Ariana Paliobagis

Ariana Paliobagis, owner of Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, Mont., will visit the Frankfurt Book Fair this October as the guest of Europa Editions, where she'll meet Europa staff and their global publishing partners, tour the Frankfurt show floor and meet German booksellers as well as publishers from the U.K.

"Mostly I'm excited to meet my colleagues and my cohorts from around the world, to learn more about the state of bookselling and publishing around the world, particularly in Europe," said Paliobagis. This will be her first time at the Frankfurt Book Fair and her first time in Germany. "I'd love to learn more about bringing international works of literature into the U.S., and acquiring works in translation."

Last month, the Country Bookshelf won Europa Editions' inaugural Europa International Book Fair Scholarship, allowing a bookseller from the store to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Applying for the scholarship, Paliobagis recalled, was very simple: all Country Bookshelf had to do was let Europa Editions know that the store was planning a release party for Frantumaglia: An Author's Journey, a new collection by Elena Ferrante slated for release on November 1. In early August she learned that the store had won.

"One of my staff came back with the phone and said, 'Someone from Europa wants to talk to you,' " Paliobagis said. "I didn't believe it at first. I really did not quite believe it."

Paliobagis called the prospect of navigating a show that was described to her as around 10 times the size of BookExpo America "daunting, but exciting. And I'll do it with the knowledge that the people around me have been there and know how to navigate it." She will be in Germany for a total of about 10 days: she'll arrive the day before the fair opens and will have a few days afterward to see the sights.

Paliobagis plans to take lots of notes and lots of photographs, and some fellow Montana booksellers have already asked to have a "debriefing" with her once she gets back. She added: "I'll share what I've learned with any of my fellow booksellers." --Alex Mutter

John Shortino, Nine Stories

John Shortino and Allison Mosher, who have been operating Nine Stories as a pop-up bookshop, plan to open a storefront operation this fall at 5400 Butler Street in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pa., selling both new and used books. As a bonus, the location "just happened to be located next to Caffe d'Amore Coffee Company. And there happened to be an option to connect the two with a wall they shared," Next Pittsburgh reported.

"Having a coffee shop and bookstore together will serve the community in a new way," said Walsh "It has the potential to be collaborative and fun and benefit both businesses as well."

As a pop-up, Nine Stories has been selling books at events like Garfield Night Market and Open Streets and at community spaces like the Stephen Foster Community Center. "We kept on acquiring more stuff every time we had a pop-up," said Shortino. "We started to realize we had outgrown the pop-up model because we weren't able to get used books back out on the market as fast as we would have liked."

Nine Stories' move to a permanent location "was funded in part by a $5,000 Kiva Zip loan, which was fully crowd-funded by 68 people in five days," Next Pittsburgh wrote, adding: "Keep an eye out for details on the early-October grand opening by following Nine Stories on Facebook and Twitter."

Zephyr Books & Coffee, which opened last week at 328 W. Miner St. in downtown Yreka, Calif., is owned by Debbie Scott, Guy Scott and Zapata Parra. The Siskiyou Daily News reported that Parra had been a long time employee of MacGregor's Gifts, Grogg & Book Emporium, and when the owners were ready to retire, they suggested she "make Zephyr Books a reality along with the help of Parra's parents." The bookstore, which is named after Parra's son Zephyr, features both new and used books.

"I was thinking about college, but the owners of McGregor's were thinking about retiring," Parra said. "For many years they introduced the idea of me taking over the store for them for a couple of years, and I thought yeah, that would be cool. Then, the idea started to become more and more real, and gradually it became Zephyr Books and Coffee."

Guy Scott noted that "the timing was right for Parra to continue with the book business that she loved, while teaming up with her mom, Debbie, who was ready for a new chapter in her life," the Daily News wrote, adding that "his role in the creation of the shop was to help it come together, and be a babysitter for Zephyr. Overall, the family wanted to create a unique space that is comfortable for those who visit."

IDW Publishing, a subsidiary of IDW Media Holdings, has signed a multi-year book sales and distribution partnership with Penguin Random House Publisher Services exclusively for the trade bookstore market. The agreement takes effect April 2017. Diamond Comics Distributors will continue to sell and distribute graphic novels and comics exclusively to the comic book specialty market, as well as handle distribution of graphic novels, books and other merchandise to the mass market in the U.K.

IDW specializes in licensed and creator-driven titles, working in association with Hasbro, Paramount/CBS, Nickelodeon, Twentieth Century Fox, Sony and Temple Street Productions, among others. IDW's Top Shelf Production imprint published the March graphic novel trilogy, Congressman John Lewis's account of the civil rights movement, co-written by Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell.

"IDW has a fantastic reputation in the comics business, and we look forward to working with them to grow the sales of their impressive graphic-novel publishing program," said PRHPS president Jeff Abraham.

Ted Adams, IDW's CEO and publisher, commented: "Our mission as a publisher has always been to create quality content and get it out to as many readers as possible. With Penguin Random House working alongside us to achieve that goal, we think IDW is primed to increase sales and take our market share to the next level."

IDW Publishing president and COO Greg Goldstein added that the company's "relationship with Diamond is extremely important, and one that we plan to continue to grow, and we thank them for the many successes they've helped us achieve in the book market up to now. Between our solid connection with Diamond and now with the addition of PRHPS onboard, we're excited by the prospect of attracting brand new readers and engaging the next generation of comic fans, wherever they're seeking entertainment."

Diamond president and CEO Steve Geppi said: "Everyone at Diamond has the highest respect for IDW and we're proud of the success we have helped them achieve. We will continue to work and grow our business with IDW, and all of the publishers we represent, in every possible way."

Streetwise Maps, a sidelines staple for indie booksellers and go-to guide for travelers for more than three decades, has gone out of business. On the company's website, owners Michael and Andrika Brown wrote: "It's not the years, it's the miles... For over 30 years we have traveled the globe walking mile, by mile, by mile. Through the most beautiful cities in the world we explored tiny streets and grand boulevards, passages, alleys, dead ends, the sublime and the gritty, the familiar and the unknown, all in the quest to make the best map possible....

"So now, after all the miles, all the notes, all the sketches and the reams of research material, it's finally time to set aside the tools and retire (cue the band, release the confetti!!). It's time for a new adventure. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this and to all of you who came along on the journey, this fiesta of a life. We are forever grateful."

Steve Raymond, who spent more than four decades in the book industry as a bookseller and pioneering wholesale distributor, died September 7. He was 68. Shortly after graduating from the University of Notre Dame in 1971, he and his brother Michael opened Pandora's Books, a used bookstore near campus that expanded within a year to carrying new titles as well. The South Bend Tribune noted that "for 45 years Pandora's thrived in the Northeast neighborhood adjacent to Notre Dame Campus, providing students and neighbors with a low-cost source for used and new books, textbooks, magazines and newspapers."

Becoming aware of the difficulty his bookshop and others had in procuring alternative and small press titles, he joined siblings Michael, Marc and Mary in 1973 to launch "the distributors," a wholesaler specializing in books from small, mid-sized and alternative presses. By 1976, the distributors occupied a 30,000-square-foot warehouse in downtown South Bend, selling to retail bookstores, libraries and schools throughout the Midwest. As they expanded, the distributors re-accessed their inventory and during the 1980s they began carrying trade paperbacks from all of the major publishers, and then mass market and hardcover titles. By 1983 they had become a full-service national wholesaler, offering same-day, 24-hour turnaround service. The distributors, which closed in 2015, was known for its imaginative marketing efforts. For years, the company's T-shirts were coveted by booksellers and publishers alike.

Plot Twist Bookstore, Ankeny, Iowa, is one of "10 hidden treasures in the Des Moines suburbs," according to the Register, which noted that the bookseller's opening "this past year in Ankeny was the perfect gift for a hustling, bustling town that seemingly already had everything. After all, Ankeny is the third-fastest growing city in America, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But until Mary Rork-Watson opened for business in April, it didn't have a locally owned, independent bookstore. Now it does and I can tell you from personal experience that Mary is a pleasure to do business with. Her business model follows in the odds-beating footsteps of Alice Meyer at Beaverdale Books and includes an emphasis on support for local authors and providing a home for small groups like book clubs. Don't judge by its strip mall cover. Inside, it stands alone in Ankeny. Check it out."

Last Tuesday "was one for the books" at the King's English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, Utah, where Deseret News stopped by during national Read a Book Day, though "there really doesn't need to be a specific day to sit back and crack open a book, because reading is one of the most enjoyable things you could ever do."

Nadine Mims has joined Cottage Door Press, the children's publisher founded in 2014, as a sales director whose responsibilities include covering independent booksellers and national accounts. She formerly worked for 15 years at Random House Children's Publishing, where she was a senior national accounts manager, working with buyers and distributors associated with Walmart, Kmart, Toys R Us, Shopko and Meijer. Before that, she worked at Golden Books.

The Perfect Girl by Gilly Macmillan (Morrow), a novel from the author of the Edgar-nominated What She Knew.

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Bad Girls Throughout History: 100 Remarkable Women Who Changed the World by Ann Shen (Chronicle Books).

Today:
Fresh Air: Abby Wambach, author of Forward: A Memoir (Dey Street Books, $26.99, 9780062466983).

Tomorrow:
Morning Joe: Dave Barry, author of Best. State. Ever.: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland (Putnam, $27, 9781101982600). (See the book trailer here.)

Live with Kelly: Bill O'Reilly, co-author of Killing the Rising Sun: How America Vanquished World War II Japan (Holt, $30, 9781627790628).

Watch What Happens Live: Carol Burnett, author of In Such Good Company: Eleven Years of Laughter, Mayhem, and Fun in the Sandbox (Crown Archetype, $28, 9781101904657).

NPR's On Point: Elizabeth Vargas, author of Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction (Grand Central, $27, 9781455559633).

NBC's Access Hollywood Live: Naya Rivera, author of Sorry Not Sorry: Dreams, Mistakes, and Growing Up (TarcherPerigee, $24, 9780399184987).

"Say what you will about the middling and awkward Fifty Shades of Grey, but there's no denying it took a strong command of the box office and proved the sly charismatic charm of Dakota Johnson," Indiewire noted in showcasing a new trailer for the sequel Fifty Shades Darker, based on the bestselling erotic trilogy by E.L. James.

Johnson reprises her role of Anastasia Steele opposite Jamie Dornan's Christian Grey. Following the departure of director Sam Taylor-Johnson, James Foley (Glengarry Glenn Ross, Perfect Stranger) has stepped in to helm this project as well as Fifty Shades Freed. The cast also includes Kim Basinger, Rita Ora, Bella Heathcote and Marcia Gay Harden. Fifty Shades Darker opens February 10, 2017.

The National Book Foundation is unveiling longlists for the 2016 National Book Awards this week, with a category released each day. Finalists will be announced on October 13, and winners named November 16. This year's longlisted titles in the poetry category are:

The Performance of Becoming Human by Daniel Borzutzky (Brooklyn Arts Press)
Collected Poems 1974-2004 by Rita Dove (Norton)
Archeophonics by Peter Gizzi (Wesleyan University Press)
The Selected Poems of Donald Hall by Donald Hall (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The Abridged History of Rainfall by Jay Hopler (McSweeney's)
Bestiary by Donika Kelly (Graywolf Press)
World of Made and Unmade by Jane Mead (Alice James Books)
Look by Solmaz Sharif (Graywolf Press)
Blackacre by Monica Youn (Graywolf Press)
Blue Laws by Kevin Young (Knopf)

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Chris Brookmyre has won the £1,000 (about $1,330) McIlvanney Prize (previously known as the Scottish Crime Book of the Year), for Black Widow, the Bookseller reported. The award was presented at the Bloody Scotland festival in Stirling. The judges said reading Black Widow is "like watching Olympic diving--just when you think the plot can't twist again, it takes a new turn. Even the twists have twists."

Laia Jufresa is a Mexican writer who lives in Germany and has also lived in Mexico, Spain, Argentina, the U.S. and France. In the same way that she has often moved from country to country, she has moved from genre to genre, writing short stories, picture books and a screenplay. Her novel Umami (Oneworld, September 13, 2016) has been translated into seven languages. The English-language version was translated by Sophie Hughes.

On your nightstand now:

There's a huge pile of books and notebooks and pregnancy vitamins. On top of it all sit--quite unstably--How to Be Both by Ali Smith and The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery.

Favorite book when you were a child:

The Anastasia Krupnik series by Lois Lowry. I read all of them when I was Anastasia's age, and I have never dared re-read them because I wouldn't want to alter that subtly confused childhood memory in which Anastasia isn't a character, but the coolest kid I ever spent time with.

Your top five authors:

Jorge Ibargüengoitia, Daniel Pennac, Fabio Morábito, Marie NDiaye and Jo Ann Beard.

Book you've faked reading:

Ah, many a famous Latin American writer: Cortázar, Bolaño, etc. As a Mexican writer, I'm somehow expected to be an expert on them all. So I just smile politely.

Book you're an evangelist for:

What It Is by Lynda Barry.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Too many to name, I'm basically a sucker for nice covers. The last one was Carlo Rovelli's Seven Brief Lessons on Physics in hardcover, which I bought because of the shiny copper foil dots. I have to say though, it turned out to be a delicious book I would now buy and give as a gift no matter what the cover looked like.

Book you hid from your parents:

I haven't lived with my parents since I was 16, I don't think I ever hid anything from them. Today though, I hope they never go through my self-helpy shelf, first of all because they would disapprove of me having such a thing, and second of all because amidst it, they'd find a book called Life Lessons for the Adult Child: Transforming a Challenging Childhood by Judy Klipin, and they may take it personally.

Book that changed your life:

Ray Bradbury's The Zen in the Art of Writing was very important to me in a time when my writing had started getting attention, yet I felt utterly inadequate because I hadn't read the things you are supposed to. Bradbury gave me a validation I didn't know I was looking for, and with it came a lot of courage to trust my instincts and hard work instead of my fears of judgment.

Favorite line from a book:

"The hell of living people is not something to come; if there is one, it is here already, it's the hell we live in every day, which we form staying together. There are two ways not to suffer from it. The first comes easy to many: to accept hell and become part of it, to the point you don't see it anymore. The second is risky and requires continuous attention and learning: to look for and recognize who and what, in the middle of hell, is not hell, and to make it last, and to give it space." --Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, translation by James Petani

Five books you'll never part with:

I actually tend to give away a book I love the minute I'm done with it, while I'm still bubbling with enthusiasm, I can't help it. Unless it's an illustrated book. So I'd never give away my copies of:

Words and Pictures by Quentin Blake
What It Is by Lynda Barry
A Lion in Paris by Beatrice Alemagna
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Maus by Art Spiegelman

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

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. I remember it blew my mind when I was about 12, but I have no idea why as I can't remember any of it.

How you feel about book recommendations:

I believe in following your cravings and picking books by the cover or by sheer instinct. You may end up having to pretend you read the American or Latin American classics (or the classics of your particular nationality), but you'll have your very own path. Like a garden you planted, which will always give tastier tomatoes than any other patch. Also, reading is a pleasure, not a vitamin, so don't finish books that bore you. And don't listen to anyone who gives you reading advice, not even distant writers in a newsletter.

Charles Thompson is not as excited as his parents are to move into a graffiti-slathered, dilapidated former hotel in Echo City. "Do you even know the crime statistics for Echo City?" the incredulous redheaded boy asks his mom. "Museums! Art shows! The opera!" she responds. "Uuugh the operaaa," he groans, sinking down in his seat of the U-MOVE truck.

As Charles opens the door to his room on the building's top floor with its narrow bed and single bare light bulb, he asks his dad, "What, no cellmate?" As he alphabetizes his books on the shelves (including three rhyming dictionaries) and unpacks his collectible warrior beanbag animals, his dad says, "Minimalism, Charles. We are not what we own." "Hands off my stuff!" his son retorts. It's not just the witty dialogue that distinguishes The Creepy Case Files of Margo Maloo, it's the delicious, expertly paced suspense-building, starting with the giant yellow eyeball peering out from Charles's closet his first night in the room.

Charles knows instinctively that no adults will ever acknowledge the fanged truth of his closet monster. Fortunately, he runs into a friendly, world record-obsessed African American kid named Kevin who is well acquainted with the supernatural sorts gallivanting around and gives him the business card of "Margo Maloo, Monster Mediator." Charles calls her, and one hour later, the oddly vampiric, brown-skinned girl creeps into his window. Wasting no time, Charles and Margo descend through an old access panel in the closet into a long-neglected hotel kitchen and follow a path of bones (Charles: "Bones! Are they human?" Margo: "Mmm, no... looks like 'Dean's fried chicken' ") that leads straight to a troll's lair, the same yellow-eyed fellow Charles saw the night before. (His name is Marcus.) Thus begins the meat of the adventure in this tremendously funny and superbly illustrated graphic novel by Drew Weing (illustrator of Eleanor Davis's Flop to the Top).

As her card suggests, Margo acts as a go-between for monsters and children, listening to both sides of their stories, trying to foster good will and cultural understanding for everyone's safety. Down in the hotel kitchen, Charles and Marcus the troll bond over collectible beanbag animals, so Marcus probably won't eat the boy alive. Then Charles--blogger, wannabe journalist and sudden advocate of monster-fearing children everywhere--decides to see if Margo is right about goblins, ghouls and vampires inhabiting "all the secret places nobody ever goes." Fortunately, she stops him before he enters a den of "extremely cranky ogres." From then on Charles tags along with her on missing-kid cases and missing-ogre-baby cases alike. For readers as curious as Charles, there's a mini-encyclopedia of ghosts, goblins, ogres and trolls in the back with plenty of pencil sketches and astute observations like "Goblins are very bureaucracy-minded." Scoop this one up. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness

Shelf Talker: In Drew Weing's hilarious graphic novel, Charles moves with his parents to a haunted historic hotel in the big city and ends up in cahoots with the inimitable monster mediator Margo Maloo.