.

Oh, and just for the sake of completeness, of course The Hidden Life of Trees changed my life. With its help, I was able not only to reach millions of readers but also do a great deal to protect forests.

Favorite line from a book:

"I will not give you the mule whose step is the easiest, but the one that reasons best, la mas racional," from Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Alexander von Humboldt believed that animals were intelligent, which made him far ahead of his time. He didn't care that he was swimming against the tide.

Five books you'll never part with:

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, because it's incredible how someone could imagine a fantasy world, including its language and prehistory, in such detail; The Egyptian by Mika Waltari, because it shows the complexity of the lives of Egyptians 3,000 years ago; The Terror by Dan Simmons, because it brings home the incredible hardships of polar exploration; an 1870 encyclopedia, because it shows how valuable it is to spread and preserve knowledge through books and paper; and last but not least, The Book of Hope by Jane Goodall--my friend, who signed it for me personally.

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

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. She is incredibly good at describing moods without becoming long-winded. While reading it, I told my wife several times that she absolutely had to read it too. That rarely happens because our tastes are different. Because the solution to this authentic historical crime case is very exciting, reading it a second time doesn't evoke the same thrill.

In the eerie, dreamlike speculative love story Habits of the Sea by Shea Ernshaw (A History of Wild Places), a woman encounters a fabled floating island and the enigmatic, ageless man who lives there.

Ellie has built herself a stable, predictable adult life after a childhood characterized by upheaval. Her mother sent her for a temporary stay with her grandmother in Nova Scotia and never reclaimed her. At age 12, Ellie took her Nana's boat into a storm to investigate a terrible noise; she found the mythical floating island of Saltwell, a name evocative of tears, and spent one night on it. When she returned to the mainland, the adults didn't believe her about the island and told her she had been missing for a week. Now grown, Ellie works as a therapist in Seattle and has just received a marriage proposal from her handsome, reliable boyfriend, James. Everything is falling into place, but "when I close my eyes, I see the ocean," she says, and thinks her engagement ring "feels like a thorn pressing against the arch of my foot." Then Saltwell reappears near the Faroe Islands, and Ellie gives in to the impulse to go there and prove once and for all whether the island exists.

She finds the island just as she remembers it, complete with one lonely house inhabited by the solitary Scotsman Clay Lockhart, who hasn't aged a day since she last saw him two decades earlier. The island drifts back out to sea before Ellie can return to the mainland. She can only hope it will come ashore again quickly, because the discrepancy between island and mainland time means months on the island translates to years in the outside world. Then there's Clay, taciturn yet compelling, who rouses feelings in Ellie that James never could. She will have to make an almost impossible choice between a safe life and truly living.

Ernshaw's intimate gothic drama plays out against a rugged and dangerous yet beautiful setting as the characters encounter moments of transient paradise underscored by disaster. The drifting island itself seems like a physical manifestation of grief and isolation. Ellie and readers only glimpse the surrounding world in occasional vignettes that lend a sense of continuing deterioration around Saltwell, which becomes more haven than prison. This love story has grit, complexity, and a core of darkness under a patina of wildness and freedom. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Shelf Talker: A woman finds love and danger on an island adrift in time in this eerie, dreamlike speculative love story.