Urban Reads Bookstore, Baltimore, Md., has been dealing with a barrage of racist harassment and threats since about February, WMAR2 reported.

Store owner Tia Hamilton said she has shared more than 500 calls, messages, and posts with the police, the FBI, and Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown. She told WMAR2 that she receives more "every day," with texts and calls arriving from numbers in nearly 10 states.

Hamilton added that she refuses to back down, and explained that when she receives a racist or threatening message on social media, she posts the users' profiles. Asked how community members and others can help Urban Reads, Hamilton suggested buying a book, donating to the store's prison literacy program, and standing up for the bookstore.

"Just protect my store, because my store is your store," Hamilton said. "We hold meetings in here, book signing kids events, children literacy programs, protect the environment. It's just not protecting me, it's protecting Urban Reads and protecting what we love in the Waverly community."

Between the Covers Co., a mobile bookstore with a focus on romance and fantasy, made its debut May 10 in Asbury Park, N.J., the Asbury Park Press reported. Owner Alyssa Regan set up shop at Talula's Pizza in Asbury Park for a Mother's Day-themed grand opening celebration.

"At our core, we're a love letter to indie authors," Regan told the Asbury Park Press. "Especially BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and other underrepresented creatives. Our mission is to uplift their stories and help readers find characters who look, love, and dream like they do." She said she also aims to support local businesses with her pop-ups.

Between the Covers Co. will return to Talula's for a Pride-focused event on May 31. Other scheduled appearances include a stop at a Drybar in Wall, N.J., in early June, and participation in the New Jersey Bookstore Crawl.

After its book bike was stolen earlier this spring, the Nonbinarian Bookstore in Brooklyn, N.Y., has replaced the bike with the help of its community, Gay City News reported.

K. Kerimian, the Nonbinarian's founder, discovered the book bike missing on April 2. Kerimian called it a "shock," and given that the distinctive pink cargo bike has the store's name on it on all sides, they couldn't imagine who would take it: "We weren't inclined to jump to the conclusion of it being a hate crime, but by virtue of it being a community service, it's not just tangible--it's what it provides to the community, it's the symbol of solidarity that people took from us."

They turned to the bookstore's community for support, and through a GoFundMe campaign raised more than $6,000. Kerimian contacted the same maker from whom they commissioned the original bike in 2022 and said "basically that we wanted the same thing." The money raised through GoFundMe covered the cost of the bike as well as some insurance.

"So many people responded to the loss of the bike and you could see how much the bike meant to other people and to people who donated to us," Kerimian told Gay City News. "While I can't say I'm glad this happened, I'm really humbled by the community response."

Kerimian hopes the new bike will arrive before the start of Pride. They launched the Nonbinarian in 2022 before opening a bricks-and-mortar location at 1130 President St. in 2024.

Dozens of authors and creators have joined the Book Industry Charitable Foundation to help launch the Now More Than Ever, I Stand with Bookstores fundraising campaign to encourage book and comic lovers to stand with their community stores in challenging times. 

Until June 2, stores across the U.S. will feature displays highlighting in-store purchase and/or donating to Binc. The first $50,000 in donations received will be matched dollar for dollar, thanks to the generosity of Binc ambassador and bestselling author Amor Towles and other authors/creators. You can donate here.

Binc noted that with the growing uncertainty regarding federal funding to support local community resources, the challenges against First Amendment rights, and overall financial insecurity, "store employees are at greater risk of harassment and not being able to withstand and navigate a personal crisis." Requests to Binc for help have increased 8% over last year and the average amount to resolve a crisis is also rising.

"Book and comic people need our support more now than ever," said Binc executive director Pam French. "They are on the front lines, working to preserve the right to free speech, the open exchange of ideas, and the freedom to read. The work of bookstores and comic shops matters more than ever."

This past week, Shelf Awareness sent our new Kids & YA Pre-Order E-Blast to more than 200,000 of the country's best book readers. The e-blast went to 209,766 customers of 42 participating independent bookstores.

The mailing features four upcoming titles selected by Shelf Awareness editors and three advertised titles, one of which is a sponsored feature. 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 second Wednesday of each month; the next will go out on Wednesday, June 11. This is a free service for indies. Stores interested in learning more can visit our program registration page or contact our partner program team via e-mail.

Ad spots are also available in the Kids & YA Pre-Order E-Blast. For more information contact sales@shelf-awareness.com for details.

For a sample of the May Kids & YA Pre-Order E-Blast, see this one from the Book Bin, Salem, Ore.

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

The Day the Crayons Made Friends by Drew Daywalt, illus. by Oliver Jeffers (Philomel)
Amelia, if Only by Becky Albertalli (HarperCollins)
The Wild Robot on the Island by Peter Brown (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Blood in the Water by Tiffany D. Jackson (Scholastic Press)

Congratulations to An Unlikely Story, Plainville, Mass., which is marking its 10th anniversary with a 10-day celebration running from this coming Friday, May 23, through Sunday, June 1.

In addition to daily events, the store will feature a Customer Memory Wall where guests can share their favorite bookstore moments; limited-edition birthday merchandise; and surprise giveaways all week long.

The celebration includes a drop-in dance party on May 23rd; Wimpy Kid Studio open house tours on the 24th and 25th; the launch of the Memory Wall on the 26th; Story Story Night, silent book club and writing night the 27th; a birthday celebration with 10% off all bookstore purchases, café specials, a free ice cream truck (2-6 p.m.), all-ages karaoke birthday party (6-8 p.m.), and a drawing for the gigantic Jellycat giveaway, all on the 28th; a special event with author/illustrator Kazu Kibuishi on the 29th; Unlikely trivia night on the 30th; a live performance by the Unlikely Strummers (11 a.m.) and draw-along with cartoonists (2 p.m.) on the 31st; and, last but not least, an after-hours staff party for all booksellers, past and present, on June 1.

Founded by author Jeff Kinney and his wife, Julie, An Unlikely Story has grown into a nationally recognized literary destination, welcoming bestselling authors, enthusiastic readers, and curious visitors from across the country.

"This celebration is our love letter to the readers, authors, and neighbors who have made the last 10 years so joyful," said general manager Melissa Lavendier. "We're excited to look back at what we've built and look forward to everything that's still to come."

"This is how Koda greets our Authors!" Hearthside Books in Watertown, Minn., posted on Instagram, along with visual evidence. 

Hal Hlavinka has been promoted to director, account marketing and sales planning, at Penguin Random House. Hlavinka has worked in a variety of areas while at PRH, including organizing, managing, and/or collaborating with the ABA's Indies Introduce program, regional shows, Winter Institute, sales meetings, the signed stock program, author events, a range of marketing initiatives, and more. Before joining PRH in 2017, he was in charge of events at the Community Bookstore, Brooklyn, N.Y.

"Hal embodies our conference mantra, which is: if we set things up right, it is possible to work incredibly hard, connect with our colleagues, and have fun, all on the same day," Ruth Liebmann, v-p, account marketing at PRH, wrote in part in a memo to staff about the promotion. "He brilliantly balances the wishes and dreams of his colleagues with the hard practicalities of logistics, technology, and scheduling. He brings a spirit of cheerful innovation to everything he does, and has a relentless drive for improving how we work together on behalf of our books and authors. Above all: no matter how crazy things get, he never loses his cool, nor his bookseller instinct for helping us feel the magic whenever and wherever we gather to talk about books."

Defiant Acts: A Novel by James Stewart III (Acre Books).

Today:
All Things Considered: 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). She will also be on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert tomorrow.

Fresh Air: Jake Tapper, co-author of Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again (Penguin Press, $32, 9798217060672). He will also appear on Here & Now today.

Tomorrow:
CBS Mornings: Maria Avgitidis, author of Ask a Matchmaker: Matchmaker Maria's No-Nonsense Guide to Finding Love (St. Martin's Essentials, $20, 9781250342355).

Late Night with Seth Meyers repeat: Graydon Carter, author of When the Going Was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines (Penguin Press, $32, 9780593655900).

Ella Anderson (Suncoast) and Juliette Lewis (Opus) will star in Jesus Land, a film adaptation from writer-director Saila Kariat (The Valley) of the 2005 memoir by Julia Scheeres. Deadline reported that the project "tells the true story of Julia and her adopted Black brother David, who struggle to navigate their tumultuous childhood in a harsh Christian Fundamentalist home amid the bigotry of '80s rural Indiana. When the teens rebel against their abusive parents Ruth and Hank, they are sent to a reform school in the Dominican Republic called Escuela Caribe." The movie's plot "is inspired by both the memoir and real-life accounts from former students of Escuela Caribe, detailing the traumatic experiences they endured there."

Anderson plays 16-year-old Julia, with Lewis as her mother, Ruth. The cast also includes Xavier Jones, Bryce Johnson, Nikki Roumel, Kristian Bruun, Kelly Sullivan, Jared Scott, Geogia Waehler, Sarah Brine, Jackson Coppins, Jimmy Ace Lewis, Mark Valeriano, and Emma Naumovska.

Andrea Batista, Saila Kariat, Karen Wilder, Rigele Abilock, Leslie Isackson, and Rick Moore are exec producers on the project, co-produced by Kariat. Adrienne Stern handled casting.

Two books have won the $50,000 Gotham Book Prize: Paradise Bronx: The Life and Times of New York's Greatest Borough by Ian Frazier (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Movement: New York's Long War to Take Back Its Streets from the Car by Nicole Gelinas (Fordham University Press). The authors will split the prize.

The Gotham Book Prize was created by Bradley Tusk, founder of bookstore P&T Knitwear in Manhattan, and Howard Wolfson of Bloomberg Philanthropies early in the pandemic to honor the best book published that calendar year--either fiction or nonfiction--that either is about New York City or takes place in New York City.

Organizers said, "In Paradise Bronx, Ian Frazier has written a compelling narrative that sweeps the reader up in the pulsing culture, diverse lives, and fascinating past and present of our northernmost borough. In Movement, Nicole Gelinas masterfully unpacks the people and politics that have influenced our transportation networks, and their immense influence on our current moment and shared future."

--- 

Palestinian author Yasmin Zaher's debut novel The Coin (published in the U.S. by Catapult) won the £20,000 (about $26,710) Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, celebrating international literary excellence in all its forms--including poetry, novels, short stories and drama--by authors 39 years old or under. 

Chair of judges Namita Gokhale said, "Zaher brings complexity and intensity to the page through her elegantly concise writing: The Coin is a borderless novel, tackling trauma and grief with bold and poetic moments of quirkiness and humour. It fizzes with electric energy. Yasmin Zaher is an extraordinary winner to mark twenty years of this vital prize."

In The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature, Charlie English (The Gallery of Miracles and Madness) explores decades of literary resistance in Poland, which occurred in part because of the support of a little known though expansive operation by the CIA. The covert intelligence operation known as the "CIA books program" distributed censored materials beyond the Iron Curtain. It was headed by operative George Minden, who was an exile from Romania who worked in the Free Europe Committee's (FEC) New York office. Under the guise of the International Literary Centre, it would, over the course of 35 years, disseminate close to 10 million items. It supported underground publishing movements that broke through the state-sponsored propaganda that kept citizens from their histories, stories, arts, and cultures.

Shaped by his experience as a journalist, English's straightforward, no-holds-barred reportage-style narrative tells a complex story that has many moving pieces and opinionated characters. He does so in a way that evokes a range of emotions from readers while exposing a hidden history of both resistance and even international political interference.

In The CIA Book Club, English examines the risks taken Solidarity Minister for Smuggling Mirosław Chojecki, book distributor and smuggler Marian Kaleta, journalist Ewa Kulik, and many others in a vast, dispersed network that considered the printing press and access to information as much a weapon as any tank could be in a war zone. Poland was by far the most successful arena for smuggling and covert printing operations, and this was in large part due to the people in the country who were committed to preserving its intellectual freedom under threats of violence, brutality, and death. English celebrates the work of everyday people choosing to resist, without romanticizing the very real dangers they faced in making those choices.

English further shows that this success was not only reliant on Western literature being smuggled into the country, but also on the ability to produce and reproduce the works of Polish émigrés, and even create resistance magazines within the country itself amid more and more repressive situations. Such writing was a way to create a "public record of regime atrocities" while also uniting like-minded people.

The newspapers, the shared literature, and the networks to smuggle them all became part of a "living social movement" even with the declaration of martial law in 1981. The underground education of the people through censored literature continued to show other ways to live, to give "a broader human context," while also countering propaganda. The CIA Book Club is a gripping lesson in long-term resistance and the resilience of the human spirit. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: Journalist Charlie English explores the underground culture of literary smuggling into Poland before the fall of Iron Curtain, demonstrating what effective, long-term resistance can look like.

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

1. Life of Your Dreams by Mark Pentecost
2. Mom, I Want to Hear Your Story by Jeffrey Mason
3. King of Envy by Ana Huang
4. Hotter in the Hamptons by Tinx
5. Grandmother, I Want to Hear Your Story by Jeffrey Mason
6. Den of Vipers by K.A. Knight
7. Older by Jennifer Hartmann
8. The Boyfriend by Freida McFadden
9. Kiss of the Basilisk by Lindsay Straube
10. Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]