Once Upon a Crime bookstore has opened at 230 E. Market Street in Smithfield, N.C. Owned by Danielle and Aaron Hilton, the new bookstore specializes in thriller, mystery, suspense, and crime fiction, offering a curated collection spanning a wide variety of genres.

The Hiltons, who had always felt opening a bookstore was about more than selling books, relocated to Smithfield from Gloucester, Va., where they had operated the Nook Books & Gifts before selling it earlier this year to Julie and Mark Garrenton. At the Nook, Danielle Hilton founded a book club that grew into a close-knit community of nearly 40 women.

"We've always believed bookstores should be places where people gather, make friends, and discover something new," she said. "We're so grateful for the warm welcome we've received in Smithfield and are excited to become part of this wonderful community."

Once Upon a Crime's grand opening weekend was made even more special as members of her original Virginia book club traveled to Smithfield to celebrate the occasion.

Danielle and Aaron Hilton

"We're thrilled to have Danielle and Aaron as part of our downtown business community," said Heidi Gilmond, executive director of the Downtown Smithfield Development Corporation. "Businesses like Once Upon A Crime add to the unique character of Downtown Smithfield while creating experiences that bring people together. It's exactly the kind of independent business that helps make our downtown a destination."

After its June 27 opening, Once Upon a Crime posted on Facebook: "What an amazing day!!! Thank you to this incredible community for all of your support! We are so honored to be YOUR local bookstore. Also, can we all take a moment to appreciate friends who looked at Google Maps, saw the drive time, and said, 'Worth it.' Huge shout-out to the Long family as well as Arye and Samantha (the highly talked about/bragged about hosts of the amazing Spice and Realms Bookclub) for traveling all the way from Gloucester Va. to celebrate with us! Your support means the world, and we're so lucky to have friends who are just as book-obsessed as we are."

Homeward Books Collective in Tucson, Ariz., will move to a larger location next month, This Is Tucson reported.

Currently residing at 3054 N. 1st Ave. Unit 8, Homeward Books Collective will be relocating to 2921 E. Fort Lowell Blvd. The new space is roughly three times the size of the store's current home. Owners Lillie Watson, Megan Downey, Zach Gotschalk, and Manny Gales plan to make use of that extra room by expanding the store's offerings and creating a dedicated area for community events.

"We feel like we've outgrown this space," Watson told This Is Tucson. "We've gained a lot of traction here, we've hosted some pretty big events and pretty good markets and stuff. And I think we're just ready for something bigger."

The bookstore's last day in business in its current location will be July 19. The owners hope to have the new store up and running on August 15. 

"We'll definitely have open mics, and we'll have markets every so often," Watson said. "I would really like for us to have an established schedule of events that people look forward to." 

Before opening Homeward Books Collective in January 2025, Watson, Downey, Gotschalk, and Gales had all worked together at Bookmans in Tucson. They found they missed bookselling and were all interested in creating a community space for Tucson. Their store is worker-owned and sells new and used books, along with comics and board games. 

"One of the big goals of moving is to really put our roots down somewhere, so that we can think about longer-term goals," Downey added. "Making the business stable, so that maybe we can onboard new people for the long-term longevity of Homeward."

The Main Chapter will open later this year in downtown Hubbard, Ohio, WFMJ21 reported.

The all-ages, general-interest bookstore will carry new and used titles. In addition to books, there will be literature-themed gifts as well as a self-serve coffee station. Event plans include children's storytime sessions, book clubs, and more.

Store owner Danae Aratari has finalized the lease for the space at 6. W. Liberty and will begin renovations soon. She expects the Main Chapter to be open by late summer or early fall.

At Artbook | D.A.P., founder and executive director Sharon Helgason Gallagher is stepping down after 36 years at the helm. Gallagher will continue to contribute to Artbook | D.A.P. as director of special projects, developing ideas for new publications.

With the change, Avery Lozada has been named president. Lozada joined Artbook | D.A.P. in 1990 as Gallagher's first hire. Lozada has held multiple positions at the company--director of publisher services, sales director, and marketing director--and currently serves as the company's senior v-p, a position she has held since 2015.

Gallagher cofounded Artbook | D.A.P. when important international monographs and exhibition catalogs were difficult to source in the American marketplace. Over the next three decades she grew the New York company into the world's premier distributor of books on art, photography, design, and visual culture, championing the work of museums, publishers, and small presses. In addition to distributing more than 25,000 publications, under Gallagher's leadership Artbook | D.A.P. launched e-commerce partnerships with cultural institutions, expanded into the gift and specialty retail market, and broadened its distribution into new territories, including Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East.

Lozada said, "I want to express my deep gratitude to Sharon and acknowledge her vision, fearless spirit, and profound impact on the publishing industry as I step into the role of president. Working alongside--and learning from--Sharon has been a pleasure and an honor. I'm thankful for the passionate staff of Artbook | D.A.P. as we look ahead to driving growth and success in the future."

In other changes, longtime sales director and senior v-p Jane Brown will become executive v-p and business intelligence director, and Kaitlyn Cicciariello will move into the role of v-p, finance & operations.

Five booksellers linked to two Hong Kong bookstores--Have a Nice Stay, founded by a group of former journalists, and the longstanding Greenfield Book Store--were arrested on Wednesday, suspected of "displaying seditious materials and selling seditious publications," the Associated Press (via NPR) reported, adding that the police operation was the third round of arrests targeting independent bookstores within four months. 

Have a Nice Stay

A police statement alleged that the content stirred up hatred against the city's government, judiciary and law enforcement agencies. Have a Nice Stay had already announced it would be closing on August 30, citing financial difficulties and "an elusive red line as being among the factors," the AP noted. The bookseller said that it cannot read through every single book and lacks the ability to judge what books are "problematic."

Hong Kong secretary for security Chris Tang said, "If you are a bookseller, you have the responsibility to make sure the books you sell won't endanger national security. It's equal to, for example, when you are selling food, you need to ensure the food won't cause a stomach ache and is not either poison or illegal."

Asked if authorities would make a list of banned books, Tang said that would not be conducive to effective law enforcement targeting titles that "intend to harm the country," the AP reported.

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The European & International Booksellers Federation has published its International Bookselling Markets Report 2024, combining quantitative market data with qualitative insights gathered from booksellers associations and industry stakeholders. The report offers insight into 20 national markets. It serves as a tool for understanding the state of the sector, informing EIBF's strategic work, and monitoring policy developments that affect booksellers.  

Global book sales experienced a slight decline in 2024 compared to the previous year, with only six of the 22 analyzed markets recording growth, EIBF's report noted. The picture varies significantly by region: while many European markets remained stable, others, such as India, saw strong growth, highlighting the different dynamics shaping bookselling around the world. 

Digital formats remain one of the most significant trends identified in the report. E-books and audiobooks increased their share of sales in more than half of the surveyed markets.  

Beyond market performance, the report explores the wider challenges facing booksellers. Economic uncertainty, rising living costs, and ongoing geopolitical tensions have created additional pressure for businesses in many markets. Booksellers increasingly face challenges linked to their broader cultural role. As facilitators of access to diverse ideas and literature, they can become targets of political pressure from both public institutions and parts of civil society. 

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In a new study, Scrolling Stories: E-book Use in Canada 2025, BookNet Canada reveals the buying, borrowing, and reading habits of Canadian e-book consumers. Among the highlights: 

• 71% of Canadians read an e-book in 2025.
• 34% of all Canadian book buyers bought e-books and 29% of all Canadian book borrowers borrowed e-books last year.
• Canadian e-book buyers spent an average of $11.85 per e-book in 2025.
• E-book buyers were more influenced by price than all buyers: 41% of Canadian e-book buyers purchased their books at a specific location due to a good price, offer, or promo compared with only 29% of Canadian book buyers.
• 55% of Canadian e-book borrowers gave wanting to save money as the reason they borrowed rather than bought their e-books.
• More than half of all Canadian e-book readers in 2025 read between one and five e-books last year (59%).
• The largest share of e-book readers used their smartphones to read their books (36%).

British historian and author Juliet Gardiner, who was known for three major works about Britain during World War II, life in the 1930s, and the place of the Blitz in national mythology, died June 16. She was 82. The Guardian reported that at the turn of the millennium, she "came to the realization that though she had a respectable reputation as a freelance historian, she had yet to write the books that would be unmistakably hers."

Wartime: Britain 1939-1945 (2004) provided a panoramic narrative and portrait of the Home Front. "Sixty years after the end of the war," she wrote in her foreword, "if the 'big picture' of a nation united in courageously facing a common enemy holds steady--as it surely does--so too do the 'short stories,' the details of people's varied experiences of war that complicate and nuance that picture."

The Thirties: An Intimate History (2010), "arguably her masterwork," was made special by "the unerring, in-depth treatment of the too often overlooked in-betweens--above all, those white-collar, lower-middle class people who found in rapidly growing suburbia a balm for their anxious sense of social status and a world they could call their own," the Guardian wrote.

Later in 2010, to mark the 70th anniversary, The Blitz: The British Under Attack was released. The Guardian's reviewer, Hester Vaizey, praised it as "a treasure trove of vivid, detailed anecdotes," but the book also tackled full on the place of the Blitz in British national mythology.

"All three books are underpinned by a clear belief in the social historian's abiding purpose. This was, in Juliet's own later words, the 'attempt to capture the historical moment and what mattered to those living in it,' " the Guardian noted.

In 1979, Gardiner became assistant editor of History Today, followed by three years as editor beginning in 1982. For a decade and a half, she was "in effect a jobbing historian," while holding posts at Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1985-89) and Middlesex University (1992-2000). The Guardian observed that during that time she wrote several books, "but they were mostly tie-ins to either a TV series, as with D-Day: Those Who Were There (1994) and The 1940s House (2000), or an exhibition, as with Over Here: The GIs in Wartime Britain (1992) and From The Bomb to the Beatles (1999), as opposed to books indisputably in their own right." 

Historian David Kynaston, who wrote Gardiner's obituary for the Guardian, stated: "The golden spell of her heavyweight trio of books started shortly after I first met Juliet, through our shared literary agent, Deborah Rogers: Juliet told me that her particular dark night of the soul had come on Millennium Eve in New York. The success it drove her to ended abruptly when she was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor, and started using a wheelchair."

Plans for new, research-dependent books had to be dropped, but with the help of her friend Lara Feigel, in 2017 Gardiner published a memoir, Joining the Dots: A Woman in Her Time.

The Book Stall in Winnetka, Ill., welcomed local author Leah Eskin (r.) and publisher Arthur Levine (l.) to discuss her debut historical novel, Like Wafers in Honey (Levine Querido), for an enthusiastic crowd. Eskin and Levine met as students at Brown University in Providence, R.I. When Levine had the idea for a novel based on the life of Jewish cookbook star Edda Servi Machlin, he knew exactly who should write it. Eskin's food column ran in the Chicago Tribune for 20 years, and her writing has been nominated twice for a Pulitzer Prize.

"I didn't realize this was a romance bookstore." In an Instagram video, Read My Lips Bookshop in Marquette and Birmingham, Mich., gently addressed a common dilemma for booksellers everywhere: the clueless patron comment. The response: "No matter how you found us, we're glad you're here. Come browse, ask us for recommendations, and leave with a love story. We love talking about anything to do with books and would love your company."

"Every time you shop an indie bookstore, a kitten gets a ride on a space unicorn." That was the sidewalk chalkboard message in front of Pageturners Bookstore in Indianola, Iowa, which noted: "This is how we chose to start off the Iowa Indie Bookstore Tour this year. We all need a space kitten." 

"With the continued heat wave, we invite you to visit. This spot near the fireplace is a favorite. Don't worry--the fireplace is taking its scheduled seasonal break," Scout & Morgan Books in Cambridge, Minn., posted on Facebook. "Grab an iced ___(fill in the blank)___, from next door and take a gander at the new titles in store. Judith was busy buying yesterday to restock the shelves."

Daniela Salazar has been promoted to marketing associate at Ecco.

Riley Keough (Jay Kelly, Daisy Jones and the Six), Devon Terrell (It's What's Inside, Barry, The Assassin), Nicholas Podany (Ponies, Saturday Night), and Carl Clemons-Hopkins (Hacks, Candyman) have joined the cast of the upcoming Netflix limited series Enigma Variations, based on the bestselling novel by André Aciman, Deadline reported. They join previously announced Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Alicia Vikander.

Written by Amanda Kate Shuman and directed by Oliver Hermanus, Enigma Variations "tells the story of Paul (Taylor-Johnson), a man remade by the lovers who ignite and undo him across 10 transformative years," Deadline noted.

Shuman, who serves as showrunner, exec produces alongside Hermanus as well as Michael Ellenberg, Christina Malach and Lindsey Springer for Media Res, Aciman, and Monica Levinson. Media Res is the studio.

Finalists have been named for the Forward Prizes for Poetry, which include the £10,000 (about $13,490) Forward Prize for Best Collection, the £5,000 (about $6,745) Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection, the £1,000 (about $1,350) Forward Prize for Best Single Poem, and the £1,000 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem--Performed. Winners of the annual awards, which celebrate new poetry in the U.K. and Ireland, will be named October 24 in London. This year's book finalists are:

Best collection
Egrets, While War by Tishani Doshi
Foretokens by Sarah How
Hide Me Under the Blood and I Shall Be Satisfied by Keith Jarrett
Unsafe by Karen McCarthy Woolf
Bycatch by Caroline Smith

First collection
Sculling by Sophie Dumont
Even the Trees by Roshni Gallagher
Ground Provisions by Shauna M Morgan
The Way the Water Held Me by Catherine Redford
October by Nur Turkmani

photo: Todd V Wolfson

Mary Pauline Lowry is the author of Last Night Was Killer (Morrow, July 7, 2026), a comedic murder mystery set in the world of amateur pole dancing. She's also the author of two previous novels, The Roxy Letters and Wildfire. Her work has appeared the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, O Magazine, and The Millions. She gushes about art and pop culture on her Substack, Make It Funny. Her hottest take is that comedy is the most essential art form.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

A single mother finds a corpse in her trunk and is launched on a Big Lebowski-like criminal adventure involving amateur pole dancing, snowmobiles, and hand grenades.

That's 26 words, but I've always been long-winded.

On your nightstand now:

I'm rereading Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis, which is about a heartbroken academic who takes a U.N. job in Iraq running a program deradicalizing ISIS brides. I'm trying to understand how Younis writes about such serious material in a way that feels both respectful and hilarious.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Eloise by Kay Thompson, illustrated by Hilary Knight. I loved the idea of Eloise slouching around the Plaza Hotel pretending to be an orphan in order to get free food handouts. I credit this book for making me love New York City long before I'd ever actually been there.

Your top five authors:

This is the most impossible question! How could anyone narrow it down to only five? Here is a sample of five authors who at one moment in time have each been my favorite author: Toni Morrison, Mick Herron, Nina Stibbe, Gabriel García Márquez, Francesca Lia Block.

Book you've faked reading:

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I pretended to a hipster boy in skinny jeans and thick glasses that I had read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Book you're an evangelist for:

On the sentence level, Ariel Delgado Dixon writes like literary greats Rachel Kushner and Jennifer Egan. But her novel Sourland, about two rivals battling for control of an illegal weed farm in Humboldt County, also has the tight pacing of a thriller. Come for sentences so sharp and gorgeous they could cut a diamond. Stay for the grit, jealousy, threesomes, cars being set on fire, and characters being stuffed into barrels.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Tehrangeles by Porochista Khakpour has the most delightful cover: a bejeweled, sunglasses-wearing cat, a bunch of roses, a gold background, and pink-and-red lettering that blasts off the page.

Book you hid from your parents:

My parents always let me read anything I could get my hands on. I'll never regret all the smutty Judith Krantz novels I gobbled up when I was way too young. But I wish they'd taken Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi away from me. I read it in the fifth grade and was terrified for years that Charles Manson was hiding in my bathroom cupboard.

Book that changed your life:

My sister and I read Finlay Donovan Is Killing It by Elle Cosimano at the same time, and we texted about it nonstop, delighted by the antics of Finlay and Vero. I immediately began a deep dive into the history of comedic murder mysteries written by women, starting with Craig Rice in the 1940s. And then I wrote my own: Last Night Was Killer.

Favorite line from a book:

My favorite line from a book is the opening to Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block. "The reason Weetzie Bat hated high school was because no one understood." The first chapter of that novel blew my heart open when I was 13 years old, made me feel understood. Like Weetzie, I lived in an amazing city (Austin, Tex.!) whose counterculture I explored and appreciated in a way my fellow high schoolers often didn't seem to get. Block is a legend and continues to write books I'm obsessed with!

Five books you'll never part with:

The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James is a magical-realism western inspired by the author's actual great-great grandfather, a Mexican bandit who survived being shot in the face by a Texas Ranger. I first read James when I was an editor at the Idaho Review and her short story "Children of a Careless God" landed in my submission pile. It was about a bunch of cats having an existential battle about whether or not to eat their owner, who'd died unexpectedly, leaving them trapped and without food in her apartment. I was thrilled we were able to publish it, and I've been a super fan of her work ever since! The Bullet Swallower is singular, buoyant, thrilling, and reimagines the western in a much-needed way.

I first read Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son when I was his student in a graduate literature class at the University of Texas. He and his wife, Cindy Lee, showed me what a dedication to a fun, friend-filled writing life looks like. I'll never part with the copy he signed for me.

My favorite Bridget Jones novel is Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding. No matter how many times I read it, it always cheers me up. Worth it for the lice (aka nits) jokes alone.

Milkman by Anna Burns is long, experimental, strange, brilliant. The subject matter sounds somber: a young woman is stalked by an older man in an unnamed city in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. But it's actually funny, dark, and wonderful.

I've read Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life by bell hooks so many times my copy is annotated to bits and nearly falling apart. When I was young and trying to find my way in love and as a writer, it acted as both guide and warning.

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

I am always so jealous when I give someone a copy of Mick Herron's Slow Horses, the first in his Slough House series about a group of screwup MI5 spies exiled to a dank corner of London and yearning to get back in the action. What I wouldn't give to go on that whole journey again, for the very first time.

For many U.S. draftees in the Vietnam War era, the question of whether to serve one's country or relocate to Canada was difficult to confront; it also forced them to address buried complexities in the lives they would leave behind. Such is the case with Lee Clarke, the protagonist of the wittily titled Dodge City, Patrick deWitt's fast-paced, dialogue-heavy story about a young slacker unsure of everything except for one important fact: he has no intention of serving in the war.

Lee lives in Los Angeles in a "second-floor apartment resting on stilts" by the water, with "the minor scents of slow-baking dumpster trash" wafting in through the window. He came to California to study land surveying at UCLA, but his main motivation was to escape "the permanent gray ceiling of Washington state," where he was born and raised. For the past two years, he's been off-and-on dating Cal, the frequently stoned daughter of East Coast intellectuals. All goes well enough, until Cal invites him to a campus party at which he gets into a fight and drops his opponent with one punch to the teeth. Unluckily for Lee, that opponent's parents are "esteemed benefactors," so the college expels Lee, and he loses his draft deferment.

Worse luck comes when he receives his draft notice and has to report for his physical in two weeks. Lee decides to escape to Canada instead. He accepts a gig with a drive-away car delivery company to bring a brand-new Jaguar E-Type to a guy in New Jersey. With only his suitcase and an ample supply of "driving pills"--Benzedrine--from his pal Robin, Lee sets out, but he doesn't take a direct route. He follows a circuitous path to visit people from his past, including his father, living alone in Washington State and eking out a living as a dogcatcher; his mother, who ditched the family and moved to Montana when Lee was in high school because, she says, "I could no longer pretend I wasn't unhappy" with her marriage; and his sister, Grace, a Manhattan nurse-in-training in an affair with a married doctor.

DeWitt (French Exit) expounds on themes of self-preservation and escape as each character addresses consequential decisions and their repercussions. "We're defined by our behaviors, by the choices we make," a character tells Lee, a lesson he learns with painful clarity in this deceptively light work. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer

Shelf Talker: Patrick deWitt's Dodge City is a deceptively light Vietnam War-era novel about a young man in Los Angeles who drives across the country to escape to Canada after receiving his draft notice.