"Ice has invaded inside the bookstore. As such, we are closing an hour early at 7 p.m. Thanks for understanding, folks!"

E-book retailer and social media site Zola Books has purchased Bookish, the book recommendation and retailing site founded by Penguin, Simon & Schuster and Hachette that launched early last year.

Although Zola Books and Bookish will continue to operate as separate entities for the immediate future, Zola has extended job offers to roughly half of Bookish's employees (predominantly software engineers) and will begin merging Bookish's recommendation engine with its own, according to Digital Book World. Ardy Khazaei, the latest CEO of Bookish, will be leaving. Bookish employees who decide to stay on will report to Zola's offices today.

"We're two companies in the same space building toward a similar goal, and that's to create a really great ecosystem for readers," Joe Regal, the founder and CEO of Zola Books, told DBW. "Bookish was going well but the destination was some time off and I think the publishers thought this was a good time to look for a happy exit."

For now, the retail arms of Bookish and Zola will remain separate, too, with Baker & Taylor still providing fulfillment for the former; Regal said that his company may reconsider selling print books through Bookish, but a final decision had not yet been made.

Regal told DBW that he didn't "believe they [Bookish] are cash positive," but that that was "immaterial" to Zola. The draws for Zola, he said, were Bookish's recommendation technology and its "serious" web traffic, which is bolstered in part by a partnership with USA Today. Bookish is estimated to attract 300,000-400,000 visitors a month.

Bookish, first announced in 2011 and aimed to be an alternative to Amazon.com, was planned to launch that same summer, but it had several CEOs and didn't launch until last February. Even then, the site's recommendation section, its most highly touted feature, faced difficulties.

Michael Pietsch, CEO of Hachette, told DBW that although Bookish hadn't "come to market on the timetable that was envisioned," the founding publishing companies were "proud" of the recommendation engine. Further, he stressed that the publishers had never planned on running Bookish beyond getting "it up on its own two legs."

Late last year, Zola received $5.1 million in venture capital funding from a group that includes original investors Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife, Chandler Burr, author of The Emperor of Scent, and Josh Bazell, author of Beat the Reaper. Zola investors also include Cablevision and HBO founder Charles Dolan and Bob Kohn, founder of eMusic, among others. --Alex Mutter

Macmillan has acquired Cookstr, the website founded in 2008 by Will Schwalbe and partners Art Chang and Katie Workman with a mission "to organize the world's best cookbooks and recipes and make them universally accessible." Before founding Cookstr, Schwalbe was senior v-p and editor in chief of Hyperion and had held a similar position at Morrow. He is also the author of The End of Your Life Book Club and co-author (with David Shipley) of Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better.

Schwalbe will continue in his current role, while taking on the additional title of v-p, editorial development and content innovation for Macmillan, where he will acquire books to be published across Macmillan's publishing imprints. Kara Rota, director of editorial and partnerships for Cookstr, continues in her existing role.

"We are thrilled to welcome Will, Kara and Cookstr to Macmillan," said CEO John Sargent. "Will is one of the great talents in publishing, and we all look forward to his creative collaboration across our companies. Cookstr will provide cookbook authors with a platform to reach recipe fans directly, and will give them new ways to grow their audience."

Schwalbe noted that his new role with Macmillan "is going to be enormous fun. Cookstr will have a great new home where it will operate independently and can continue to thrive and grow. I can stay deeply involved with Cookstr and also acquire and edit books in all genres for some of the world's greatest imprints."

Art Chang, Cookstr's CEO, said the deal "gives Cookstr a tremendous platform for growth."

Skyhorse Publishing has partnered with literary agency International Transactions to launch Yucca Publishing, an imprint featuring titles for the general trade market. The Yucca list will feature debut authors and previously published authors alike, "authors with intent, literary strength, and fresh, new visions," as Skyhorse put it. Yucca's first list of 20 titles will appear this fall.

International Transactions president Peter Riva, who will be Yucca's executive editor, commented: "New reading mediums, new book outlets, and new promotional platforms have spurred new creativity and new independent voices--authors with fresh exciting content to build into unified brands."

Tony Lyons, Skyhorse president and publisher, said, "As authors, agents, and publishers find new paradigms for publication, we want to be flexible and find new partners with new ideas."

U.K. supermarket chain Sainsbury's plans to stop selling physical books online by the end of February. The Bookseller reported that the company's website "will move to a completely on demand model in March," while its retail locations will continue to sell physical books, CDs, games and DVDs.

"We see that the online opportunity lies in digital products, with physical music, books, games and films sold in our stores," said a Sainsbury's spokesperson. "This move is in line with wider industry trends towards on demand entertainment, and part of our focus on the fast-growing download and streaming market. "

Sainsbury's "has recently stepped up marketing and promotion of its digital e-book platform through a series of public competitions and in-store cross-merchandising promotions," the Bookseller wrote.

Tom Rosenthal, a former managing director of U.K. publisher Secker and Warburg, "adept at balancing the demands of literature and commerce" and a "notable writer on art," died last Friday, the Guardian reported. He was 78.

On Saturday afternoon, Bookshop Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, Calif., hosted the wedding of two book lovers--the groom studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the bride visits regularly, and they always stop at the bookstore, owner Casey Coonerty Protti said. The couple asked that the store remain open during the nuptials; more than 100 customers watched. Before the bride and groom arrived, the 60 guests started to pile up appropriate books on the officiant's podium, including Wedding Planning for Dummies, The Hobbit and fairy tale books (the bride's favorite). As a gift to the bride, the store gave her a copy of her favorite book, Beauty and the Beast, with a signed bookplate by Jan Brett, the illustrator. Protti said her favorite moment during the occasion was when "the groom carried the bride's dress train as she made her way through the store, book in hand, and out the front door to a busy downtown streetscape."

The Toadstool Bookshops in New Hampshire have "weathered all kinds of competition," but "remained successful by staying true to its roots as a welcoming spot to browse the shelves," the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript reported. A small business that was launched more than four decades ago by owner Willard Williams and several family members "has grown into a regional presence with busy locations in Peterborough, Milford and Keene, boosted by a loyal customer base."

Williams said the rise of online competition "places challenges on retailers, because in past years, income hasn't grown much, but all your other costs go up. So you have to be more efficient in what you do to make a profit.... I'm trying to ensure a great experience. I want this to be a place people enjoy coming to. In general, bookstores across the country are trying to engage in a conversation about the experience of being in the store. In a quick walk-through, hundreds of titles can catch your eye that you didn't know existed, and wouldn't have known to search for on the Internet."

He added that even though Toadstool has evolved over the years "to accommodate the changing times," the business model has stayed essentially the same: "The great thing about the book business is that there's always new titles on the table, so it's never stagnant in here. The way we do business doesn't really have to change. We're still all about books."

"It may be -20 degrees outside, but it's never too cold to read Consortium's print catalogue, dontcha know!" With so many people conducting experiments with hot water during this week's Polar Vortex, the hardy folks at Consortium Book Sales & Distribution decided to test the viability of the printed word in sub-zero conditions.

Lynn Rosen has left her position as editorial director of Book Business and Publishing Executive magazines. She is interested in job opportunities as well as freelance/consulting work. She may be reached at lynn@lynnrosen.com or at 215-360-5382.

This morning on the Today Show: Ellie Krieger, author of Weeknight Wonders: Delicious, Healthy Dinners in 30 Minutes or Less (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $29.99, 9781118409497).

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Today on Fresh Air: Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure: A Memoir (Random House, $27, 9780679643753).

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Tomorrow morning on Morning Joe: John Rizzo, author of Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA (Scribner, $28, 9781451673937). He will also appear on NPR's Morning Edition.

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Tomorrow on NPR's Diane Rehm Show: Jane Pauley, author of Your Life Calling: Reimagining the Rest of Your Life (Simon & Schuster, $26, 9781476733760).

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Tomorrow on Fresh Air: Masha Gessen, author of Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot (Riverhead, $16, 9781594632198).

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Tomorrow on the View: Rocco DiSpirito, author of The Pound a Day Diet: Lose Up to 5 Pounds in 5 Days by Eating the Foods You Love (Grand Central, $26, 9781455523672).

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Tomorrow on a repeat of Tavis Smiley: Nikki Giovanni, author of Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid (Morrow, $19.99, 9780688156978).

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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: Ishmael Beah, author of Radiance of Tomorrow (Sarah Crichton Books, $25, 9780374246020).

Public Television's American Masters series will open its new season January 21 with a director's cut of Shane Salerno's documentary Salinger. Deadline.com reported that the program "will be 15 minutes longer than the theatrical version" and will "bare more previously unseen photos, testimony and secrets about reclusive author J.D. Salinger, including his harrowing days fighting the Nazis in World War II."

"Adding J.D. Salinger to the American Masters library as the 200th episode is a perfect reflection of the series' mission: to illuminate the lives and creative journeys of America's most enduring artistic and cultural giants for the public--no matter how elusive," said Stephen Segaller, v-p programming for WNET. "The film is almost overpowering: highly cinematic, highly dramatic, and packed with research discoveries worthy of the best painstaking investigative journalism. We get to know Salinger, his life and his work to an unparalleled degree."

A first peek is now available of Disney's Alexander & the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, the first live-action film adaptation of Judith Viorst's 1972 illustrated children's classic, Broadway World reported, noting that the project, directed by Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl, Cedar Rapids, Youth in Revolt) from a screenplay by Rob Lieber, hits theaters nationwide on October 10. The cast includes Megan Mullally, Jennifer Coolidge, Steve Carell, Jennifer Garner, Dylan Minnette, Kerris Dorsey and Ed Oxenbould.

Winners have been named in the five Costa Book Awards categories, the Telegraph reported. Each author receives £5,000 (US$8,202) and is now eligible for the £30,000 Costa Book of the Year prize, which will be announced later this month. This year's Costa category winners are:

Novel: Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
First novel: The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer
Biography: The Pike by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Poetry: Drysalter by Michael Symmons Roberts
Children's: Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse by Chris Riddell

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The winners of the 2014 Pacific Northwest Book Awards, chosen by members of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, are:

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (Viking)
The Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of an Underground America by Langdon Cook (Ballantine)
We Live in Water: Stories by Jess Walter (Harper Perennial)
Anatomy of Melancholy and Other Poems by Robert Wrigley (Penguin Books)
Dream Animals: A Bedtime Journey by Emily Winfield Martin (Random House)
The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme by Joe Sacco (Norton)

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The longlist for the 2014 International Prize for Arabic Fiction consists of 16 novels from nine countries. The shortlist will be announced on February 10, and the winner will be named April 29 at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.

The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance has announced its winter Okra Picks, a dozen fresh titles chosen by Southern indie booksellers each season as the upcoming Southern titles they are most looking forward to handselling

The In-Between Hour by Barbara Claypole White (Mira Books)
Starting Over: Stories by Elizabeth Spencer (Liveright Publishing)
The Last Days of California by Mary Miller (Liveright Publishing)
The Secret of Magic by Deborah Johnson (Amy Einhorn Books)
Without Mercy: The Stunning True Story of Race, Crime and Corruption in the Deep South by David Beasley (St. Martin's Press)
This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash (Morrow)
The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing by Sheila Turnage (Kathy Dawson Books)
One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band by Alan Paul (St. Martin's)
A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd (Scholastic)
Long Man by Amy Greene (Knopf)
Down South: Bourbon, Pork, Gulf Shrimp & Second Helpings of Everything by Donald Link (Clarkson Potter)

Following Loving Frank, her debut novel about Frank Lloyd Wright's love affair with Mamah Cheney, Nancy Horan returns to tell the story of Robert Louis Stevenson and his American wife, Fanny van de Grift Osbourne, in Under the Wide and Starry Sky.

Horan tells their story based on letters, papers and memorabilia gleaned from the couple's archives. Since she wasn't there to hear them speak, she has "put into their mouths words from their written work or actual excerpts from their letters," with results that flow so logically and naturally the reader never questions the novel's authenticity.  

Though she was separated from her womanizing husband, Fanny was still legally married, yet it's apparent she and Louis (as Stevenson was known) were meant to be together. He was fascinated by Fanny's intrepid nature, and she proved an intelligent, loving companion, not intimidated by his repeated bouts of illness. For her part, Fanny found Louis to be the kindest, best man she had ever known. They moved in together, with Fanny's two children, before she was divorced. This brought the vocal disapproval of both families. In the end, Fanny won over Louis's father as Louis had never been able to.

Stevenson did not know immediate success as a writer; far from it. And Fanny's writerly aspirations always took a back seat to her caregiving of Louis. Her need to lead a creative life was subsumed in Louis's own writing and his illness, which resulted in periodic bouts of mental breakdown, frightening to both of them.

They were a peripatetic brood--Fanny and Louis, her son, Lloyd, Louis's widowed mother and the family helper, Valentine--going from France to England to Scotland and back again, always in search of inexpensive lodgings in a climate congenial to Louis's condition. They chartered a sailing vessel and went to Samoa where they built a home in a small village. Louis wrote every day, Fanny tended her garden, they swam and walked; it was very close to idyllic. One night, Louis cried out, grabbed his head and said: "Oh, what a pain!" He collapsed with a cerebral hemorrhage and died. Fanny left Samoa and spent the rest of her days in San Francisco promoting Louis's literary legacy--and getting her own book published.

Theirs was an intense love affair, fraught with complications , but neither of them could imagine life without the other. --Valerie Ryan, Cannon Beach Book Company, Ore.

Shelf Talker: The story of Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife, Fanny, a relationship filled with joy and sadness, spanning time and place.