Three Ducks Bookstore held a grand opening Saturday, October 17, in Springfield, Ill., the Illinois Times reported. 

Located at 414 E. Monroe St., Three Ducks focuses on literary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and graphic novels. Owner Drew Kodrich described the inventory as a balance between "new, contemporary books--some weird stuff and also intellectual-leaning academic literature along with a decent amount of classic novels and graphic novels."

Kodrich, a musician who is very active in the Springfield music community, hopes the bookstore will become a community hub. He told the Illinois Times he is interested "in having a place for people to congregate, and I want to have a decent number of small events here, like book clubs and that kind of stuff."

While on tour as a member of the hardcore band Prevention, Kodrich would often visit bookstores in other towns. He felt that Springfield was lacking in independent bookstores specializing in new books, and he thought it would be "cool to have something where people can come and buy new stuff that's a little bit more catered than Barnes & Noble can provide and a little bit more literary-leaning," he explained. "And I guess I thought I could do that, probably. And here we are." 

The grand opening festivities began on Saturday with a ribbon cutting at 10:30 a.m.

Bibliobar in Plano, Tex., held a grand reopening in its new home on October 17, Community Impact reported. The bookstore, which first opened as a pop-up store in 2017, has moved from 1018 E. 15th St. to 1024 E. 15th St. The new space spans about 2,000 square feet, more than double the size of its previous location. 

Owner Chelsea Tresp has used the extra space to create a dedicated children's section and expand the store's book and gift offerings. There is also space for events, and Tresp plans to host author signings, book clubs, craft nights, parties, and more.

Following its debut as a pop-up, Bibliobar opened its first bricks-and-mortar location in 2023. The store carries general-interest titles for all ages, with a focus on social justice and diverse voices.

Britney Ellis, owner of the Fireheart Tavern in Bangor, Maine, "wants to build on untapped potential in the reading community and add a 'completely different' type of space to the city" with her business at 105 Main St, the Bangor Daily News reported.

"It'll be a mix between a brewery feeling, but also a cozy cafe feeling," Ellis said, adding that the name alludes to characters fantasy fans will be familiar with, including the "Fireheart" nickname from Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas or the protagonist in the children's book series Warriors.

Fireheart will offer used and new books and events, with a particular emphasis on fantasy. The bar, serving cocktails, mocktails, wine and beer, will also double as a cafe counter with specialty coffee, matcha, and chai. 

"I'm hoping to bring something completely different to Maine," said Ellis, noting that she wants the space to offer a more relaxed atmosphere than a typical bar and to host affordable events like author readings, slam poetry events, Dungeons and Dragons nights, and craft events. The space will also have a community room for groups to rent out for their own meetings.

Currently the space is undergoing a complete renovation, including taking down interior walls, removing carpet, and adding new lighting. Ellis plans to add two bathrooms, a six-seat bar, a reading nook, and cozy seating. She hopes to finish the renovations by early December.

A former Books-A-Million in the Orange Park Mall at 1910 Wells Road in Orange Park, Fla., has reopened in the same location as a 2nd & Charles store, "adding a second Northeast Florida location as the mall undergoes renovations," the Jacksonville Business Journal reported. BAM's 2nd & Charles at St. Johns Town Center in Jacksonville opened in 2017.

"This is a market the company has been in for a long time. With the mall undergoing significant changes, we had the opportunity to rebrand," said Rick Rupp, v-p, 2nd & Charles. "The conversion gives parent company Books-A-Million a different way to reach shoppers in an established market." 

He noted that since launching in Hoover, Ala., in 2010, 2nd & Charles has grown to include 46 stores across 19 states, adding: "We've been on a really nice trajectory."

Scottish poet Douglas Dunn, whose work explored class, poverty, and grief, died October 16. He was 83. The National reported that the award-winning writer was best known for his poetry collections Terry Street and Elegies, the latter of which won the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 1985. He received an OBE in 2003 and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2013. 

Fellow Scottish poet and former St. Andrews colleague Don Paterson called Dunn "the finest Scottish poet of the post-war period.... Dougie was also someone we knew and loved as a dear friend, mentor and teacher, and he will be deeply missed."

Dunn initially trained as a librarian before moving to the U.S. in 1964, where he worked at a public library in Ohio. He later returned to the U.K. to study English literature at the University of Hull, where he was mentored by poet Philip Larkin.

Dunn's first poetry collection, Terry Street (1969) was published to critical acclaim. Other collections include A Happier Life (1972), Love or Nothing (1974). and Barbarians (1979). He also wrote literary criticism, plays for radio and television, and short stories, including some for the New Yorker that resulted in two collections: Secret Villages (1985) and Boyfriends and Girlfriends (1995).

"Following the death of his wife Lesley from cancer in 1981, Dunn published Elegies, a collection of poems reflecting on grief and loss which became one of his most celebrated works," the National wrote. The book won the Whitbread Prize

He returned to Scotland in the 1980s for a writer-in-residence position at the University of Dundee before moving to the University of St. Andrews, where he became a professor of English and head of the university's Scottish Studies Institute. He retired from the university in 2008.

In a tribute, his publisher, Faber, posted: "We are so sad to learn of the passing of the pre-eminent Scottish poet, Douglas Dunn, whom Faber published for over fifty years, a poet others admired, turned to, learnt from and loved. Our thoughts are with his family and friends."

He "was overjoyed to find himself among the poetic aristocracy at Faber and Faber" when his first book landed there, the Guardian noted. Dunn said he loved being published by "the publisher which issued Eliot, Pound, Auden, Larkin, Ted Hughes, Thom Gunn, and Seamus Heaney. When my copies arrived, I kissed them." 

"Attempts to characterize Dunn's poetry and its attachment to moral rigor typically reach for the line, 'My poems should be Clyde-built, crude and sure,' " the Guardian wrote. "But it is equally pertinent to reflect on another snatch of verse, from the poem 'The Apple Tree', published in St. Kilda's Parliament (1981). Our lives, Dunn wrote, 'Crave codes of courtesy, ways of describing love, / And these, in a good-natured land, are ways to weep, / True comfort as you wipe your eyes and try to live.' "

Novelist Cal Hoffman (r.) was in conversation with Joanna Rakoff (My Salinger Year) at Harvard Bookstore, Cambridge, Mass., for the launch of his five-city tour for Judah Can’t Tell (November 10, 2026) and his debut, Easy to Slip (now in paperback), both from Rare Bird.

The Underground Yarn and Book Shop in Hershey, Pa., shared a social media post explaining "What I learned about my bookstore from a local 5 Year Old," noting that children "will always see the world different from us, and sometimes stepping into their world can be magical. For so many children, foundational memories are made at libraries, read-alouds, and in small cozy nooks. What an honor to be a safe space for this local little, and for so many others too."

The Gilded Page bookstore in Tarpon Springs, Fla., offered an alternative take on the classic "don't like (this book)? Try (this one)" handselling ritual, noting: "But seriously, we haven't actually heard anyone DIDN'T like this book after store owner Julia rec'd it. Thanks Blinking Owl Books for the reel inspo!"

"Books & sunshine on a Friday. Is there anything better?" Bolen Books in Victoria, B.C., Canada, asked. 

Ocean Superheroes by Gabrielle Raymond McGee (Tiny Torch Books/The Collective Book Studio).

Tomorrow:
The View: Collin Gosselin, author of In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood (Grand Central, $30, 9781538784723).

Drew Barrymore Show: B.J. Novak, author of The Little Book With No Pictures (Rocky Pond Books, $10.99, 9798217242597).

Live with Kelly and Mark: Jane Leeves, author of Daphne & Me: My Life on Frasier (And a Bit More) (Morrow, $29.99, 9780063426955).

Tonight Show: Joe Manganiello, author of Bloodlines: A Memoir (Avid Reader Press, $30, 9781668207109).

Apple TV has added several new cast members for the seventh season of its hit series Slow Horses, based on Mick Herron's novel Bad Actors, which is part of his Slough House book series. Season 7 sees Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) and his crew "on the hunt to find and neutralize a mole at the heart of British Government before they can bring down the state." Season six of Slow Horses is currently running and season eight was recently announced.

The additional cast members include Varada Sethu (The Other Bennet Sister, Andor, Doctor Who), Ethan Moorhouse (The Moment, Ludwig, Mobland), Tuppence Middleton (Downton Abbey: A New Era, Mank, Death by Lighting), Merab Ninidze (Homeland, The Courier), and Joshua McGuire (The Gold, Anatomy of a Scandal), as well as the return of James Callis. 

Hachette Australia, along with the Richell family, and in partnership with the Emerging Writers' Festival and Simpsons Solicitors, has released a shortlist for the 2026 Richell Prize for Emerging Writers. The award honors the memory of Hachette Australia's former CEO Matt Richell, who died in a surfing accident in 2014. 

The winner, who will be named November 6, receives A$10,000 (about US$7,005), along with a 12-month mentorship with one of Hachette Australia's publishers. Hachette Australia will work with the winning writer to develop their manuscript with first option to consider the finished work and shortlisted entries for publication. This year's finalists are:

The House Where Mercy Died by Chloe Anne
Moola Bulla by Mike Boynes
The Same House by Farrin Foster
Harvest by Euri Glenn
Peril by K.T. Major
Exhibit A for Althea by Gillian Worrall

T. Geronimo Johnson  (photo: Elizabeth Cowan)

Born and raised in the American South, T. Geronimo Johnson is the author of Welcome to Braggsville, longlisted for the National Book Award and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence; and Hold It 'Til It Hurts, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He won the inaugural Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the Rome Prize, the Ernest J. Gaines Award, and the William Saroyan International Prize, received his M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and has held Wallace Stegner and Iowa Arts fellowships. His novel The Occidental Book of the Dead (Morrow, October 6, 2026) is a darkly funny, formally inventive, decades-spanning literary crime masterpiece that skewers and vividly evokes the complexities of the South and centers on a Black cop in an Atlanta precinct.

Handsell readers your book:

It's a love story inside of a love story inside of a love story, a novel about both romantic and fraternal devotion, and about childhood and parenthood. A police officer desperate to become a father finds that his every attempt to do the right thing sparks horrific unintended consequences that destroy the lives of everyone around him, leaving several people dead.

On your nightstand now:

The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr, The Lumumba Plot by Stuart A. Reid, The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri, The Free-lance Pallbearers by Ishmael Reed, Ten Little Niggers by Agatha Christie, The Whistler by John Grisham, Trust Exercise by Susan Choi, and U.S.A. by John Dos Passos.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Every book with Greek mythology. Racy stuff.

Your top five authors:

Only five? This constitutes entrapment. Did Damocles himself write this million-dollar question? I choose to phone a friend-in-spirit by the name of Danger Mouse. His seminal The Grey Album is hereby invoked as my spirit guide. A potential top five mash-up:

1. Gabriel García Morrison (particularly The Chronicle of the Bluest Eye Foretold)
2. James "Saramago" Baldwin (who doesn't love All the Names on the Mountain?)
3. Flann "Borges" O'Brien (I recommend his mind-bending account of Pierre Menard at Swim-Two-Birds)  
4. Italo "Barry" Calvino (The Invisible City Bohane)
5. Patrick "Dostoyevsky" Chamoiseau (Notes from Texaco)

Books you're an evangelist for:

The Thought Gang by Tibor Fischer. Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje. Together they form a literary speedball.

Book you hid from your parents:

Grade book.

Book that changed your life:

The book most recently read.

Every book I encounter changes me. Henry James wrote in "The Art of Fiction" that writers must "try be one of those on whom nothing is lost." This is good advice for life overall. It's certainly good advice for reading. How can I read a book without being aware that I'm spending time with the mind of another human? How can I read a book and not be curious about the author's every decision great and small? It matters not whether I agree. It matters not whether I "like" the book. It matters not whether it's my genre. It matters not whether I feel I've read a similar story before. Each book is another window on the world. (I'll reexamine this notion as AI-authored texts become more prevalent.)

But rules are meant to be followed and I haven't answered the question. One book that I'd recommend is not literature at all. It's a book about money. An esteemed author once said that the key to success for a writer is "low overhead." I accordingly recommend Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez. It's about the difference between making a living and making a life. It's about knowing your "real wages." It's about financial independence. What could be more important to a writer (or any artist) (or anybody who works for a living)?

Favorite line from a book:

One of my favorite dishes is the famed turducken. Those familiar with that delicacy will understand my strategy in answering this question. I opt for a selection from Édouard Glissant found inside a translator's note found inside a novel entitled Slave Old Man by Patrick Chamoiseau:

"The past, our endured past, which is not yet history for us, is yet here tormenting us. The writer's task is to explore this obsessive pain, to 'reveal' it constantly in the here and now."

Runner up: "Anger is better." --Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye.

Five books you'll never part with:

I've moved so frequently that no book has a reserved seat on the ark. As for books that continue to resonate: The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald, City of Bohane by Kevin Barry, The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy, Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. You will find in this list exemplars of the writer's cardinal virtues: inquisitiveness, probity, veracity, and revelation.

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

The Quiet American by Graham Greene for the ending. Greene convincingly renders hauntingly tragic remorse. He blends the personal and the political perfectly.

Another question you'd like to answer:

What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do? --Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

Answer: Everything.

Zolboo Orgil, an artist living in Mongolia, makes her debut with a fantastical picture book that imagines the adventures of dreams that have escaped their creator and wandered into the world. Orgil pairs the gently stimulating narrative, translated by author and poet Bujinlkham Erdenebaatar, with surreal watercolor illustrations befitting the most extraordinary dreamer. Full of wonder and whimsy, The Dreamcrafter takes its audience on a magical jaunt through Orgil's unparalleled creativity.

The Dreamcrafter spends most of her time in her small room building dreams for other people. One morning she awakens to find that the dreams have flown away. At first she thinks, "How nice for them to be able to explore!" But then, "more than anything, she [longs] to have them back"; she wants to give the dreams "to those for whom she had made them." So she ventures out, cage in hand, to see if she can locate her escaped dreams. The Dreamcrafter moves "through the bustling city, gathering the stray dreams"--a tea kettle on a swing, a rainbow-winged green giraffe, a fish carrying a city on its back--"like a shepherdess rounding up her sheep." To obtain the final dream, a pink cat designed for a traveling circus performer, she must wander outside the city limits. All along her way, she drinks in her surroundings: towering buildings, a river, an "infinitely vast" meadow, a grove of trees, and the starry sky.

Orgil's splendid illustrations, based in traditional Mongolian drawing techniques and made with watercolor on handmade canvas prepared with casein glue and chalk, depict each step of the Dreamcrafter's travels. Double-page spreads feature textured art and remarkably saturated colors that match the dreams themselves: "Some [are] unsettling and others brim... with wonder." Orgil's stunning night sky, under which the Dreamcrafter finds the pink cat dancing, makes a particularly marvelous image: a field of dark blue, dotted with stars surrounded by swirls and streaks of color.

Erdenebaatar's translation transmits a sense of peace and curiosity through tone and pacing, and Orgil's balance of text and art creates an enchanting reading experience. The Dreamcrafter may introduce budding readers to the joy of storytelling and the breadth of dreams, allowing them to "dissolve in the beauty" of books the way the Dreamcrafter dissolves into the starry sky. --Jen Forbus, freelancer

Shelf Talker: A Mongolian artist makes her debut with this stunningly illustrated fantastical picture book about a dream maker's day spent corralling escaped dreams.