Barnes & Noble and Waterstones owner Elliott Management is preparing to take the companies public "next year in London or New York," the Financial Times reported, adding that Elliott "has spoken to potential advisers about an initial public offering, according to people close to the discussions, who added that Elliott could appoint investment banks in early 2026."

London is likely to be where the offering would be listed. "No final decisions had been taken and the plans could yet shift, people familiar with the matter said," the Financial Times continued. "The company's financial year runs until April, which makes any IPO unlikely until after the summer at the earliest. Elliott declined to comment." 

Elliott bought Waterstones in 2018 and B&N the following year. Waterstones has gone on to buy Foyles, Hatchards, and Blackwell's. B&N has bought Tattered Cover in Denver and Books Inc. in the San Francisco Bay Area. B&N has also opened more than 60 stores this year.

The Bookseller noted that earlier this month, James Daunt, head of B&N and Waterstones, told the BBC that an IPO in either the U.S. or U.K. "feels like an inevitability and probably better than being flipped to the next private equity person."

Nina Barrett, owner of Bookends & Beginnings and Middles Used Books in Evanston, Ill., reported that the season got off to a "kind of terrifying start," with a blizzard "like something out of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" hitting the Chicago area on Small Business Saturday. Since then, the bookstore has been able to "regain that ground," thanks in part to a SBS "re-do" held on the following Saturday. And though this year has brought "the worst weather I have ever seen in a holiday retail season," Barrett said, "I feel like we're holding our own."

The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon and Heart the Lover by Lily King are the store's two "runaway bestsellers," Barrett said. Other titles that are doing very well include Lessons from Cats for Surviving Fascism by Stewart Reynolds, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, and Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan, which "just keeps going." There are a few titles the store is chasing; the children's book If We Were Dogs by Sophie Blackall is a prime example. That book "suddenly blew up," and now the store is getting "multiple calls about it per day."

The supply chain, Barrett continued, has been "more of a mess than usual." The store has seen partial shipments arrive without invoices, damages, and "boxes going astray." What's more problematic, though, is the fact that there are books that will take Bookends a "week or two weeks to get" yet are still available from online retailers and would arrive for customers in a matter of days if ordered there. That necessitates Bookends staff having to comb through and "handhold" online orders and explain to customers that a particular book in their order likely won't arrive before Christmas.

"It makes us look awful," Barrett said, and the conversations often happen with the exact sorts of customers who make a point of supporting local, independent businesses. It is a frustrating situation all around, she added, and "I think it's going to catch up with us."

Asked whether the store has seen any differences in consumer behavior, Barrett said the team is still "seeing the same big stacks of books" brought to the register, and plenty of customers have mentioned that they're giving only books as gifts this year. And while some customers do ask why prices have gone up, sales at Middles are actually a bit lower than usual at the moment, suggesting that increased book prices are not getting in the way of people shopping for "new gift books."

In St. Petersburg, Fla., Tombolo Books has had a "wonderful" holiday season so far, said owner Alsace Walentine. The last few weeks have been very busy, and the team expects things to only get busier as Christmas approaches. In terms of expectations, it's been a "pretty normal season."

Tombolo Books has seen a few titles "really take off as of late," including The Gales of November, Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run by Paul McCartney, The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, Red Rising by Pierce Brown, the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman, and A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst. Walentine noted there's also been a "real uptick in folks wanting to purchase classics."

On the subject of the supply chain, Walentine said the store has seen issues with "one publisher in particular," and one distributor's warehouse that is "usually very fast has been backlogged." There's also been a "huge amount of damages" from that distributor.

Touching on shopper behavior, Walentine reported that some people started shopping a little earlier this year, perhaps to "head off price changes," and people are maybe a bit more conservative with spending. But, said Walentine, "difficult times often inspire people to spend their money at the places they feel add value to their lives and their community, and there's been a nice movement back to local businesses this year."

For the King's English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, Utah, the holiday is "meeting expectations," reported co-owner Calvin Crosby, and although sales were slightly down for the first two weeks of December, "the year has been good and overall, we are up."

Crosby said he's been "blown away" by the demand for The Gales of November, and he noted that the special orders this year "definitely stand out," wondering if it's attributable to readers "making sure to get their book orders early." Community support for shopping local is "stronger than ever," and the store has not experienced delays or shipping distributions, due in part to "50- to 60-degree weather here." --Alex Mutter

If you are interested in having your store appear in a future Holiday Hum article, please e-mail alex@shelf-awareness.com.

Shree Summerlin has purchased Hills & Hamlets Bookshop in Serenbe, a planned community in Chattahoochee Hills, Ga., from original owners Megan Bell and Josh Niesse. 

Shree Summerlin

"I'm thrilled to be taking over Hills & Hamlets," Summerlin said. She praised Niesse and Bell for their work "curating a wonderful collection of books that the community has enjoyed for nearly 10 years," adding that she is "excited to be continuing in their footsteps."

Prior to taking over Hills & Hamlets, Summerlin was a customer there, and over the span of about three years had gotten to know one of the booksellers on staff. It was that same bookseller who told Summerlin that the owners were looking to sell, and the rest was a matter of "right time, right place."

Hills & Hamlets, which Bell and Niesse opened in 2016, sells titles for all ages across a range of genres, including literary fiction, food, photography, sustainability, architecture, art, and interior design. Serenbe is a community focused on health, wellness, and nature.  

"I'm so excited to be starting this new venture," Summerlin said. "I look forward to collaborating with authors and publishers to create events and cultivate discussions around literacy and to continue to bring joy to the community."

Niesse and Bell were also the owners of Underground Books in Carrolton, Ga., which they sold earlier this year to store manager Anna Anabseh Clark. The physical store has been renamed Underground Bookshop, while Bell and Niesse will continue to operate Underground Books as an online rare and antiquarian business.

Novelist Dinaw Mengestu has been elected president of PEN America for a two-year term, succeeding Jennifer Finney Boylan, the trans author and LGBTQ+ activist whose 18 books include novels, thrillers, memoirs, and a YA adventure series. 

Dinaw Mengestu

Mengestu has published four novels. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (2007), How to Read the Air (2010), and All Our Names (2014) center on the psychic toll and complexities of immigration from his native Ethiopia to the United States. His most recent novel, Someone Like Us (2024), shifts to the U.S.-born second generation, examining how displacement shapes their identity and a sense of belonging. He has also reported on conflicts in Darfur, Uganda, and eastern Congo in articles for the New York Times, the New Yorker, Harper's, Granta, and Rolling Stone.

Mengestu directs both the Center for Ethics and Writing and the Written Arts Program at Bard College and has been a PEN America trustee since 2016. In 2012, he won a MacArthur Genius Grant and has won the National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award.

PEN America interim co-CEO and chief of Free Expression programs Summer Lopez said, "Dinaw Mengestu has spent his career illuminating the borders between countries, histories, and identities, and bringing readers into the lives of those too often pushed to the margins. As he steps into the role of PEN America president, his unwavering commitment to free expression, his advocacy for writers under threat around the world, and his profound belief in literature's power to humanize across deep divides will guide the organization through this pivotal moment for democracy and the written word."

Mengestu said, "My driving ambition at PEN America has been to spread and promote the joy of literature--to make reading and the conversations and ideas that reading inspires accessible to more people with greater recognition of the incredible value that books add to our lives.

"My hope is to support PEN America in its work celebrating the unique power of literature. To make reading, and the conversations and ideas that reading inspires accessible is an integral part of our defense and advocacy for the free expression rights that make literature not only possible, but necessary.

"Across the globe, we live in a moment that demands fierce advocacy for free expression and the freedoms to read, write, and speak. Political and cultural forces are trying to define our societies in very singular and restrictive terms. If we do not make room for the plurality and range of voices embodied in our literature, we endanger not only our culture, but our democracy."

Embarrassing Shoes in San Antonio, Tex., will close next month, San Antonio Current reported.

The bookstore, which specializes in photography and art books, debuted in February 2025 within coffee house San Antonio Gold at 1913 S. Flores St. In addition to art and photography books, it carries greeting cards, art prints, candy, and other gifts. The store also features a gallery wall.

In a message posted to Instagram earlier this week, co-owners Emiko Badillo and Chad Miller wrote the store will be closing due to "bad business idea." They elaborated: "Well... it just didn't work out. We are gonna be slowly going out of business and trying to clear out inventory in the least painful way possible."

Through the end of the year, all books will be 20% off, with deeper discounts to follow. The owners are also open to selling shelving, fixtures, and POS systems.

Miller and Badillo thanked customers for "the support and hanging out and nice chats."

At New York City's 92nd St. Y, National Ambassador for Young People's Literature and author Mac Barnett and actress Jennifer Garner, a passionate advocate for children’s literacy, discussed children's picture books as great literature hiding in plain sight. (photo: Josh Lobel/Michael Priest Photography)

"We met Britt and Nicole immediately upon opening the shop," the Little Book, Des Moines, Iowa, posted on Facebook. "They had already fostered deep connections to the Highland Park community (Britt leads a book club at @slowdowndsm) and they were ready to welcome us in with open arms. Britt is a regular in the shop. We see them at least weekly, and they have become more than a customer--we are so honored to call both Britt and Nicole a friend. 

"It's been an absolute joy to watch these two count down to their wedding day. When Britt reached out to ask if they could come take pictures in the shop after their wedding, we were beside ourselves. We also teamed up with Britt to treat Nicole with a little surprise--we blocked off The Bank for a few minutes and cued up their song, and they got to share their first dance together here. 

"Thank you, so much, for making The Little Book a part of your big day. Thanks for letting Page hijack your photoshoot. Thank you for the honor of being side characters in your own gorgeous love story. We love y'all. We wish you a long, beautiful life together, enormous bookshelves, always enough extra change for all the matching tattoos, and the joy and adventure you deserve. Cheers to Britt & Nicole!!... @rylie.eden.photography."

"We're getting crafty this holiday season," McLean & Eakin Booksellers, Petoskey, Mich., posted on Instagram, sharing a pic of the bookshop's storefront window display. "From all things knitting to watercolor notebooks and paint sets we have a huge array of options to create the most crafty holiday of all time!⁠"

The Motivation Mindset Workbook: Helping Teens and Tweens Discover What They Love to Do by Ellen Braaten and Hillary Bush (Guilford Press).

Today:
Here & Now: Evan Wang, national youth poet laureate.

Tomorrow:
Sherri Shepherd Show: Nia Sioux, author of Bottom of the Pyramid: A Memoir of Persevering, Dancing for Myself, and Starring in My Own Life (Harper Horizon, $29.99, 9781400253043).

Also on Sherri Shepherd: Debbie Gibson, author of Eternally Electric: The Message in My Music (Gallery, $30, 9781668056769).

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 this weekend from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, December 20
3:15 p.m. Jennifer Dasal, author of The Club: Where American Women Artists Found Refuge in Belle Époque Paris (‎Bloomsbury, $29.99, 9781639731305), at Buxton Books, Charleston, S.C.

Sunday, December 21
8 a.m. Michael Finch, author of A Time to Stand (Republic Book Publishers, $26, 9781645721185). (Re-airs Sunday at 8:16 p.m.)

8:50 a.m. Scott Jennings, author of A Revolution of Common Sense (Morrow, $32, 9780063472174). (Re-airs Sunday at 9:06 p.m.)

11:10 a.m. Claudia Rowe, author of Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care (Abrams, $28, 9781419763151), at the 2025 Miami Book Fair.

11:35 a.m. David Nasaw, author of The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II (Penguin Press, $35, 9780593298695), at the Miami Book Fair.

12 p.m. Steven Pinker, author of When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life (Scribner, $30, 9781668011577).

1 p.m. John U. Bacon, author of The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Liveright, $34.99, 9781324094647).

2:45 p.m. Malcolm Harris, author of What's Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis (‎Little, Brown, $30, 9780316577410), at the 2025 Wisconsin Book Festival.

4:41 p.m. Jane Leavy, author of Make Me Commissioner: I Know What's Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix It (Grand Central, $32.50, 9780306834660), at the Wisconsin Book Festival.

5:42 p.m. Caro De Robertis, author of So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color (‎Algonquin, $32, 9781643756875).

Hatchards and the Biographers' Club have released a shortlist for the Hatchards First Biography Prize 2025, honoring the best first biography of the year. The winner, who will receive £2,500 (about $3,345), will be named March 5, 2026, at Hatchards, Piccadilly. This year's shortlisted titles are:

Crick: A Mind in Motion--From DNA to the Brain by Matthew Cobb
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie 
Operation Pimento by Adam Hart
Peacemaker: U Thant, The United Nations and the Untold Story of the 1960s by Thant Myint-U
Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, December 23:

Valentines Are the Worst! by Alex Willan (S&S, $19.99, 9781665962612) is another picture book featuring Gilbert the Goblin being harassed by supposedly charming creatures.

Bite Me: Will Tennyson's Guide to Low-Calorie, High-Protein Cooking for Macro Wins by Will Tennyson (DK, $35, 9798217130849) is a cookbook by a fitness influencer. 

Paperbacks:
H.P. Lovecraft's the Shadow Out of Time Manga, adapted and illus. by Gou Tanabe, trans. by Zack Davisson (‎Dark Horse Manga, $21.99, 9781506746340).

The Shortest History of Scandinavia: 14,000 Years from the Stone Age and the Vikings to the Happiest Nations in the World by Mart Kuldkepp (The Experiment, $16.95, 9798893030914).

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:

Hardcover
59 Minutes: A Novel by Holly Seddon (Atria/Emily Bestler, $29, 9781668087695). "What would you do if you had 59 minutes left before a nuclear strike? Pulse-pounding plot, clever twists, interesting characters, and a thought-provoking concept of how close we are--at any given moment--to destruction." --Debra Ginsberg, DIESEL, A Bookstore, Santa Monica, Calif.

Supersaurio: A Novel by Meryem El Mehdati (Hanover Square Press, $30, 9781335090638). "This book lets you know you're not the only one that's cried in the bathroom at work. The humor is quick and ironic, with deep insight into being a twenty-something in a world that feels out of your grasp." --Lucy Lawrence, Serendipity Books, Chelsea, Mich.

Paperback
Casanova 20: Or, Hot World by Davey Davis (Catapult, $17.95, 9781646222834). "Literature has no shortage of stereotypes about queerness and hypersexuality, but this book looks beyond. It carefully slices the tumor from the host, and then it gives the tumor life. Bold." --Sayan Ray, Politics and Prose Bookstore, Washington, D.C.

Ages 3-7
Broken by X. Fang (Tundra Books, $18.99, 9781774882009). "X. Fang deftly conveys the range of emotions a child (or really, any of us) can experience in a single afternoon: deadly boredom, overwhelming grief, consoling relief. What begins as an accident reveals an opportunity for truth telling, forgiveness, and the mending of hearts." --Jasmine Valandani, Kepler's Books, Menlo Park, Calif.

Ages 9-12
Outside by Jennifer L. Holm (Scholastic Press, 17.99, 9781546138143). "Part dystopian, part thriller, all an exciting read! Perfect for pre-teens who are looking for a bit of an adventure. Just remember--don't go outside!" --Ashley Watts, CoffeeTree Books, Morehead, Ky.

Ages 12+ (An Indies Introduce Title)
Last Chance Live! by Helena Haywoode Henry (Nancy Paulsen Books, $21.99, 9780593625309). "I have been reeling from the ending of this book since I finished it. We meet Eternity Price, who is on death row for reasons that are unclear at first, as she is given the chance to vie for her life on reality TV in exchange for giving up any chance at future appeals. This debut is stunning, and not just for young adult readers!" --Andrea Richardson, Fountain Bookstore, Richmond, Va.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

A brilliant young woman who sees the dead is caught up in a dangerous mystery surrounding a foreboding estate and the merciless man obsessed with it in the gorgeously atmospheric and adventurous gothic fantasy Weavingshaw by Heba Al-Wasity, the author's first novel and the beginning of a trilogy.

Leena Al-Sayer must make a terrible bargain to save the life of her deathly ill brother. She has no money to buy the medicine he needs, so she approaches the ruthless man known as the Saint of Silence, a play on his real name, St. Silas. The Saint pays for confessions, and Leena knows anyone who does business with him "came back changed, as if despair and terror had carved a home between their eyes." Rumor says that liars come home mutilated.

Leena expects to meet "a monster in an impeccable suit" and is surprised to find the Saint is young and handsome though still embodying "intimidation at a single glance." She offers to sell him her innermost secret, that she has the ability to see and sometimes communicate with ghosts. Instead of merely paying her, St. Silas maneuvers Leena into a deeper bargain: he will save her brother, but in return, she will work for him until she finds the ghost of Percival Avon, the former master of an estate known as Weavingshaw.

Bound to the cruel, infuriating Saint, Leena is slowly drawn into a vast paranormal conspiracy where nothing is as it seems. Along the way, she searches for clues that could lead her to her missing father, who was imprisoned for agitating for workers' rights. Every mystery she encounters draws her further into the ominous shadow of Weavingshaw and a more intimate understanding of the enigmatic Saint and the forces that ensnare him.

Al-Wasity builds a vibrant fantasy world infused with international conflict in which the political interacts with the paranormal. Leena and her family are refugees from a war-torn country trying to build a new life in a setting that resembles Britain during the Industrial Revolution. The deep-seated yearning that slowly develops between Leena and St. Silas has its roots not only in their potent chemistry but also in their mutual abuse at the hands of the systems in power. Packed to the brim with mystery, pathos, and that which goes bump in the night, Weavingshaw is a gothic fantasy lover's dreamland. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads

Shelf Talker: A young woman who sees ghosts becomes entangled with a compelling, dangerous man and a mysterious estate in this gorgeous, seductive gothic fantasy.

In his pre-Christmas Editor's Letter ("Let the tills ring out for the trade"), the Bookseller's Philip Jones began with an ode to bookstore-themed movies and novels tied to (obsessed with?) the holiday, in which "the shop is threatened by closure, until--at the last--the spirit of Yuletide intervenes."

Newtown Bookshop, Newtown, Pa.

"I write this slightly jovial fare not to diminish the efforts we have all made over the past 11 and a half months," he observed, "a time during which we have battled everything and everyone from tech giants to our own government, to the European Union, through to those who would cancel us, ban us, undermine us and even rob us. We know there are no saccharine solutions available to us in real life."

If the book trade were a Christmas tale, he added, "a last-minute glitch--perhaps a distribution snafu or an unexpected tax increase--would doubtless  threaten the satisfactory and affecting denouement we all want. But, luckily, not only are we the recipients of the stories others tell, we are also creators of the magic. In our story, we are champions of the chance encounter, experts in hope and inspiration, and purveyors of cheer--whatever the season."

For indie booksellers, the final week before Christmas is every kind of story (drama, comedy, thriller, adventure, romance, mystery, and more) wrapped into one. So much is at stake and so much can go terribly wrong, with badly timed snowstorms and power outages at the top of the Bad Santa list. Although I haven't worked in a bookstore during "the rush" for a long time, somehow the Bookseller Spirit of Christmases Past still haunts. 

I joined the Shelf Awareness team in 2006, making this my 20th week-before-Xmas column. The first one was headlined "Reading & the 'True Spirit' of the Holidays." I just reread it a few days ago ("I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit. "Look upon me!" as Charles Dickens put it), with whatever perspective I've gained about my chosen profession over the years. 

The essential message still rings true, I think. So it seems appropriate to end my 20th anniversary Christmas week column with a visit from that particular ghost of columns past, published on December 22, 2006.

I began, as one does this time of year, with a passage from A Christmas Carol: 

They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be.

And then I wrote: "The search for the 'true spirit' of the holiday season is not an easy task, and is perhaps made even more complicated because the reader in me tends to identify with the boy by the feeble fire, while the person whose livelihood depends upon selling books can't help feeling just a little sympathy for old Ebenezer counting out his coins.

"As a longtime bookseller, I've grown accustomed to experiencing the holiday season as an ongoing drama of comparing daily sales figures to last year's numbers and obsessing over re-ordering strategies.

"This is at once an exhilarating and intimidating time of the year. Some days 'bah, humbug' doesn't seem like an overreaction to unpredictable weather, late deliveries or demanding customers. Wise and prescient ghosts of past, present and future seldom visit us with neat, plot twisting solutions to our multilayered dilemmas.

The Lynx Books, Gainesville, Fla.

"So how do we remember in such times that this mad world we've chosen to live and work in is still primarily about something as simple and complex as putting the right words together so that someone will read them?

"When I was a kid, the words 'true spirit of Christmas' were wrapped up beautifully in the stories I read and heard, stories from Dickens as well as the nuns at school. These tales reminded urchins like me that the holidays were about more than tinsel and toys, and I suspect I will always feel an emotional tug for young Scrooge reading by the feeble fire as well as Nativity scenes. I'm sure you have your own variations on that theme.

"And if you are reading these words, chances are that you read as I read, to sift the world's cacophony into understandable (on good days, at least) measures. We read to live. We read to find our way in the world. We read this time of year to encounter, if we can, the true spirit of the holiday season. That spirit is not always apparent, nor where you'd think it might be.... 

"My wish is that you find the true spirit this holiday season, too, wherever you happen to read it. And so, as Tiny Tim observed, 'God bless Us, Every One!' The capital letters and the exclamation point belong to that old rascal Mr. Dickens. Feel free to edit and paraphrase to suit your own needs and beliefs. I wish you great reading in 2007."

And all these years later, I'll say it again: I wish you great reading in 2026.