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Buxton Village Books in Buxton, N.C., "a longtime fixture in the Hatteras Island community, is set to reopen later this month following the passing of its longtime owner, Gee Gee Rosell, with family members stepping in ahead of the busy summer season," Island Free Press reported. Rosell, who had operated the bookstore since 1984, died January 29.

In a social media post on Monday, Rosell's siblings said: "Given that Memorial Day is only 3 weeks away, our operating the store is the best option for having the store open this Summer for our beloved Sister's many friends and customers. We will do our best to honor Gee Gee and her 42 years of owning the store. Come and see us!"

Day-to-day operations will be managed by Rosell's sister, Lynanne Wescott, while her brother, George Butcher III, will assist behind the scenes, Island Free Press noted, adding that Rosell's long tenure had made her "a familiar presence in Buxton, and her passing left uncertainty about the store's future in the early months of 2026."

The family said their goal is to continue the store's legacy while honoring the decades of work that made it a staple of the island community.

Raven and Pines Bookstore hosted its grand opening celebration on Independent Bookstore Day at 40044 Highway 49, Ste. B1, in Oakhurst, Calif. Sierra News Online reported that the bookshop, owned by mother-daughter duo Cherri Loll and Jessica Loll, carries a variety of genres, including fantasy, sci-fi, self-help, true crime, biographies and romance, among others. It also features a local-interest section, covering hiking trails and the history of Yosemite.

"We have lots of plans for different types of events, like we want to have craft nights, trivia, music, games, puzzle night, stuff like that. We're also going to be having a story time for the kids in the mornings," said Jessica Loll.

She also stressed the importance of making books locally accessible: "That experience, walking into a bookstore and being able to browse and see things that you probably wouldn't have been shown by [an online] algorithm is really powerful. It can help expand people's reading selection and what information is being presented and available to them."

Loll noted the store can help children feel excited about reading, while providing accessible options to improve their ability: "Young readers who are maybe hesitant to [read] a big chapter book might be drawn into [graphic novels] and then become more interested in reading."

Ultimately, she wants to find "what the community is really interested in. We really want to establish our events and our community offerings. So finding what those areas are of public interest, and trying to bring those into the community and creating those inviting spaces."

Book RePort, a bookstore and cafe, will open in Port Washington, N.Y., on May 15, the Long Island Press reported.

Located at 40 Main St. in a 1,500-square-foot space, Book RePort will sell new titles for all ages, along with gifts, stationery, and games. The store's event plans include children's storytime sessions as well as book clubs, author events, and a youth advisory council. The cafe side of the business, meanwhile, will serve coffee and tea.

Co-owners Mara Silverstein and Kathleen Schechter were inspired to open a bookstore following the closure in 2022 of the Dolphin Bookshop, which had served the Port Washington community for more than 75 years. As they worked toward opening a bricks-and-mortar store, they held pop-up events at various locations around Port Washington.

"The intention was always to have a store," Silverstein told the Press. "But those events allowed us to introduce ourselves and build excitement. We were blown away by the support, not just from Port Washington, but neighboring towns." 

"How can we have a town without a bookstore?" Schechter said. "Our town is incredible. It needs to have a bookstore."

The grand opening festivities will begin on May 15 and run through the weekend. Plans include a ribbon-cutting ceremony, storytime sessions, and a "sip and shop" event.

Barnes & Noble will host a grand reopening celebration today, May 6, at its bookstore in the Crossing Clarendon shopping center at 2800 Clarendon Blvd., #2000, Arlington, Va. B&N said the nearly 14,000-square-foot store "has been fully remodeled and reimagined, with bright new fixtures, curated displays, and the cozy layout customers have come to love."

The store's relaunch will feature local author Sam Kean cutting the ribbon and signing copies of his most recent book, Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Recreating the Signs, Sounds, Smells and Tastes of Lost Civilizations (Little, Brown).

B&N said the company is celebrating "the reopening of our wonderful Clarendon store, nearly one year after its closing. We are delighted to welcome our customers back to enjoy this beautiful new store."

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B&N is also opening its new bookstore in Seattle, Wash., today. The store returns downtown after the location in Pacific Place closed in January 2020. Located at 520 Pike St., the 18,000-square-foot space is situated a couple of blocks from the Convention Center and Pike Place Market. 

The official opening to the public will feature local author Robin Hobb cutting the ribbon and signing copies of her book Blood of Dragons: Volume Four of the Rain Wilds Chronicles.

"The return of a major bookstore to Downtown Seattle is testament both to the revitalization of the downtown area and the vigor of bookselling generally," said James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble. "The Downtown Seattle Barnes & Noble was for many years a flagship for the bookseller. We are very pleased to restore this again with the new Pike Street bookstore."

Sales for Canadian independent Bookstore Day, April 25, were up 6% over 2025, according to Bookmanager, which released a some of its data covering both CIBD and Independent Bookstore Day in the U.S. Bookmanager added that there "is no contest that the event as a whole benefits the industry and has turned a nondescript Saturday into a boon for bookstores." 

Overall sales were down 1% from last year's Independent Bookstore Day overall, but Bookmanager reported that in 2025 sales had been 44% higher for the day than in 2024 and noted it is worth considering "that we collectively held onto that amazing growth despite the many economic uncertainties we and our customers are facing, along with the rising cost of books and, well, everything (a banana now costs how much?!?)."

While Indie Bookstore Day sales overall for the U.S. and Canada increased by 125% from the previous Saturday (April 18), Bookmanager found that Canadian stores had 76% more sales than the previous Saturday, along with a 17% increase from 2024. By comparison, U.S. stores had 150% more sales than the previous Saturday, but decreased by 5% from the previous year's Indie Bookstore Day, which saw a 58% increase over 2024. 

While some stores experienced a small sales gain on the day, others markedly exceeded the average. "This huge variance in data points is very likely due to some stores going full tilt on marketing, promoting, and bolstering the event with specials and actvities, while others are essentially calling it another day," Bookmanager wrote. "The biggest takeaway is that if you haven't been emailing out / posting on social media / building buzz, offering promotions or discounts, and/or offering unique activities or extras for the day, it's well worth the time and small hit on margins (which are easily made up for in volume of sales) to do so for the next year."

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(Photo: ActuaLitté)

The Gibert group of French booksellers was set to ask the Paris economic activities tribunal to place it in receivership on April 28, as it moves its focus to selling secondhand books. The Bookseller reported that "the chain of 16 outlets in 12 towns and cities across the country has been squeezed by the 'explosion' of fixed costs and the decline in the new book market."

The group said it seeks to double its sales of used books from €30 million (about $35 million) in 2025 to €60 million (about $70 million) in 2029; to double these books' share of total sales from 35% to 70%; and to become the leader in the field. 

The Gibert group has closed nine outlets since 2017, five that year and four in the Place St. Michel in the Paris Latin Quarter in 2021, the Bookseller noted.

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Last month, legendary New Zealand bookseller Ruth Shaw retired as owner of "her three wee bookshops" in Manapōuri, which "gained international fame and seen thousands flock to tiny Manapōuri to visit, especially after the publication of her 2022 autobiography, The Bookseller at the End of the World, and its 2025 follow-up, Three Wee Bookshops at the End of the World," the Post reported.

"I thought, it's time, it really is time," said Shaw, who is turning 80 this year. 

When she started looking for someone to take over the bookshops, Shaw was adamant that if the bookshops couldn't stay in Manapōuri, she would simply close them. She found a buyer: Inger Nicholson, who came to live in Manapōuri as a child, nearly 60 years ago. As soon as Shaw made the offer, Nicholson said yes, the Post noted. Nicholson described her friend as "a little force to be reckoned with. She's been great--you want her on your team. And it's her bookshop, really. I'm just caretaking it, in a way."

This past week, Shelf Awareness sent our monthly pre-order e-blast to nearly 935,000 of the country's best book readers. The e-blast went to 933,876 customers of 282 participating independent bookstores.

The mailing features 11 upcoming titles selected by Shelf Awareness editors and a sponsored title. 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 last Wednesday of each month; the next will go out on Wednesday, May 27. Stores interested in learning more can visit our program registration page or contact our partner program team via e-mail.

For a sample of the April pre-order e-blast, see this one from Looker Books, Coatsville, Penn.

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

Whistler by Ann Patchett (Harper)
Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer (Doubleday)
Land by Maggie O'Farrell (Knopf)
Rasputin Swims the Potomac by Ben Fountain (Flatiron)
Daughters of the Sun and Moon by Lisa See (Scribner)
It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell (Atria)
Contrapposto by Dave Eggers (Knopf)
The Children by Melissa Albert (Morrow)
The Missed Connection by Tia Williams (Grand Central)

Chapter One Books in Mendham, N.J., hosted a Paris-themed paint-'n'-sip launch party with Colleen Cambridge for In the Spirit of French Murder (Kensington), her fourth An American in Paris Mystery. Pictured: Cambridge (standing, in back, r.) and store owner Sophia Maoli (standing in back, l.) with participants. (photo: Larissa Ackerman)

"Running a business is hard work. Social media is exhausting. How's this?" Bridgeside Books in Waterbury, Vt., posted on Instagram. "Buy some books. Or puzzles. Or games. Or cards, taffy, tea, notebooks, art supplies, or an event ticket. We're not picky."

"Stop and smell the books." That was the sidewalk chalkboard message in front of the Book Shop of Beverly Farms in Beverly, Mass., which noted: "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood."

Black Summers: Growing Up in the Urban Outdoors edited by Desiree Cooper (Wayne State University Press).

Tomorrow:
CBS Mornings: Harlan Coben, co-editor of Birds of Prey (The Mysterious Press, $26.95, 9781613167939).

Julia Hart (I'm Your Woman) will direct a film adaptation of Better Than the Movies, the bestselling YA novel by Lynn Painter, for Netflix, Deadline reported. Hart is also a co-writer on the project with her husband and creative partner Jordan Horowitz, who will produce for Original Headquarters alongside Shauna Phelan. 

Better Than the Movies "is a love letter to romantic comedies, in which senior Liz Buxbaum relies on her obsession with rom-com movies to get the attention of her untouchable crush, with an assist from her annoying but cute next-door neighbor," Deadline wrote.

Erika Krouse has won the 2026 Joyce Carol Oates Prize, sponsored by the New Literary Project and honoring "emerged and continually emerging writers of major consequence--short stories and/or novels--at the relative midpoint of a burgeoning career." Her most recent publication is a book of short stories, Save Me, Stranger (Flatiron Books).

The award has a $50,000 prize, and Krouse will spend a brief residence during the 2026 NewLit Roadshow at the University of California, Berkeley, and in the Bay Area, including Saint Mary's College of California--teaching and public speaking in a variety of educational and literary settings--in October.

Oates said, "Save Me, Stranger is a collection of riveting first-person accounts, each so uniquely credible and engaging, the reader is inclined to think that it must be Erika Krouse herself speaking in an intimate, confining, candid way, telling us secrets she has shared with no one else. Yet--and this is the surprise and the delight of Erika's fiction--each of the voices is a distinct character, usually but not always a young woman; locales are wildly different--from a Siberian village that is 'the coldest place on earth' to the lurid Red Light district of Bangkok; from a remote bed-and-breakfast in the Rocky Mountains to the outskirts of Tokyo--while each is perceived, by the astute eye of the beholder, as 'the center of all rings, loneliness.' Here is masterly storytelling, so deftly accomplished, with such warmth and sympathy, the reader is totally immersed in each story, wishing only sometimes that it might be longer, and our engagement with these so-human, so-fascinating characters prolonged."

Caroline Bleeke, editorial director, fiction, Flatiron Books, said in part, "Over the past five years, I have had the privilege of working with Erika on both her fiction and nonfiction, and am continually astonished by her range, imagination, and immense talent. As you can feel in every page of her writing, Erika has a seemingly endless curiosity about our world and a boundless capacity for empathy. Her characters are nuanced and knotty, never romanticized and never judged. There is such an emotional expansiveness to her writing, regardless of length or format, and I am grateful to work with an author who shines a light into the darker corners of our world, unafraid of what might be revealed."

photo: Samira Hirji

Alexandra Oliva is the author of Forget Me Not and The Last One, her debut, which was selected as a Best Book of 2016 by the Seattle Times and was translated into 25 languages. She grew up in a tiny town in New York's Adirondack Mountains and received a B.A. from Yale University and an M.F.A. from The New School. She now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her family. Her new novel is The Radiant Dark (SJP Lit, April 28, 2026).

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

A mother's life--and the lives of her children--is forever changed when she learns Earth has received a message from a distant alien civilization.

On your nightstand now:

A beautiful short story collection by Korean author Kim Choyeop (translated by Anton Hur) called If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light; Ruby Falls by Gin Phillips, whose main character I wish were real and alive today so we could be friends; and a nonfiction book called AI Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, because while I have zero interest in using generative AI, I would like to know enough about it to articulate why I feel that way. There are also a few books from John Patrick Green's InvestiGators series because my son likes to read in bed with me.

Favorite book when you were a child:

The first book I can remember reading is Professor Wormbog in Search for the Zipperump-a-Zoo by Mercer Mayer, which I adore to this day. There is just so much going on in the illustrations, and the ending is pure delight. I was also obsessed with Terry Brooks's Shannara series from second grade through middle school, and with Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books through high school. A rare non-genre love of mine when I was young was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, which I recently got great joy out of recommending to one of my nieces.

Your top five authors:

This question is impossible to answer, but some authors whose new books I will always be excited to get my hands on include: Charlotte McConaghy, Jane Harper, Kazuo Ishiguro, Elizabeth Strout, and Andy Weir.

Book you've faked reading:

I honestly can't think of a book I've faked reading. Generally speaking, I've accepted that there are far too many incredible books out there to ever get close to reading them all, so I don't mind admitting when I haven't read something.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier. I've read it twice now and both times it took my breath away. It's this gorgeous, heartfelt exploration of communication and connection and is exceptionally engaging. I've been recommending it to everyone as one of my all-time favorite books.

Book you've bought for the cover:

The Zoologist's Guide to the Galaxy by Arik Kershenbaum snagged me from all the way across a bookstore with its neon animal shapes. Even if I hadn't been thinking about the evolution of extraterrestrial species for my own writing, I wouldn't have been able to resist.

Book you hid from your parents:

I believe there was a phase in which I hid some R.L. Stine Goosebumps books because my brother made a big scene about my getting cranky when I read them. To be fair, he was right. Horror got to me then, and it gets to me now.

Book that changed your life:

The Passage by Justin Cronin. It came out when I was having some not-so-great workshop experiences in an M.F.A. program, and seeing an overt genre premise (vampire apocalypse!) and ambitious plot melded so beautifully with exceptional character work and prose gave me hope that there might be a place in the publishing industry for the kind of books I was trying to write. I don't think I would have given up on writing if I hadn't read The Passage--writing is far too integral to my sense of self for that--but that book definitely inspired me to push through some hard times and periods of self-doubt.

Favorite line from a book:

This is another impossible question, but I was recently gripped by the opening line of an Elizabeth McCracken short story: "Once upon a time a woman disappeared from a dead-end street." I love the juxtaposition of the fairy tale phrasing with the darkness of a disappearance and the modernity of a dead-end street. And the cadence is beautiful. Once I read this line, I was all-in. (It's from the collection Thunderstruck & Other Stories.)

Five books you'll never part with:

I've done a few tough purges of my bookshelves since my son was born (in order to make room for his stuff), and some books that will always make the cut are: Educated by Tara Westover; A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan; the Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer (yes, that's technically three books--loophole!); An Immense World by Ed Yong; and Girl at War by Sara Novic.

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

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. And I want it to be an edition with no spoilers in the cover art or jacket copy.

The tender and visually radiant The Skeleton and the Cat by Brandon James Scott (A Bear, a Fish, and a Fishy Wish illustrator) is a picture book consisting of five short stories that each convey large emotional range. In miniature chapters, Scott transforms a simple premise into a meditation on companionship, curiosity, and the gentle disruption of solitude, all through the coming together of an unlikely pair: a solitary skeleton and an insistent black cat. Skeleton--skinless, cloaked in black, and perfectly content with her "simple and quiet" routine--lives alone and relishes the lack of "interruptions." Her calm is upended with "The Knock": Cat introduces himself and asks to be let in. Despite Skeleton's initial "No," the cat charms his way across the threshold with a well-timed (bad) joke. What follows is a friendship that builds through small, everyday encounters.

In "The Sandwich," Cat asks for food, but Skeleton's pantry offers little. Claiming sandwich expertise, Cat assembles what he is able with a can of sardines and a stale loaf of bread. But Skeleton--unsure how to eat without a mouth--offers her sandwich up to Cat then quietly sits as he happily consumes both. "The Garden" introduces dancing; "The Book" finds the pair wandering through Skeleton's library before settling into quiet fireside reading; and "The Night Sky" closes the collection with stargazing and the promise of another day together.

Scott's writing is economical with precise comedic timing. The humor often arises from the characters' matter-of-fact exchanges or from Skeleton's literal-minded attempts to navigate seemingly ordinary tasks. These moments keep the tone light while the emotional arc--Skeleton gradually letting someone into her carefully ordered life--unfolds. Visually, Scott draws remarkable expression from two characters who both technically lack mouths. Subtle shifts in the shapes of Cat's and Skeleton's eyes convey curiosity, hesitation, delight, and puzzlement. The palette reinforces the book's warmth: Skeleton's dark robe and Cat's black fur are offset by touches of pink, green, copper, and lavender. Scott is particularly effective at illustrating light as it streams through windows and floods the garden, allowing for the supposedly macabre protagonist to feel cozy. In the double-page spread of the duo dancing in the garden, the world is practically drenched in gentle light. That spread captures the book's spirit: awkward, exuberant, and jolly. The final page ends with a teasing "The End?" It's a fitting close for a book that will make readers hope for more stories with this winning partnership. --Julie Danielson

Shelf Talker: Five understated episodes in this tender picture book trace the unlikely bond between a solitude-loving skeleton and the cat who refuses to stay outside her door.