Flesh by David Szalay has won the £50,000 (about $65,870) 2025 Booker Prize, honoring "the best sustained work of fiction written in English and published in the U.K. and Ireland."

Szalay was born in Canada to a Hungarian father and Canadian mother. He has lived in Lebanon, the U.K., Hungary, and now Vienna. He is the author of six works of fiction that have been translated into more than 20 languages, as well as several BBC radio dramas. His All That Man Is was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2016.

Flesh was published in the U.S. by Scribner in April and was the focus of a Shelf Awareness Maximum Shelf on October 23, 2024. We wrote in part that the book is the story of "István, the Hungarian teenager whose serendipity brings him to the heights of wealth and power, only for tragedy to complicate his path... Flesh [is] a brilliant novel that is as much about the immigrant experience as it is a cautionary tale about capitalism and the allure of eros.... Astute readers of literary fiction who enjoy thoughtful stories, stripped-down prose, unpredictable turns, and a counterpoint to traditional narratives about the immigrant experience will find much to savor in Flesh."

Organizers said, "Written in spare prose, and spanning decades--from a Hungarian housing estate to the mansions of London's rich elite--Flesh is a propulsive novel centred on an emotionally detached man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp."

Chair of judges Roddy Doyle, who won the Booker in 1993 and is the first Booker winner to chair a Booker judging panel, said, "The judges discussed the six books on the shortlist for more than five hours. The book we kept coming back to, the one that stood out from the other great novels, was Flesh--because of its singularity. We had never read anything quite like it. It is, in many ways, a dark book but it is a joy to read.

"At the end of the novel, we don't know what the protagonist, István, looks like but this never feels like a lack; quite the opposite. Somehow, it's the absence of words--or the absence of István's words--that allow us to know István. Early in the book, we know that he cries because the person he's with tells him not to; later in life, we know he's balding because he envies another man's hair; we know he grieves because, for several pages, there are no words at all.

"I don't think I've read a novel that uses the white space on the page so well. It's as if the author, David Szalay, is inviting the reader to fill the space, to observe--almost to create--the character with him. The writing is spare and that is its great strength. Every word matters; the spaces between the words matter. The book is about living, and the strangeness of living and, as we read, as we turn the pages, we're glad we're alive and reading--experiencing--this extraordinary, singular novel."

Building off the success of their bookstore in Palm Springs, Calif., Paul Carr and Sarah Lacy are opening a new bookstore in San Francisco, Calif., called the Best Bookstore in Union Square, the San Francisco Standard reported.

The Best Bookstore in Palm Springs

Lacy and Carr launched their Palm Springs store, the Best Bookstore in Palm Springs, in 2022. The business has proved a success and been more lucrative than the couple expected, inspiring them to open a store in San Francisco, where they lived prior to relocating to Palm Springs in 2019.

"Every time somebody sees a bookstore, they're pleasantly surprised it exists," Carr told the Standard. "But the reality is that print books are selling in huge, huge numbers, there are more bookstores opening than closing... and book publishing is doing better than it's ever done before." 

As the name suggests, the bookstore will be located in downtown San Francisco's Union Square, which saw in recent years an exodus of major retailers. Thanks in part to a city program called Vacant to Vibrant, however, businesses are coming back; Carr and Lacy utilized the program to find their storefront and get a lease.

Lacy noted that many of the businesses opening up are smaller, and as a result Union Square feels much more local. "When we turned around and looked around, it wasn't just Gucci and Nordstrom and Nintendo and designer stores," she said.

There is still a lot of work to do, and the owners are aiming to be open on Black Friday regardless.

"All we can say is there will be books, and piles of wood, and it will appear to be what it is: an independent bookstore," Lacy said. "Hopefully people are gentle with us, because we're doing this whether we're ready or not."

Jane Estes, co-owner of Lark & Owl Booksellers in Georgetown, Tex., reported that the store has done a lot more consignment with local artists and artisans in the past year. While Lark & Owl still carries its other retail sidelines, the store has been having success with things like hand-painted earrings, crocheted stuffed animals, handmade bookmarks, journal covers, and stickers made by local artists and craftpeople. 

Touching on stickers, Estes noted that they are the store's "number one seller every week" by unit, and Lark & Owl has benefited from a "lovely partnership" with a woman who makes stickers. She'll bring in packs of stickers for the store to sell and make custom stickers for book clubs and special events.

Seasonal candles, whether Halloween-, Thanksgiving-, or generally autumn-themed, are doing very well at the moment; Estes said Faire has been a great source for those items, along with crocheted tote bags that "always sell."

"No matter where you live, I think you can find some vendors and artisans you can highlight," remarked Estes, adding that two of the three people who make crochet stuffed animals work at the hair salon next to the bookstore. "There are talented people everywhere."

Asked about tariffs, Estes said they have not had a noticeable impact, but "people keep bringing it up," with some vendors being particularly concerned. She pointed out that even if something is made locally, "one little, tiny item will come from overseas, whether it's screws or glue or whatever."

Relying more on consignment for gifts and non-book items has not been the only change that Lark & Owl has made with its buying. In the face of economic uncertainty, "people's buying habits have changed," leading the store to buy on more of a weekly or bi-weekly basis rather than a monthly or seasonal basis. Estes called it a "huge pivot for us," but the approach has worked, and she thinks it will continue. At the same time, the store has "skewed lower" in prices when it comes to non-book items.

At Pages, a bookstore in Manhattan Beach, Calif., some perennial favorite sidelines include puzzles, cards, and plush, said general manager Jeff Resnik. Since the beginning, the store has carried Mighty Bright booklights, and for a long time the store has done quite well with store-branded bags made by a company called Apolis. Resnik called it a "fantastic quality bag" that can hold an "unbelievable amount of books" along with a laptop.

A relatively recent nonbook addition has been Blackwing pencils, which the store "went deep" on. They created a display that gives customers the chance to try one of the pencils out on a notepad, and that has been very successful.

Pages also brought in chocolates within the last year or so, with Resnik remarking that he "tried a heck of a lot of chocolate" before deciding what to carry. The team went with Deux Cranes, a company based in California, due to the combination of the chocolate's quality and the story behind the chocolatier. The "guiding principles" for the store's sidelines, Resnik added, are a product's quality and its story. 

Asked about other locally or regionally sourced items, Resnik pointed to a line of wooden postcards made by a company in San Pedro, Calif. He called them "really cool," noting that they are heavy enough that they need an additional stamp when mailed; Pages keeps a supply of extra stamps for customers who buy them.

On the subject of tariffs, Resnik said that when he was first bringing in chocolates, he found another supplier based in Canada that he was "really excited about." About a month later, the tariffs started coming down, and though there was a brief window where he could buy more without the tariffs affecting the cost, "that window has closed."

And in Cambridge, Mass., holiday scented candles are "flying off the shelf" at Lovestruck Books, said head gift buyer Rae Diep. Keyboard fidget keychains are a recent addition that have been huge hits with both customers and Lovestruck staff. 

When it comes to locally and regionally made sidelines, Diep said the Lovestruck team are "big believers in working with our local community," and the store partners with several local and regional artists and vendors. As examples, Diep pointed to One More Chapter Candle Co., which creates custom Lovestruck Candles, and anyang.art, a local artist making postcards, prints, keychains, and more.

Asked about perennial favorites, Diep said stickers were the biggest favorite and theorized that they are so popular because they "show off so much of our personality in just one small item." Customers love the perfumes and potions from TokyoMilk, which can be "a bit tough to keep in stock," as well as many of the store-branded sidelines, such as "surprise favorite" tumblers that are co-branded with George Howell Coffee.

Tariffs, Diep continued, have made the team "rethink how we shop for holidays a bit," with filtering through vendors that may have import duties or tariff costs being the biggest change. Fortunately, there are "so many vendors" that ship within the U.S., and Lovestruck's sales reps have been "extremely helpful" in letting the store know whether to expect price increases. The team is also "staying mindful of wholesale vs. retail pricing" so that holiday shopping stays affordable. And though Lovestruck has seen some price increases from vendors related to tariff costs, "they have been largely minimal." --Alex Mutter

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

Former Vermont Poet Laureate Ellen Bryant Voigt, who published six collections of poetry and a book of craft essays, died October 23, the Barre Montpelier Times Argus reported. She was 82. Her collection Shadow of Heaven was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2002; Kyrie was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1995; and Messenger was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2008. In 2003, she was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and in 2015, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

Jennifer Grotz, fellow poet and teacher, and director of the Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers' Conferences, said, "Her poetry is a model for how a poet might develop her gifts and her subject matter over time. She herself also modeled how a poet might teach and support other writers and how to sustain the creative life over the course of a lifetime."

Voigt graduated from Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C., then earned an MFA from the University of Iowa. She taught at MIT and Goddard College where, in 1976, she developed and directed the nation's first low-residency MFA in Creative Writing. She also taught in the MFA program for writers at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina.

"She invented the low-residency MFA Program at Goddard College," said Michael Collier, a poet and former director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. "There was nothing like it at the time. It allowed apprentice writers who had jobs or domestic situations that prevented them from attending full-time, to study at the graduate level. This was particularly helpful for women who were raising children and running a household. The low-residency model has been replicated widely but no other program is as rigorous as the one Ellen began at Goddard."

In a tribute, the Yale Review wrote that Voigt "was a central figure in American poetry for more than five decades. Her work combined formal precision with psychological depth, tracing the intricacies of family life, rural experience, and moral attention."

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Philips observed: "Fierce and ferocious are the words that keep coming up as people remember Ellen. But I'm not sure she'd agree with that. Unless devotion is a form of ferocity, a respect for art and the making of it, an insistence on precision, on not mistaking randomness for intuition, and on remembering that one way to think about art is as intuition coinciding (whether instinctively or as if instinctively) with craft. In which case, yes, she was a fierce poet, a ferocious teacher, and (even at times when I myself swerved a bit, got lost) a swerveless friend."

From her poem "Practice": 

Some believe in heaven,
some in rest. We’ll float,
you said. Afterward
we’ll float between two worlds--

five bronze beetles
stacked like spoons in one
peony blossom, drugged by lust:
if I came back as a bird
I’d remember that--

until everyone we love
is safe is what you said.

Horseshoe crab advocates turned out in force at Water Street Bookstore in Exeter, N.H., for Caroline Sutton and her new book, Eyes in the Soles of My Feet: From Horseshoe Crabs to Sycamores, Exploring Hidden Connections to the Natural World (Schaffner Press). The event was co-sponsored by Great Bay Stewards, a nonprofit whose mission is the long-term protection and conservation of the nearby Great Bay estuarine system by supporting education, land protection, research and stewardship. The Great Bay is home to endangered horseshoe crabs that are monitored by scientists and volunteers. Water Street donated a portion of the evening's proceeds to Great Bay Stewards.

Before (top) and after at Bright Side Bookshop.

Bright Side Bookshop in downtown Flagstaff, Ariz., recently unveiled a literary-themed mural in the alley behind the shop. Created by local artist Joel Geist, the mural celebrates the joy (and agony) of the writing process, books, and the trust in patience and courage. 

The shop hosted a Mural Reveal and Ribbon Cutting Celebration during First Friday Art Walk on November 7, with light refreshments and plenty of literary cheer as the finished artwork was unveiled.

The project was made possible through the support of the Flagstaff Downtown Business Alliance, which helped secure a mural grant; the shop's landlords; and the City of Flagstaff's Beautification in Action Program.

"We're so happy to see this dream come to life! We're especially delighted to now have a 'bookshop cat,' and the coffee perfectly represents our shared team addiction," said the Bright Side team. "The whole literary theme makes us smile every time we walk up the alley and unlock the back door to open the shop for the day. It's such a wonderful, welcoming sight and a joyful addition to downtown." 

Kaye Publicity has hired:

Erica Tempesta as publicist.

Alexandria Mitchell-Pressman as marketing assistant.

Emily Greenzang as events assistant.

Green Crime: Inside the Minds of the People Destroying the Planet, and How to Stop Them by Dr. Julia Shaw (Chelsea Green).

Today:
All Things Considered: Justinian Huang, author of Lucky Seed: A Novel (MIRA, $30, 9780778387862).

Fresh Air: Marion Nestle, author of What to Eat Now: The Indispensable Guide to Good Food, How to Find It, and Why It Matters (North Point Press, $36, 9780374608699), a major revision of Nestle's What to Eat.

Tomorrow:
CBS Mornings: Sen. John Fetterman, author of Unfettered (Crown, $32, 9780593799826).

The View: Rob Riggle, author of Grit, Spit, and Never Quit: A Marine's Guide to Comedy and Life (Grand Central, $30, 9781538769546).

Drew Barrymore Show: Alison Roman, author of Something from Nothing: A Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, $37.99, 9781984826411).

Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Jonathan Karl, author of Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America (Dutton, $32, 9798217047000).

A full international trailer has been released for The Wizard of the Kremlin, adapted by Oliver Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria, Personal Shopper) and screenwriter/novelist Emmanuel Carrère from the eponymous novel by Giuliano da Empoli. Deadline reported that the film "delves into the Byzantine politics of post-Soviet Russia and the rise to power of Vladimir Putin."

Directed by Assayas, the movie stars Paul Dano, Jude Law, Alicia Vikander, Tom Sturridge, Will Keen as late oligarch Boris Berezovsky, and Jeffrey Wright. It "enjoyed a 12-minute ovation in Venice and has since played at Toronto, San Sebastian and London among other festivals and soon hits the MENA circuit with a screening at the Red Sea Film Festival in December," Deadline noted.

The Wizard of the Kremlin is produced by Oliver Delbosc (Curiosa Films) and Sidonie Dumas (Gaumont) in coproduction with France 2 Cinéma with the participation of France Télévisions and Disney+. Gaumont is handling French distribution and international sales.

Winners were named for the 2025 Christy Awards, honoring "the year's best Christian fiction" and sponsored by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association:

The Christy Book of the Year: All We Thought We Knew by Michelle Shocklee (Tyndale House Publishers) [Also co-winner in the historical category.]
The Amplify Award for Christian Fiction: Bitter and Sweet by Rhonda McKnight (Thomas Nelson Publishers)
Contemporary Romance: The Roads We Follow by Nicole Deese (Bethany House)
First Novel: Darkfell by Amanda Wright (Quill & Flame Publishing House)
General Fiction: Between the Sound and Sea by Amanda Cox (Revell)
Historical: (tie)
All We Thought We Knew by Michelle Shocklee (Tyndale House Publishers)
Born of Gilded Mountains by Amanda Dykes (Bethany House)
Historical Romance: As Sure as the Sea by Jamie Ogle (Tyndale House Publishers)
Mystery/Suspense/Thriller: Night Falls on Predicament Avenue by Jaime Jo Wright (Bethany House)
Short Form: "A Daffodil in the Dress" (in Something Borrowed) by Susie Finkbeiner (Kregel Publications)
Speculative: Memoria by J.J. Fischer (Enclave)
Young Adult: The Chaos Grid by Lyndsey Lewellen (Enclave Escape)

Ian Frazier has been writing for the New Yorker since his first "Talk of the Town" piece in 1974. The 46 career-spanning selections collected in The Snakes That Ate Florida: Reporting, Essays, and Criticism, his 16th book, offer a generous sampling of his work for that magazine and others, demonstrating the encyclopedic breadth of his curiosity and the versatility of his writing.

Of the three categories identified in the book's subtitle, more than two-thirds of the pieces gathered here fall under the heading of reporting, but there is significant variety within its scope. Many of the shorter offerings exemplify Frazier's early work, touching on subjects that include a rodeo in Madison Square Garden, the pool hustler Minnesota Fats, Montana's bald eagles, and Kim Williams, a homespun philosopher from that state and an NPR favorite in the 1980s. These entries depend more for their appeal on Frazier's observational skill, keen wit, and economical prose than they do on one's interest in their occasionally dated subject matter, but are consistently pleasing nonetheless and whet the appetite for the more substantial journalism to come.

The examples of Frazier's long-form writing demonstrate considerable range. They include historical excursions to the 13th-century Mongol Empire and the Russian Revolution, alongside "Frogpocalypse Now," a sometimes tongue-in-cheek examination of the cane toad, "one of the most successful invasive species on the planet," whose members "sit and look at you as if you owe them money" as they overrun southern Florida's housing developments and shopping centers. Frazier literally waded in with both feet to report the collection's titular piece, the story of the Burmese pythons, "simply the latest in a series of environmental nightmares we've inflicted on the Everglades."

Frazier is equally adept at the personal essay, whether it's a charming description of a day he spent at a used automotive parts market in Los Angeles ("Pick Your Part") or recounting with his characteristic wry humor his involvement in a seven-car pileup on N.J.'s Garden State Parkway while driving his heavily dented 18-year-old Honda Civic ("Driving in New York"). Among the several examples of his criticism featured here, he reviews a biography of the Lakota warrior Crazy Horse and examines a book on the environmental toll of modern American agriculture in "Grim Reapers."

The seeming ease with which Frazier writes about such a variety of subjects might cause some to devalue his work, but his ability to sustain such high quality, informative, and entertaining journalism for half a century speaks eloquently to his talent. Though he's perhaps not as well known as fellow New Yorker writers Susan Orlean and Calvin Trillin, this volume confirms that Frazier is entitled to be included in their company. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: Longtime New Yorker contributor Ian Frazier offers an ample collection of his writing, both short and long, on an assortment of subjects over more than half a century.

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

1. Breathe with Me by Becka Mack
2. Right Wing Revolution by Charlie Kirk
3. The Things Gods Break by Abigail Owen
4. Lights Out Collectors Edition by Navessa Allen
5. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros 
6. Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros 
7. Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton
8. Caught Up by Navessa Allen
9. Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
10. Iron Flame (Wing and Claw Collection) by Rebecca Yarros 

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]