Weeks Co. & Lantern Lights Bookstore opened May 1 in Wallace, Idaho, the Hagadone News Network reported.

Located at 512 ½ Bank St. in downtown Wallace, the bookstore carries a general-interest inventory of new and used titles, with an emphasis on local authors and blind date book packages. Alongside books, customers can find custom apparel and a variety of gifts. In the months ahead, Weeks Co. & Lantern Lights Bookstore will start hosting book clubs, craft groups, and other community events.

Before opening the store, co-owners Cheyenne Weeks and Katie Kitchen met while working together at a bank. After they left their bank jobs, Weeks launched Weeks Co. to sell her custom-made apparel. In time Kitchen began working with Weeks to make acrylic bookmarks, and it was Kitchen who suggested they open a bricks-and-mortar bookstore. They started building a following by selling Blind Dates with a Book, and they jumped on the space at 512 ½ Bank St. when it became available. 

"We knew we'd be dumb not to sign a lease," Weeks told HNN. "Were we ready for a storefront? No. But [we] knew we could be ready by May 1."

"Being in Wallace, we both felt that we needed to get those local authors here," said Kitchen. "This community, especially Wallace, thrives on that."

With the bricks-and-mortar store, they kept the Weeks Co. name and added Lantern Lights as a nod to their husbands, who are both miners. For now, the bookstore is open Wednesday through Saturday; hours may increase as the tourism season begins.

Applications are open for the Macmillan Booksellers Professional Development Scholarship, a partnership between the Book Industry Charitable (Binc) Foundation and Macmillan Publishers that provides eight grants of $750 each to booksellers traditionally underrepresented within the industry to attend their region's fall trade show. Applications will be accepted until June 1

Kelly Collins, v-p, communications & community, Macmillan, said, "For 30 years, Binc has been a lifeline for booksellers when it matters most. At Macmillan Publishers, we're proud to partner on this scholarship, helping booksellers grow their careers, connect with one another, and deepen the impact they have in their communities."   

Each scholarship covers the cost of travel, lodging and meals for one bookseller up to $750. Eligibility details and the application can be found here.

B&N in Aurora, Ohio

Barnes & Noble will open new stores tomorrow, May 20, in Aurora, Ohio, and Prosper, Tex.

The Aurora store will span 18,000 sq. ft. and reside at 7555 Market Place Dr. in the Marketplace at Four Corners shopping center. The store will have a B&N Cafe, and Dan Chaon, author of One of Us (Holt), will be on hand for a ribbon cutting and signing. It will be the seventh new B&N to open in Ohio since 2022, and the second this year.

The Prosper store, meanwhile, is located at 1191 Gates Parkway, Suite #300, in the Gates of Prosper shopping center. It measures 20,000 sq. ft. and includes a B&N cafe. Local author Tanner Mitchell will cut the ribbon and sign copies of his book, For the Love of Houseplants: Caring for & Keeping Plants with Confidence (Simon Element). B&N has opened 14 new stores in Texas since 2023 and will open six in the state this year, including the Prosper store.

B&N intends to open 60 stores this year after opening more than 60 in 2025. The chain now has more than 700 bookstores nationwide.

British author Ian Watson, who "established his reputation as an exhilarating, intellectually adventurous writer of science fiction" with his first novel, The Embedding (1973), winner of the Prix Apollo in France, died April 13, the Guardian reported. He was 82. Watson's debut novel was followed by The Jonah Kit (1975), winner of the British Science Fiction Association award, and The Martian Inca (1977).

"As can happen with genre writers who do not stick to a formula, he did not achieve great commercial success or critical acclaim, but did maintain a long career, writing what he wanted. His early books are now sci-fi classics, kept alive as e-books, but some of his later, out-of-print novels are ripe for rediscovery," the Guardian wrote. Author Adam Roberts pointed to the "intricate interweaving of myth and science" in Watson's The Books of Mana, inspired by the Finnish epic, the Kalevala.

Although Watson published more than 20 novels, after 2001 he concentrated on short stories. Altogether he published 15 collections, including The Very Slow Time Machine (1979) and The 1000-Year Reich (2016).

Watson's "reputation as an ideas man brought him to the attention of Stanley Kubrick, who was looking for a writer to help him develop the Brian Aldiss short story 'Super-Toys Last All Summer Long' into a feature film," the Guardian noted. For nine months in the early 1990s, Watson was paid to be personal writer, conversational partner, and muse to Kubrick. The resulting film, AI Artificial Intelligence (2001), was ultimately made by Steven Spielberg, with a screen credit for Watson.

During the late 1990s Watson became the primary caregiver for his ill wife and wrote poems, which he described as "like condensed short stories." One of them, "True Love," won the 2002 Rhysling award from the Science Fiction Poetry Association. After his wife's death in 2001, he resumed writing short fiction.

The European Science Fiction Society gave him the title of European Grandmaster in 2024, "and he was writing to the end, leaving behind an unfinished story about Nietzsche in Turin, and still more ideas," the Guardian noted. Although dedicated to his craft, he insisted that "writing should be fun."

This past week, Shelf Awareness sent our Kids & YA Pre-Order E-Blast to more than 310,000 of the country's best book readers. The e-blast went to 312,554 customers of 74 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, June 10. 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 May Kids & YA Pre-Order E-Blast, see this one from Yardstick Books, Algoma, Wis.

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

The Gilded Blade by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Little, Brown)
Ruinous Ends by I.V. Marie (Delacorte)
The Knight with No Bottom by Levina van Teunenbroek, illus. by Charlotte Bruijn (Viking)
Shook by Julian Randall, illus. by Nathan Walker (Holt)

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt alums gathered to celebrate Bruce Nichols and the publication of his first book, The Emerson Circle: The Concord Radicals Who Reinvented the World (Avid Reader), at the Book Shop of Beverly Farms, owned by Hannah Harlow (at front), with (from left to right) David Eber, Lauren Wein, Alison Kerr Miller, Adrienne Brodeur, Deanne Urmy, Liz Anderson, Becky Saikia-Wilson, Megan Wilson, Nicole Angeloro, Josh Press, Katie Kimmerer, Ken Carpenter, Gary Gentel, and Taryn Roeder.

Marking the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence this July, Association of University Presses members have compiled a collection of more than 100 new and recent books, spanning Revolutionary-era history to insights into the American experiment, 250 years along. A related collection is On Democracy: Essential Reading from University Presses.

Kevin Hamric will retire at the end of May following a 40-year career that has spanned retail, wholesale/distribution, publishing, and consulting. We at the Shelf always appreciated Hamric's support, his industry insight, and his directness. He can be reached at kevinhamric@gmail.com.

Mike Mongo's KID Astronaut Training Manual by Mike Mongo, illus. by Raghav Arumugam (Fair Share Publishing).

Today:
Fresh Air: Jesmyn Ward, author of On Witness and Respair (Scribner, $29, 9781668064269).

Tomorrow:
Today: Isabel Klee, author of Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I've Cried About: A Memoir (Morrow, $28, 9780063451070).

Tamron Hall: Hayden Panettiere, author of This Is Me: A Reckoning (Grand Central, $30, 9781538773420).

Kelly Clarkson Show: Beth Stern, author of Coco and Stephen, Together Forever: How a Kitten and Bunny Became Best Friends (Random House Studio, $19.99, 9798217123544).

Also on Kelly Clarkson: Dr. Elisa Port, author of The Breast Advice: All You Need to Know About Breast Health, Screening, and Treatment (HarperOne, $29.99, 9780063492547).

A TV adaptation of Fay Weldon's 1980 novel Puffball is in development. Deadline reported that Firebird Pictures has optioned the book, with playwright and screenwriter Morgan Lloyd Malcolm (Obsession) attached to write. The novel was previously made into a 2007 film that was directed by Nicolas Roeg and starred Kelly Reilly, Donald Sutherland, and Miranda Richardson.

Puffball follows a young London couple "who move to the country with the expectation of having children. Their neighbors are Mabs and Tucker, a farming family with five children of their own. Mabs, jealous of the newcomers' easy life, sends Tucker to sleep with Liffey while Richard is away, priming her with an herbal aphrodisiac, but she becomes angry when Liffey becomes pregnant and finds that she herself is suddenly unable to conceive," Deadline wrote.

Finalists have been unveiled for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction as well as the Orwell Prize for Political Writing (nonfiction), both of which aim to encourage good writing and thinking about politics as well as meet Orwell's ambition "to make political writing into an art." The winners will be named June 25. Finalists for all four Orwell Prize categories are available here. The book finalists are:

Political Writing 
The Escape from Kabul by Karen Bartlett
Israel: What Went Wrong? by Omer Bartov
Shattered Lands by Sam Dalrymple
For the Sun After Long Nights by Nilo Tabrizy & Fatemeh Jamalpour
Three Years on Fire by Andrey Kurkov
The Wall Dancers by Yi-Ling Liu
The Elements of Power by Nicolas Niarchos
Stalin's Apostles by Antonia Senior

Political Fiction 
Uprising by Tahmima Anam
Flashlight by Susan Choi
The Comfort of Distant Stars by I.O. Echeruo
Transcription by Ben Lerner
This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin
Every One Still Here by Liadan Ní Chuinn
John of John by Douglas Stuart
A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia

We Were Forbidden by the late Belgian writer Jacqueline Harpman (1929-2012) collects three intriguing never-before-translated stories, each originally published in French in the early aughts. Throughout the trio, Harpman nimbly examines personal agency, particularly for women. Ros Schwartz, who also translated I Who Have Never Known Men, skillfully captures Harpman's unembellished clarity, reflecting the directness of her spare prose.

"The Ardennes Forest" opens the collection, a dystopian narrative about a military group assigned to patrol the forests during a seemingly senseless war: "We didn't understand why we were walking, why we took great care to keep our weapons in working order... or why we still thought of ourselves as soldiers." Originally a company of 104, "the cold, hunger and disease had re­duced our number to just thirty-seven exhausted souls." When the group happens upon a deserted village, for a few days they eat their fill, drink wine, dance, sleep in beds--and remember comfort and community.

Harpman's writing turns autobiographical in "The Outcast," which takes readers to Casablanca where her Jewish family fled to escape the Nazis during World War II. Written in first-person, the 15-year-old narrator recalls the cleaving of a close friendship over twisted words, cruel accusations, striking ignorance--and an administration that unfairly ostracizes and silences her as punishment. At the end of the 40-day ban, she takes her turn and "ostracize[s] them all"--but it's to her own detriment: "in the first battle I waged in the world, I was beaten hollow and I still bear the scars."

The final story, "The Broom Closet," is also the best, a slyly entertaining meta-narrative spotlighting an author composing a story about a woman and her affairs. Using first-person, Harpman shifts without warning--but entertainingly--between writer and protagonist. The young wife is 22, "married for six tedious years" but later, her creator will decide, "twenty-two may be too old, let us say nine­teen and married three years." In the throes of plotting, the writer interjects, "Lord! Is she blonde or brunette? I no longer have any idea; I'd have to go back to the previous pages but that would interrupt my flow!"

Given Harpman's notable playfulness in "The Broom Closet," certain details might imply connections between the three: the Ardennes may geographically link "Forest" with "Outcast"; the soldier named Ulrich could be the same in "Forest" and "Closet." The suggestion of such liminal narratives makes Harpman's fiction even more cleverly enticing, while evergreen themes--war, coming of age, the fine art of writing--ensure Harpman's posthumous relevancy. --Terry Hong

Shelf Talker: Three newly translated stories from the late Belgian writer Jacqueline Harpman memorably capture women seeking, losing, and reclaiming agency.

The bestselling self-published books last week as compiled by IndieReader.com:

1. The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett
2. Becoming a Principle-Driven Leader by Charles and Chase Koch
3. Making It Without Losing It by Jess Ekstrom
4. I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
5. Hell in a Handbag by Jibz Cameron
6. The Self-Coached Swimmer's Guide by Cori Linder
7. The Deal by Elle Kennedy
8. The Score by Elle Kennedy
9. Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
10. The Mistake by Elle Kennedy

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]