"I want the shop to give other people what books have always given me: a bit of calm and care in chaos. Somewhere to chill and discover good stories and amazing art, warm and welcoming enough that on a bad day you can come in and find a book to escape into. Books are how I found comfort and stability in my own childhood, and I think that was a gift.... The practical goals follow from that. I want Nuts & Shells to be a fixture people build into their week, not a place they visit once, and I want the shelves to respond to what young readers actually want to read and see." 

In 2026, membership at the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance grew by almost a third, to 353 bookstore members; the association is "financially stable"; the board, which will have several new members as of the first of the year, is moving forward on finding a new executive director to succeed Linda-Marie Barrett; and the new website and new programming has been successfully implemented. These and other topics came up at SIBA's annual meeting, held virtually yesterday.

Board members and others praised Barrett, who announced earlier this month that she will leave her post at the end of the year. In her remarks, she noted that she had been with SIBA for about 10 years and has been executive director of the association for seven, starting an "amazing journey" in March 2020, which was "great timing," because the pandemic had just started in the U.S. Not surprisingly, she began by focusing on SIBA's response to Covid's impact on members, the annual conference, and the association's finances.

Linda-Marie Barrett at yesterday's meeting

Other areas of focus during Barrett's tenure have included addressing AI as well as "a continuing wave of book banning and other forms of censorship," which are more prevalent in SIBA territory than anywhere else.

Barrett noted that the staff has grown to offer "more targeted membership, social media, and sales support." New programming has included the March Madness series, where booksellers meet across SIBA territory. Two virtual education programs are Jump Start for new members, hosted and developed by membership coordinator Candice Huber, as well as the Lunch & Learn series, where industry partners share tips with booksellers on "best ways to work together, take advantage of benefits, and sell more books."

While catalog revenues will probably decrease by 10% compared to last year, SIBA is receiving extra revenue from "publisher programming and sponsorships." Net revenue from the New Voices New Rooms conference was $40,000, split with partner New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association. SIBA is keeping expenses in line with income and should end the year in positive territory financially.

Barrett said she feels that SIBA is "in a great position for the future" and she hopes to remain connected with the community and "the beautiful trade of bookselling, which to me is a holy calling."

Julia Davis

SIBA president Julia Davis of the Book Worm, Powder Springs, Ga., noted changes on the board. In the recent election, Bunnie Hilliard of Brave + Kind Bookshop, Decatur, Ga., was elected to a second term, and three members were elected for the first time: Elese Stutts of Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, N.C.; Cat Bock of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tenn.; and Courtney Ulrich Smith of Underbrush Books in Rogers, Ark. Their terms begin January 1.

Outgoing board members are Melissa Taylor from E. Shaver, Bookseller in Savannah, Ga.; Krystle Dandridge from The Book Bar RVA in Richmond, Va.; and Davis herself, who will become president emeritus.

SIBA is analyzing feedback from booksellers, exhibitors, and others about the New Voices New Rooms conference, which it puts on in partnership with NAIBA. Barrett said that two items of concern involve timing (August is too early for some), and the fact that when the conference is held in one association's territory, attendance by members of the other association declines somewhat. An announcement about next year's conference will be made "in the coming weeks," Barrett said.

SIBA secretary Rayna Nielsen of Blue Cypress Books, New Orleans, La., updated members on the search for a new executive director. The board has met with a business consultant but hasn't decided yet whether to use a headhunter or manage the process in-house. The association will post a job listing in the coming week and hopes to have a new executive director in place by mid-December, with enough time for Barrett to help onboard that person.

Davis noted that SIBA is transitioning away from using the Carver rules of governance, which sometimes can be overly restrictive. Other regional associations have stopped using Carver, too, and Davis emphasized that members should see no difference in how the association operates. The changeover requires a vote by membership, and Davis urged all members to vote.

Word in Brooklyn

WORD Bookstores, with locations in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Jersey City, N.J., is for sale. Owners Christine and Vincent Onorati are planning to relocate abroad in 2027 and are looking for someone to take over the well-established bookstores.

The Brooklyn store, located at 126 Franklin St. in Greenpoint, first opened in 2007, while the Jersey City store, located at 29 McWilliams Pl. in Hamilton Park, opened in 2013. Christine Onorati, a former American Booksellers Association board president, described the stores as "fixtures" in their respective neighborhoods, with dedicated customer bases and staff that frequently move between stores. WORD also has a branding deal with a Hudson News location in Newark Airport.

"It's a wonderful time to take them over," Onorati said, reporting that WORD has seen consistent sales growth year over year, with 2025 the highest sales year in the store's history and 2026 up 25% year to date. She emphasized that the bookstores have "20 years of history, 20 years of data, and we know what works in each store." Both locations have "wonderfully upportive" landlords, Onorati noted, and she said the new owner will have an "amazing running head start" to continue what the stores are already doing.

Word's Jersey City store

Asked what she and her husband are looking for in a prospective buyer, Onorati said she wants to find someone "with more energy, more hustle, who will be able to do something great with them" and who will love the stores "as much as I did." At the same time, a "perfect successor" would be able to balance their love of books and the cultural mission of bookstores with the understanding that "this is a business and we need to sell books." 

Onorati said it was "bittersweet" to be looking for a successor, but also "really exciting. We would really like them to be in good hands." 

Interested parties should reach out to P.K. Sindwani by phone at 610-457-1053 or via e-mail. Additional financial and operational information, including a valuation done by Paz & Associates, will be made available to qualified buyers pending a confidentiality agreement.

In the third quarter ended September 30, net sales at Amazon rose 12%, to $201.9 billion, and net income slipped 2.4%, to $20.7 billion.

Amazon's "core" North America segment sales increased 6%, to $112.9 billion, and international sales increased 5%, to $43.1 billion, or increased 8% excluding changes in foreign exchange rates. Because Prime Day occurred in the third quarter in 2025 but mostly in the second quarter this year, sales were 4% less than they would have been if Prime Day had taken place in the third quarter this year. Sales at AWS, Amazon's cloud computing division, rose 39%, to $46 billion. The company expects to spend $220 billion this year on capital expenditures, mostly for AI. Capital spending in the third quarter was $75.9 billion.

Free cash flow decreased to an outflow--or loss--of $42.4 billion for the trailing 12 months,
"driven primarily by a year-over-year increase of $94.8 billion in purchases of property and equipment, net of proceeds from sales and incentives," the company said. "This increase primarily reflects investments in artificial intelligence. This compares to free cash flow inflow of $14.8 billion for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2025."

Because sales in Amazon's main retail business were lower than expected and spending on AI continues to be so high, Wall Street had the same negative reaction it's had to other major tech companies this week. In after-market trading, Amazon stock dropped almost 7%, to $227 a share.

As the New York Times put it, "Four of the tech industry's biggest companies set a new spending record in the last quarter as they raced to build artificial intelligence, leading to a worrisome new milestone: most of them are spending more cash on data centers than they get from running their businesses.

"Over the past two weeks, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta said they were on track to spend more than $720 billion this year on data centers and other capital expenses--roughly triple what they spent just two years ago. And all are expected to spend even more next year. The investments are so large, the A.I. boom accounts for much of the resilience in the U.S. economy."

Andy Jassy, Amazon president and CEO, said, "Our AWS investment in functionality and infrastructure is working, with over 39% year-over-year revenue growth in Q3 ($184 billion revenue run rate) and projected revenue growth rates of over 40% both in 2027 and in 2028. Our broader selection and speedier delivery are helping us capture more retail market segment share with improving margins, and our newer businesses, ranging from Grocery to Pharmacy to Amazon Leo to Zoox are progressing encouragingly. There has never been a trillion dollar revenue business, and we may have two of them in the next 5-10 years."

Amazon forecast that net sales in the fourth quarter will rise 12%-16%, to $240 billion-$247 billion.

Two Doors Down Bookshop, "where the love for books & community meet... just two doors down," hosted its grand opening celebration last week at 200 S. Main St. in Buda, Tex. Owner Sarah Ray said the store gets its name from a Dolly Parton song. The bookshop launched in August of 2025 as a pop-up and online operation. 

"The mission of our little bookstore is to be a community hub where people are laughing and drinking and having a bookclub, but more importantly where they find their next favorite read and make a new friend," she said. 

After the grand opening, Ray posted on social media: "Thank you again to everyone who came out this weekend or is planning to come out this week! I never in my wildest dreams could have imagined the support from all of you (and all my wonderful family and friends from near and far). I'm doing my best to restock AND prep for our A Court of Splintered Harmony release + Boo-tique Crawl so your patience is so appreciated. Buda needed a bookshop and now it has one!"

The Buda Economic Development Corporation noted that the indie "is the first official bookstore in Buda, adding a new gathering place where the love for books and community meet in the heart of downtown."

Earlier this year, Ray graduated from Cohort 3 of the Buda HIVE (Home for Innovators, Visionaries, & Entrepreneurs), the Buda EDC's startup incubator that gives entrepreneurs the resources, mentorship, and collaborative support to launch and grow their businesses in the city. 

"Two Doors Down Bookshop started as a passion project in my home, and I'm so grateful to bring it to Main Street," said Ray. "I wanted to create a cozy place where neighbors can find a great book, enjoy a glass of wine, and connect with other readers. I can't wait to welcome the Buda community through our doors."

Jennifer Storm, CEO of the Buda EDC, noted: "We are thrilled to welcome another locally owned business to Main Street, and to celebrate Buda's very first bookstore. Two Doors Down Bookshop brings something truly new to downtown, a place for readers, families, and friends to gather. Businesses like Sarah's add to the character and vibrancy that make downtown Buda such a special destination."

Jacqueline Martinez, director of HIVE & Business Support at the Buda EDC, added: "Watching Sarah grow from a home-based business into a storefront on Main Street is exactly why the Buda HIVE exists. It is so exciting to see one of our graduates open her doors in downtown Buda. We're proud of her and can't wait to see Two Doors Down Bookshop thrive."

Cooper's Prose Booksellers will make its debut as a mobile bookstore in Starkville, Miss., in the months ahead, the Dispatch reported.

Built out of a 7×16-foot trailer, Cooper's Prose is owned by married couple Megan and Chase Cooper and sells general-interest titles for all ages. They described the bookstore as a "passion project rooted in a love of reading, accessibility, inclusivity, and the desire to wander." The mobile bookstore will make appearances around Starkville and northeast Mississippi as the couple searches for a permanent, bricks-and-mortar home for the business.

The Coopers are both Mississippi State University graduates and they decided to open a bookstore of their own after moving to Starkville last year. "When we moved back last fall, we noticed the lack of local bookstores and felt that was something that could really serve our area," Megan Cooper told the Dispatch. "We both work full time so the mobile option gives us that flexibility currently, but the long-term plan is to find a permanent space in Starkville once we're more established."

Feltrinelli at Stazione Porta Nuova, Torino

The recent wave of protests across France and Italy has also left its mark on bookshops in those countries. Citing an article in Börsenblatt, the European & International Booksellers Federation's Newsflash reported that the Feltrinelli bookstore at Porta Nuova railway station in Turin was vandalized during protests, and the riots in France have left more than 24 bookshops affected, including in Paris, Nantes, Lille, Grenoble, and Strasbourg. 

Booksellers associations "are starting to take action: to help identify the bookstores and measure the damages impacted by the protests unfolding across France," EIBF Newsflash noted. The Syndicat de la librairie française (SLF) has posted a short questionnaire "that will serve as a way of offering representative information for possible exchanges with the public authorities and, if necessary, the broadcasters/distributors."

--- 

The Booksellers Association of the U.K. & Ireland has issued a statement following the government's business rates changes, as outlined in the budget this week. The Bookseller reported that "while the freeze on rates and decision to raise the 100% Small Business Rates Relief threshold will have a 'tangible benefit' for some, the measures don't go far enough in addressing the fundamental problems with the business rates system."

Under the British government's new plan, beginning April 2027 the threshold for Small Business Rates Relief (SBRR) for Retail, Hospitality, and Leisure businesses will be increased for 100% relief and tapered relief. In addition, qualifying RHL properties in England will have their business rates frozen in 2027-28 and 2028-29. 

In her response to the budget, BA managing director Meryl Halls said "many bookshops could still face significant increases in their business rates bills by 2030, and questions remain about whether the proposed two-year freeze will prevent these rises or simply postpone them....

"This continued uncertainty makes it harder for bookshops to invest, plan for the long term and, crucially, grow. Without more fundamental reform, the system risks actively discouraging thriving local bookshops from expanding for fear of crossing a threshold that leaves them financially worse off, at a time when growth in every postcode is rightly a priority for the government. [The] announcement offers welcome but, for many bookshops, temporary relief, and we now need clarity on how these measures will work in practice."

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Kate Cuthbert

Kate Cuthbert has joined the Australian Booksellers Association as events and training manager, effective in November, following the resignation of operations manager Kate Sloggett, who stepped down this month, Books+Publishing reported. In the role, Cuthbert will manage the ABA's conference, roadshows, and bookseller professional development activities, among other duties.

"Kate has close to 20 years in this sector including working on events such as Volume National Reading Symposium, [Australian Book Industry Awards] and more, as publishing director at Books+Publishing, Pantera and Harlequin, and Writers Victoria and at [Australian Library and Information Association]," the ABA noted.

ABA CEO Susannah Bowen added: "I'm really excited Kate is bringing her industry background, broad skillset and dedicated approach to work on behalf of Australia's booksellers--and looking forward to what we can achieve with Kate in the team!"

Lil Jon (left) was in conversation with Charlamagne Tha God for a sold-out event at Barnes & Noble Union Square in New York City to promote his memoir, I Only Shout So You Can Hear Me (Black Privilege Publishing/Atria).

Secret World Books in Highland Park, Ill., posted: "Our goddess Elaina is ready for trick or treaters at this afternoon's @downtownhighlandparkil Candy Stroll! We have free picture books for kids, a card catalog filled with Nerds (because we nerds love card catalogs) and a pitcher full of Smarties for all the smarties who come by! Hope to see you on your candy strolling rounds!"

A Halloween reminder from the chalkboard in First Chapter Bookshop in Seneca, S.C.: "Nothing haunts us like the booooooooooks we haven't read."

Bookshop owner reality check, posted by Twice Told Tales in McPherson, Kan.: "When you're just a girl who wants to do a cleansing full moon ritual, but you're also a small business owner who has an event tomorrow, you settle for cleansing the carpet." 

Today:
Fresh Air: Kazuo Ishiguro, on Klara and the Sun (Vintage, $19, 9780593311295), now adapted into a film.

A full trailer has been released for the six-part Netflix series Pride & Prejudice, based on Jane Austen's classic novel. The project is written and exec produced by Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love, Good Material), with Euros Lyn (Heartstopper) directing. It debuts on the streamer December 3.

The cast includes Emma Corrin, Jack Lowden, Freya Mavor, Olivia Colman, Rufus Sewell, Fiona Shaw, Rhea Norwood, Hopey Parish, Hollie Avery, Louis Partridge, Siena Kelly, and Jamie Demetriou.

"Once in a generation, a group of people get to retell this wonderful story and I feel very lucky that I get to be a part of it," Alderton said. "Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is the blueprint for romantic comedy--it has been a joy to delve back into its pages to find both familiar and fresh ways of bringing this beloved book to life."

John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life under American Racial Law by Beth Lew-Williams (Belknap/Harvard University Press) has won the 2026 Cundill History Prize, administered by McGill University. Lew-Williams receives $75,000.

Organizers said the winning author "presents a new and unexpected history of American racial law and argues that recovering the history of Chinese exclusion is essential to understanding the history of race, racial reconstruction, and immigration in the United States, and more broadly, the western world." 

Chair of the jury Emily Greenwood commented that Lew-Williams "unravels the paradoxes of anti-Chinese racial laws in the American West from the 1850s to the 1920s, analyzing the intentions of these laws, their effects, and how Chinese migrants responded to them. These laws were part of a larger racial regime, one of whose consequences was to contain and suppress the lives of Chinese migrants, reducing them to anonymous stereotypes--the 'John Doe Chinaman' of the title. Using a supple combination of data algorithms to process legal and bureaucratic records and trenchant storytelling, Lew-Williams documents the ghosting of these lives in the historical record, retrieving Chinese voices that show us some of what we are missing. This is a dazzlingly innovative and hard-hitting work."

Meghan Cox Gurdon  (photo: Michael Kress)

Meghan Cox Gurdon is a weekly contributor to the Wall Street Journal's books pages, columnist for the Wall Street Journal's "Free Expression" newsletter, and author of The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction. Her memoir, Free Range Girl (Morehouse, October 20, 2026), chronicles the year that Gurdon spent on a homestead in rural Maine with her father, who was a proponent of the "back to the land" movement, when she was 12 years old.

Handsell readers your book:

Free Range Girl is the true story of what happened when I moved in 1976 at age 12 to live with my eccentric father in the woods of Maine on a homestead he was building with his own hands. It's a colorful memoir of vanished pre-screen childhood that was seriously risky--and gloriously independent.

On your nightstand now:

With weekly deadlines, I always have a review book going. It reproaches me when I go to bed because that's when I'd prefer to read for pleasure. That said, the pleasure of my chief book at the moment, W. Somerset Maugham's intellectual memoir, The Summing Up, is... mixed. The cover features a wonderfully baleful portrait of the elderly writer looking down on the reader, and Maugham is a superb stylist, but the book is hard going (two pages and my eyes are smarting) because there's no story and there are a great many saddening references to famous contemporaries of his who today scarcely anyone remembers. Sic transit gloria mundi, I suppose.

Once I've finished Maugham, I'll move on to Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, R.C. Sherriff's The Hopkins Manuscript, and a newish book of short stories by the brilliant Colm Tóibín, The News from Dublin. After that, more Maugham! I haven't read Of Human Bondage or The Moon and Sixpence since I was a teenager, and retain nothing of what I read then, assuming that I understood it at the time, which seems unlikely.

Favorite book when you were a child:

One book? It can't be done. I was a rapacious reader, and returned again and again to the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis (my favorites there being The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Horse and His Boy); the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (of which Farmer Boy and The Long Winter commanded my heart); I loved stories of adversity and triumph, such as The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken; as an only child of divorced parents, I also adored books about lonely girls who found refuge in hidden places, such as The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett, Mandy by Julie Andrews Edwards, and The Velvet Room by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.

Your top five authors:

Well! You mean after Edith Wharton, Leo Tolstoy, Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens, Evelyn Waugh, and Jane Austen? Okay, after them, my favorites include Kazuo Ishiguro, that master of murky feeling; Adam Johnson, pitiless and sublime; Hilary Mantel, queen of sinister subtlety; and Robert Louis Stevenson, creator of thrilling and witty effects.

Book you've faked reading:

I plead innocent here. When I was fresh out of college, I pretended that I had eaten sushi before, put a big dollop of wasabi into my mouth, and paid for my fib with an exploding brain. But books? Never. I've never faked reading one.

Book(s) you're an evangelist for:

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
True Grit by Charles Portis
Good Behaviour by Molly Keane
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
Ash Road by Ivan Southall

Book you've bought for the cover:

Anytime I find a Könemann edition of any title, I buy it: I have a lovely collection of these compact and elegant books, with their talcum-smooth covers and handsome interior design. Ditto with hardbacks from the Everyman's Library: no matter how battered the book, I want it!

Book you hid from your parents:

Like a lot of kids who babysat in the 1970s, I would wait until the parents were gone and my charges were asleep to find the household copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves. Everyone back then seemed to own that big paperback from the Boston Woman's Health Book Collective, with its sexually explicit illustrations (remember the Japanese lovers and the swing?), and if the car drove in--boy!--did horrified fascination turn to panic. You did not want to be caught looking at that book!

Book that changed your life:

The book of Hebrews, in the New Testament, made a believer out of me.

Favorite line from a book:

"Children almost always hang onto things tighter than their parents think they will." --E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

Five books you'll never part with:

Someone will have to pry my ancient, dog-eared, food-speckled, hardcover copy of Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn from my cold, dead hands--because that's the only way I'll surrender it. The pages are soft from frequent turning, for this is a book that yields more delight the more often you read it. I'll never part with my mom's first edition of The Enchanted Hour, which I inherited when she died in 2023. Not giving away any of my ratty Roald Dahl paperbacks for children now that the new editions are being bowdlerized. Also not parting with any of the 13 fragile paperbacks, some losing their covers, of Anthony Powell's series A Dance to the Music of Time. Nor, for that matter, can you persuade me to relinquish my gorgeous green-and-gilt Folio Society set of Narnia hardbacks with the brilliant illustrations by Pauline Baynes. Some of the pages are wavy from reading to my children in the bath!

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

Occasionally I've encountered someone who has never read The Odyssey by Homer (my favorite is the Robert Fitzgerald translation), Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, or Middlemarch by George Eliot and have felt a genuine pang. Oh, to discover those stories again for the first time!

The nine brilliant stories in Catherine Lacey's seventh work, My Stalkers, express anxiety about misogyny, bureaucracy, and technology through gently absurdist plots.

In "Cut," the take-no-prisoners opener, playwright Peggy has an anal wound of unknown cause. When a friend mentions that her late husband(s) sometimes had sex with her sleeping body, Peggy questions her own husband's nonchalance. Misogynistic violence is a theme all through the collection, especially strong here: Peggy realizes a male voice has always narrated sex in her head; during a one-on-one meeting with a student, she imagines the young man stabbing her; and a female student submits a poem about the "angry man in your house"--cf. The Möbius Book, in which the phrase applies to Lacey's father and to her former partner.

Doppelgängers and red tape abound. In "Coconut Flan," Mexico-based Daria loses her U.S. passport and learns it's been used to smuggle a look-alike across the border. In the Kafkaesque "Congratulations on Your Loss," Enid repeatedly receives reprimands for jaywalking--except she wasn't on those streets at those times. At a government office, she hears her dead mother's voice on the loudspeaker and a computer won't allow her to contest the fines. Will finding her double stop the exasperating cycle? Both stories evoke the panic of having to prove one's identity to a pitiless state machine.

The stories operate by a sort of dream logic--or perhaps nightmares are becoming real. In "Being Shot," set at a "Conference on the State of Modern Thought," gun violence is simultaneously the "American fate" and performance art. The satirical "Who Is She?" features a woman so paralyzed by indecision that she lies down on a median strip and awaits would-be saviors. The surreal comedy "Man Mountain" has a woman attempting to surmount a pile of semiconscious men in rural Kansas.

Details about several protagonists' relationship histories suggest that the stories can be read as autofiction. The question of whether tech actually improves people's lives is fundamental. The "techno-optimism" in "Rate Your Happiness" (e.g., influencer videos and driverless cars) contrasts with Louise's faltering connections with her girlfriend and estranged father. In "My Stalkers," technology enables surveillance and rootlessness.

From outlandish situations, Lacey (Biography of X; The Answers) spins unsettling parables that feature memorable metaphors ("his voice sounded as sad as a caved-in cake"; "she carried me, limp as old celery") and impeccable endings. Her innovative, cerebral fiction is absorbing and essential. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck

Shelf Talker: Catherine Lacey's hard-hitting, absurdist short stories bring home the threats of misogynistic violence and overreliance on technology.