Storytime Bookshop in Kennewick, Wash., is closed temporarily after suffering smoke damage Tuesday morning from a fire at a nearby restaurant. The Tri-City Herald reported that the owners of neighboring businesses, including the bookstore, "were on the scene. It appears there may be some smoke odors affecting the shops. Once it's safe, investigators will be able to go inside to figure out where the fire started and what caused it."

Storytime Bookshop owner Lorelei Kennedy was worried about how smoke might have affected the store, which had just relocated to this space last October. The Herald noted that her store's wall is next to the restaurant's kitchen. A firewall had been recently installed, but the construction left cracks where smoke got through, she said. 

"I'm just trying to stay calm and take the information as I get it," she added. "I'm concerned, but I'm trying to stay calm." She expected they will have to deep clean to deal with the smell of the smoke. She is also worried how this might impact the entire area. "This time of year is really slow, and this year has been extra, extra slow," she noted. 

"We've had a lot of discussions with the Kennewick Fire Department, and they and the Pasco Fire Department have been so wonderful in so many ways," Kennedy told Apple Valley News Now. "They made sure that they were communicating with us all day long. When we were speaking with one of those fellows, he said, you know, you were just minutes from that fire coming through the restaurant, into your building..... Well, we've already been shut down since Tuesday morning and will continue to be shut down sort of indefinitely until we get the insurance process started."

Yesterday, the bookstore posted an update on its Instagram page: "On Tuesday morning, the block that Storytime Bookshop resides experienced a fire that has affected several businesses. Our direct neighbors, El Tequilas, have a total loss of business and our hearts are broken for them. Our shop has smoke damage and a covering of soot that must be cleaned from everything and any repairs needed as they are found. Both Earth Spirit and JDs Time have smoke damage--Earth Spirit is closed temporarily as well. 

"This is still the early stage, and all we know is that we'll be closed for a while. Your support still matters as we move through this as a community. If you'd like to support the bookshop you can do that through bookshop.org and/or Libro.fm. We receive a percentage of the purchase price and these businesses are set up to help independent bookstores like ours succeed.... More ways to support and updates soon. Love, Lorelei, Jason, and the Puppets."

Leafy Pages Bookstore in Wellsboro, Pa., will host its grand opening on Saturday, April 4, the Wellsboro Gazette reported. Located at 31-33 Waln St., Leafy Pages will carry titles for all ages, with roughly 70% of the inventory consisting of used books and the rest new books. There is a self-service coffee station and customer seating that includes a Victorian fainting couch. The building is also handicapped accessible.

Owners and longtime friends Lisa McConomy and Kelly Copley plan to launch a membership program and host book clubs, sprayed-edges workshops, and other events. They've put a strong emphasis on accessibility and want the whole community to feel welcome.

"When your town has a bookstore, you want to feel comfortable," Copley told the Gazette. "We're open to all and are LGBTQ+ friendly."

After attending high school together, the pair fell out of touch, eventually reconnecting when Copley joined an online book group that McConomy created. "We just always talked books," McConomy recalled. "We're going to have a book for everybody."

The grand opening celebration will include raffles, refreshments, and other festivities.

Following a soft opening on March 5, Flourish & Fiction in Woodstock, N.B., will host a grand opening tomorrow, March 21, the River Valley Sun reported.

Located at 617 Main St., Unit C, in downtown Woodstock, Flourish & Fiction sells general-interest titles, with both new and used books available. Owner Kiersten Kearney will host the store's first author event in April and plans to add book clubs and writing workshops in the months ahead.

Kearney told the River Valley Sun that she decided to open a bookstore following a trip to Kansas City to meet some online friends she'd gotten to know during the pandemic. Just two weeks after returning home she applied to the Business Fundamentals program at New Brunswick Community College.

"Getting to this point has been insanely fast, but also feels like it took forever," Kearney said.

Sourcebooks is partnering with educator, author, and social impact strategist Lavaille Lavette to create Joyful Pen Books, which will publish "thoughtful, empowering, and inclusive stories that reflect the brilliance, courage, and resilience of young readers."

Joyful Pen Books titles will include:

• The Golden Gavel younger reader series and Junior Ben: A Children's Graphic Story Book Series by Ben Crump, civil rights attorney and author.
• Terysa Solves It picture book series by Terysa Ridgeway, Google program manager and author, highlighting the creativity and problem-solving brilliance of girls in STEM.
• The Humble Gray Lion, a picture book by Micah Parsons, defensive end with the Green Bay Packers, that explores strength through humility and self-belief.
• You Don't Know Me Yet young reader series by Lavaille Lavette, a trio of books shining a spotlight on unsung heroes who have shaped history and inspired change.
• Sadie and the Speech Adventures, a picture book by Alysia Anderson, an inclusion advocate and author, that celebrates speaking with courage, pride, and the power of sharing our full selves.

The first Joyful Pen Books titles will launch in fall 2026.

Jennifer Gonzalez, senior v-p, children's publisher at Sourcebooks, said, "We are thrilled to be launching Joyful Pen with Lavaille. Her deep passion for storytelling, commitment to equity, and ability to bring together such impactful voices align beautifully with our mission at Sourcebooks. Joyful Pen Books will change how children see themselves and the world around them."

Lavaille Lavette said, "Joyful Pen was created to honor the power of storytelling, spark curiosity, and remind young readers that their voices and dreams matter. My team and I are honored to partner with Sourcebooks to elevate inspiring stories that help children see their limitless potential and the joy of being who they are. Together, we're building a home for stories that spark confidence and change lives."

To celebrate its 30th birthday, the Book Industry Charitable Foundation will host an anniversary gala on May 13 at the Prince George Ballroom in New York City, with 30% of the net proceeds from the gala to be used to build an endowment, "allowing Binc to continue providing life-changing support for store owners and employees at a time when their work has become increasingly challenging," the organization noted. 

The event features Sourcebooks CEO Dominique Raccah as honorary chair, along with Emma Straub, bestselling author and co-owner of Brooklyn's Books Are Magic, as emcee. Binc's author ambassadors Amor Towles and Ann Patchett will be honored. Former Borders president George Mrkonic will receive the Founders Award and ComicsPRO executive director Marco Davanzo the Unsung Hero Award.

"The foundation has been there during the headline-grabbing national tragedies like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and the Covid pandemic as well as for the day-to-day crises that can shake the foundation of a household or a store," said Binc CEO Pam French. "It's about book people caring for book people and we're proud to celebrate this community."

Peruvian author Alfredo Bryce Echenique, "who wrote with an insider's touch about the heedlessness of his country's upper crust and the quiet suffering of the classes underneath," died March 10, the New York Times reported. He was 87. His death was announced by the office of Peru's president, who called him "one of the most brilliant figures in our literature."

Sometimes considered "the other Peruvian," to distinguish him from his friend Mario Vargas Llosa, Bryce Echenique was also grouped with the other Latin American novelists of the literary "boom" of the 1960s and '70s, like Gabriel García Márquez of Colombia and Julio Cortázar of Argentina. But he "was not so easily categorized," the Times wrote. "An understated chronicler of the elevated milieu from which he came, he eschewed the surreal distortions of Mr. García Márquez's magical realism and the high politics and morality that infused the work of Mr. Vargas Llosa. In Mr. Bryce Echenique's novels, the critique of disparities and inequality is implicit."

"Bryce Echenique's first instinct as a writer is to be witty rather than moralistic," Jonathan Thacker wrote in a 2003 Times Literary Supplement review of El Huerto de Mi Amada (The Garden of My Lover).

His best-known work, A World for Julius (1970), is one of only two of his 12 novels that have been translated into English, in 1992. An evocation of his upper-class childhood in 1940s Lima, the book features Julius, who "judges from an intimate distance the hedonism of his beautiful mother and her vapid social set in Peru's capital city," the Times noted.

Bryce Echenique's father was the director of the Banco Internacional del Peru, and his mother a descendant of a Spanish viceroy and a 19th-century Peruvian president, José Rufino Echenique. Bryce Echenique spent his life shuttling between Europe and Peru, and early in his life decided to "make a deep break with my social class," as he said in 1972.

"His own social class loathed him," said his biographer, Peruvian journalist Daniel Titinger. "He would say, 'The elitists are deeply ignorant.' " Yet that same class informs the dense fabric of A World for Julius, praised by French writer Michel Braudeau in Le Monde as the "magnificent evocation of a casual, extravagant and cruel universe where only golf outings and the next cocktail party count."

In 1993, more than 20 years after the novel's publication in Peru, Robert Houston wrote in the New York Times Book Review that A World for Julius was a "masterpiece of Latin American fiction... like the best of Dickens's novels," and "a great fat book that completely engages a reader with its characters and places."

None of his subsequent novels achieved the success of his first, which won France's best foreign novel prize in 1974 and Peru's 1972 national literature prize. He won Spain's national narrative prize in 1998 for Reo de Nocturnidad (A Night Owl). Other books include Tarzan's Tonsillitis (1998), La Vida Exagerada de Martin Romaña (1981), and Huerto Cerrado (Enclosed Garden) in 1968.

Titinger said that in his fiction, Bryce Echenique elaborated from the "quotidian," from themes of "friendship, love, tenderness," and wrote from the "point of view of failure and the loser." Bryce Echenique told Le Monde in 1999: "I always start from reality, but from an angle to which nobody else paid the slightest attention. And from there, I invented, and so people in my set called me a liar."

Melissa Auf der Maur, bassist of Hole and the Smashing Pumpkins, celebrated the release of her memoir, Even the Good Girls Will Cry (Da Capo), at the Brooklyn Brewery in Brooklyn, N.Y. She was in conversation with DJ/musician Mark Ronson. The event was hosted by Brooklyn's WORD Bookstores.

"Well, we are technically dug out if anyone needs a book," Canterbury Book Store in Escanaba, Mich., posted on Facebook.

"Today's forecast: 100% chance of reading!" That was the chalkboard message in front of the Story Emporium & Bookshop in Hutto, Tex., which noted: "Stop in, grab a drink or a bite from our cafe, and stay awhile! We've got plenty of space to work, free wifi, and loads of exciting shelves to explore when you're ready for a break!"

At the Penguin Publishing Group:

Jordan Aaronson has been promoted to associate director, marketing strategy.

Carolina Meurkens has been promoted to senior manager, multicultural marketing.

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At Kensington Publishing:

Andi Paris has been promoted to assistant director of marketing operations.

Michele Laikowski has joined the company as assistant director of digital marketing.

New production photos "are offering a first look at Tony-winning director John Doyle's new actor-musician revival of Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon's 1991 musical The Secret Garden at York Theatre Royal," Playbill reported. Adapted from Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic children's book, the production opens March 19, and continues through April 4.

Estella Evans (The Book Thief, Matilda) and Poppy Jason (Les Misérables) share the role of Mary Lennox, joined by Catrin Mai Edwards as Martha, Joanna Hickman as Lily, Henry Jenkinson as Archibald, Elliot Mackenzie as Dickon, Ann Marcuson as Mrs. Winthrop, Elizabeth Marsh as Mrs. Medlock, André Refig as Neville, and Steve Simmonds as Ben, with Cristian Buttaci and Dexter Pulling sharing the role of Colin. The cast also includes Stephanie Cremona, Matthew James Hinchliffe, Lara Lewis, and Melinda Orengo.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson (28 Years Later, Nosferatu) will star in Enigma Variations, a limited series greenlighted by Netflix based on André Aciman's bestselling novel, Deadline reported, adding that he succeeds Jeremy Allen White, who was originally going to star.

Written by Amanda Kate Shuman (The Wheel of Time) and to be directed by Oliver Hermanus (The History of Sound), Enigma Variations stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Paul, "a man remade by the lovers who ignite and undo him across ten transformative years. It's an intimate yet sweeping portrait of masculinity, sexuality, and modern love--and in a world of endless choices, it asks the question: will we know when we've found the one?" Deadline wrote.

Shuman is the showrunner, and executive produces alongside Hermanus as well as Michael Ellenberg and Lindsey Springer for Media Res, Aciman, and Monica Levinson (Love Story: JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette). Media Res is the studio.

The National Book Critics Circle has announced that National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service are this year's recipients of the Toni Morrison Award, which is given annually "to an institution that has, over time, made significant contributions to book culture." The award will be presented during this year's awards ceremony, which will be held March 25. 

"This year the award recognizes two such institutions," the NBCC noted. "The contributions to book culture of NPR and PBS are countless. For decades, their book reviews, author interviews, and coverage of the publishing industry have sparked the interest of readers of all varieties, from the little fans of PBS' Reading Rainbow to the adults who anticipate each year's expansive Books We Love list from NPR.

"Beyond that rich coverage of books and authors, we salute NPR and PBS for their unstinting defense and exercise of First Amendment rights, even in times when their funding has been slashed for that stance. As critics, as readers, we know freedom of speech and of the press are essential. Our congratulations to NPR, PBS, and all their staff."  

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Shortlists have been selected for the 2026 Lambda Literary Awards. Finalists will be celebrated and winners announced on June 12 at Sony Hall in New York City. To see the shortlisted titles in 26 categories, click here.

photo: Noah White

Kiersten White is the author of dozens of books for readers of all ages, including the And I Darken trilogy, Star Wars: Padawan, Hide, Mister Magic, Lucy Undying, and the gothic supernatural thriller The Fox and the Devil (Del Rey Books, March 10, 2026), which follows the daughter of Abraham Ven Helsing, Anneke, on a quest for revenge. White also has an extremely large tortoise named Kimberly, which isn't relevant, but she wanted you to know.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

In 1890s Europe, Anneke Van Helsing is hunting the woman who killed her father. But is the killer sending her threats... or love letters? Also, vampires.

On your nightstand now:

The Slough House novels by Mick Herron, about a dispirited group of reject British spies. The character and setting descriptions are astonishingly good, and I like taking breaks with very different genres than what I'm writing. I also have an early copy of Melissa Albert's adult debut, The Children, which looks delicious. I love her weird brain so much.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery made me feel seen and valued. The Redwall books by Brian Jacques made me a fantasy fan for life. And The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner made me dream of using a cleverly dammed river as a fridge to keep my milk cold. I still dream of it, and I don't even drink milk.

Your top five authors:

Mary Shelley for being a badass goth genius; Shirley Jackson for her astonishing way with words; Stephen Graham Jones for being my modern introduction to the power of horror; Mariana Enríquez for reminding me to write boldly and without fear; and Susanna Clarke for delivering two wildly different but completely perfect books.

Book you've faked reading:

It by Stephen King. I'm sorry, Stephen. It's just so long.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett. I'm not saying reading it will fix you, but... maybe it will, for a few hours. While I have nothing but respect for the genre, cozy-style books don't often hit the spot for me. This, however, was one I want to live in. Well-paced, absurdly charming, enough stakes and plot to keep me engaged, and a love interest reminiscent of Howl Pendragon. A deeply kind protagonist like Agnes is the kind of escapism I needed right now, and I suspect many others do, too.

Book you've bought for the cover:

When I was in Munich a couple of years ago, I bought a beautiful German edition of The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. I can't read German, so it wasn't very practical. But it's one of my all-time favorites and I had to own it in the original language. (If you only know the story from the '80s movie, read the book! Read the book!)

Book you hid from your parents:

I didn't hide any from my parents, but I hid Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn from myself. As a child, I read it once a year every year, and then pushed it behind other books because it was too scary to look at.

Book that changed your life:

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. But for a really practical reason! When I read it, I thought... I could do this. So, I switched from trying to break into middle-grade to writing YA, and that's where my author career started.

Favorite line from a book:

When I'm reading, I take photos of lines I love. (I had to stop doing this while reading The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, because I was basically just photographing every single page.) But my favorite line that I return to again and again is from a collection of Emily Dickinson's poetry, "Tell all the truth but tell it slant" (Poem 1263). It's how I feel about genre writing. We tell the truth. We just tell it sideways, so it sneaks up on you. Sometimes with fangs.

Five books you'll never part with:

Our fancy leather-bound copy of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy that I saved up to buy my spouse our first Christmas together; my tiny, adorable Japanese edition of my first book, Paranormalcy; the illustrated copy of Anne of Green Gables a neighbor gifted me when I was a child; my beat-up childhood copy of Redwall; and an advanced reader edition of Lola and the Boy Next Door by my best friend Stephanie Perkins. The original cover wasn't the right cover for the book, but it is one of my oddest small-world experiences. It randomly features the only male model I know. Hi, Tim!

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

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. I've often said reading it is the most fun you'll have being deeply confused for hundreds of pages. I stand by that statement, and I'd wipe my memory and do it again in a heartbeat. Conversely, I think Harrow the Ninth, the second book in the Locked Tomb series, needs to be read twice in order to be appreciated. (And deserves to, too. It's brilliant.)

Books you're most looking forward to this year:

New Murderbot! Martha Wells fascinates me with her ability to write so well in different genres, and Murderbot got me out of a big reading slump a couple of years ago. I can't wait to hang out with it again in Platform Decay. I'm also very excited for the next Dungeon Crawler Carl book, A Parade of Horribles, by Matt Dinniman, as well as Operation Bounce House. (I'm curious to see what a slightly less unhinged story from him is like.) And I've been trying to get my hands on early copies of Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker and It Looks Like You in the Dark by Mathilda Zeller, two upcoming horror releases that sound phenomenal.

In her tender, lyrical debut collection, Layaway Child, Chanel Sutherland explores the inner landscapes of Caribbean women who immigrate to Canada from their island homes, often leaving behind their own children. Through a series of linked stories, Sutherland probes the complexities of motherhood from a distance, the dubious benefits of building a new life, and the complications of living between two worlds--for mothers and daughters alike.

In "My Mother's Hands Are Silver," a daughter both admires and pities the streaks on her mother's skin, "a map... of the labour that emptied her and fed me at the same time." The daughter also remembers her mother taking her to art galleries, giving her a library card, urging her to pursue her education. The silver in her mother's hands (and, later, in her hair) speaks of work and exhaustion, but also the effort to give her daughter a broader, brighter world. In a sense, all of Sutherland's mothers do the same: sacrifice their own dreams, hide their longings "in the folds of a tablecloth" to give their children a chance at success.

Sutherland draws a sharp contrast between the island of St. Vincent--lush and vibrantly warm, crowded with bodies and ripe fruit and memories--and Montreal-- sterile, cold, impersonal, "a city with teeth." Her characters, mothers and daughters alike, must learn to make lives for themselves in Montreal's unfamiliar landscape, dealing with homesickness and racism while holding onto their bonds of family and identity. Sometimes, their new lives require emotional as well as physical distance; often, they learn to present one face to their white employers, saving another for their friends and family. Their Canadian lives bring alienation and grief, but also new possibilities: friendships, education, potential careers, a different way of seeing the world. Sutherland's keen eye catalogs the losses but also acknowledges the bittersweet hope of building a new life in a new place.

For the daughters, who immigrate as children or teenagers, the stakes are different but no less high: forging their own dual identities as Black girls with island ties in a city that always looks at them slantwise. In "With Friends Like These," immigrant daughter Shelly finds an unexpected connection to home when she meets her white friend's housekeeper. As they share a glass of malt and a conversation, Shelly gains a glimmer of insight into her mother's life and makes a choice about how to live her own.

Powerful and moving, Layaway Child is a sensitive evocation of lives shaped by immigration, separation, and the tenacious love of mothers for their children. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Shelf Talker: Chanel Sutherland's lyrical short story collection explores the lives of mothers and daughters profoundly shaped by their immigration from St. Vincent to Montreal.