Garden Wall Bookshop hosted a grand opening celebration on September 20 and 21 at 101 N. Main St., Verona, Wis., the former site of Kismet Books, which was founded in 2020 by Ryan Kimmet. Suzi Arnston and Melissa Arnston-Choudhury purchased the bookstore from Kimmet in March and "have been working hard to bring new life to the unique bookshop and historic building" as part of their rebranding efforts, they noted. 

At the time of the sale last spring, Kimmet posted on Instagram about the ownership change, noting that "Melissa & Suzi will be taking up the mantle of the family owned and run indie bookshop and I know they will carry on building on this incredible community we have built together. I will have more to share about them in their own intro post soon. Again, I am so happy to have been able to begin this wonderful place and help it grow and am excited to see what the next chapter holds for Kismet."

Arnston and Arnston-Choudhury noted that the building in which the Garden Wall Bookshop is located was constructed in 1848, "the year Wisconsin became a state. The Matt's House was said to have drawn visitors from the surrounding area back in the day just as it does today. 177 years later the Matt's home still stands on the northeast corner of Verona's main intersection and is home to Garden Wall Bookshop.... One step inside the old house and you will be welcomed into what an independent bookstore is supposed to be. Packed with books for all ages, trinkets, and a variety of items from local artists, the store has something for everyone."

Twila Dang

Entrepreneur Twila Dang is the winner of the 2025 Hatch Bloomington business pitch competition, which has awarded her $100,000 to help her launch BookMother, an independent bookstore and community gathering space to be located in Bloomington, Minn. The winning entry was selected based on two rounds of community voting and the work of a seven-judge panel that assessed contestants' pitches at the Top 25, Top 10, and Top 3 stages, Hatch Bloomington noted. 

Designed as a modern third space, BookMother will offer "curated books, light fare, and rich programming." The space is built to center on what Dang calls the "Auntie" archetype: a tastemaker who shares books and ideas across generations while welcoming all who are curious, creative, and community-minded. The award will allow Dang to secure a location, complete the buildout of the store, and launch with opening inventory and community programming. 

"I'm passionate about this business because it's more than a business to me. It's a love letter to my hometown. It's a space I wish had existed when I was younger, and a space I know my neighbors and community members are ready for now," Dang said in her contest application. "BookMother is about creating something enduring. It's a place where people can gather, grow, dream, and feel at home." 

"Hatch Bloomington aligns with the City's goal of cultivating an enduring and remarkable community where people want to be," said Mayor Tim Busse. "BookMother will add vibrancy to Bloomington and create a welcoming space for residents and visitors alike." 

Dang told Twin Cities Business magazine that although the Hatch money "basically means we don't have to go out and get a loan to be able to get ourselves off the ground and into a space," her business is not solely reliant on the contest for funding. Other capital initiatives in the works include a founding reader membership, community events like book exchanges and dinners, as well as sponsorship and advertising revenue from a newsletter and podcast.

"Many of these initiatives will continue after the store is open, as well," she added. BookMother is tentatively scheduled to open in the summer of 2026.

Brilliant Books in Traverse City, Mich., will close its physical store and transition to an online-only model, WPBN reported.

"While this was an incredibly difficult decision, and we are heartbroken it has come to this, this is not the final chapter for Brilliant Books," read a message to customers announcing the closure. "For nearly two decades, it has been our privilege to be a part of this wonderfully bookish community, and we are deeply grateful for your support." 

Although the Brilliant Books team did not give a definite timeline for the closure, the store's hours will be shortened in the coming weeks. At the same time, the "top priority" will be fulfilling commitments related to preordered titles, gift certificates, and the Brilliant Books Monthly subscription service, which will continue after the storefront's closure.

"This next chapter may look different, but Brilliant Books' commitment to a vibrant, book-loving community remains strong," the announcement noted.

Owner Peter Makin opened Brilliant Books in Traverse City in 2011. Previously, there had been another Brilliant Books location in Suttons Bay, which opened in 2007. The store created its monthly subscription service as a way to sell books to seasonal customers year-round, and by 2013, it had gained members all over the country who had never visited Traverse City or the bookstore. 

In 2015, Makin and Brilliant Books received widespread news coverage for offering refunds for Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman, which Makin described as not a new book but "a first draft that was originally, and rightfully, rejected." 

In 2024, Brilliant Books launched a GoFundMe campaign to help pay off suppliers and settle debts the store accrued during the Covid-19 pandemic.

LeVar Burton has been named the American Booksellers Association's Indie Bookstore Ambassador for 2025-2026. From Indies First Day/Small Business Saturday on November 29 to Independent Bookstore Day on April 25, 2026, Burton will serve as a champion for independent bookstores. Previous ambassadors include Celeste Ng, Amanda Gorman, and Trevor Noah.

Burton is an actor, director, producer, and podcaster whose work includes Roots, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Reading Rainbow. He is the recipient of seven NAACP Awards, a Peabody, a Grammy, and 15 Emmys, including a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Inaugural Children's & Family Emmys. He is also a lifelong literacy advocate and has dedicated decades to encouraging children to read.

In 2023, Burton premiered his first documentary, The Right to Read, a film that considers the literacy crisis in the U.S. as a civil rights issue. The Right to Read was an official selection at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and SXSW EDU.

He is also the award-winning author of Aftermath, The Rhino Who Swallowed a Storm, and A Kids Book About Imagination. He launched his first book club with Fable, a digital book club community, and partnered with Masterclass to share the power of storytelling.

His production company, LeVar Burton Entertainment (LBE), develops film, television, podcasting, and publishing projects with the mission to share stories that foster empathy, champion diversity, and build community. The LeVar Burton Reads podcast has more than 175 episodes in its catalog, with 25 million downloads. LBE's first Kids & Family podcast, Sound Detectives, made its debut on Stitcher in 2023.

Burton called it "an extraordinary honor to be chosen as ABA's Indie Bookstore Ambassador. From my earliest memories, books carried me beyond the world I knew. They let me explore distant planets, ancient kingdoms, and lives very different from my own. Independent bookstores are where those explorations began. They are sanctuaries of possibility where a single story can change a life. In my forthcoming book, I reflect on discovering and embracing one's authentic self. Bookstores offer that same opportunity to every reader. Step inside, wander the shelves, ask questions, and follow your curiosity. Every book you open is an invitation to imagine, to learn, and to see the world anew. But, you don't have to take my word for it!"

Margaret Rossiter

Historian Margaret W. Rossiter, whose trilogy, Women Scientists in America, "documented in sharp detail the ways women were excised from the annals of science--and who coined the term 'the Matilda effect,' named for the 19th-century suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage, to describe the age-old practice of attributing scientific achievements of women to their male colleagues," died August 3, the New York Times reported. She was 81.

In the late 1960s, Rossiter was working on her Ph.D. at Yale when a comment from one of her male professors struck her. Who were the women in science? she had asked. He replied that that there were none, while another professor mentioned Marie Curie. "I realized," she told Smithsonian magazine in 2019, "this was not an acceptable subject."

A few years later, she discovered a few entries about women in a 1906 directory titled American Men of Science. "I felt like a modern Alice," she wrote, "who had fallen down a rabbit hole into a wonderland of the history of science that was familiar in some respects but distorted and alien in others."

For the next 40 years, Rossiter researched the hidden work of female astronomers, botanists, biologists, chemists, engineers, entomologists, geologists, and physicists, and others. 

In Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (1982), the first volume of her trilogy, Rossiter wrote that "these materials transformed the project from a kind of collective biography of women scientists (hardly any of whose names are household ones) into a history of an occupational group whose status had risen and fallen over time as the women's role responded to external events and pressures."

M. Susan Lindee, a professor of the history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania, said, "Margaret had a lasting and transformative impact on the history of women in science.... They were invisible to history. Their stories show us exactly how power works. That's her real legacy."

"Trained to advanced levels," Rossiter wrote in Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action, 1940–1972. Vol. 2., "they were, to use some military terms of the period, 'camouflaged' as housewives, mothers and 'other,' and 'stockpiled' in cities and college towns across America (where many still remain), ready but uncalled for the big emergency that never came."

Rossiter's other books include The Matthew Matilda Effect in Science (1993), Writing Women into Science (2002), and the third volume of her trilogy, Women Scientists in America: Forging a New World Since 1972 (2012).

Book Love Bar in Ypsilanti, Mich., hosted a panel on historical mysteries. From left: Kensington authors Dianne Freeman (A Daughter's Guide to Mothers and Murder), Darcie Wilde (The Heir), and Colleen Cambridge (A Fashionably French Murder). (photo: Dan Freeman)

"Let me introduce 'Edgar Allan Crow (with raven)!' He's part of the Village's Main Street Scarecrow display. Come by to check out this Poe-boy," Battenkill Books, Cambridge, N.Y., posted on Facebook. 

Lydia Zidan has been promoted from marketing & research intern to marketing & publicity assistant at the future of agency.

Cabin Head and Tree Head by Scott Campbell (Tundra Books).

Tomorrow:
Sherri Shepherd Show: Hoda Kotb, author of Jump and Find Joy: Embracing Change in Every Season of Life (Putnam, $30, 9798217043880).

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 this weekend from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, September 27
4:15 p.m. Nina Willner, author of The Boys in the Light: An Extraordinary World War II Story of Survival, Faith, and Brotherhood (Dutton, $35, 9780593471272).

Sunday, September 28
9:05 a.m. Andrew Hartman, author of Karl Marx in America (‎University of Chicago Press, $39, 9780226537481), at Red Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse in Baltimore, Md. (Re-airs Sunday at 9:05 p.m.)

10:12 a.m. Stephen Grant, author of Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home (Simon & Schuster, $29.99, 9781668018040). (Re-airs Sunday at 10:12 p.m.)

10:42 a.m. Peter Cozzens, author of Deadwood: Gold, Guns, and Greed in the American West (Knopf, $35, 9780593537855). (Re-airs Sunday at 10:42 p.m.)

2:23 p.m. Ray Dorsey and Michael Okun, authors of The Parkinson's Plan: A New Path to Prevention and Treatment (PublicAffairs, $32, 9781541705388).

3:30 p.m. Bridget Lyons, author of Entwined: Dispatches from the Intersection of Species (Texas A&M University Press, $21, 9781648432873).

4:30 p.m. Jordan Thomas, author of When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World (Riverhead, $30, 9780593544822).

The shortlist has been selected for the 2025 Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award, recognizing "the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues." The winner, who will receive £30,000 (about $40,300), will be announced December 3. The authors of the remaining shortlisted books will each be awarded £10,000 ($13,440).

The shortlisted titles:
House of Huawei: Inside the Secret World of China's Most Powerful Company by Eva Dou (Portfolio)
Chokepoints: How the Global Economy Became a Weapon of War by Edward Fishman (Portfolio)
How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations by Carl Benedikt Frey (Princeton University Press)
Abundance: How We Build a Better Future by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (Simon & Schuster)
Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang (W.W. Norton)
The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip by Stephen Witt (Viking)

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, September 30:

The Portrait: A Novel by Danielle Steel (Delacorte Press, $29, 9780593498767) is a romance about a portrait artist and her subject.

The Impossible Fortune: A Thursday Murder Club Mystery by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman Books, $30, 9780593653258) is the fifth Thursday Murder Club mystery.

Denied Access by Vince Flynn and Don Bentley (‎Atria/Emily Bestler, $30, 9781668045879) is the 24th Mitch Rapp thriller.

What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (‎Tor Nightfire, $19.99, 9781250354921) is book three in the Sworn Soldier fantasy series.

The Future of Truth by Werner Herzog, trans. by Michael Hofmann (Penguin Press, $26, 9780593833674) ponders what truth is and where to find it in the "post-truth" era.

Truly by Lionel Richie (‎HarperOne, $36, 9780063253643) is the memoir of the music star.

Disrupt Everything--and Win: Take Control of Your Future by James Patterson and Patrick Leddin (Little, Brown, $32.50, 9780316593946) is a self-help guide to sudden life changes.

Celebrate: Joyful Baking All Year Round by Paul Hollywood (Bloomsbury, $40, 9781639735037) is a cookbook by the Great British Baking Show judge.

Buffalo Fluffalo and Puffalo by Bess Kalb, illus. by Erin Kraan (Random House Studio, $18.99, 9780593810309) is a picture book sequel in which Buffalo Fluffalo meets his new sibling, Puffalo.

Fake Skating by Lynn Painter (S&S, $21.99, 9781665921268) is a YA fake dating romance featuring a young woman reconnecting with her childhood best friend.

Paperbacks:
Soul Searching: A Sweetwater Peak Novel by Lyla Sage (‎Dial Press Trade Paperback, $18.99, 9780593977774).

Holiday Ever After: A Novel by Hannah Grace (‎Atria, $19, 9781668213735).

Midnight Timetable: A Novel in Ghost Stories by Bora Chung, trans. by Anton Hur (Algonquin, $18.99, 9781643756639). 

Witch of the Wolves by Kaylee Archer (St. Martin's Griffin, $20, 9781250393074).

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:

Hardcover
Hot Desk: A Novel by Laura Dickerman (Gallery, $29, 9781668081099). "Part romance, part comedy, part multi-generational story of women in publishing, this was a fun and engaging read. Light and humorous, but also touching on themes of gender and power in the workplace." --Vanessa Gengler, The Galaxy Bookshop, Hardwick, Vt.

Happiness and Love: A Novel by Zoe Dubno (Scribner, $27, 9781668062951). "The stream-of-consciousness format intrigues as much as the premise of this novel. A dissection of the superficiality of the 'art world' that tenderly reminisces after a dear friend's death." --Emily Huettl, Avant Garden, Anoka, Minn.

Paperback
Discontent: A Novel by Beatriz Serrano, illus. by Mara Faye Lethem (Vintage, $17, 9798217006762). "Serrano proves that Millennial ennui transcends countries and languages. She so deftly captures the 'what are we doing here?' vibes of this moment, and then throws an unexpectedly hilarious and dark curveball (or two)." --Kelly Brown, Magic City Books, Tulsa, Okla.

Ages 4-8
Zombie and Brain Are Friends by Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic, illus. by Laan Cham (Bloomsbury Children's Books, $18.99, 9781547613625). "As soon as I saw this book, my heart had the same little flutter as Zeb! I knew it would not disappoint. A sweet, charming book with adorable illustrations that is perfect for story time!" --Kaitlyn Reed, Read Between the Lynes, Woodstock, Ill.

Ages 9-13: An Indies Introduce Title
Zeyna Lost and Found by Shafaq Khan (Carolrhoda Books, $19.99, 9798765639139). "Zeyna is an eminently relatable twelve-year-old in 1970, visiting Pakistan (and maybe some other countries, too!) who always wants a mystery to solve... and finds a real one. Shafaq's voice really comes through in such delightful ways in this super fun historical fiction mystery." --Grace Lane, Linden Tree Children's Books, Los Altos, Calif.

Ages 14+: An Indies Introduce Title
Reasons to Hate Me by Susan Metallo (Candlewick, $18.99, 9781536240351). "After months of being cyberbullied for hooking up with her best friend's boyfriend, unrepentant theater nerd Jess Lanza starts a retaliatory blog in this heartfelt, hilarious, and sometimes heartbreaking debut novel." --Matilda McNeely, Little Shop of Stories, Decatur, Ga.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

Stewart O'Nan's body of work is noteworthy for its diversity across 18 works of fiction, with settings that include post-Civil War Wisconsin, Jerusalem on the eve of Israel's statehood, and a failed Red Lobster restaurant in contemporary Connecticut. Throughout, however, he has displayed a special fondness for Pittsburgher Emily Maxwell, first seen in his 2002 novel, Wish You Were Here. She makes a fourth appearance in Evensong, a frank but deeply sympathetic portrait of a quartet of aging women who demonstrate that the challenges of advanced years need not impede one's ability to do good in the world.

Evensong centers on the work of Emily and three other women--her sister-in-law, Arlene, and their friends Kitzi and Susie (younger than the others by about 20 years), members of a volunteer network they call the Humpty Dumpty Club. The group performs a variety of tasks--picking up prescriptions and groceries, driving patients to medical appointments and the like--for older people needing assistance in their Pittsburgh neighborhoods. In the autumn of 2022, they're thrown into crisis when their longtime leader, Joan Hargrove, is hospitalized after a fall, and Kitzi is anointed as her successor.

O'Nan (Songs for the Missing) follows the women as they execute their mundane chores, and some especially challenging ones involving a pair of retired music professors and distinguished concert pianists drowning amid their hoarded possessions and a herd of cats. But as he constructs a credible plot, all the while he's digging below the surface to reveal how each woman copes with the often harsh realities of age.

Emily, widowed from her husband, Henry (the protagonist of O'Nan's novel Henry, Himself), recognizes that "after a point you outlived everyone who truly knew you," but is buoyed by the knowledge that her daughter, Margaret, is approaching the fifth anniversary of her sobriety. Arlene, an artist, slowly is coming to terms with the effects of advancing dementia. Kitzi swings between concern for her husband Martin's heart condition and her determination to rise to the demands of her new responsibilities. Susie is recently divorced and now living in an apartment that affords her only a faint echo of the life she enjoyed in her upscale suburb, but she has also taken the first tentative steps into a new relationship. O'Nan renders their small victories and defeats with honesty and more than occasional wit.

"They all had their losses," he writes, "and if time made them easier to bear, the dead were also more remote and harder to recall, a silent slideshow of old memories unchanging as the past." Despite the inevitable emotion it engenders, Evensong is noteworthy for its lack of sentimentality. Emily and her cohort are admirable survivors, resolutely absorbing the blows that life administers in one's waning years, yet rising each morning with gratitude to greet another day. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: An empathetic, but decidedly honest, reckoning with the realities of old age in the lives of a group of Pittsburgh women.

Last Friday, in anticipation of the Booksellers Association Conference (September 21-22), the Bookseller released its 2025 Bookshop Heroes list, noting that perhaps the most interesting aspect of the honorees is "how new to the game some of these 14 bookshop owners and managers are."  

Eight of them have opened their businesses since 2021, but "whether newcomer or established veteran, the through-line of the Bookshop Heroes is commitment to their communities and a constant search for fresh ideas to keep 21st-century bookselling relevant. Long may they reign." This year's Bookshop Heroes are: 

Lily Baron

Lily Baron of Book Space in Cardiff, Wales, whose bookshop "has hit the ground running since its June 2024 debut, quickly becoming a favorite of long-standing locals and the student community of the Welsh capital's Cathays neighborhood, helped by its lively events program, which includes books clubs and its wildly popular monthly open-mic poetry nights."

Helen Cockburn and Irene Humphrey, co-managers of Christian specialists Green Pastures Bookshop in Norfolk, England, who "are coming into this autumn on a high: at the beginning of September they and their team bagged the Bookshop of the Year gong at the Christian Resources Together Conference.... The award saluted Green Pastures' in-store nous, thoughtful recommendations and encyclopedic staff knowledge, but also its tireless schedule of pop-up shops.... Green Pastures is thriving."

Ross Denby of Pages N' Pixels in Halifax, whose bookshop "has become a West Yorkshire focal point for comics, Manga and gaming fans, building a loyal following among superfans and graphic novel newbies alike. Engaging content across its social media platforms has meant that Pages N' Pixels has a presence far beyond its four walls, which has been used cannily by Denby to promote the shop's upcoming move to larger premises."    

Louisa Earls of Books Upstairs in Dublin, Ireland, who joined the family firm in 2015 (her father Maurice co-founded the shop in 1978), and in "in the past decade, she helped orchestrate the move to its current premises on D'Olier Street, expanded the stock range, reinvented its events program, and built a now-thriving digital arm, while still retaining its long-held outsized footprint on Ireland's literary scene."

Nadia Jones, the bookshop, editions, and retail manager for South London Gallery Bookshop, Camberwell, who "has done much to energize the bookshop offering in its contemporary art, design and art theory space (along with exhibition tie-ins), champion independent literature, and align to SLG's tireless community outreach work."

Bronwynne Malone of Hubb16 in New Ross, Ireland, who "has helped build the indie into a lynchpin of the New Ross high street. Deep community links have been forged in Hubb16's four years by the general books and lifestyle store--part of Hubb16's business is a homewares range--aided by its events program."

Ren McGuicken of PaperxClips in Belfast, Northern Ireland, who runs the store's book side, "a curation of queer lit with an emphasis on local writers. The momentum of the splashy opening in 2022, helped by a canny social media campaign and pre-launch pop-up at Lush, has never stopped and the space has become a queer-community touchstone.'

Jenny Moore of How Brave Is the Wren in Birmingham, who originally launched her business as a travelling bookshop in a remodeled caravan, then, post-pandemic, "added permanent premises in the Kings Heath area of her native Birmingham, which widened the stock while still retaining its curated range of picture books and small-press gems."

Tom Owen of Gay on Wye in Hay-on-Wye, who "founded his indie in 2023--which very quickly made its mark in a town not short on competition--with a mission statement of making it 'more than just a commercial venture; it is a celebration of the LGBTQ+ community's history, struggles and achievements.' "

Natasha Radford of Chicken and Frog Bookshop in Brentwood, whose bookshop opened in 2012 and "immediately embedded itself in the Brentford community.... Radford's Ph.D. was on the representation of autism in picture books and that is reflected in the bookshop's ethos with its Special Educational Needs/Autistic Spectrum Condition-friendly approach, which includes a recently-opened neurodiversity room."

Elaine Sinclair in Daydreams Bookshop in Milngavie, Scotland, who "hit the ground sprinting" after opening in the Glasgow suburb in 2024, with the idea "coming out of the Bonnie Wee Book Club (BWBC), which she launched in 2021. BWBC is now a cornerstone of Daydreams' busy events schedule, which includes signings from the great and the good... as well as more community-focused activities.

Courtney Terwilliger of The Enchanted Spine, an American transplant who "used her lifelong interest in fantasy and Young Adult to launch her subscription box and romantasy specialist online shop... a little over a year ago.... A sprightly social media presence has helped pull in the punters--and enabled the indie to go toe-to-toe with the sub-box behemoths--helping TES to deliver on its motto: 'We don't just sell books. We deliver obsessions.' "

Amanda Truman

Amanda Truman of Truman Books in Leeds, whose shop opened in 2021 and "established itself as a community anchor in the arty Leeds suburb of Farsley--and very quickly, with queues down the street at launch. The momentum has been kept up with astute stock curation and regular events... and this October, Truman will co-host the fourth edition of the Farsley Literature Festival."

Philip Jones, editor of the Bookseller, observed that the 2025 Bookshop Heroes list "shows a trade renewing itself, with the majority having opened their stores after 2021, in some cases helped by changes to how the BA reaches out post-pandemic, and some having moved into bookselling after careers elsewhere. Not to minimize the work, but to be a bookseller feels less like doing a job and more like taking on an identity."