Matt Lee has sold the Bookworm of Edwards in Edwards, Colo., to longtime bookseller and manager Christopher Green, effective July 1. An entrepreneur and local resident, Lee purchased the nearly 28-year-old bookstore from Nicole Magistro in 2020.

Christopher Green (l.) and Matt Lee

The Bookworm was originally launched by Kathy Westover and Neda Jansen, who took it from its origins as a mobile book van to its first storefront. Subsequent owners Kristi Allio and Nicole Magistro moved the store to its current location and opened the cafe. Magistro became sole owner in 2013 before selling to Lee in 2020. 

During his tenure as owner, Lee improved employee compensation and benefits ahead of state and industry standards, the bookstore noted. He also steered the store's expansion in 2023, adding 1,000 square feet to the storefront.

"I am very grateful for my time as the owner and steward of this amazing place," he said. "Your support allows a truly amazing team of talented people to grow and thrive in a place they cherish. I am glad to be passing the baton to someone who is so passionate and knowledgeable about bookselling, and who could not be more dedicated to the store's mission and longevity."

Green has been with the Bookworm since 2011, starting as a part-time bookseller and becoming store manager in 2012. During his career, he has been involved at many levels of the bookselling industry, including serving on the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association board for two terms and as the president for two years (2020 and 2021). 

"In the Bookworm, I have found friends, community, a life, and livelihood," he reflected. "I found a passion for the work of serving our community. I found an industry that forms one of the most important keystones of a free society.... The Bookworm is a vibrant small business that depends on our community to continue to thrive. But, it also serves that vital role of changing a collection of people in proximity to each other into a community. Maybe I'm being grandiose. I'm definitely biased. I 'drank the Kool-Aid' a long time ago."

Noting that this fall the Bookworm will celebrate its 28th anniversary, Green added: "I will celebrate my 14th year with the store shortly after that. I take a little joy in knowing both of these happen in the year I take ownership and that moving forward I can say that I've been a part of The Bookworm for more than half its existence."

Lee observed: "Change is constant. This bookstore has thrived when faced with challenges, like economic ups and downs, a pandemic, and increasingly competitive online retail. Despite those challenges, we've grown and become more invested in our community every step of the way. I'm so glad that our year-round locals from Edwards and Eagle County and visiting community members from all over the world appreciate the value of supporting local independent businesses. We wouldn't be able to do it without you."

Former lawyer Kirstin Gulling is "making good on a dream she had as a law student in the early 1990s" by purchasing the Bookies bookstore in Denver, Colo., from Nicole Sullivan, who will stay on through the end of 2025 to assist with the transition, BusinessDen reported. Gulling took over operations effective July 1. 

Kirstin Gulling, new owner of Denver's The Bookies.

"The hard work of turning the business around is mostly behind us," noted Sullivan, who also owned BookBar in the city's Berkeley neighborhood before closing it in 2023. 

Sullivan had assumed ownership of the Bookies in 2021--after the death of founder Sue Lubeck--and moved it from Glendale to the current 7,000-square-foot location at 2085 S. Holly St. last year to gain more visibility and provide room for growth. Sullivan had been looking for a buyer since March. 

"I've so enjoyed putting my skills and knowledge to use to set this beloved, iconic Denver bookstore up for success for years to come. I believe Kirstin is the right person to take it from here. Her enthusiasm, passion, and expertise will carry the Bookies into its next 50 years," said Sullivan. "The next step is to grow sales and get customers in the door and back in the door. I think Kirstin's going to be really good at that. New energy, fresh pair of eyes, and also hands-on."

Gulling's vision for the Bookies is rooted in warmth, inclusivity, and a passionate commitment to literacy and education. "This isn't just a business to me. It's a promise that the Bookies will flourish for another 50 years and beyond while staying true to the things that make it so special," she said, adding: "It's exciting in all the ways, especially because I have something to build on. There's a talented community of people who already work and visit here." 

Gulling also observed that the Bookies' mission fits with her own: "You have this long legacy of the bookstore being for educators and young children, and, under Nicole's leadership, into more of a community space. It's my community. I live down the street, literally over a mile away, and I would love to help it expand on what Nicole has already done here.... My vision is to keep the Bookies a warm, welcoming place."

She added: "This place has been around for a little over 50 years, and my main goal is to have it go for another 50 years. I'm open to trying everything to make this place stick around."

In an embarrassing mistake, yesterday's item about Shelf Awareness's 20th anniversary omitted one of our newer staff members, publishing assistant Madison Gaines. Madison is hardworking and dedicated, juggling and placing thousands of ads in Shelf Awareness, and works with publishers to make their ads look as good as possible. Madison is often ready with a joke or riddle and enlivens the Seattle office. As a former bookseller at Third Place in Seattle, she has a good instinct for bookseller interests.

The Sparkle Bookstore is set to open in mid-July at 642 Main St. in Sparkill, N.Y. The Rockland County Business Journal reported that Donna Miele, along with her son Armand Miele-Herndon, have leased a 750-square-foot building for one year. Plans call for a small café with prepared foods to be added to the business.

Donna Miele's path to opening a bookstore is a familiar one. "From the time my mother and aunt taught me to read, I've loved books," she said. "Both my parents were working; I was alone a lot. Reading was a way to keep myself busy."

Her father, Armand Miele, was a real estate developer, political figure, and publisher of the Rockland County Times from 1998 until his death in 2013. At college, Donna Miele studied American Civilization and later law, but said, "I was always a writer," adding that her father, who became a publisher when she was 30 years old, "used to ask for my help because he didn't have a lot of practice." 

Although she initially worked as a lawyer, then part-time at the newspaper, and later ran a co-working space in the building the company owns, she is now ready to pursue her lifelong passion. 

"I've been speaking about this, saving up, for a long time," she said. "But when I learned about the space in Sparkill, I had to take it. It's a perfect space, perfect location, wonderful neighbors, and so we got started sooner than planned."

Located near the post office and featuring a large parking lot, the space is furnished with "the shelving, tables, and displays from free discards from the recently shuttered Shakespeare & Company in Manhattan," the Business Journal noted. Miele learned of the impending closure on Bookseller Discord, a social media platform. 

Miele said she believes there is a recent trend toward "anti-billionaire sentiment," motivating consumers to uplift indies: "Local bookstores are a giving back to the community, and the community respond in kind. People want to feel like their dollars are going toward the betterment of the community."

John Robbins, "an heir to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream empire who rejected the family business to advocate plant-based nutrition, environmentalism and animal rights," died June 11, the New York Times reported. He was 77. Robbins was best known for his bestselling book, Diet for a New America: How Your Food Choices Affect Your Health, Happiness and the Future of Life on Earth (1987), which "drew a link between the heavy consumption of animal-based products and the increased risk of chronic illnesses like heart disease and obesity; examined the environmental damage caused by factory farming; and raised ethical concerns about the treatment of animals in confined conditions."

Robbins wrote that the book's message was "that the healthiest, tastiest, and most nourishing way to eat is also the most economical, the most compassionate and least polluting." In 1988, Washington Post columnist Colman McCarthy compared Diet for a New America and its impact on the way we think about food with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962). 

Robbins's other books include May All Be Fed: Diet For a New World (1992), The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World (2001), Healthy at 100: The Scientifically Proven Secrets of the World's Healthiest and Longest-Lived Peoples (2006), The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less (2010), No Happy Cows: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Food Revolution (2012), and Voices of the Food Revolution: You Can Heal Your Body and Your World with Food! (2013)

He worked in his family's ice cream business during his younger years, but, "as a devotee of Thoreau, Emerson and Whitman, he later mutinied against materialism," telling the Times in 1992 that, in his family, "roughing it meant room service was late." In 1967, Baskin-Robbins was sold to the United Fruit Company. While his father remained with the company until he retired in 1978, Robbins did not.

After graduating in 1969 from the University of California, Berkeley, Robbins and his wife, Deo, moved to British Columbia, where they built a one-room log cabin. He received a master's degree in humanistic psychology in 1976 from Antioch College through its affiliation with Cold Mountain Institute in British Columbia. In 1984, when his son, Ocean Robbins, was 11, the family moved to the Santa Cruz area in California. John Robbins began reading books about the treatment of animals at factory farms, as well as the links between food, health and the environment. His studies inspired him to write Diet for a New America. 

John and Ocean Robbins established the Food Revolution Network, an online education and advocacy organization dedicated to healthy, ethical and sustainable food, in 2001.  

This past week, Shelf Awareness sent our monthly pre-order e-blast to more than 890,000 of the country's best book readers. The e-blast went to 890,910 customers of 268 participating independent bookstores.

The mailing features 11 upcoming titles selected by Shelf Awareness editors and a sponsored title. 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 last Wednesday of each month; the next will go out on Wednesday, July 30. Stores interested in learning more can visit our program registration page or contact our partner program team via e-mail.

For a sample of the June pre-order e-blast, see this one from Birdhouse Books & Gifts, Austin, Texas.

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

We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad (S&S/Marysue Rucci)
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager)
Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor)
Songs for Other People's Weddings by David Levithan with songs by Jens Lekman (Abrams)
Love's a Witch by Tricia O'Malley, Tricia (Gallery)
People Like Us by Jason Mott (Dutton)
Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher (Tor)
We Are All Guilty Here by Karin Slaughter (Morrow)
Kiss Her Goodbye by Lisa Gardner (Grand Central)
The Raven Boys: The Graphic Novel by Maggie Stiefvater, adapted by Stephanie Williams, illus. by Sas Milledge (Viking Books for Young Readers)
The Last Tiger by Julia Riew and Brad Riew (Kokila)

Spectacular Things by Beck Dorey-Stein (‎‎The Dial Press) is the July pick for Reese's Book Club, which described the book this way: "When Mia is diagnosed with a chronic illness, her sister Cricket faces an impossible choice: save Mia's life by donating a kidney or hold on to her lifelong dream of playing soccer. Spectacular Things is a heartfelt exploration of sisterhood and how much we are willing to sacrifice in the name of love."

Reese wrote: "Spectacular Things follows sisters Mia and Cricket as they navigate an impossible choice that will change everything. Think sisterhood, sacrifice, and the golden age of women's soccer all wrapped into one epic story."

"Here’s our current heat wave chalkboard," Wonderland Books, Bethesda, Md., noted in sharing the bookshop's latest sidewalk chalkboard message: "Ask us for help finding your summer reading." 

Yazmine Hassan has been promoted to publicist at Berkley.

Millie Fleur Saves the Night by Christy Mandin (Orchard Books).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Christine Brennan, author of On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women's Sports (Scribner, $29.99, 9781668090190).

Jimmy Kimmel Live repeat: Steve Martin, author of Steve Martin Writes the Written Word: Collected Written Word Works by Steve Martin (Grand Central, $30, 9780306835735).

Late Show with Stephen Colbert repeat: Dawn Staley, author of Uncommon Favor: Basketball, North Philly, My Mother, and the Life Lessons I Learned from All Three (Atria/Black Privilege Publishing, $28.99, 9781668023365).

Warner Bros. Pictures Animation has released the first trailer for its first full-length movie, The Cat in the Hat, an animated adaptation of the classic Dr. Seuss story, Deadline reported. Starring Bill Hader as the voice of the Cat, the film chronicles "our hero's toughest assignment yet," when the I.I.I.I. (Institute for the Institution of Imagination and Inspiration, LLC) "asks him to cheer up Gabby and Sebastian, a pair of siblings struggling with their move to a new town. Known for taking things too far, this could be this agent of chaos' last chance to prove himself... or lose his magical hat!"

Directed by Alessandro Carloni and Erica Rivinoja, the project has a voice cast that includes Xochitl Gomez, Matt Berry, Quinta Brunson, Paula Pell, Tiago Martinez, Giancarlo Esposito, America Ferrera, Bowen Yang, and Tituss Burgess. The film will be released to theaters and IMAX across North America on February 27, 2026, and internationally beginning February 25. 

Chanel Sutherland was named overall winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and will receive £5,000 (about $6,865) for "Descend," in which enslaved Africans share their life stories as the ship transporting them sinks. The literary magazine Granta has published all the regional winning stories, which will also be available in a special print collection from Paper + Ink.

Chair of judges Dr. Vilsoni Hereniko commented: "Told in the quiet voice of a seer, 'Descend' is deep and profound. It tells the story of slaves packed like sardines in the hull of a sinking ship, an allegory that affirms the unrivalled power of storytelling to set our spirits free and find hope where none exists." 

Sutherland said: "My love for storytelling began before I even fully understood what a story was--I only knew they made me feel something, and I wanted to make others feel it too. Back in Saint Vincent, I used to scrawl my earliest stories into the sand in our yard, knowing they'd be washed away by rain or footsteps. Winning feels deeply affirming--as if that little girl scribbling in the sand was always right to believe that stories mattered. 

"I took a risk with 'Descend'--its shape, its voices--because I believed every enslaved person deserves to have their story told with dignity. I can't tell all the stories, or restore the lives that were stolen, but I'm humbled that this one resonates."

Samantha Mann is the author of Putting Out: Essays on Otherness and the editor of I Feel Love: Notes on Queer Joy. She writes essays and articles exploring culture, mental health, motherhood, and LGBTQ issues. Her work has been featured in the Cut, Vogue, Elle, Today, Romper, and more. Her most recent book is Dyke Delusions (Read Furiously, June 3, 2025), a collection of essays on body politics, motherhood, and feminine sexuality, told with Mann's signature humor and pitch-perfect observations.

Handsell readers your book in about 25 words:

Did you grow up with the feeling that you were delusional only to become an adult and realize it was the culture at large that ingrained that idea into you?

On your nightstand now:

Reading the Waves by Lidia Yuknavitch. No one makes me reconsider my writing like Lidia. Her writing is so gorgeously her own. I read her essay "Woven" at least twice a year, hoping how she expertly weaves her stories together will rub off on me like osmosis. A few years ago, I took a "Writing Better Sex Scenes" seminar with Lidia and she astutely pointed out that women are taught to write how men get off (setting, rising action, climax, resolution, and conclusion), and that we should work hard to write in a way that matches our own experience. I think about this all the time!

Favorite book when you were a child:

From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg. Two children run away from home and sneak into the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. While they are hiding out at night and enjoying the museum by day (and eating chocolate bars for all their meals!), they come across a mystery of an angel sculpture that might have been created by Michelangelo. The book made me want to run away from my dull suburban life and live somewhere chic!

Your top five authors:

Roxane Gay
Samantha Irby
Lidia Yuknavitch
Maggie Nelson
Melissa Febos

Book you've faked reading:

The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I did skim it in a bookstore for approximately five minutes, and I feel like I understand the overall gist! While I cannot get myself to finish more than one day's worth of morning pages a year, I do try to take myself on an Artist Date when I can!

Book you're an evangelist for:

Body Work by Melissa Febos. I refer to this book as the bible. If you care about nonfiction or essays, there is nothing more life affirming or insightful than this! There are still so many misnomers about essay writing that I find infuriating (mainly, "does essay-writing work cure your mental illness and isn't it bad for you to write about all this personal stuff"?). Melissa expertly breaks apart all of it and now acts as the authoritative voice in the back of my head when I hear the old whisper of... "who cares about your life?"

Book you've bought for the cover:

I don't think I've done this!

Book you hid from your parents:

Same Sex in the City (So Your Prince Charming Is Really a Cinderella) by Lauren Blitzer and Lauren Levin. My mom actually did find this book lodged between my mattress and bed frame. When she kindly asked me if there was anything I wanted to tell her, I screamed at her for having a limited scope of reading interests.

Book that changed your life:

The Hours by Michael Cunningham. As a teenager I was depressed and gay and felt embarrassed about both things. Seeing all the interesting, complex, and also depressed women in this book helped me shift my mindset from embarrassment to misunderstood creative, which was more useful! It also clarified the fact that I wasn't a 1950s housewife like Kitty, and that I could be a Clarissa. Sure, Clarissa was morose, but she also was married to a woman in a gorgeous West Village apartment.

Favorite line from a book:

"First of all, why you would ask a man anything is beyond me." --Samantha Irby, Wow, No Thank You

"O god, she prayed, thank You for giving me the strength to run." --Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls

Five books you'll never part with:

The Hours by Michael Cunningham
All About Love by bell hooks
Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Díaz
Devotions by Mary Oliver
Skin Game by Caroline Kettlewell

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

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. The use of language in this book is so beautiful it makes me wish I was a poet. Or it at least makes me wish poets would stop writing novels--it's making the rest of mortal writers look bad!

Sherri L. Smith (Pearl; Orleans) delivers a stellar work of middle-grade science fiction in Candace, the Universe, and Everything, about three generations of Black girls bound by a wormhole in their shared locker.

It's the first day of eighth grade, and 13-year-old Candace's locker just exploded. "Okay, not exploded. But basically exploded." As Candace opened the door "some... thing... burst out." Candace "threw her arms up and screamed. The thing screamed, too." It was a bird--a bird had flown out of her locker. Later, Candace finds a purple notebook labeled "What You Need to Know. For Girls Like Me" on the top shelf of the locker; "Tracey Auburn, Fall '88" is written in the front cover. Candace reads through the notebook and draws a picture of The Bird, signing the illustration, and placing it back on the top shelf. When Candace returns and finds that the drawing has been ripped out, she decides she will find Tracey Auburn.

Tracey, now a 53-year-old college professor, has memories of a bird flying into her locker in 1988, of losing her purple notebook, and of finding the illustration. She is understandably shocked when Candace presents her with the missing notebook 40 years later. Together, they test the locker: they write a note and leave it inside. Moments later, they open the notebook to find a new message: "Loretta Spencer... I'll be waiting." Loretta is a 93-year-old quantum physicist who has been studying the portal (and others like it) since a bird flew out of her locker in 1948. Now, Loretta needs Tracey and Candace to help her continue researching the "forty-year knot" of the locker wormhole--research that started in 1908 with Loretta's birdwatching (near-physicist) Grandmother.

Smith's novel is filled with cosmic metaphors, intergenerational connections, science, and self-discovery. She focuses the main narrative on Candace but includes chapters from both Tracey and Loretta's 13th year. Smith keeps a steady pace as she reveals the connections between the present and the past and she uses quotes from a beloved science fiction series in the world of the book to keep the reader speeding through chapters. With its contemporary When You Reach Me tone, Candace, the Universe, and Everything reminds readers that although the universe is boundless, our connections to each other are limited and thus extremely meaningful. --Natasha Harris, freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: In this whimsical and wondrous sci-fi narrative, a Black girl and two Black women form an unlikely friendship based around the portal in their shared locker.

The bestselling Libro.fm audiobooks at independent bookstores during June:

Fiction
1. Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Penguin Random House Audio)
2. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab (Macmillan Audio)
3. Caught Up by Navessa Allen (Slowburn)
4. Problematic Summer Romance by Ali Hazelwood (Penguin Random House Audio)
5. Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry (Penguin Random House Audio)
6. My Friends by Fredrik Backman (Simon & Schuster Audio)
7. The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig (Hachette Audio)
8. Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto (Penguin Random House Audio)
9. King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby (Macmillan Audio)
10. The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (Penguin Random House Audio)

Nonfiction
1. Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green (Penguin Random House Audio)
2. Empire of AI by Karen Hao (Penguin Random House Audio)
3. Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams (Macmillan Audio)
4. Not My Type by E. Jean Carroll (Macmillan Audio)
5. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Tantor Media)
6. A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin Random House Audio)
7. Actress of a Certain Age by Jeff Hiller (Simon & Schuster Audio)
8. It Came from the Closet, edited by Joe Vallese (Blackstone)
9. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (Penguin Random House Audio)
10. How to Lose Your Mother by Molly Jong-Fast (Penguin Random House Audio)