Author James Patterson and Bookshop.org are launching a literary award called the James Patterson and Bookshop.org Prize; the grand prize of $15,000 will go to a debut author chosen by independent booksellers.

"I've been a longtime supporter of indie bookstores--and emerging authors," said Patterson, who to date has given $3.5 million to indie booksellers through his holiday bonus campaigns. "Creating this award that recognizes both the booksellers that are getting books into the hands of readers and of course, the books themselves, was a no-brainer to me. I'm excited to see which titles are nominated by those who in my opinion are the real experts!"

Indie booksellers from qualifying bookstores will be able to nominate titles and vote for the longlist, shortlist, and final winners. Nominations will open on January 5, 2026, with the 10-book longlist scheduled to be announced on February 9. The five-book shortlist will be announced on March 16, and the winner on April 6.

Full-length debut books originally written in English and first published in the U.S. between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2025, will be eligible for the prize. The book must also be available for purchase on Bookshop.org and published by a traditional publisher with standard trade distribution. The first-prize winner will receive $15,000 while the runner-up will receive $10,000; both titles will be promoted on Bookshop.org and by participating indie bookstores.

More information about the prize can be found on Bookshop.org.

Dust & Blush Bookshop, a romance-focused bookstore and mocktail bar and lounge, will open next year in Boyne City, Mich., with the help of a crowdfunding campaign, the News-Review reported. 

The future home of Dust & Blush.

Owner Rachael Hilliard has found a space at 116 S. Main St. and plans to carry a diverse range of romance titles. Her event plans include author signings, book clubs, watch parties, and community nights. 

The Kickstarter, which went live on November 20, has a goal of $50,000 and 25 days left to go. Money raised through the campaign will go toward various opening costs like renovation work, fixtures and lighting, a POS system and online store, opening inventory, and the build-out of the lounge. Backer rewards include reading lists, custom playlists, bookmarks, stickers, and more. 

The mocktail lounge will feature book-themed non-alcoholic drinks as well as dirty sodas, which are sodas with special flavors or toppings.

"A lot of people now are choosing not to drink," Hilliard told the News-Review. "I want to create that same feeling in a book club space."

Hilliard, an Air Force veteran, said she's wanted to own a business of her own since she was a child. While in the military she fell in love with romance books, which provided an escape from everyday life as well as a way to connect with friends. Discovering the space at 116 S. Main St. prompted her to take the plunge and open a bookstore.

She plans to open Dust & Blush in the spring.

Finalists have been selected for the 2025 Golden Poppy Awards, sponsored by the California Independent Booksellers Alliance and celebrating "the best of California authors and creators." 

The categories include fiction, nonfiction, mystery, the Octavia E. Butler Award (science fiction/fantasy/horror), poetry, romance, Glenn Goldman: California Lifestyle and Cooking, and the Martin Cruz Smith Award for Emerging Diverse Voices, a juried prize. In children's literature, categories are picture book, middle grade, YA, children's nonfiction, and the Mirrors & Windows Award for Excellence in Children's Literature, a juried prize. The finalists can be seen here.

California booksellers have until early in the new year to read as many finalists as possible before the voting period, which runs January 1-11, 2026. Winners of the Golden Poppy Awards will be announced at a virtual ceremony on January 29 (RSVP here).

For the 2026 awards, CALIBA is making some major changes that will allow the association for the first time to hold an in-person ceremony for winners, which will take place on the last day of its 2026 Fall Fest, September 15, 2026, in San Diego. All finalists will be invited to attend the ceremony and mix and mingle with booksellers afterward.

Changes also include having all 13 Golden Poppy committees be juried, with committee members choosing the five finalists and one winner for each category. The book submission calendar will start and end sooner. (See details about the new timeline here.) Bookstores will promote the finalists and winners throughout the fourth quarter and again in the new year.

Lakeside Book Company, one of the largest book printing, binding, and distribution companies in North America, has bought Baker & Taylor Publisher Services as well as B&T's print-on-demand facilities, both with headquarters in Ashland, Ohio. B&T closed in October. Lakeside Book's roots are in the R.R. Donnelley Company. 

Lakeside said that its acquisition of B&T Publisher Services, which provides distribution services for publishers, is "a great strategic fit for the company's end-to-end book supply chain portfolio," expanding "its service offering to include distribution and order-to-cash capabilities, providing publishers with streamlined and integrated solutions to sell, print, store, and distribute their books with Lakeside Book Company."

B&T Publisher Services clients include Severn River Publishing, Central European University Press, Guideposts, Little Creek Press, CamCat Books, Con Todo Press, Yad Vashem, and more.

B&T Publisher Services will be merged into the Lakeside Book Company brand and led by Michael Shea, president of book services at Lakeside Book. Shea commented: "The services offered by BTPS are a perfect fit within Lakeside Book's end-to-end solutions for publishers, from sales all the way through order-to-cash. Small and mid-sized publishers, a key customer base for BTPS and high growth opportunity across our industry, will now have direct access to Lakeside Book's expansive book manufacturing capabilities, creating a seamless supply chain under one financially strong partner focused exclusively on the book business."

The POD operations acquisition "complements Lakeside Book's existing digital print platform and strengthens offerings to customers of both organizations."

Ian Marchant, "a writer, performer, teacher, and broadcaster with a unique perspective on the lesser-known highways and byways of British life," died November 14, the Guardian reported. He was 67. 

Marchant found his voice in "a hybrid style of nonfiction that combined memoir, travel writing, humor, and considered social observation" the Guardian wrote, noting that his book Parallel Lines (2003) "is a deeply researched history of Britain's railways that does not exclude a gonzo approach to the Great Little Railways of Wales," while The Longest Crawl (2006) "traces the history of Britain's relationship with alcohol from The Turk's Head in the Isles of Scilly to The Baa Bar in Shetland." Something of the Night (2012) "looks at what Britons do in the night-time," and A Hero for High Times "lives up to its extravagant subtitle": A Younger Reader's Guide to the Beats, Hippies, Freaks, Punks, Ravers, New-Age Travellers and Dog-on-a-Rope Brew Crew Crusties of the British Isles, 1956-1994. 

During the 1990s, Marchant wrote a novel, In Southern Waters (1999), and for two years managed the Quinto Bookshop on Charing Cross Road in London. In 2001 he published his second novel, The Battle for Dole Acre, and the following year left London to become residential director, along with author Monique Roffey, of the Arvon writing center at Totleigh Barton in Devon.

In 2006, he settled in the Welsh border town of Presteigne and founded Radio Free Radnorshire while commuting to Birmingham City University to teach creative writing. He later was a presenter of an ITV Border documentary about the Scottish engineer Thomas Telford, followed by Fun for Some (2008), a series in which he explored "minority hobbies with unfeigned enthusiasm," the Guardian noted. Beginning in 2011, on BBC Radio 3 and 4, he hosted programs on a wide range of subjects.

During the Covid pandemic, with help from his wife, Hilary, Marchant discovered a distant ancestor of his father who had been the land-owning Sussex yeoman Thomas Marchant, author of a published diary covering the years 1714-28. Ian Marchant's final nonfiction book, One Fine Day (2023), "gives full voice to the family conversation between now and then," the Guardian noted, adding that his final novel, The Breaking Wave (2025), is about getting an '80s band back together in late middle-age.

At the Miami Book Fair this past weekend, Ed Devereux, owner of Unabridged Bookstore in Chicago, met Kiran Desai, the author of his favorite novel for 2025, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (Hogarth). Desai was on a panel called "Tracing Invisible Currents: Multigenerational Stories" with Susan Choi and Gish Jen. The Fair, cofounded in 1984 by Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Miami's Books & Books, drew some 80,000 attendees over eight days, and featured 715 authors, moderators and experts.

Posted on Facebook by Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Mich.: "Here's a special program: Breaking the Cycle With Books. It's a nonprofit in Detroit that brings students to indie bookstores, every kid goes home with books, and it's 100% volunteer. Thank you Mike Cruz for establishing this important program! We loved meeting the students."

Alexis Nowicki has joined the Viking Penguin publicity team as a senior publicist. She previously worked at Astra House.

Posted on Instagram by Roundabout Books, Greenfield, Mass.: "New books and library carts in the bright afternoon."

Today:
Fresh Air: Joyce Vance, author of Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping a Democracy (Dutton, $28, 9798217178117).

Leighton Meester (Good Cop/Bad Cop) and Jared Padalecki (Supernatural) will star in a Netflix holiday rom-com based on Katherine Center's The Bodyguard. Deadline reported that in the 2022 novel, "a no-nonsense bodyguard is assigned to protect a charming action star over the holidays, leading sparks to fly and secrets to unravel, with Christmas getting a whole lot more complicated."

The movie's cast includes Andie MacDowell, Walker Hayes, Noah LaLonde, and Toby Sandeman. The project is directed by Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum (Aquamarine) from a script by Erin Cardillo & Richard Keith (Isn't It Romantic, Virgin River). Gina Matthews and Grant Scharbo are producing for Little Engine Productions, alongside Jared & Genevieve Padalecki for Living in the Asterisk.

Deadline noted that "fans of The Bodyguard will have a hand in titling the new Netflix movie--keep an eye on the Instagram pages of Meester, Padalecki and Center to find out more."

Rosenbaum said, "I began paying close attention to BookTok culture around the success of my last Netflix Film, Purple Hearts. The overwhelming enthusiasm on social media and with readers for Katherine Center's novel was a major factor in my decision to come on board as director.... It's been amazing to work closely with Katherine so far, and to see her so excited about moving her witty story about a no-nonsense bodyguard to an A-list actor into the holiday season."

Winners have been named for the 2025 Readings Prize, which are sponsored by Readings bookstore in Melbourne, Australia. Each year, three prizes are awarded by teams of Readings staff. The winners in new Australian fiction, YA, and children's categories each receive A$5,000 (about US$3,235). In addition, the Gab Williams Prize is judged by the Readings Teen Advisory Board from the YA shortlist, with the winner receiving A$1,000 (about US$645). This year's winners are:

New Australian fiction: I Want Everything by Dominic Amerena
YA: Aisle Nine by Ian X Cho 
Children's: How to Free a Jinn by Raidah Shah Idil
Gab Williams Prize: This Dream Will Devour Us by Emma Clancey

"The Readings Prize is unique in the Australian literary landscape as the only prize currently run by an independent Melbourne bookshop, and specifically supporting emerging local voices. Each year, the three prizes are awarded by teams of Readings staff and reflect our judgement of the works that have attained the highest literary merit in their category--and of course they’re always great reads, too," said prize coordinator Angela Crocombe, adding that the Gab Williams Prize "is awarded in memory of our much-missed former colleague."

In Nightshade and Oak, Molly O'Neill (Greenteeth) presents a fresh take on an oft-forgotten Iron Age goddess of the British Isles. Mallt Y Nos is the goddess of death; her role is to wander the land with her hounds, gathering lost souls to guide them to their rest in Annwn, the afterworld over the sea to the west. She has been very busy lately, cleaning up after the results of Boudica's rebellion against the Romans. But as she is collecting souls from the battlefields one day, she is drawn to a surge of magic in a glade that also holds souls in pain. When she reaches the source, the magic traps her. Mallt finds herself stripped of her godly powers in a human body. She learns that a spell cast by Boudica's eldest daughter, the warrior princess Belis, has caused this transformation as she was trying to heal her sister, Cati, who is now a lost soul. Mallt travels with Belis to Annwn to reclaim Cati's soul and her own powers, and she's forced to learn what it means to be human.

Despite her role collecting souls, Mallt has existed separately from human beings, never concerning herself with what their lives must be like before they pass from this world. But now stuck in a body so different from her goddess form and without her powers, Mallt receives a full, embodied crash course in what it means to be human, with all the trials and also with all the joys. For her part, Belis is now in the position of teaching a goddess about minutiae like blisters and exhaustion. But when they finally reach Annwn, they find that the Roman invasion has not harmed just Belis's people, the Iceni, but has damaged the mythic world as well--and if they can't solve that problem, their dual quests will have been in vain.

O'Neill draws from both the Mabinogion and from pre-Roman, pre-Christian British history, and features individuals such as Boudica, queen of the Iceni tribe. In addition to Mallt, readers are also introduced to other Welsh folkloric and mythic figures they may not have known, such as Gwyn ap Nudd and Rhiannon at a time of great historical and cultural upheaval. Nightshade and Oak is a fantastic expansion of myth and legend that reinvents a little-known, obscure figure for a new generation. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: Nightshade and Oak rounds out a lesser-known mythological goddess of death, teasing at the lines between humanity and divinity and asking questions about what it means to be alive.

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

1. Delivering the Wow by Richard Fain
2. If You Claim Me by Helena Hunting
3. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros 
4. Yours for the Season by Uzma Jalaluddin
5. Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
6. Heart of a Goon by Jahquel J.
7. Sleigh Bells and Snowstorms by Claire Kingsley
8. Time After Time by Maya Alden
9. Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
10. Coeds and Cattails by Jana DeLeon

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]