"Stores like that--independent bookstores--they're portals into all these different worlds. They give you access to all these different worlds and, for me, that became my first encouragement to imagine and to create and to learn. I wanted to learn about everything. I wanted to pick up every book. It encouraged me to imagine.

"And to this day, whenever I walk into a bookstore, I feel safe and welcome, but also that encouragement to imagine and create. A bookstore is like having a dog--there's a universality to it. People from all different backgrounds and cultures can come in and share being a fan of a book or anticipating a new book. In the same way that people of all different backgrounds or political affiliations can enjoy talking about our dogs. Bookstores give us space to be a community and I love it."

Givens Books & Little Dickens, Lynchburg, Va., will change hands next month: Anneli Givens Morse will buy the 50-year-old bookstore from her father, Danny Givens, in August and officially take over in September, the Roanoke Times reported.

Founded by Givens's father, George, in 1976 under the name Boonshire Books, the store first occupied a renovated gas station before moving and becoming Givens Books in 1979. In the late 1980s Little Dickens, a toy store, opened, and Danny Givens bought the bookstore from his father in 1999. The same year he built the store's current home at 2236 Lakeside Dr.

Givens told the Roanoke Times the bookstore saw record sales in 2025 and so far, 2026 has been the store's "strongest" in its history. He said he is thrilled to be keeping the bookstore in the family and worried that if he ever sold the bookstore to an investor, "it would be the death knell." He added that when his daughter, who previously worked in the tech industry, told him she wanted to buy the store, he was overwhelmed. "I cried myself to sleep," Givens said. "I was in a state of shock." 

Givens Morse said she left the tech world because she was "feeling algorithm fatigue" and did not want to spend her life that way. Looking ahead, she wants to expand the store's offerings of workshops and community events and emphasize its role as a third space.

"I have such strong ideas of what this business is and what this business can be for another 50 years," Givens Morse said. "The next chapter is figuring out, in an ever-increasing digital world, how we slow down and really look at what the community needs and how we can best help each other."

The Fleuria, a mobile romance bookstore, has opened a permanent installation called the Fleuria Airstream, at the LAB Anti-Mall in Costa Mesa, Calif., Culture OC reported.

Built out of a renovated Airstream trailer, the Fleuria Airstream debuted at the LAB Anti-Mall on June 13. It will remain there permanently, while the original Fleuria mobile bookstore, built out of a 1968 Volkswagen truck, will continue to make pop-up appearances around Orange County. Both the truck and trailer prioritize romance books while also carrying a selection of popular fiction. 

"It felt like a really good in-between stop," owner Stephanie Pao told Culture OC. "It's like a brick-and-mortar store, but it's a small footprint and something that I could easily transition to. It's a good stepping stone into something larger, but not so scary that it feels like a huge risk."

Pao first launched Fleuria in March 2025 after leaving a career in marketing. She'd wanted to open a bookstore for years, but felt it was better to start with something on a smaller scale than a bricks-and-mortar location. Initially, she'd thought of going with an online or pop-up store, but after seeing a vintage truck she really liked, decided a mobile store was the way to go.

Pao has created an audiobook walking club, and the Fleuria mobile store has started a summer reading series that will include two appearances at a brewery in Long Beach, Calif.  

Per Culture OC, the Fleuria is part of a "trilogy" of romance stores in Orange County that includes Heartbound Book Shop in Anaheim and Mystic Box Bookstore in Huntington Beach.

In the second quarter ended June 30, net sales at Amazon rose 20%, to $200.6 billion, and net income more than tripled to $62.6 billion (a gain that includes $53.4 billion in non-operating pre-tax other income, primarily from the company's investment in Anthropic). 

North American sales rose 16%, to $116.2 billion, and international sales rose 15%, to $42.2 billion, but the biggest gain was at AWS, the company's cloud computing and web services provider, where sales climbed 37%, to $42.2 billion.

The gains in sales and net income were above analysts' expectations. And while some investors have been concerned about tech companies' huge investments in AI and data centers, they appear to approve Amazon's capital expenditure estimates of more than $200 billion for 2026 because of the gains in AWS sales. As a result, in after-market trading, Amazon stock jumped about 13%, to $266 a share.

Amazon president and CEO Andy Jassy said, "AWS is booming, growing 36.7% year-over-year in Q2--our fastest growth in 18 quarters--and our AI and Chips businesses each eclipsed run rates of more than $25 billion. In Stores, we again set record delivery speeds for Prime members in the first half of the year--over 40% more items delivered same-day or overnight, with Grocery and Everyday Essentials growing meaningfully faster than the rest of the business. And, Advertising had another strong quarter with 26% year-over-year growth. There's a lot to be excited about, and we have much more coming for customers in the second half of the year and beyond."

Amazon predicted that in the third quarter net sales will grow between 9% and 12%, to $197 billion-$202 billion.

Rebecca Klassen

The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass., has named Rebecca Klassen as its chief curator and Craig Langlois as director of education. Klassen will join the Carle in September after 13 years at the New York Historical, where she served as curator of material culture and decorative arts. Langlois, who started in his new position in January 2026, is an education and museum leader with more than two decades of experience, including 15 years at the Berkshire Museum.
 
"We are thrilled to welcome Rebecca to The Carle and are delighted that Craig is already making such a positive impact as a member of our leadership team," said Jennifer Schantz, executive director of the Carle. "As we advance our strategic plan, Rebecca's deep curatorial experience and commitment to research and scholarship will help to continue establishing The Carle as the leading voice in picture book art, while Craig's innovative approach to education and community engagement is expanding opportunities for visitors of all ages to connect with the art, artists, and stories that inspire us. Together, they will strengthen The Carle's leadership in exhibitions, scholarship, and educational excellence."

Benjamin Alire Sáenz, a priest, teacher, poet, novelist, and artist "whose complex life and acclaimed work have been widely recognized," died July 28, El Paso Matters reported. He was 71. Sáenz's works include the PEN/Faulkner-winning Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club and the bestselling Aristotle and Dante novels.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz (photo: Vantage Point Studios)

"What Ben did that nobody else could get away with is be bold enough to be sentimental, to write heartbreaking things that some people might think are too emotional," said author and friend Daniel Chacón, who is chairman of the Creative Writing Department at the University of Texas at El Paso. "That's what he did best."

Born in Old Picacho, N.M., a small farming community near Las Cruces, Sáenz drew from his life for his writing. "It is my stubborn heart that's made me the writer that I have become. There was no Plan B. I was going to become a writer," he said in a TEDx Talk in El Paso in 2023.  

In 1972, Sáenz earned a bachelor's in humanities and philosophy at the St. Thomas Seminary in Denver. He later studied theology at the University of Louvain in Belgium before entering the Catholic priesthood, serving in El Paso for three years before leaving his order.

"Ben was irrepressibly hopeful of the human spirit," said Ruben Garcia, a friend and founder of the Annunciation House network of migrant shelters in El Paso. "That was non-negotiable for him--the human spirit--and he was incredibly protective about that."

After leaving the priesthood, Sáenz returned to school, earning a master's in creative writing from the University of Texas at El Paso, then joined the faculty there, teaching creative writing and serving as chair of the department while publishing poetry and fiction. He retired from the university in 2016.

In the 1990s, Sáenz published his debut poetry collection, Calendar of Dust, which won an American Book Award; Carry Me Like Water, a novel that won the Southwest Book Award; and The House of Forgetting. He also wrote several children's books, including The Dog Who Loved Tortillas, A Gift From Papa Diego, and in 2006 the YA novel Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood.

His two most prominent books were published in 2012, El Paso Matters noted: "Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, a young adult novel set in El Paso in the 1980s, centers on two Mexican-American teenage boys who become friends and fall in love. His collection of short stories, Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club, is set in El Paso, Ciudad Juárez, and the bar at the foot of the international bridge that connects the two cities." In addition to the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the latter book won a Lambda Literary Award and a Stonewall Honor. The Texas Institute of Letters honored Sáenz with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020.  

He published Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World, a sequel to the earlier novel, in 2021. It was adapted into an independent film in 2023. On September 29, two new books will be released: Grandma Fina's Wonderful Umbrella, illustrated by Raúl the Third, with color by Elaine Bay (HarperCollins) and When the World Was Happy (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)

Justin Chanda, senior v-p and publisher of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, said: "There is no book I am prouder to have published than Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. Knowing and working with Ben was an absolute honor. We've lost a luminary, but his books will continue to change lives for generations. I am so grateful for that."
 
Kendra Levin, v-p and editorial director, added: "Benjamin had a remarkable gift for making you fall in love with the characters he wrote about, because he saw them as real people with a full and rich humanity. His tremendous affection and admiration for young people shone through in everything he wrote for teens, and radiated from him in conversation, too. He was a true poet who was constantly challenging himself in his work and, even with his last works and while in poor health, he was still pushing himself to do his best writing. We won't see another one like him again and I feel extraordinarily privileged to have gotten to edit his work and to know his loving, funny and wise spirit."

Many years ago, Terri LeBlanc, co-owner of Swamp Fox Bookstore, Marion, Iowa, visited Bakka-Phoenix Books in Toronto, Canada, and she had recommended the Canadian store to her customers who were vacationing there. Recently, Kristen Chew (left) from Bakka-Phoenix Books came to Swamp Fox to say thank you. The two exchanged store swag and book recommendations.

Posted on Facebook during the regional deluge yesterday by TidePool BookShop in Worcester, Mass.: "I know, I know... it's pouring rain out there... but, it's cozy and dry inside here at the bookstore--plus we have puzzles of The Odyssey!"

At Macmillan:

Brad Wood has been promoted to v-p, online sales.

Diego Molano Rodriguez has been promoted to director, trade sales.

Elizabeth Rine has joined the company as director, children's sales, trade sales.

Kaitlyn Cullen has been promoted to associate national account manager.

Gwyneth Bechunas has joined the company as HPLLC (trade sales), manager, operations, planning, & administration.

Renee Coppola has joined the company as senior manager, email marketing, CIMA.

Emma Greydanus has joined the company as manager, retail media advertising, CIMA.

Samantha Slavin has moved from the Fableistik team to the trade sales team as manager, national accounts.

Katie Layton has been promoted to sales associate.

Sophia Malak has been named assistant, client services, trade sales. She was formerly an intern in distribution and in kid's sales. Earlier she was a bookseller at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, Calif.

The House with Nobody in It by Jon Klassen (Candlewick Press).

Noting that "the appetite for Agatha Christie appears to be at an all-time high," Deadline reported that the iconic crime author's estate had record sales last year. Agatha Christie Limited posted revenue of nearly £33 million (about $43.9 million) in 2025, which was the highest level of sales in the company's 40-year history and up 24% over 2024. It broke the previous record of £26.7 million (about $35.5 million in 2018).

Agatha Christie Limited generated a pre-tax profit of £20 million (about $26.6 million) last year, up from £13.7 million (about $18.2 million) in 2024, according to the earnings. The company attributed the results to increases in "publishing, TV distribution, and licensing revenues." It also noted that Agatha Christie's "library programs also had strong sales performances."

Daniel Schonning has won the 2026 Four Quartets Prize for his collection As When Waking (University of Chicago Press). Sponsored by the T.S. Eliot Foundation and the Poetry Society of America, the prize celebrates the multipart poem and is awarded for a unified and complete sequence of poems published in the U.S. in a print or online journal, chapbook, or book.

Judges also selected Juliana Spahr for "scotch broom" from Ars Poeticas (Wesleyan University Press) and Annie Wenstrup for The Museum of Unnatural Histories (Wesleyan University Press) as finalists.

Schonning receives $20,000, and each finalist gets $1,000.

photo: Sophia Spring

Tudor historian and chief historian of Historic Royal Palaces Tracy Borman follows up on her authoritative nonfiction--among which Smithsonian selected The Stolen Crown and Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I as some of their best history books of the year--with a historical novel. The House of Boleyn (Atlantic Monthly Press, August 4, 2026) weaves the dramatic history of the Boleyn family into a richly imagined tale of ambition, bloodlines, and the opulent and deadly court of Henry VIII.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

The House of Boleyn casts dramatic new light on Tudor England's most famous family through the lens of their beloved home, Hever Castle.

On your nightstand now:

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. This book has been cited to me so many times when I mention the princes in the tower that I had to see what all the fuss was about!

Favorite book when you were a child:

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. My big sister used to read this to me every Christmas. I can still recite some of the passages word for word.

Your top five authors:

C.J. Sansom
Salley Vickers
Alison Weir
Hilary Mantel
Clare Chambers

It's probably no surprise that most of these authors are known for their historical books. But I do love a bit of modern-day escapism, and that's where Vickers and Chambers come in.

Book you've faked reading:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. It's one of those classics that I thought I should tackle, but I'm such a slow reader that the sheer length of it was just too intimidating. To my shame, I watched a TV adaptation instead.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Miss Garnet's Angel by Salley Vickers. Venice is one of my favorite places on Earth, and this book evokes its melancholy beauty better than any other I've read.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell. I lucked out here because the cover really drew me in, but what was inside was even more breathtaking.

Book you hid from your parents:

Probably a Mills & Boon. I was into romances as a teenager and borrowed a few from my mum's collection. I don't think she ever knew.

Book that changed your life:

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Reading this extraordinary novel inspired me to find out how true a depiction of Thomas Cromwell it was. In turn, this led to me writing a nonfiction biography of him, which became my first bestseller.

Favorite line from a book:

"I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth." From Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. I remember studying this for the A level and completely falling in love with the dark gothic tragedy of it all. My teacher used to read out that last line with a hand on her heart and tears in her eyes.

Five books you'll never part with:

The Complete Works of Shakespeare
Henry VIII: The King and His Court by Alison Weir
Dissolution by C.J. Sansom
Tudor England by John Guy
Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

These have all shaped my career, in different ways. What got it all started was the Shakespeare, which my dad bought me back in 1989 when we were visiting Stratford-upon-Avon.

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

You Are Here by David Nicholls. I've always loved walking, particularly in the Lake District, and this book is so spot-on with both the highs and rainy lows of long hikes.

Book you're reading for research right now:

Medieval Children by Nicholas Orme. I'm reading this as part of my research for my new nonfiction book. It's under wraps at the moment but watch this space!

Indonesian author/academic Intan Paramaditha, who lives in Sydney, offers the chilling Night of a Thousand Hells, a sprawling, polyphonic examination of horrific suicide bombings. Stephen J. Epstein returns as translator after The Wandering and Apple and Knife, joined by novelist Tiffany Tsao (The Majesties).

On May 13, 2018, six bombers associated with an ISIS-connected organization detonated three explosions in Kotawijaya, Indonesia. A family of four were among the perpetrators--Annisa, the mother, Muhammad, her husband, Gibran, their nine-year-old son, and Patricia, their two-year-old daughter. Muhammad and Gibran targeted the Church of the Sacred Heart; Gibran survived. Annisa, with Patricia, chose a residential complex's multipurpose hall where an Islamic study group for transgender women was in session.

Paramaditha introduces Annisa as "the beautiful sister, the pious one, the apple of Papa's eye." Her death means her story must be told by others: "This is a tale of three sisters," Paramaditha promises. "But this also is the tale you didn't ask for, a tale of the unseen, the unheard, the unre­membered. The two who remain seek clues--why, whose fault, when?" Mutiara, the oldest, is "the caretaker," the role both "duty and curse." Her youth was devoted to their late mother; their father now lies in a Jakarta hospital, which is where Muti sees the heinous, proliferating news broadcast. On the other side of the world is Maya, "the traveler," who first landed in New York City with a scholarship for graduate school. Now she's put her history Ph.D. dissertation on hold to "reimagine [their] grandmother's life and turn it into fiction." The gruesome cataclysm calls her back to resentful Mutiara to face the aftermath of Annisa's incomprehensible decisions. To do so will require confronting the past, including their grandmother's manipulations, their parents' silenced secrets, and their own actions of betrayal and destruction. The two surviving sisters are joined by Rohadi--a servant raised as playmate, even sister--who reappears, now as Rosalinda, and whose chosen mother was among Annisa's victims.

Paramaditha likely found inspiration in a May 2018 three-part suicide attack in Surabaya, Indonesia, in which a couple involved their young children. Paramaditha writes effortlessly across genres, blending dysfunctional family epic, haunting folklore and horror, with themes of suffocating traditions, pervasive gender inequity, and LGBTQ+ discrimination and identities. Her peripatetic locations beyond Indonesia--the U.S., Australia, New Zealand--suggest an aspirational longing for elsewhere, away from generational entrapment, religion, senseless bloodshed. "There is no answer to be found in this story, no magic pill," she warns. Bearing witness is the only alternative. --Terry Hong

Shelf Talker: A suicide bomber's older sisters confront the brutal tragedy's aftermath in Intan Paramaditha's provocative, chilling Night of a Thousand Hells.

The bestselling Libro.fm audiobooks at independent bookstores during July:

Fiction
1. Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (Penguin Random House Audio)
2. The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett (Spiegel & Grau by Spotify Audiobooks)
3. Whistler by Ann Patchett (Harper)
4. Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth (Macmillan Audio)
5. Theo of Golden by Allen Levi (Simon Maverick)
6. This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum (Macmillan Audio)
7. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (Penguin Random House Audio)
8. The Odyssey by Homer (Penguin Random House Audio)
9. Land by Maggie O'Farrell (Penguin Random House Audio)
10. The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson (Penguin Random House Audio)

Nonfiction
1. The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI by Cory Doctorow (Macmillan Audio)
2. Regime Change by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan (Simon & Schuster Audio)
3. London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe (Penguin Random House Audio)
4. Famesick by Lena Dunham (Penguin Random House Audio)
5. Strangers by Belle Burden (Penguin Random House Audio)
6. The Land and Its People by David Sedaris (Hachette Audio)
7. Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green (Penguin Random House Audio)
8. Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams (Macmillan Audio)
9. Enshittification by Cory Doctorow (Macmillan Audio)
10. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Tantor Media)