"It never hurts to try. If you have issues with the industry, the only way they're going to be addressed is if your voice is heard. And the best way to have your voice heard is to get involved in ABA--whether through the Booksellers Advisory Council (BAC), Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council (DEIC), the Board, Indies Introduce, or through one of the other committees.

"Change isn't going to happen if you don't get involved. That's really what it comes down to. If you want to make change, you've got to put skin in the game.... I also want to stress that you don't have to be an owner or a manager. I'm a frontline bookseller. We may not have a traditional managerial role or owner role, but that doesn't mean our voices aren't important. So go for it. It doesn't hurt."

Bluestockings Cooperative in New York City, which launched a GoFundMe campaign earlier this summer to help it recover from financial difficulties, will be closing as a business at the end of 2025. 

"The current, former worker-owners, and staff part of the sunsetting crew are gutted to be delivering this news," a statement on the bookstore's website noted. "After 26+ years of serving marginalized communities as an independent feminist bookstore, event hub, and all-around radical community space, the daily operations are unfortunately no longer sustainable on multiple fronts. Your support and contributions have sustained the spirit of this radical bookstore for years. We cannot thank you enough for everything you've done for us, and this beautiful, messy, space!"

Noting that the closure was "our absolute last resort," Bluestockings cited the "ongoing struggle against the organized abandonment of New York City and constant crises" as key factors in the decision, adding that "it's time to sunset, transition on our terms, and envision new chapters."

While Bluestockings' storefront is now closed for business, the staff plans to continue to fulfill any book orders through the end of 2025, and will also aim to send out any outstanding membership perks within this time. Memberships will officially cease on December 15, and no further events will be held. 

"This decision comes after the shared failures of multiple cohorts to come to consensus around the guiding principles and practices Bluestockings should embody to move forward as a worker-owned cooperative that serves as a radical bookstore, cafe, and community event space," the statement noted. "We've made a lot of mistakes, but the lack of political and business-operations alignment on upholding the responsibilities of our space has directly led to many of the setbacks we've faced the last two years."

"The bookstore has been fighting a losing battle against debt for over two years now. Unfortunately, we frankly hit the wall," co-owner Raquel Espasande told Gothamist, which reported that the closure comes after years of financial strain and mounting public controversy. 

Following its debut as a pop-up and mobile bookstore, Smitten Booktique is opening a bricks-and-mortar store in Leawood, Kan., the Johnson County Post reported.

The romance-focused bookstore will open on September 27 at 11531 Ash St. in the Park Place shopping center. Owners Kara and Damien Bowersock will carry a wide range of romance titles for adults, as well as some young adult romance and children's books that pertain to familial love and friendship. Alongside books, customers will find things like candles, bookmarks, and hats. 

Kara Bowersock told the Post that the bricks-and-mortar space will allow the store to host events and better connect with its customers. "In the mobile store, it's so busy that we don't have a lot of time to just sit and talk with people. We'd like to have author signings and book clubs and release parties. So all of the things that bookstores typically do, we get to do them now."

Smitten Booktique made its debut as a pop-up vendor at Painted Tree Boutiques in Overland Park, Kan., in 2023, and last year converted a 160 square-foot cargo trailer into the mobile bookstore. The Bowersocks had considered opening a bricks-and-mortar store for some time, but could not find the right location, until they found the space in the Park Place shopping center earlier this year.

The Golden Owl bookstore in New London, Conn., is planning to reopen sometime this fall after suffering flood damage earlier this month that ruined ceilings, floors, and walls while also damaging furniture, books, and antiques, the Day reported.

Owner Wendy Vincent said that while the store was hosting a book club, the flood started in an upstairs sprinkler system on September 7, and it took firefighters about 40 minutes to turn off the water, which started pouring through the ceiling onto a 19th century piano often used at events.

"That was the most heartbreaking part," Vincent said. "Within a matter of 15 minutes, we were standing in 8 inches of water." She added that the water also damaged some of the shop's antique books and furniture. The piano has been sent to a restoration company in the hopes it can be saved.

While the Golden Owl was covered by insurance, it "was devastated, temporarily putting an end to one of the bright lights in downtown where musicians, poets, writers and gardeners loved to congregate," the Day noted.

"Post-COVID, people were really craving that connection again," said Vincent, who opened the bookstore two years ago and thinks the shop will be closed for at least a month. "The most overwhelming part has been the community support. There's been so much outreach among the community asking if they can help and saying how much the Golden Owl means to them.... There's been a lot of tears in the last couple of weeks. We've decided to say 'OK, we can't change what's happened, but we can keep going forward.' "

A children's bookstore called Turtle Books will open next month in Brookline, Mass., Brookline News reported. Owners Bruce and Cathy Jacobs, Brookline residents who are both recently retired, have found a space at 44 Washington St. and plan to host a soft opening in October. The shop will carry books for children and teens and will host book clubs and storytime sessions. 

The store will reside in Brookline Village, a neighborhood that was home to a children's bookstore called the Children's Bookshop for nearly 40 years. Bruce and Cathy Jacobs told Brookline News that they hope to foster a love of reading in local children and families and to fill the hole left in the community by the closure of the Children's Bookshop in 2022.

The Jacobses have backgrounds in engineering and social work, respectively, and are new to bookselling. They've created two advisory boards to help guide them: one made up of children between the ages of 8 and 14, and the other made up of local librarians, teachers, and other residents. On that board is Terri Schmitz, the former owner of the Children's Bookshop. 

"I really think the community needs this," Schmitz told Brookline News. "I was sorry I wasn't able to continue doing it, but I think the time is right for them to try it again."

Hannah Langdon

Romance author Hannah Langdon died September 4, the Bookseller reported. She first joined the Romantic Novelists' Association New Writers' Scheme in 2020 and graduated in 2023. She was shortlisted for the Joan Hessayon Award in 2024. Her debut novel, Christmas with the Lords, was a bestselling e-book, and she went on to write four more romance novels, including Christmas with the Princes, which will be released posthumously on October 23.

Oliver Rhodes, managing director of Storm Publishing, said: "Hannah's love of writing shone through in every page she created, and in every interaction with those who worked alongside her. She was exceptionally talented, dedicated, and brought an infectious enthusiasm to all she did. We feel deeply fortunate to have published her work, and will miss her immensely."

Kathryn Taussig, her editor, commented: "I really loved working with Hannah, both on a personal and professional level, and was so sad to hear the news of her passing. I still can't quite get my head around the fact that we aren't going to work on any more books together. She was a total joy to edit and publish--a real talent and just the loveliest person. Everybody at Storm is going to miss her hugely, and I know her readers will too."

Cookbook author Polina Chesnakova (l.) launched her new title, Chesnok: Cooking from My Corner of the Diaspora: Recipes from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia (Hardie Grant Books), at Books on the Square in Providence, R.I., where she offered food from her cookbook and had a conversation with author Christine Chitnis.

"Pose of the day." Dark Star Books and Comics in Yellow Springs, Ohio, shared a pic of the shop's bookseller cat, Spooky, hard at work. 

"This humidity has us missing the lovely cool weather we've been having," Fountain Bookstore, Richmond, Va., posted on Facebook, "so hoping these cozy, fall shelves bring that back! Just a little over a week left to submit your shelves y'all!"

The Elevator on 74th Street by Laura Gehl, illus. by Yas Imamura (Beach Lane Books).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Lionel Richie, author of Truly (HarperOne, $36, 9780063253643).

The View: Clea Shearer, author of Cancer Is Complicated: And Other Unexpected Lessons I've Learned (The Open Field, $28, 9780593830611).

Tamron Hall: Priscilla Presley, co-author of Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis (Grand Central, $32, 9780306836480).

Netflix has acquired Mitch Albom's upcoming novel Twice "in a competitive situation," Variety reported. Paul Weitz (Fatherhood, Murderbot, About a Boy) will adapt and direct the film. He is also producing with Andrew Miano through their company, Depth of Field. The book will be be published on October 7 by Harper.

Twice "is a love story about magical second chances, Variety noted. "The novel asks: 'What if you got to do everything in your life--again?' That's the reality for Alfie Logan, who discovers the magical ability to undo any moment and live it again. The one catch... is that he must accept the consequences of his second try, for better or worse."

The six-title shortlist has been released for the 2025 Booker Prize for Fiction. The winner, who will be be named on November 10 in London, receives £50,000 (about $67,630). Each of the finalists gets £2,500 (about $3,380). This year's shortlisted titles are:

Flesh by David Szalay
The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
Audition by Katie Kitamura
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
Flashlight by Susan Choi

Chair of judges Roddy Doyle said the finalists "have two big things in common. Their authors are in total command of their own store of English, their own rhythm, their own expertise; they have each crafted a novel that no one else could have written. And all of the books, in six different and very fresh ways, find their stories in the examination of the individual trying to live with--to love, to seek attention from, to cope with, to understand, to keep at bay, to tolerate, to escape from--other people. In other words, they are all brilliantly written and they are all brilliantly human."

---

A shortlist has been released for the 2025 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Prize, which recognizes "writers of exceptional talent for the best novel or short story collection of the year" in Canada. The winner, who will be named at the Writers' Trust Awards in Toronto on November 13, receives C$70,000 (about US$50,500) and each finalist C$7,500 (US$5,400). This year's shortlisted titles are: 

Graveyard Shift at the Lemonade Stand by Tim Bowling
Simple Creatures by Robert McGill
We, the Kindling by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek
Endling by Maria Reva
Julius Julius by Aurora Stewart de Peña

The award is named in honor of Writers' Trust co-founders Margaret Atwood and Graeme Gibson, who, with the help of several other writers, started the organization in 1976 to support Canadian literary culture. 

photo: Derrick Boutte

ND Stevenson is the author and illustrator of Nimona and The Fire Never Goes Out and co-creator of Lumberjanes. He was also the showrunner for the award-winning Netflix series She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. He lives in Los Angeles, Calif. His first middle-grade novel is the suspenseful and magical Scarlet Morning (Quill Tree Books).

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Fantastical pirate adventure set in a world where the sea has turned to a desert of salt. Enigmatic pirate captain. Whale with arms and legs.

On your nightstand now:

A compilation of Edgar Allan Poe mystery stories. I've been reading a lot of Poe lately and the more I read, the fonder I become of him and the less I respect him. I love his love of interior decorating. He'll be writing something horrifying and go, "I cowered in my chair (which was velvet)."

Favorite book when you were a child:

By the Great Horn Spoon! by Sid Fleischman, illustrated by Eric von Schmidt. I still have my ratty old paperback copy with its surprisingly homoerotic cover (look it up). The interaction between the nimble text and the lively pen-and-ink illustrations instilled a love of comics in me long before I'd ever read a graphic novel.

Favorite book to read to a child:

The Redwall series by Brian Jacques. I haven't done it myself yet, but my mom was a legend at reading aloud and always went all out on the accents and songs, so I'm just gonna channel her.

Book you've faked reading:

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. Less "faked" reading it and more that I have been working on it for three years and I'm still not finished. His obvious neurodivergence wreaks havoc on my own. He'll be like, "But first, let's all think about the color white. Let me list all the things that are white in order of scariness!" and I'll be like "Oh! Okay!" and then four hours later I'll realize that I've just been staring at a wall thinking about the color white instead of reading.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Monster Blood Tattoo: Foundling by D.M. Cornish. It's a dark, goopy, vaguely Victorian middle-grade fantasy where monster hunters implant monster organs into their bodies to better fight monsters. I spent a lot of time as a teen on the author's blog debating monster physics with other fans and it's a huge part of my DNA now.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. Lesbians and submarines--catnip for me specifically.

Book you hid from your parents:

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. It was THE forbidden book in my ultra-conservative community growing up, and I desperately wanted to know what was so bad about it, so I secretly rode my bike to the library and read the whole first book sitting on the floor in a corner. Then I channeled my secret shame into my enormous crush on Mrs. Coulter, so the moral of the story is, book bans make kids gayer. (This is 80% a joke.)

Book that changed your life:

Eragon by Christopher Paolini, because it was the book that made me believe I could write a book. He was a teenage homeschooler just like me. I set myself a goal that I was going to finish my first book by the time I turned 15, and I ended up with a 600-page epic about pirates. Long story short, that book was Scarlet Morning, and it's coming out in September.

Favorite line from a book:

"There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell--but the imagination of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas! the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful--but, like the Demons whose company Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us--they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish." --"The Premature Burial," Edgar Allan Poe.

I like this one because it's about how you should go to bed.

Five books you'll never part with:

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, illustrated by Jules Feiffer; Ducks by Kate Beaton; the Delilah Dirk graphic novels by Tony Cliff; By the Great Horn Spoon! by Sid Fleischman, illustrated by Eric von Schmidt; the Monster Blood Tattoo books by D.M. Cornish.

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

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. This book blew my mind. I love it when a sparse, quiet narrative keeps you on the edge of your seat the way this one did.

Favorite nonfiction:

I like reading about doomed Arctic expeditions because I like reading about people who made bigger mistakes than me. One of my favorites is The Expedition by Bea Uusma. It's about the Andrée Expedition of 1897, a disastrous attempt to reach the North Pole in a hydrogen balloon, which is very famous in Sweden but not so much in the U.S. The expedition was a complete clown show. On the day of the balloon launch they cut the rope, and it immediately flew straight into a wall, then into the ocean, and they just--kept on going! Anyway, they all died. The author attempts to solve the mystery of their deaths despite being, by her own admission, completely unqualified to do so. At one point she consults a psychic. This book is a ride, is what I'm saying.

Sibert Medal-winning author Kevin Maillard (Fry Bread, with Juana Martinez-Neal) tenderly explores the ache of loss in And They Walk On, with luminous art by Pura Belpré-winning illustrator Rafael López (The Day You Begin, with Jacqueline Woodson). Speaking in the intimate, first-person voice of an Indigenous child, the story opens with a question that echoes through the pages: "When someone walks on, where do they go?"

In a note at book's end, Maillard (Seminole Nation) explains that "walked on" is a term used by many Native people in place of "passed" or "died": "It's an active, ongoing transition of a person from body to spirit." Hints woven through his poetic text and López's radiant illustrations reveal the person who has "walked on" was a beloved elder. Readers glimpse their world through small, cherished details: the Starlight mints kept by the bed; their scarf alive with vivid, geometric designs (into which López, of Mexican descent, weaves in his own cultural influences); eucalyptus tea in the kitchen; warm grape dumplings; and their flower-print apron for cooking. "Because of the magic of food," the narrator says, "I travel through time," recalling moments of joy spent cooking together and the warmth of shared meals. (The author even includes his grape dumpling recipe in the back of the book.) These memories, presented in gentle flashes, honor not only the bond they shared but the rhythms and passions of a life lived well. That understanding resonates through the child's journey, which moves from confusion and yearning ("I have stories to tell") toward a quiet recognition that love and memory keep the connection alive: "We still hear their whispers... and walk in their footsteps."

López's illustrations imbue each scene with warmth and presence, even in moments of sorrow. The kitchen hums with remembered laughter ("I remember where I used to go to feel love," the child says, heading to the kitchen where family members are packing everything away), and the elder's room, still and quiet, feels layered with history. Through glowing yellows, soft pinks, and scenes steeped in memory, López evokes both the sense of presence and the ache of absence.

And They Walk On provides a compassionate space for children to contemplate loss through its affectionate narration, sensory details, and illustrations that pulse with life. Maillard and López remind readers that mourning can coexist with joy and that, even in that absence, presence lingers--like the scent of eucalyptus in a bustling kitchen. --Julie Danielson

Shelf Talker: And They Walk On is a moving meditation on loss and a reminder that those who walk on are never truly gone.