Canyon Booksellers opened on Friday in Spearfish, S.Dak., the Rapid City Journal reported. The store opened at the same time as the Spearfish Creek Fly Shop, both owned by Justin Stephens, who also owns High Mountain Outfitters.

Canyon Booksellers offers books geared toward locals and tourists, including Black Hills history and interest, Native American culture, nature and the environment, and literature of the American West. The store will also carry books by local authors and a large selection of children's books.

"Customers say they miss having a bookstore in Spearfish," Stephens said. "Because this space was available, we are happy to be able to meet this need."

Amazon has confirmed that this summer it will open a bricks-and-mortar store at 7 W. 34th St. in New York City, across from the Empire State Building, Newsday reported. The prospective book and electronics shop has been added to the company's "Stores by State" page online. This would be the second Amazon Books location planned for Manhattan. The first is slated to open this spring in the Shops at Columbus Circle mall at the Time Warner Center.

Amazon Books locations have opened in Seattle, Wash.; Dedham, Mass.; San Diego, Chicago and near Portland, Ore. In addition to the Manhattan stores, other locations will be launched this year in Walnut Creek, Calif.; San Jose; Paramus, N.J.; Lynnfield, Mass.; and Bellevue, Wash.

BolognaFiere, organizer of Bologna Children's Book Fair, will launch a copyright trade and licensing show in New York City next year, scheduled to run from May 30 to June 1, the Bookseller reported, adding that "the show will be open only to trade exhibitors, and could mean it clashes with BookExpo America.... The company is bidding to attract U.S. publishers and agents across children's and adult markets and their global business partners, as well as booksellers and librarians, to the event."

Marco Momoli, commercial director of BolognaFiere, said the company "is dedicated to fostering cross-cultural cooperation and international trade among publishers. With the debut of this new trade show, BolognaFiere extends its reach to cultivate new relationships and global business alliances among publishers."

Actress and comedian Isla Fisher has been added to the lineup for BookExpo's Children's Book & Author Breakfast, which will be held June 2 at the Javits Center in New York City. She will discuss her new middle grade book, Marge in Charge, and the importance of helping children grow and learn through engaging storytelling. Fisher joins the previously announced lineup of Jason Reynolds, Marieke Nijkamp, Jennifer Weiner and host Savannah Guthrie.

Fisher has worked in TV and film for 25 years, including roles in The Great Gatsby, Wedding Crashers, Scooby Doo, Definitely Maybe, Confessions of a Shopaholic, and Arrested Development. Most recently, she starred in Keeping Up with the Joneses and Nocturnal Animals.

"The addition of Isla Fisher to the Children's Book & Author Breakfast rounds out an exciting and highly-talented lineup of speakers for what is sure to be one of the most anticipated events of the show this year,” said Brien McDonald, event director of BookExpo. 

Alex Tizon, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter whose 2014 memoir, Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self, "documented his insecurities and alienation as a Filipino-American," died March 23, the New York Times reported. He was 57. Tizon, along with Eric Nalder and Deborah Nelson, shared a Pulitzer in investigative reporting in 1997 for Seattle Times articles "about problems facing a Department of Housing and Urban Development program to help Native Americans build homes.... The series resulted in a congressional investigation and changes in the federal program."

In Big Little Man, he addressed many of the stereotypes he had internalized as an Asian-American, having experienced them "as a set of suspicions that seemed corroborated by everyday life.... When did this shame inside me begin? Looking back now, I could say it began with love. Love of the gifted people and their imagined life; love of America, the sprawling idea of it, with its gilded tentacles reaching across the Pacific Ocean to wrap around the hearts of small brown people living small brown lives. It was a love bordering on worship, fueled by longing, felt most fervently by those like my parents who grew up with America in their dreams. The love almost killed us."

Michele Matassa Flores, managing editor of the Seattle Times, said that as a reporter, Tizon "focused on the gray.... The world was not a simple place for Alex, and he wanted to convey that to his readers."

Simon & Schuster sales rep Tim Hepp introduced his relative, debut author Amanda Foody, to booksellers in the Philadelphia suburbs. Foody's YA fantasy, Daughter of the Burning City, is being published in July by Harlequin Teen. In one whirlwind day, they visited Towne Book Center in Collegeville; Harleysville Bookshop in Harleysville; Doylestown Bookshop and Booktender's Secret Garden in Doylestown, Children's Book World in Haverford; and Main Point Books in Wayne. Pictured: Hepp, Foody (r.) and Heather Hebert of Children's Book World, which will host Foody's launch event.

At Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books in Greenwich Village, "conversations among staff and visitors tend to be literary. Or political," the New York Times noted in its "Neighborhood Joint" series profile of a bookshop that has been in the same building, at 34 Carmine Street, for 25 years. Specializing in bargain books, "the store's selection varies according to the personal taste" of owner Jim Drougas and the "entire place is maybe 25 feet across, and rows of bookshelves divide the space into two long, narrow aisles," the Times wrote. A few years ago, rising rents prompted Drougas to lease one of the aisles to Carmine Street Comics.

"Looming" over the bookshelves and dividing the sections are posters of Bob Dylan ("holding a sign that says, 'Over 35 Different Bob Dylan Books in Stock!' ") and a formal portrait of William Blake. "It's as if the two poets are the guardian angels of the store," the Times noted. Drougas observed: "If I can't sell Blake, what's the point?"

Lisa Thomas has been promoted to publisher and editorial director of adult books at National Geographic. She was formerly senior v-p and editorial director of National Geographic adult books.

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At Open Road Integrated Media:

Gregg Fleischman has been promoted to executive director, consumer newsletters.
Sarah Janet has been promoted to director, marketing analytics.
Rachel Krupitsky has been promoted to director of marketing.
Colleen Lindsay has been promoted to director of marketing.

Animals of a Bygone Era: An Illustrated Compendium by Maja Säfström (Ten Speed Press).

Today:
Fresh Air: Alec Baldwin, author of Nevertheless: A Memoir (Harper, $28.99, 9780062409706).

Tomorrow:
Late Late Show with James Corden repeat: Keke Palmer, author of I Don't Belong to You: Quiet the Noise and Find Your Voice (North Star Way, $24.99, 9781501145391).

"The old and new deities on display in Starz's American Gods opening titles include the famous Las Vegas neon cowboy, a crucified astronaut, assorted metal animals and cars," Deadline reported. The upcoming series is produced by FremantleMedia North America. The titles were created by Elastic.

"Is it strange to want action figures from a main title sequence?" co-showrunners and executive producers Bryan Fuller and Michael Green said in a statement. "Crucified astronauts, neon cowboys and S&M centaurs--we bow to Elastic and their spectacular vision. A totem of godly visions we didn't know we needed to worship until they showed us the light with this clarion call to the American Gods."

The series, which debuts April 30, stars Ricky Whittle, Ian McShane, Emily Browning also stars, with Pablo Schreiber, Yetide Badaki, Bruce Langley, Orlando Jones and Crispin Glover.

Imbolo Mbue won the $15,000 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for Behold the Dreamers (Random House). Speaking on behalf of the judging panel, Chris Abani said the book "displays a remarkable confidence impressive for a debut novel. Imbolo Mbue has a fine ear for dialogue and the nuance of language. Without ever leaning into sentimentality and yet managing to steer clear of cruelty, she pushes her characters through true difficulties into a believable and redemptive transformation. Behold the Dreamers reveals a writer with a capacious imagination, and the warmth and compassion to craft a career of beautiful and important novels."

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German illustrator and picture book author Wolf Erlbruch won the five million Swedish kronor (about $554,380) Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, which is given annually to authors, illustrators, oral storytellers and reading promoters "to promote interest in children's and young adult literature."

In praising this year's winner, the jury's citation noted that Erlbruch "makes existential questions accessible and manageable for readers of all ages. With humor and warmth deeply rooted in humanist ideals, his work presents the universe on our scale. He is a master of the illustrator's art who honors tradition whilst opening new creative doors.... His visual style grows out of a long tradition and is characterized by strong lines and graphic precision. He often combines different techniques: collage, pencil and chalk drawing, graphic experimentation and watercolor."

Erlbruch has written 10 books of his own and illustrated nearly 50 titles by other authors. He is best known for his illustrations of The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business (1994).

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Finalists for the 2017 Hugo Awards and John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer have been announced and can be seen here. Winners will be unveiled August 11 at the 75th World Science Fiction Convention in Helsinki, Finland. 

photo: Lorin Klaris

Abigail Pogrebin is the author of My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew (Fig Tree Books, March 14, 2017); Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk about Being Jewish, for which she interviewed 62 famous Jewish Americans about their religious identity; One and the Same, about the realities of being an identical twin; and Showstopper, about her teenage adventures in the original cast of a Broadway flop composed by Stephen Sondheim. A former Emmy-nominated producer for Mike Wallace at 60 Minutes and for Charlie Rose and Bill Moyers at PBS, she has written for numerous publications and been interviewed on the Today Show, Good Morning America, Charlie Rose and CNN.

On your nightstand now:

Jonathan Safran Foer, Here I Am
Charles Blow, Fire Shut Up in My Bones
Richard Cohen, She Made Me Laugh: My Friend Nora Ephron
Thomas L. Friedman, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations
Robert Gottlieb, Avid Reader

Favorite book when you were a child:

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle: I never forgot my mother's bedside demonstration--using the wrinkle of the quilt fabric--of how time could be abridged or condensed.

Your top five authors:

Jhumpa Lahiri: She takes me immediately into whatever world she's created; I love her scenes, her characters, and her command of evocative language.

Frank Bruni: His bluntness, humor and peppery approach make me want to hear his take on the world and his own life.

Joan Didion: She's a master of the perfect, necessary, evocative detail.

Nora Ephron: Her biting irreverence and brave candor were always entirely fresh, and she called life's tiny truths on the carpet.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: He constantly pushes me to think about why Judaism remains not a dusty document but an urgent, relevant and resilient call to attentiveness, kindness and responsibility.

Book you've faked reading:

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. I want to be reading it or to have read it, because everyone has talked about it and recommended it, but the subject of death and preparing for death scares me too much to stick with it.

Book you're an evangelist for:

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. This book was a revelation to me--for its candor, its unflinching confrontation with a physician's own mortality and the way it made me think about limited time and what constitutes quality of hours remaining.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Diaspora by Frédéric Brenner. It's dramatic and spare, and feels strong and inviting as a result.

Book you hid from your parents:

The Diary of Anaïs Nin. There were sexy parts that I don't recall now, but which felt illicit and shocking when I stumbled upon the book in grade school.

Book that changed your life:

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I had never seen that a shattering story could be told in snapshots, with startling power that came in economy, and the pointillism of grief.

Favorite line from a book:

"When Tibor died, the world came to an end. And the world did not come to an end. That is something you learn." --from Beloved Dog by Maira Kalman

Five books you'll never part with:

Pat the Bunny (Touch and Feel Book): It reminds me, in an instant, of my childhood.
Over the Moon by Rachel Vail: It reminds me, in an instant, of my children's childhood.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer: I studied, dissected and wrote term papers about that book till the pages were frayed. And of course, I still can recite (in Old English) the opening stanzas we all had to memorize.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion: It's when I discovered the essentialness of keeping track and keeping notes.
Deborah, Golda and Me by Letty Cottin Pogrebin: It's my favorite of my mother's books, and taught me who she came from.

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

Heat by Bill Buford: It was a thorough romp from start to finish and I didn't want the journey to end.

Book I wish I'd written:

Israel Is Real by Rich Cohen: It manages to make a complicated history accessible, jaunty and luminous.

Planet Earth is "a tiny sphere that orbits an ordinary, middle-aged star." It's also "a giant ball of rock and metal that whizzes through space around the sun." Shelf Awareness pays tribute to everyone's favorite planet with these Earth Day picture books about trees, space water, warthogs and "other wonders yet to find."

Trees (Candlewick, $14.99, hardcover, 40p., ages 2-5, 9780763690014, March 14, 2017) comes from Lemniscates, a Barcelona author/illustrator/designer collective that creates children's books and apps. Five or six words on each beautiful two-page spread capture the "marvelous beings" that are trees. On one spread, mixed-media clouds swirl above a pair of young black birds in a nest: "Trees have their heads in the clouds...." On the next, criss-crossing underground (root) routes tell a story of insect passageways and resting places of ancient stones and gems: "and their feet on the ground." Trees is more than another pretty book, though--in simple language, it provides real, if poetically minimal, information: "Trees clean the air we breathe... and give us their seeds with every piece of fruit." Simply lovely.

Whimsical and quirkily informative, The Big Book of Beasts (Thames & Hudson, $19.95, hardcover, 64p., ages 4-up, 9780500651063, April 18, 2017) by Yuval Zommer (The Big Book of Bugs) introduces readers to baboons, binturongs, honey badgers and more than a dozen other mammals that qualify as beasts: "deadly, cunning and most importantly, wild!" Pages featuring specific animals ask and answer the kinds of questions likely to be of greatest interest to young readers: "Why is an armadillo covered in armor?" "Is a Tasmanian devil a devil?" and "Just how lazy is a sloth?" (Spoiler: very.) Charming illustrations of each beast in various poses and habitats, search-and-find challenges and special sections on Ice Age beasts and saving endangered species make this "Big Book" a big winner.

Everywhere, Wonder (Imprint/Macmillan, $17.99, hardcover, 48p., ages 3-6, 9781250087959, February 7, 2017) takes readers on a wild adventure from a little boy's bookshelf to the near side of the moon and back, with stops in the savannas of Kenya, the bottom of a swimming pool and the North Pole (where a "cold and lonesome bear" waits, "wishing for some company"). Dreamy pictures show the boy drifting right through the panes of his bedroom window as if it was water, and placing him in wondrous settings: rocketing toward Earth from the moon, gazing into the tree canopy in the jungles of Brazil and, in Sheboygan, enjoying an ice cream cone with "a tractor mechanic named Shirley" among her "thirty-seven friends." Author Matthew Swanson and illustrator Robbi Behr (Babies Ruin Everything) show readers how a lively imagination and a good book can carry you anywhere in this world--and beyond.

Over and Under the Pond (Chronicle, $16.99, hardcover, 48p., ages 5-8, 9781452145426, March 7, 2017) by Kate Messner, illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal, is the enchanting aqueous companion to Over and Under the Snow and Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt. A small boy and his mother row across a pond, exploring the cattails and painted turtles and great blue herons "over the pond" while talking about the minnows and dragonfly larvae and tadpoles that live "under the pond." Cool blue-lavender-gray-green artwork brings the pond to life, carrying the reader from late afternoon into the evening as boy and mom shift their focus over and under, over and under, with a rhythm like oars dipping in a pond.

"In the vastness of space lies a tiny sphere that orbits an ordinary, middle-aged star in a quiet backwater of the Milky Way." The Earth Book (360 Degrees/Tiger Tales, $29.99, hardcover, 64p., ages 8-up, 9781944530068, March 1, 2017) by Jonathan Litton, illustrated by Thomas Hegbrook, is a big, elegant celebration of life on Earth. Highly detailed tidbits in four categories--Physical Earth, Life on Earth, Earth Regions and Human Planet--invite close, leisurely scrutiny. Thick, creamy paper soaks up the rich dark colors of spreads describing the inner workings of the planet, perfect for readers who want bite-size chunks of knowledge about our vast home.

DK Publishing has a well-deserved reputation for producing authoritative compendiums of knowledge about an endless array of topics, chockablock with stunning photos and other illustrations. Utterly Amazing Earth (DK, $19.99, hardcover, 32p., ages 7-9, 9781465458674, March 21, 2017) by Dougal Jerram tackles one of the larger topics--Earth--with DK's trademark finesse. Pop-ups, flaps and wheels dramatize such earthly events as volcanoes and hailstorms, and diagrams and maps and manageable blocks of text provide good information about a range of fascinating subjects, including rocks and minerals, caves, "Icy Earth," seasons and life on Earth. Kids who love facts and explanations will eat this book up. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor