Swoon Books & Wine, a romance-focused bookstore and wine bar, held its grand opening yesterday in Oakwood, Ohio, the Dayton Daily News reported.

Located at 2504 Far Hills Ave., Swoon carries an assortment of romance titles representing plenty of sub-genres. Along with a curated selection of wine, the bar side of the business serves cocktails, coffee, tea, and other nonalcoholic options. Prior to the grand opening Tuesday night, it soft-opened on Friday in time for Valentine's Day weekend.

The bookstore has a membership program with three tiers. The first offers members two paperback book club selections per month as well as a $10 monthly menu credit and access to members-only happy hours. The second tier features two hardcover books per month, a $15 menu credit, and 10% off events. The highest tier, meanwhile, includes a hardcover book and a special edition book each month, along with a $30 menu credit and 15% off events.

Swoon owners Lindsay Woodruff and Lauren Gay

Co-owners Lauren Gay and Lindsay Woodruff own other area businesses--Gay owns Joui Wine in Dayton, while Woodruff owns a boutique called Maraluna. The pair hired operations manager Jude Ward to help them open the bookstore.

"We are so incredibly grateful for your support and patience during the arduous journey," Gay and Woodruff wrote on social media. "Sharing this moment with you makes it all worthwhile. Cheers to the many memories that will be made together inside of our cozy little space."

Artemis Books & Goods, offering new and used books as well as community-centric programming and events, will host a launch party and soft opening this coming Saturday, February 21, in the Warehouse MRKT building at 144 Hall St., Traverse City, Mich. Co-owners Samantha Duby, Caitlin Marsh, Rachel Sang, and Carissa Yonan worked together at the city's Brilliant Books, which closed last October after nearly 20 years in business. 

"We loved being booksellers," said Sang. "It defined us and gave us such deep connections in our community. So when it was decided that we couldn't keep Brilliant Books going anymore, it was devastating. Pretty quickly, we realized we didn't want to give up what we had built and began looking at how we could keep going. So here we are now, ready to grow this new place: a place for books, community, and real connections."

Artemis owners (l.-r.) Rachel Sang, Samantha Duby, Carissa Yonan, and Caitlin Marsh

Duby added that this sense of community has been integral both in shaping the new company's goals for the future and in its foundational values: "Artemis grew out of relationships that were already formed and the sense of connection they created within our community. We wanted to do this because we believe independent bookstores thrive when they're rooted in connection, care, and mutual support. This isn't just about selling books; it's about building a space that reflects and gives back to the people who already show up for one another."

The owners had originally planned to start with pop-up events, school book fairs, and installations at partner businesses around Traverse City while searching for a permanent home, but were approached about the Warehouse MRKT location. 

"It was too good an opportunity to pass up," Marsh noted. "We were already planning to hold a launch party in the atrium there and I remember we were all sitting in there one day working on plans and kind of eyeing the Alexa Grambush gallery and imagining what it would be like to have a space like that for the store in the future. When the opportunity came to take over that very space, we could hardly believe it!"

The store will have limited hours initially as it is refitted and stocked, but the owners foresee a full schedule by late spring. 

"I'm so excited to be getting back into the bookish community in Traverse City," said Yonan. "I felt a void open up when Brilliant closed and I know people have been missing it, so I'm very happy that we've all gotten together to build Artemis and do what we do even better than before. We're offering used books, which is very exciting since it's been a while since there's been a used bookstore in town, and we're also hoping to be open later in the evenings, to serve as a cozy third space where people can work on projects, hang out with friends, decompress after work, and more. We have a lot of dreams for Artemis and we can't wait to share them."

Pan Macmillan international director Jonathan Atkins will retire, effective on April 2, after 16 years with the company and a career in the publishing industry spanning four decades. Since joining Pan Macmillan in 2009, Atkins has been a central figure in the company's global expansion, the company noted, adding that as international director "he has been responsible for managing worldwide export sales and providing strategic oversight for sister companies Pan Macmillan India and Pan Macmillan South Africa. Under his leadership, both businesses achieved significant growth and record-breaking profitability."

Jonathan Atkins

Atkins's publishing career began in European sales at Penguin before he moved to Simon & Schuster, where he spent 20 years and eventually served as international publishing and sales director. 

"After 40 years in the business I can honestly say that my 16 years at Pan Mac have been the happiest and most rewarding time of my career," Atkins said. "But all good things must come to an end and this feels like the right time for me to step back and hand over to the brilliantly talented teams, both here and overseas, who have all contributed to making international sales such a fundamental and successful part of the company's DNA."

Pan Macmillan CEO Joanna Prior added: "I want to personally thank Jonathan for his dedicated leadership and for the relentless energy he has poured into Pan Macmillan during the last 16 years. He has been instrumental in ensuring our books, authors, and illustrators find their way into the hands of readers in every corner of the globe. We wish him all the very best for his retirement, knowing that we are a stronger, more connected company because of his work."

BookPeople will revert to its previous name, the Australian Booksellers Association, for its industry-facing work, Books+Publishing reported, noting that the rebranding is a "soft switchover" and the logo eventually will be updated. The organization had changed its name to BookPeople in 2022.

ABA CEO Susannah Bowen said, "We are pivoting back to the name Australian Booksellers Association for industry and advocacy, and will use Love Your Bookshop for consumer-facing campaigns. Implementation will be gradual--we will update materials as they come up in the normal course of operations. Thank you to all our bookshop members whose feedback helped inform this shift."

The latest rebranding was adopted after the association conducted a Member Priorities Feedback survey for members, with a rebranding from the perspective of industry and consumers as items for feedback, Books+Publishing noted. 

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Andrew Franklin

Andrew Franklin, founder and publisher of Profile Books, will receive the London Book Fair's 2026 Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes "an individual who has made a truly significant mark in the sphere of the global book world." LBF will honor him March 11 at a reception during the book fair.

LBF director Emma Lowe said: "We are absolutely delighted to recognize Andrew's brilliant career with this year's Lifetime Achievement Award. A standout independent publisher of his generation, it's not an exaggeration to say that Andrew has been an inspiration for thousands of people in the industry. The book world is in awe of what Andrew has built with Profile over nearly thirty years--from the many incredible books he's published and authors' careers he's fostered, to the care and passion he put into his company."

Franklin commented: "I am absurdly honored to be given this award. Some of my greatest publishing heroes are past winners and I really don't think I belong in their company. It is a particular pleasure to be given this award by the London Book Fair, because I strongly believe that the book trade thrives on sociability. We need to meet, make friends, develop contacts and exchange gossip. Writing and reading are the most rewarding solitary activity known to humankind. But publishing and selling books are social activities. It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a book fair to make a book."

Meryl Halls, managing director of the Booksellers Association, added: "Unsurprisingly, and un-coincidentally, he has also always been a friend and champion of booksellers and bookshops. I've been lucky enough to work with Andrew on a few trade groups and committees, and his commitment  to connections, conversations and debate are second to none. He'll let you away with nothing, and yet you know he'll hold himself to the same high standards. I'm sure he'll continue to raise his voice, to make our benighted world a better, and more honest, place."

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Liam Donnelly and Tony Hayes

Retail manager Liam Donnelly and bookstore manager Tony Hayes of Hodges Figgis Bookshop in Dublin, Ireland, have been named joint winners of the O'Brien Press Bookseller of the Year Award 2026, which recognizes "outstanding achievement or an invaluable contribution to the book trade by an individual bookseller." The winners, whose names are added to The Elements, a bronze trophy sculpted by Rowan Gillespie, keep the award for the year and also receive a framed commemorative certificate.

The judges' citation reads: "Liam Donnelly and Tony Hayes have huge experience in a wide range of roles across the book world, and a vast knowledge of books and book people. Their complementary skills create the alchemy needed to keep their team motivated and customers coming back time after time. Always keen both to innovate and advocate, they are the perfect custodians of an iconic bookshop."

Bookseller John Peel, a longtime staff member at Dickson Street Bookshop, Fayetteville, Ark., died last weekend. In a tribute posted on social media, the bookstore wrote: "Yesterday we lost a most vital piece of our hearts. It is impossible to capture the uniquely wonderful, brilliant, loving, and kind hearted John Peel, but here is a whole hearted attempt to describe in words what can only be felt in the weight of his absence.             

John Peel

"John was our longest and oldest employee, having come to us in 1984. His hands have touched a very large portion of the books that have come through our doors in the past 42 years. That in itself is so very magical. He had a keen knack for meeting people where they were and learning what makes them tick so that he could be a better friend to them. He marveled in everyone's uniqueness and used the awe he felt to individually inspire them. He often spoke of things that most people would not notice. John saw the importance of the things found in books before anyone else and has been making time capsules of them for decades. 

"In short, he saw value in things that others would cast aside. When he spoke to you, it felt like you were the only person in the world, which made his every attention feel like a gift. He was our family. He was fiercely loved. Losing him so soon after losing [owner] Don [Choffel] has made us feel raw in a way only deep loss and extreme grief can inflict. We are so lucky to have had him. We were all made better by him. And our lives will never be the same. Love each other, for we do not know how long we shall have each other."

This past week, Shelf Awareness sent our Kids & YA Pre-Order E-Blast to more than 330,000 of the country's best book readers. The e-blast went to 333,311 customers of 70 participating independent bookstores.

The mailing features four upcoming titles selected by Shelf Awareness editors and three advertised titles, one of which is a sponsored feature. Customers can buy these books via "pre-order" buttons that lead directly to the purchase page for the title on each sending store's website. A key feature is that bookstore partners can easily change title selections to best reflect the tastes of their customers and can customize the mailing with links, images, and promotional copy of their own.

The pre-order e-blasts are sent the second Wednesday of each month; the next will go out on Wednesday, March 11. This is a free service for indies. Stores interested in learning more can visit our program registration page or contact our partner program team via e-mail.

Ad spots are also available in the Kids & YA Pre-Order E-Blast. For more information contact sales@shelf-awareness.com for details.

For a sample of the January Kids & YA Pre-Order E-Blast, see this one from A Seat at the Table Books, Elk Grove, Calif.

The titles highlighted in the pre-order e-blast were:

Fruitcake: A Graphic Novel by Rex Ogle, illus. by Dave Valeza (Scholastic)
Orris and Timble: Star Stories by Kate DiCamillo, illus. by Carmen Mok (Candlewick)
Young World by Soman Chainani (Random House Children's Books)
Dad by Christian Robinson (Balzer + Bray)

A sell-out crowd of 100 people attended the launch of Kim Danielson's (center) memoir, Piece by Piece: A Life Remembered Through Things Lost (She Writes Press), at Tattered Cover Aspen Grove, Littleton, Colo.

Here is the February edition of The Poetry Shelf, our suggested poetry assortment, compiled by Michelle Halket of Central Avenue Publishing.

As always, there are some new titles on the bestseller list, including: 

• Swirl & Vortex by Larry Lewis
• In the Middle of a Better World by Grant Chemidlin
• Tales and Ink by Loan Wendling and Save Me an Orange by Hayley Grace (well she's been on there a while now!) but this is a reminder not to count out poets who self publish because they sell a ton! 

In recognition of the Women's History Month, I'm suggesting featuring a group of books that I think naturally fit together: women, poetry, and the equinox. As the seasons shift, it feels like a good time to highlight women's voices and the role poetry plays in marking change and transition. The equinox offers a sense of balance and renewal, and it also leads us neatly into April's Poetry Month.

Start by pulling out some women poets from your Classics or Experienced reader section like Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver, Anne Carson, or Audre Lorde. Add in some nature or renewal themed books by poets like Morgan Harper Nichols, Lucille Clifton, or Maya Angelou. And finish off by featuring the young women poets of today who are broaching difficult topics and are popular on socials, like Amanda Lovelace, Nikita Gill, Trista Mateer, or Josie Balka.

As always, these are all just suggestions meant to spark ideas of your own. After all, you know as well as I do that this business is part art and part numbers. Have fun getting ready for spring!

(Want to discuss with Michelle directly? She'll be at Winter Institute at the Meet the Presses, and you can also book a time to discuss your own poetry section at Publishers by Appointment.)

Dave Lucey

Dave Lucey has joined Edelweiss as director, Omnibus adoption & ecosystem partnerships. He has been an advisor in the development of Omnibus, the company's new bookstore operating platform for Square stores.

Lucey is co-owner of Page 158 Books, Wake Forest, N.C., which he and his wife, Suzanne, opened in 2015. He also has more than 20 years of experience in the software industry, including leading large-scale platform implementations and serving as an advisory solutions consultant at ServiceNow. 

He will be at Winter Institute next week wearing both his bookseller and Edelweiss hats.

"Walked by the bookstore tonight and I had to stop and take a photo. I told Aaron 'look, we did that,' " Monarch Books in Arroyo Grande, Calif., posted on Instagram.

Effective September 1, Penguin Random House Publisher Services will sell and distribute Drawn & Quarterly's frontlist and backlist in all sales channels, including the Canadian market, where it will be sold and distributed by Penguin Random House Canada.

Founded in Montreal in 1990, Drawn & Quarterly is one of the most influential publishers in literary comics and graphic novels and has published work by such stars as Adrian Tomine, Lynda Barry, Nick Drnaso, Kate Beaton, Chester Brown, Aminder Dhaliwal, Jillian Tamaki, Ebony Flowers, Chris Ware, and Seth, as well as international authors including Tove Jansson (Finland), Guy Delisle (France), Tom Gauld (U.K.), Yoshiharu Tsuge (Japan), Shigeru Mizuki (Japan), Shirato Sanpei (Japan), Keum Suk Gendry-Kim (Korea), Zuo Ma (China), and more.

Julia Pohl-Miranda, v-p & co-owner, marketing and sales, Drawn & Quarterly said, "At the end of 2024, D&Q had five distributors in North America with metadata and shipments going in every direction. PRH will streamline our supply chain from beginning to end. As an employee-owned publisher whose print runs belie our boutique publisher status, we couldn't be more excited."

Peggy Burns, publisher & co-owner, Drawn & Quarterly, added, "We know firsthand the stellar, sincere, and passionate service that PRH provides independent retailers from operating our own full-service bookstore, so we look forward to working with PRH as a client publisher to grow our business across North America and beyond in all markets. PRH understands that our commitment to our cartoonists is our foremost concern."

Rachel Goldstein, executive v-p of Penguin Random House Publisher Services, said, "Drawn & Quarterly has been a cornerstone of independent comics publishing for decades, championing extraordinary artists and elevating storytelling in profound ways. Their commitment to creators, booksellers, and readers alike aligns seamlessly with our own values. We're honored to partner with them and support the next phase of their growth."

Tomorrow:
CBS Mornings: Mark Hyman, author of Food Fix Uncensored: Inside the Food Industry’s Biggest Cover-Ups (Little, Brown Spark, $22.99, 9780316598637).

Jennifer Hudson Show: Laura Dave, author of The First Time I Saw Him (Scribner, $29, 9781668002964).

Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Michael Pollan, author of A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness (Penguin Press, $32, 9781984881991).

Leo Woodall (The White Lotus, Bridget Jones: Mad About a Boy) will co-star with Sydney Sweeney in a movie adaptation of Edith Wharton's classic novel Custom of the Country for Studiocanal and Charles Finch's Rabbit's Foot Films, Deadline reported. Josie Rourke will direct after adapting the script from Wharton's novel.

Sweeney, Charles Finch, Monumental Pictures' Alison Owen and Studiocanal will produce. Studiocanal will fully finance, releasing theatrically in all its territories (the U.K., France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Poland, and Benelux), and launching worldwide sales at European Film Market in Berlin.

Andy Weir won the Robert A. Heinlein Award, which honors "outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings that inspire the human exploration of space." Weir's books include The Martian, Artemis, and Project Hail Mary.

Organizers cited Weir's novels, "which have blended the best elements of science fact with the aspirations of traditional science fiction with a flare for engaging a new generation of readers."

The award will be presented on May 22, during opening ceremonies for Balticon 60, the 60th Maryland Regional Science Fiction Convention. Balticon and the Robert A. Heinlein Award are both managed and sponsored by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society.

photo: Jemimah Wei

D.S. Waldman is the author of the poetry collection Atria (Liveright, February 17, 2026), his debut that explores presence and absence, proximity and distance with formally experimental poems. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, ZYZZYVA, and many other publications. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and recipient of the Poetry Society of America's Lucille Medwick Memorial Award, Waldman lives and teaches creative writing in New York City.

Handsell readers your book in 30 words or less:

Atria is a formally restless text interested in grief and love and art and how they affect the way we see and interact with the world.

On your nightstand now:

Helen Vendler's Invisible Listeners: Lyric Intimacy in Herbert, Whitman, and Ashbery. I'm a bit of a dork in that I enjoy reading criticism, and I like to have at least one book of criticism going in the background while I read something else, fiction or poems or whatever. I'm not aware of a better reader of poems than Helen Vendler was--I love this book.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis. I'm not sure if it was my favorite, but it's the first to come to mind. There's this outrageous and memorable scene in which a cockroach or some other bug crawls into someone's ear and begins speaking to them, or makes sounds that sort of evolve into speech. In truth, I don't even remember the plot. I need to revisit it.

Your top five authors:

In no particular order, and with the caveat that my top five is probably pretty fluid:

Anne Carson
Julio Cortázar
Garth Greenwell
Maggie Nelson
Ben Lerner

Book you've faked reading:

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. I've just never been able to get into Whitman the way it seems like I'm supposed to; I prefer reading Helen Vendler and Ben Lerner and Robert Bly and others who write about him. Maybe if I had lived a hundred or more years ago his verse would've resonated with me.

Book you're an evangelist for:

I'm not so evangelical, but a book I recommend to a lot of people, and which I teach often when working with nonfiction students, is Figure It Out by Wayne Koestenbaum. He is a writer who has definitely cycled in and out of my top five, depending on the day or the moment, and this collection of essays in particular has so much to offer my students. I think it helps reimagine what an essay is and how it operates and what its aims or non-aims can be.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Time and Materials by Robert Hass--I bought it for the cover, but it turned out to be one of my all-time favorites, a tremendous poetry collection. I also used its cover as inspiration for the design of my own book jacket.

Book you hid from your parents:

I remember my first time flying into LAX--I'm not sure how I got separated from my parents--I was approached by a guy handing out these self-realization books, and I took one. In truth, I never even read it; it was more a talisman of the West Coast progressivism and looseness and free-spiritedness that, having grown up in rural Kentucky, I'd never really encountered. I think my mom found it eventually and was pretty concerned. She thought it was some cult thing.

Book that changed your life:

I think every book I read changes my life, to a degree. I don't remember when I first encountered Anne Carson's Nox--sometime after my own brother died, but before I'd really started writing poetry with any seriousness. I read it and knew I wanted to make something to both work through and memorialize that loss, something formally defiant and distinctly my own, like Nox.

Favorite line from a book:

"At the end of my suffering/ there was a door."

Probably the bravest first line of any poetry collection I'm aware of (Louise Glück, The Wild Iris).

Five books you'll never part with:

Nox by Anne Carson
Ways of Seeing by John Berger
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
Proofs & Theories by Louise Glück
What the Living Do by Marie Howe

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

The Topeka School by Ben Lerner--mostly for its penultimate chapter, and in particular the final several paragraphs of that chapter, which the entire novel builds toward. Spectacular.

If you could never read or write again, what would you do instead:

Watch and direct films. I've lately been obsessed with Joachim Trier's recent film Sentimental Value; I think it has made me want to work (when, I don't know) on some sort of film project.

Sayantani DasGupta (The Serpent's Secret; The Chaos Monster) takes readers on a riveting, wild excursion through New York City as three seventh graders race to return an iconic jewel to its rightful home while eluding an onslaught of nefarious villains.

Twelve-year-old Ria Bailey is furious when her "all-around shiny do-gooder" art historian mom, Dr. Meena Basu, is mysteriously fired from her job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ria will be leaving friends, school, and her diverse Hell's Kitchen neighborhood in New York City to live in some "dinky butt town" in Germany. Her mom has gone ahead to Germany to start her new museum job, while Indian British American Ria and her dida wait in the city.  

Ria is shocked when she hears about the attempted theft of the Met's "fancy, jeweled" Lotus Sword, "originally wielded by Queen Padma Devi," a legendary Indian warrior who fought against the British. Thieves didn't get the sword, but they did take the Heart of the Lotus, a brilliant ruby set in the hilt. When a mysterious package addressed to her mom arrives at Ria's apartment, she opens it to find--"OMG"--the (possibly?) real Heart of the Lotus! Ria's mom was acting "super shady" before she left, fighting with her bosses over whether Western museums should "send all the stolen art back to where it came from," and now Ria wonders if her suddenly secretive Ma was the one who stole the ruby.

Ria, along with besties Miracle Owusu and Annie Hernandez, must skirt "danger and death" to protect the gem. On their grand expedition through the streets of Ria's beloved New York City, the trio encounters a mysterious boy who makes Ria's chest feel "oozy-woozy," a potentially zombie "all-woman art thief gang," and a billionaire tech bro who is inordinately interested in museum artifacts.

Theft of the Ruby Lotus is a twisty-turny middle-grade caper with plenty of peril that is balanced by ample doses of pitch-perfect humor. Ria's bright, snappy dialogue pegs her as the sassy heroine she is, and her well-defined supporting cast nicely balances the dynamic. Strongly conscious of the conversations about who rightfully owns a culture's inheritance, DasGupta's characters discuss the repatriation of artifacts and offer a compelling argument for "art belong[ing] to the cultures that created it." DasGupta gives middle-grade readers an exciting action-adventure-mystery that provides plenty to ponder. --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author

Shelf Talker: In this thrilling, humor-infused middle-grade adventure, three seventh graders attempt to return a fabulous jewel to its home in a museum's iconic sword.