Loyalty Bookstore in Washington, D.C., officially reopened this past weekend following a renovation and name change, PoPville reported. The store, formerly Upshur Street Books, is located in the city's Petworth neighborhood and had its soft opening on Valentine's Day before hosting a grand opening celebration on Saturday.

Owner Hannah Oliver Depp bought Upshur Street Books from founder and original owner Paul Ruppert earlier this year, after being the store's managing partner for several months. She had also worked with Ruppert on a holiday pop-up shop in Silver Spring, Md., called Loyalty Bookstore, and has brought the same approach to the permanent Loyalty Bookstore location.

The bookstore now has a greater focus on children's books and diverse and intersectional fiction and nonfiction. During the renovations, Depp chose to move away from wall shelves in favor of more display tables, in order to give the store a "please touch" vibe. There is space for customers to read and book groups to gather. And over the next few weeks, Depp and her staff will be gradually ramping up the new Loyalty Bookstore's events program.

In Silver Spring, meanwhile, the Loyalty Bookstore pop-up has resumed operation and will be open at the Downtown Silver Spring Farmers Market this Saturday. On the same day, Loyalty will be hosting its "Too Lit to Quit" book club at the Wayne Library in Silver Spring. Depp hopes to eventually find a permanent location in Silver Spring.

The Blind Pig in progress.

The Blind Pig, a 3,500-square-foot bookstore, wine bar and cafe, will open in Paris, Tex., by the end of next month. According to owner Cristy Burns, the front half of the store will be devoted to books and hand-crafted, locally made gift items, while the back half of the store will be a "modern-day speakeasy" serving comfort food, coffee, beer, wine and more.

Burns reported that her book inventory will consist of "most categories you would find in a large bookstore," with a particular focus on children's books and work by local writers. Her plans for non-book and gift items include things like soaps, lotions and other bath products, along with throw pillows, tote bags and T-shirts, as well as wine glasses, locally farmed honey and seasonal peanut brittle.

In the speakeasy half of the store, which Burns plans to make accessible through a door hidden behind a large picture, she will serve dishes like alfredo pasta, baked ziti and cheese and olive platters to go with her selection of wines and beers. And even though the entrance will be hidden, customers will be able to go freely from one side of the store to the other.

Burns plans to host frequent events, using both the bookstore and the speakeasy. In the former, she'll have storytime events for children along with traditional author events, while in the latter she'll have live music, trivia nights, murder mysteries and more. She is also partnering with a travel company called Directions, Saint Louis to offer guided tours throughout the year. The first tour is scheduled to go to Napa Valley in May.

A lifelong book lover, Burns explained that she began to seriously consider opening a store of her own after the town's only bookstore, a Hastings, closed down. She added: "This is a dream come true for me and I cannot wait to bring a bookstore back to Paris and see people wandering amongst the shelves or relaxing and reading with a glass of wine."

Harper's Books, Lebanon, Tenn., is closing its current location in The Mill, but plans to reopen at a new location on the south end of Lebanon Square at 107 S. Cumberland St., the Democrat reported.

"We were down there painting the other day and saw a lot of people walking by and traffic on the street, so it looks like it'll be good for us," said owner James Kamer, adding that the new store will be a bit larger. He also noted that Lebanon's economic development director Sarah Haston had been a big help in finding and acquiring the new space on the square. Kamer and his wife, Andrea, opened Harper's Books in July 2017.

The lineup for BookExpo's Adult Book & Author Breakfast, scheduled for Thursday, May 30, has been announced. Rachel Maddow, political commentator, author and host of MSNBC's Emmy Award-winning The Rachel Maddow Show, will emcee and discuss her forthcoming, as yet untitled, book, for the first time.

Joining Maddow onstage will be Malcolm Gladwell to talk about his new book, Talking to Strangers; Karin Slaughter to discuss her upcoming thriller, The Last Widow; Ta-Nehisi Coates to preview his next work and first novel, The Water Dancer; and Marjorie Liu, to talk about her award-winning comic series Monstress, created with Sana Takeda.

"Each year, our Adult Book & Author Breakfast invites attendees to hear from an eclectic mix of storytellers who are each greatly impacting the industry," said Jennifer Martin, event director, BookExpo. "One of our most popular events of the show, the Breakfast offers an unparalleled opportunity to hear from some of the most prominent authors in publishing today."

The Children's Book & Author Breakfast, hosted by co-hosted by Jenna Bush Hager & Barbara Pierce Bush, will take place the following morning, on Friday, May 31.

W.E.B. Griffin, the prolific and bestselling author of military novels, died February 12, the Associated Press reported. He was 89. William E. Butterworth III enlisted in the Army just before his 17th birthday and later served in the Korean War. He eventually wrote more than 200 books as W.E.B. Griffin and various other names.

His many popular series included The Corps, Brotherhood of War, Badge of Honor, Men at War, Honor Bound, Presidential Agent, and Clandestine Operations. The AP noted that over 20 novels, including the upcoming The Attack, were written with his son, William E. Butterworth IV. Under his own name, he wrote several sequels in the 1970s to Richard Hooker's book M*A*S*H, which had been adapted into the hit movie and TV series.

Noting that more than 50 million copies of Griffin's books are in print in many languages, including Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese and Hungarian, a spokesperson for Putnam, his publisher, said the author was "known for his historical accuracy, richly drawn characters, thrilling adventure, crackling wit and astute aptitude for the heart and mind of a military hero" and "delighted readers for decades with his electrifying novels about the military, police, spies and counterspies."

The Twig Book Shop, San Antonio, Tex., celebrated the launch of bookseller Charlotte Sullivan Wild's debut picture book, The Amazing Idea of You, illustrated by Mary Lundquist (Bloomsbury). With a launch party, signings and a visit to Miss Anastasia's Twiglet story time, Twig sold more than 140 copies.

Jaimee Leigh, a bookseller at her family's Barrow Bookstore in Concord, Mass., has a "talent for creating one-of-a-kind birdhouses" that aren't just functional, but "pieces of art, each one designed around a work of literature," Wicked Local Concord reported.

Among her "Well-Read Birdhouses" is one inspired by The Hobbit, with a roof that features glow-in-the-dark lettering in the same original font as Tolkien's books; as well as a suet bird cage inspired by Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience.

Leigh traced the idea for the birdhouses back to four years ago when she was visiting her godmother in Sligo, Ireland, and attended a creative arts competition. The "Well-Read Birdhouse" idea took shape "when I returned to Concord," she said. "They were intended as displays for the Barrow Bookstore, and became for sale when people asked to buy them."

She does extensive research into each book she bases her designs on, and each one can take 60 to 80 hours to complete. "I don't visualize the final product ahead of time," she said. "It comes as I'm working."

Green Apple Books, San Francisco, Calif., tweeted an evocative image of the bookshop at night: "Come towards the light!"

Hillary Brady has joined DK as digital marketing manager. Earlier Brady was a digital content specialist at Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum.

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At Chronicle Books:

Michaela Whatnall has been promoted to school & library marketing coordinator on the children's marketing team. Previously she was special projects marketing assistant.

Stephanie Cargill-Greer has been promoted to export sales coordinator. Previously she was export sales assistant.

American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War by Duncan Ryūken Williams (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press), a trailer that features George Takei.

HBO is in early development on Loner, a drama based on the 2016 novel by Teddy Wayne, who will write the pilot and co-executive produce, Deadline reported.

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Neil Gaiman has teamed with Fremantle and the Jim Henson Company to develop a reimagined version of Henson's iconic '80s anthology series, The Storyteller, for television. Deadline reported that the new incarnation, written and executive produced by Gaiman, "will create a mystical world combining various fairy tales and folklore."

Noting that it will be updated to work "for the binging kind" of viewer of today, Gaiman added: "Part of what fascinates me about The Storyteller is the stuff that we don't know. Who was the Storyteller, why was he telling these stories, was he a goblin, what kind of creature? What I'd love to do is an inside story that's as long as the outside story. We're going to find out a lot about who the storyteller is, we're going to find out things we don't even know that we don't know. We're going to begin in a Northern kingdom where stories are forbidden and where the act of telling a story is liable and can get you imprisoned or executed. If you put a storyteller into that situation, things would need to start getting interactive."

Vicky Jones (Killing Eve) will write the screen adaptation of Simon Parkin's upcoming nonfiction book, A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Secret Game That Won the War. The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Amblin Partners and its DreamWorks Pictures banner, which was behind Steven Spielberg's classic Saving Private Ryan, acquired film rights to the book.

The project will be produced by Marc Platt and Jared LeBoff of Mark Platt Productions, as well as DreamWorks. Platt, who last produced Mary Poppins Returns, was nominated for Oscars for La La Land and Bridge of Spies.

The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals has released longlists for the Carnegie Medal (author of a book for children & young people) and Kate Greenaway Medal (illustrator). CILIP noted that the awards' mission "to recognize a diverse range of voices and perspectives is reflected in this year's longlist, with books portraying the experiences of children and young people across the globe.... This year's list spans multiple forms; including fiction, graphic novels, verse novels, poetry and a novella--reflecting contemporary issues as wide-ranging as depression, assisted suicide, controlling behavior, grief, gender conformity, the refugee crisis and women's rights, and helping young people to navigate these important issues."

Shortlists will be announced March 19 and winners named June 18. Both winners receive £500 (about $650) worth of books to donate to their local library, a golden medal and a £5,000 (about $6,520) Colin Mears Award cash prize. You can find the complete CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway longlists here.

One title from each of the medal shortlists will also be named recipient of the Amnesty CILIP Honor for works "that most distinctively illuminated, upheld or celebrated human rights."

In addition, the Shadowers' Choice Award, a new honor, has been introduced this year. CILIP said it "will be voted for and awarded by the children and young people who shadow the medals. This award has evolved out of CILIP's recent Diversity Review, which identified opportunities to empower and celebrate the young people involved in the Medals through the shadowing scheme by giving them a more significant voice and visible presence in the process and prize giving."

Alison Brumwell, chair of the judging panel, said she was "overwhelmed by the caliber of this year's longlists. The authors and illustrators recognized this year for their outstanding achievements have produced works which entertain, challenge, inspire, and even outrage. The forty books selected by judges offer intimate insights into family life, superb world-building and thoughtful, incisive explorations of complex themes and issues. Young readers have the opportunity to encounter characters in a diverse range of narratives who both reflect their own experiences and build empathy for different ways of living. This year's shadowing groups will have plenty to debate and discuss!"

The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance has announced its Winter Okra Picks, "a collection of the best forthcoming Southern books" chosen by the region's indie booksellers each season as the upcoming Southern titles they are most looking forward to handselling:

Meet Miss Fancy by Irene Latham (Putnam Books for Young Readers)
Sugar Run by Mesha Maren (Algonquin Books)
The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man's Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America by Tommy Tomlinson (S&S)
The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi (Wednesday Books)
The Current by Tim Johnston (Algonquin)
Miraculum by Steph Post (Polis Books)
Parkland Speaks: Survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas Share Their Stories by Sarah Lerner (Crown Books for Young Readers)
We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin (One World)
American Pop by Snowden Wright (Morrow)
The Atlas of Reds and Blues by Devi S. Laskar (Counterpoint)
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli (Knopf)
A-List by D. P. Lyle (Oceanview)
The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray (Berkley)
Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee by Jeff Zentner (Crown Books for Young Readers)
A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself by William Boyle (Pegasus Books)
Solitary by Albert Woodfox (Grove Press)
The Good Detective by John McMahon (Putnam)
Poetree by Shauna Lavoy Reynolds, illustrated by Shahrzad Maydani (Dial)

Neil Strandberg is Shelf Awareness's technology and operations director. His book career began in 1988 at San Francisco's A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books but many are more familiar with his 23 years at Denver's Tattered Cover Book Store. In 2012, Neil joined the American Booksellers Association as its director of technology, and then relocated to Seattle in 2015 in order to join Shelf Awareness. Neil and his family enjoy exploring the mountains of Washington State and, when not blissed-out on a soggy bicycle or while running, he can sometimes be found reading. Slowly.

On your nightstand now:

The nightstand collects books I haven't finished but which interested me enough that I want them near at hand for when the right moment finally strikes. Today, The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, Middlemarch by George Eliot, Stoner by John Edward Williams, The Recognitions by William Gaddis, The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne (so short and I still didn't finish. Oy.) and Independent People by Halldór Laxness are waiting for the stars to align. The book I'm currently reading, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne, is one such example: it had been on the nightstand for years, after I put it down in 2010 having read only 30 pages. On this second attempt the chemistry is right.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I could say the World Book Encyclopedia. During my elementary school years, I would feign illness or exaggerate symptoms in order to stay home from school and spend time with the 20-some volumes that comprised it. There were exceptions, though: in fifth grade, I really enjoyed John D. Fitzgerald's The Great Brain and Donald J. Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown series. To this day, clock radios still remind me of the critical clue in one of the Encyclopedia Brown mysteries.

Your top five authors:

No such thing, say I, and it changes over one's reading life, but I've gone back to Raymond Chandler, Iris Murdoch, P.G. Wodehouse, Jim Harrison, Jane Gardam, Charles Dickens and Neal Stephenson, to name seven. And what to do with singularly meaningful books? Setting aside how many of an author's books I haven't read, I can't help but mention my excitement with Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day, Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor and Clarice Lispector's Near to the Wild Heart.  

Book you've faked reading:

I don't think I've misrepresented what I read but in college I did not do justice to Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook or Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse.

Book you're an evangelist for:

None. It makes me uncomfortable to even think about. My enthusiasm for a book is the product of private alchemical processes which have no relevance to the outside world. This might seem odd for a bookseller but since we all find our own way from one book to the next, my approach to bookselling had always been to learn as much as I could about the reader's needs in order to use my expertise to lead that person to good choices for their own alchemy. Or whatever: what anyone else should read still has nothing to do with me.

Book you've bought for the cover:

I could say all of them but that's only slightly incorrect. I'm a sucker for bigger books--a trade size paperback over 500 pages? I like it already!--and I'm methodical about choosing what to read next, which includes look and feel. As I see it, if one is going to hold the damn thing for hours and perhaps carry it outside of the house, one had better enjoy the acts of both holding and seeing it. For me this definitely means I'm often making my final decision based upon: These are all great but I sure like how this one looks. 

Book you hid from your parents:

My parents never uttered a word about my reading, but they didn't need to; I self-regulated more effectively than any parent might have. As a high school freshman, I spent lunch breaks in the library and deliberately read The Catcher in the Rye on such breaks, believing that I'd receive a dangerous mark in a permanent file were I to check it out. At about this same time, I secretly read (okay, maybe not the whole thing, I was looking for particular things) the copy of Judy Blume's Wifey my mother brought on a family vacation. I didn't hide the book in either case, but I did make efforts to conceal my reading.

Book that changed your life:

Don't they all, just a little bit? Isn't that the point? That said, I didn't really understand just how much books were preferable to people until I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in close succession in or around the sixth grade. This realization, more so than the books themselves, was life-changing.

Favorite line from a book:

My memory for sentences is exactly the same as my memory for jokes: by the time it reaches the end, I have forgotten the beginning.

But in keeping with the spirit of the question, a passage from Renata Adler's Speedboat rolls around somewhere in my head pretty much every time I leave the house: "At six one morning, Will went out in jeans and frayed sweater to buy a quart of milk. A tourist bus went by. The megaphone was directed at him. 'There's one,' it said. That was in the 1960's. Ever since, he's wondered. There's one what?"

"There's one" nailed my insecurities so well that I have had to remind myself on more than one occasion that the tourist bus megaphone wasn't actually directed at me in real life.

Five books you'll never part with:

I was never one for collecting, I don't scribble in the margins, and early in my career I successfully trained family to stop buying books for me as gifts. So books don't hold much in the way of sentimental value and, now that I've moved across the country twice in a short period of time, I have learned that I can part with all of them.

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

None. The closest I come to this idea is a thought I had at 20-something that reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov as an older man might be really different from reading it as a younger man. Thirty years, two marriages and a couple of kids later, I've been thinking about picking it up again.

One night, as a girl sleeps in her bed, the red-collared cat on her blanket spies a red toy mouse on the floor. Through a portal in the wall arrives a blue-collared cat, which makes off with the mouse back through the hatch. The red-collared cat follows the other cat through the portal. The girl, who has awoken and taken all this in, can't be expected to stay put, can she?

That's when things get weird--for the reader. (The girl and cat remain unruffled throughout their adventure.) After the girl follows her cat through the portal, she appears with her head sticking out of a hole in what looks like the floor, yet her braids point skyward. Turning the page and rotating the book 180 degrees solves the gravity-defying hair problem: now her head is poking out from a hole in the ceiling. From this vantage point, she observes her cat entering a portal in the wall. After she shinnies down some red fabric (it looks an awful lot like the blanket on her bed), she trails her cat through the portal. A turn of the page shows the girl emerging from the hole; readers can help her out by rotating the book 90 degrees to position her upright.

Girl and cat proceed through this surreal obstacle course, which includes a ball pit slide, a rainbow-colored conveyor belt and a free-floating play space where children of a range of ethnic backgrounds draw, Hula-Hoop and so on. Finally, the adventurers are confronted by their ceiling-walking doppelgängers: the blue-collared cat and someone who looks exactly like the girl but for a blue emblem on her nightgown. She tosses the red toy mouse to the girl; they wave goodbye, and the girl and her red-collared cat enter the portal leading back to her bedroom.

With its loop-the-loop perspective and call for interactivity, Another will remind readers of Press Here, and the girl's unblinking entrée into another dimension, perhaps of her own improvisation, calls to mind Harold and the Purple Crayon. But this isn't to attribute anything other than full creative authorship to Christian Robinson, whose illustrator credits include the justly ballyhooed Last Stop on Market Street. Robinson makes this wholly original wordless fantasy utterly coherent thanks to clutter-free, digitally tweaked paint-and-collage art that pointedly doesn't hide its real-world seams (brushstrokes, crumpled paper). Most readers will gladly surrender to this mind-bending romp, which may not be over for the protagonists at book's end: on the last page, the cat, back on the again-sleeping girl's bed, lifts the edge of the blanket to reveal a blue toy mouse on the floor. Here they go again? --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author

Shelf Talker: In this exhilarating wordless picture book, a girl and her cat enter a portal to a physically skewed world where they encounter, among other things, their doppelgängers.