Author Wiley Cash and his wife, photographer Mallory Cash, plan to open Floodplain Books, featuring new books, local-branded merchandise, and literature-related items, in downtown Wilmington, N.C. Wilmington Biz reported that the new bookshop, at 23 N. Front St., is expected to open by late summer or early fall next year, and "will offer something Wilmington currently doesn't have: a place to host major touring authors." 

Cash said that while the Port City already has multiple independent bookstores they admire, "we saw an opportunity for us to get in, because there are so many writers and readers living in Wilmington. It's such a literary town, but a lot of writers don't come here on a book tour." 

His books include the novels A Land More Kind Than Home, This Dark Road to Mercy, The Last Ballad, and When Ghosts Come Home. Cash also teaches at the University of North Carolina-Asheville.

After deciding to open the shop, the Cashes contacted owners of other indies in town, who responded that "the more book culture there is in town, the better we're all gonna do," Wiley Cash noted.

Wiley and Mallory Cash

"All of these bookstores do something a little different. I think we're all going to be able to work together and refer to each other," Mallory Cash added.

The building dates back to around the 1840s, and the front of the structure will be brought forward to its original footprint on the street, according to Wiley Cash, who added that the bookstore will have access to the building's third-floor, 3,000-square-foot event venue, which can hold 300 people. 

The store's relationship with customers will be key. "If you come to Floodplain, we and our employees are gonna know about the books on our shelf. We're gonna be able to talk about them," Wiley Cash said. "We're gonna be able to open a dialogue with you about what do you like, what have you read?"

He noted that independent bookstores deserve a lot of credit for his own book sales: "If my book had been launched into the Amazon refuse pile, nobody would have read my books. It was because independent booksellers and independent books sales reps made a conscious decision to put my books in the hands of readers."

The Cashes will get off to an early start in their endeavor by hosting a series of online literary seminars this winter featuring writers John Grisham, Ann Patchett, Imani Perry, and more. "Each session will be recorded and shared for registrants who can't attend in real time. Every cent directly supports our journey in opening Floodplain Books," they noted.

Finney's Books, a romance-focused bookstore in Austin, Tex., held a grand opening celebration on Saturday, December 13, CultureMap Austin reported.

Located at 3823 Airport Blvd., #D, the bookstore sells a wide assortment of romance titles representing plenty of sub-genres, including contemporary romance, romantasy, and monster romance, among others.

"In the last couple years, like so many folks around me, I discovered the absolute joy to be found in romance books," wrote owner Cameron Lagrone. "What I once thought of as outdated regressive stories have instead been a place where I've found stories that celebrate love and pleasure in all their forms. And as a queer woman, I've been delighted with the ever-expanding catalog of queer love stories that celebrate that love is love."

The bookstore is named for Lagrone's dog, Finney, and she wrote: "Finney would like me to note that he loves a good audiobook, having been forced to listen to dozens. He loves a good MM romance."

The grand opening on Saturday ran from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and featured coffee and baked goods sourced from local businesses, along with other refreshments. Customers were entered into a signed book and merch giveaway with the purchase of a book, and the first 25 shoppers received a free store-branded tote bag.

Comma Bookstore & Social Hub, a Black-owned bookstore that opened in Flint, Mich., in 2020, is closing its bricks-and-mortar location and transitioning to an online-only model, Flintside reported.

Owner Egypt Otis at Comma

While owner Egypt Otis has not announced a final opening date for the bookstore, a closing sale began on Saturday, November 29, and Comma will hold its final ArtWalk event tonight at 6 p.m. Once the physical store closes, Otis plans to grow Comma's online presence, expand its inventory, and host events in partnership with cultural organizations. She intends to focus on work that preserves Black history and community history.

"There is a very intentional effort to erase history," she said. "It takes a community effort to protect the institutions charged with maintaining these stories."

Per Flintside, Otis attributed the decision to financial factors such as "declining arts funding, reliance on nonprofit grants, and economic challenges in Flint," alongside personal ones. She told the publication: "My mental health, emotional health, all of those things were suffering. Now I can invest in my well-being again."

Comma first opened in September 2020, with the help of a GoFundMe campaign Otis launched that raised more than $11,000. The bookstore focused on Black and brown authors, creators, and culture, and in addition to books sold art and other locally sourced items. At the time, Otis told MLive her vision was to "create a centralized space where we can have accurate representation of people, and when they come in here I want them to feel like they see themselves on the shelves."

"I think the reason why people loved it so much is because they really felt invested in it," Otis told Flintside. "They felt like it was theirs. It was for the city, and it was by the city."

Joanna Trollope, author of more than 30 novels "whose portrayals of British domestic life made her one of the nation's most widely read authors," died on December 11 at age 82, the Guardian reported. "Her early works, written under the pseudonym Caroline Harvey, were historical romances, but from the mid-1980s onward, she turned to contemporary fiction, a shift that would define her reputation."

Joanna Trollope

The Guardian observed that Trollope's breakthrough came with novels "including The Rector's Wife, which in 1991 knocked leading authors off the top of the charts, and later works including A Village Affair and Mum & Dad, which tackled issues ranging from infidelity, remarriage, parenthood and adoption to the strains on the so-called 'sandwich generation' caring for both their children and their parents...

"Throughout the 1990s and '00s, she produced a succession of bestsellers, including A Village Affair, Next of Kin, Other People's Children and Marrying the Mistress. Many were adapted for television, bringing her stories to an even wider audience. Explaining her success, she said in a 1993 interview: 'I think my books are just the dear old traditional novel making a quiet comeback.' "

A fifth-generation niece of author Anthony Trollope, she was honored with an OBE in 1996 and later a CBE for services to literature.

Some criticized her for writing "Aga Sagas," middle-brow romances set in the English countryside, but Trollope disputed the "patronising" categorization, saying, "Actually, the novels are quite subversive, quite bleak." The Guardian added, "Rather than fairytale versions of domestic life, her books were praised by critics for their honest reflections of ordinary people's dilemmas, addressing themes of broken families, difficult relationships, love and betrayal."

Trollope's literary agent, James Gill, said, "It is with great sadness that we learn of the passing of Joanna Trollope, one of our most cherished, acclaimed and widely enjoyed novelists. Joanna will be mourned by her children, grandchildren, family, her countless friends and--of course--her readers."

Quoted by the Bookseller, Joanna Prior, CEO of Pan Macmillan, which published her since 2017, called Trollope "a treasured author" who was "much admired for her astute judgement, sharp wit, fun company and steely determination, and appreciated for the kindness she showed to those who worked closely with her. Joanna and I got to know each other before I joined Pan Macmillan as she was a trustee of the National Literacy Trust when I joined their board.

"She was an inspiration in the way she supported the work of the charity and helped with fundraising, always making time and speaking with passion about the importance of books and reading. Her own novels were captivating and thought provoking and it was a privilege to be her publisher."

Jeremy Trevathan, Trollope's publisher at Pan Macmillan, said: "Joanna was such a witty, wise and empathetic author who wrote with a really unerring insight into the complexities and anxieties of contemporary family life, but she was also just lots of fun to be with. It was such a privilege for us that she came to us for her later fiction. The only consolation is that she leaves us all a wonderful legacy of compelling, insightful social commentary, portraying family dynamics with warmth, intelligence and a keen eye for human foibles."

Posted by Friends to Lovers bookstore in Alexandria, Va.: "Love looks pretty on you. These gorgeous wedding photos were taken right outside our store, and our hearts are absolutely melting. We're so grateful to be even a tiny part of your love story. Moments like these remind us why we built this community. Photography by the wonderful Jenna Leigh Photography."

"We had a breathtaking December sunset over the bookstore today! So grateful to be here in lovely Old Town Fort Collins!" Bookstore on the Square, Fort Collins, Colo., posted on Instagram.

Emily Engwall has joined Sourcebooks as marketing and publicity manager, Poisoned Pen Press.

Today:
Today: Sam Heughan, author of The Cocktail Diaries: A Spirited Adventure (Quadrille, $29.99, 9781837834198).

Also on Today: Mindy Pelz, author of Age Like a Girl: How Menopause Rewires Your Brain for Mental Clarity, Increased Confidence, and Renewed Energy (Hay House, $29.99, 9781401975562).

Fresh Air: Zadie Smith, author of Dead and Alive: Essays (Penguin Press, $30, 9780593834688).

Jimmy Kimmel Live: Michelle Obama, co-author of The Look (Crown, $50, 9780593800706). 

Tomorrow:
Today: Jonathan Haidt and Catherine Price, authors of The Amazing Generation: Your Guide to Fun and Freedom in a Screen-filled World (Rocky Pond Books, $14.99, 9798217111916). They will also appear on the View.

Tonight: Martha Stewart, author of Entertaining (Clarkson Potter, $50, 9798217034871).

Searchlight Pictures has set Taika Waititi to direct Barn 8, based on the novel by Deb Olin Unferth, with Jessica Gao (She-Hulk: Attorney at Law) writing the script. Deadline reported that the novel "revolves around a caper: two U.S. auditors of chicken eggs plot to heist a million chickens from a factory farm, leading a team of activists in a chaotic rescue mission."

Gotham Group's Eric Robinson and Ellen Goldsmith-Vein (Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere) acquired rights to the book, and will produce the film with Waititi Productions' Waititi, Ishi Metkar, and Michelle Chan.

Shortlists have been released for the 2025 Westminster Book Awards, which is presented by the Booksellers Association of the U.K. & Ireland and the Publishers Association to recognize "excellent political writing" in three categories, the Bookseller reported.

Books were nominated by publishers, with authors and booksellers selecting the shortlists. Parliamentarians will vote to decide the category winners, who will be honored at the Houses of Parliament on February 4. This year's shortlisted titles are:

Nonfiction or fiction by a parliamentarian 
The New Total War: From Child Abduction to Cyber Attacks and Drones to Disinformation by Bob Seely 
The Football Battalions: The Elite Footballers Who Fought in the Great War by Christopher Evans 
Eclipsing the West: China, India and the Forging of a New World by Vince Cable 
Breaking the Taboo: Why We Need to Talk about Birth Trauma by Theo Clarke  

Biography by a parliamentarian
Frankly by Nicola Sturgeon 
Why I Care: And Why Care Matters by Ed Davey 
The Most Dangerous Man in Britain? The Political Writings of Tony Benn by Tony Benn (with an introduction by Melissa Benn) 
A Life and a Half by Chris Bryant

Political book by a non-parliamentarian 
Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams 
The Eyes of Gaza by Plestia Alaqad 
A Barrister for the Earth by Monica Feria-Tinta 
A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern

BA managing director Meryl Halls said: "At a time when readers around the world are seeing their freedom to choose and buy the books they want already compromised or actively eroded, it is more important than ever that we in the U.K. celebrate the freedoms we are privileged to hold--the freedom for readers to buy, and for bookshops to curate titles from every corner of intellectual thought, political perspective and rigorous research. With this year's shortlist tackling issues from disinformation and big tech to the climate crisis and political leadership, we are delighted, as always, to gather at Westminster to champion the nuanced, researched and impactful political writing that we in the U.K. are fortunate to be free to publish, sell and read." 

Throughout her debut collection, Patchwork Dolls, Hong Kong writer and gallerist Ysabelle Cheung writes with a beguiling matter-of-factness as she impressively explores seemingly fantastical impossibilities over 10 stories. In the disturbing titular story, these so-called "Patchwork Dolls" sell their facial features for thousands of dollars to "moneyed people seeking an upgrade to newer, trendier faces." This "method of transdermal patchworking" eventually comes under fire for "murky racial inequities": most buyers are "affluent white women dabbling in ethnically ambiguous faces," and sellers are "primarily disadvantaged women of color." The narrator, recalling the anti-Asian racism she endured, remains conflicted: "On a white woman, my face was desired, ambiguous, a symbol of power and wealth. But for me it had been a curse, something I desperately needed to scrub out."

In "Mycomorphosis," Noel's debilitating migraines prove to be "extra fungus in your head." Once she's been diagnosed, she begins to see "brain fungus everywhere." In "Find Your Spirit," a woman's dead twin sister returns to convince the living sibling to download an app that tracks the unliving "as long as she remains close to the earthly plane." In "Herbs," a septuagenarian widow can't escape her dead husband's clones of various ages--youthful 21, emotionally abusive 45, familiar 75--who appear by her side wherever she goes. In "Please, Get Out and Dance," Frankie, her mother, and grandmother attempt to outrun the disappearances of anything and everything by jumping cliffside into the deep sea. In "Galatea," a woman goes home with her date, and leaves with his CompanionDoll--"not a sex toy.... More for companionship"--who "looks... like a generic female office worker," rather like the woman herself. In "Not in This Neighborhood," an extraterrestrial refugee has difficulty adjusting to life on Earth--"she had chosen America simply because she had been to no other place on Earth"--where her name is truncated to just "T" for the difficulty of its "sloping vowels," where, once she migrated, "the narrative changed from a language of community to one of singularity, of hostility."

What elevates many of Cheung's stories into standouts is her uncanny ability effortlessly to spin today's all-too-familiar challenges into tomorrow's speculative extremes: the jarring disappearance of books; escaping colonialism's destruction; matched cohabitation instead of dating; interplanetary immigration. With inventive aplomb, Cheung skillfully strikes a memorable balance between the utterly disconcerting and thoroughly engaging. --Terry Hong

Shelf Talker: Ysabelle Cheung's remarkable debut collection, Patchwork Dolls, presents 10 stories of women facing challenges, simultaneously somehow both familiar and fantastical.