The New England Independent Booksellers Association's Fall Conference in Newton, Mass., which concludes today, has included lively author and editor breakfasts and lunches; rep pick sessions; a busy trade show floor; a striking and highly relevant keynote by Jill Lepore, whose new book is The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State; an awards banquet that celebrated the power and magic of books, authors, booksellers, readers, and more. Here are pictures from the always-popular Author Reception: 

Booksellers Read Davidson (l.) of Lovestruck Books in Cambridge, Mass., and Thomas Grebenchick from Books on the Square in Providence, R.I.

Absolute fashion icons Kai Barrows (l.) and Erica Tso Haidas (r.), booksellers from Belonging Books (Hyannis, Mass.), with the equally fashionable Abrea Armstrong, author of Ferry Tales (Red Hen Press).

Bloomsbury senior director of publicity Faye Bi (l.) and picture book author Tiffany Hammond display Hammond's 2025 debut, A Day with No Words, and her 2027 sophomore picture book, How Do You Spell Belong?

Author and illustrator Pam Muñoz Ryan (l.) and Andrés Vera Martinez with their graphic novel Esperanza Rising (Graphix).
Arthur Levine (l.), publisher of Levine Querido, and first-time translator Antonio Gonzalez Cerna, proudly display Betina González and Mariana Ruiz Johnson's Vampire Girl Conquers the Night.

From l. to r.: Aaron Becker, author of The Water Beast (Candlewick); sales rep extraordinaire Keith Arsenault, Chesapeake & Hudson; and bookseller Elizabeth Bluemle, Flying Pig Bookstore, Shelburne, Vt.
David Keohan, author of The Wind Beneath the Stone (Chelsea Green), with bookseller Jim Havener, Green Toad Bookstore, Oneonta, N.Y.
Shelf Awareness's Neil Strandberg and John Mutter (author of Fortune and Glass, Left Field Publishing) with bookseller Joan Grenier, the Odyssey Bookshop, South Hadley, Mass. (photo: Judey Kalchik)

Gold Shoe Books opened recently at 405 N. Jackson Ave. in St. Louis, Mo. The Post-Dispatch reported that owner Debra Kennard "has always dreamed of opening a bookstore. She's a reader and raised her three children to be readers, too." 

Kennard said she drew inspiration from Parisian cafes and English shops for her bookstore's feel and inventory, adding that her goal is to be a classic neighborhood bookshop, one that creates community and brings people together: "I want to know what people want and what excites them, what their friend told them to read."

Prior to opening Gold Shoe Books, Kennard stepped away from her position at Washington University, feeling like this was the right time to pursue her bookshop dream: "I just pictured myself 10 years from now and feeling like that window had closed. I didn't want to be sitting somewhere in 10 years and wonder if I could have done it."

In preparation for the new venture, she scouted potential locations and spoke with other booksellers in the city, including Kelly Von Plonski of Subterranean Books and Kris Kleindienst of Left Bank Books, noting that these bookstores "were sort of my book haunts before now.... 

"In my conversation with Kelly I said, 'I'm not here to cannibalize your customer base or anybody else's.' My hope is that rising tides raise all ships. There's certainly enough interest in reading and hopefully the idea is you build even more of a reader base and more of a community and people can find their little niches. The more I talked to people, the more I was like, 'I'm not crazy to think I could do this. This is a neighborhood bookstore and I hope to do some things, but it's not going to ever be like Left Bank Books, as a cultural institution."

The bookshop's name was inspired by The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by DuBose Heyward, illustrated by Marjorie Flack, which she read to her kids when they were little. 

Good Girl Cafe & Bookstore opened on September 13 at 2807 South Broadway in Englewood, Colo., after construction issues had delayed the launch from its original July date. The Englewood Herald reported that the store features only romance titles, along with a cafe offering drinks inspired by romance tropes.

Owner Meg Garcia-Jahrman said the bookstore and cafe pairing was inspired by shops that had played a role in providing comfort for her during a difficult time. She had always wanted to open such a business, and decided it was the time to follow that dream: "If now is not the time, I don't know when the time is going to be. So we might as well just go for it."

A self-described "big reader for a really long time," Garcia-Jahrman said that as she coped with the loss of her parents, "I think I read over 400 books over two years. It was truly my escape to remember that like happily ever afters do exist and that love is something that's really powerful too."

She was drawn to the Englewood area for many reasons: "I love that we're in Englewood because I love the South Broadway area. I come here for thrift shopping, vintage shopping, go to bars down here, do all that fun stuff, and eat down here too, because there's some really good food. I knew this would be a great location."

Garcia-Jahrman has transformed the storefront "with moody-green walls, plants and antique furniture that she said would fit right in at her own home," the Herald wrote. "I really wanted to create a space for people to come and sit for as long as they wanted and read or do a craft or do whatever feels good," she said, noting that she also wanted customers to know the store is a safe space, with disability and LGBTQIA+ representation on the shelves and the shop's beliefs posted on the website. 

Good Girl Cafe & Bookstore was originally scheduled to open in July, but construction delays and a permitting oversight postponed its debut. In the interim, Garcia-Jahrman opened an online store and offered several pop-up events, where people have expressed their support and enthusiasm for the venture. 

"So many people come up to me and they're like, 'I follow you on Instagram, and I can't wait for the store to open,' " she said. "So it's been really awesome to be able to meet so many people in the community who are really excited for what is happening."

Garcia-Jahrman also started a GoFundMe to help recoup some of the losses as delays caused the store to go without income. "I knew that the book community was super tight-knit, and the support was gonna be there for this, but I could never have anticipated how many people are rooting for us, and how much support they want to give," she said. "It is so mind-blowing to me how many people have been so supportive of us and just so excited."

Annie Dillard, "who as a young American writer walked into the woods and came out with a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on the wonders and horrors of creation, the modern classic Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," died September 15, the New York Times reported. She was 81. The book, published in 1974, was an immediate success and won the Pulitzer for general nonfiction in 1975. Dillard also published essays, meditations on religion, poems, a theory of literature, two novels, journalism, and the bestselling autobiography An American Childhood (1987).  

Annie Dillard

Dillard's first book was the poetry collection Tickets for a Prayer Wheel, published a few months before Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Later titles include Encounters with Chinese Writers (1984); The Writing Life (1989); For the Time Being (1999); and her second novel, The Maytrees (2007), which was the last book she wrote.

Many reviewers of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek mentioned it as a 20th-century analogue to Henry David Thoreau's Walden, which was not coincidental given that Dillard had chosen Thoreau as the subject of her master's thesis at Hollins University.

"Though her writing could convey the sense of a solitary life in the wilderness, she was mostly a day-tripper. After her forays into the Roanoke Valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains--which was, after all, her neighborhood--she would return home to the suburban house she shared with Richard Dillard, a creative writing instructor she had married at the end of her sophomore year at Hollins," the Times wrote, adding that "in spite of her patient, unflinching observations on flora and fauna, she wasn't a nature writer, but rather a theologian looking high and low for God."

In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Dillard wrote: "I walk out; I see something, some event that otherwise would have been utterly missed and lost; or something sees me, some enormous power brushes me with its clean wing, and I resound like a beaten bell."

She moved to Washington State, dividing her time between Bellingham and the islands Waldron and Lummi. Her marriage ended, and in the Pacific Northwest, she regained the concentration essential to her work.

"The Cascade Range, in these high latitudes, backs almost into the water," she wrote in Holy the Firm (1977). "There is only a narrow strip, an afterthought of foothills and farms sixty miles wide, between the snowy mountains and the sea.... If the Greeks had looked at Mt. Baker all day, their large and honest art would have broken, and they would have gone fishing, as these people do."

Dillard's years in Washington inspired some of the essays in her collection Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982). Her first novel, The Living (1992), a 19th-century pioneer saga centered on what became Whatcom County, was also inspired by her time there. 

In addition, she taught classes at Western Washington State College (now Western Washington University). Paul Lindholdt, a former student working on a biography of Dillard, recalled: "She was by turns disorganized and inspiring, prickly and brilliant. She required her students to foot-stomp aloud the meter of favorite poems, including 'God's Grandeur' by Gerard Manley Hopkins."

Dillard returned east in 1979, and from then until 2001 she taught at Wesleyan University. After her second divorce in 1988, she married Robert D. Richardson Jr., whom she had met after sending him a fan letter about his book Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind. He died in 2020. 

Dillard's papers are held at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. She was last photographed in public in 2014, when she received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama for her "profound reflections on human life and nature."

She spent recent years at her Cape Cod home, painting watercolors, the Times noted, adding that Dillard "had written with all her might, and had tried to light the same fire in others."

In Holy the Firm, she wrote about a day in her classroom: "How many of you, I asked the people in my class, which of you want to give your lives and be writers? I was trembling from coffee, or cigarettes, or the closeness of faces all around me.... All hands rose to the question. (You, Nick? Will you? You, Margaret? Randy? Why do I want them to mean it?).... And then I tried to tell them what the choice must mean: You can't be anything else. You must go at your life with a broadax."

Bookshop Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, Calif., celebrated the 25th anniversary of local author Jonathan Franzen's National Book Award-winning novel The Corrections. The festivities included a mix-and-mingle gathering, a special toast, short remarks, and Franzen signing copies of his books. Picador has just released a 25th-anniversary deluxe paperback edition with French flaps, interior cover art, and a new afterword by Adam Moss. Pictured: (l.-r.) Teyah Talamante, Fernanda Torres Calderón, Cyreine Adams, Joseph Langley, Casey Coonerty Protti, Jonathan Franzen, Stefanie Berntson, Chorel Centers. (photo: Shmuel Thaler)

Click here to see the latest Independent Press Top 40, the weekly bestseller list celebrating the bestselling 40 fiction and 40 nonfiction titles from independent publishers, as sold by independent bookstores across the country. The list is sponsored by the Independent Publishers Caucus and the American Booksellers Association.

This week's debut fiction titles:

35. Acid Green Velvet: A Novel by Grace Krilanovich (Two Dollar Radio)
37. The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo (Pushkin Vertigo)

This week's debut nonfiction titles:

8. I Deliver Parcels in Beijing by Hu AnYan (Astra House)
13. A Little History of Mathematics (Little Histories) by Snezana Lawrence (Yale University Press)
17. The Book of Genocides by Dana Mashoian Walrath (Harvard University Press)
22. All the Presidents' Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America's War on Terror by Peter Bergen (W. W. Norton)
23. Emo Revival: Community, Diy, and Rebirth in Post-Hardcore and Emo (2008-2018) by Andrew Sacher (Clash Books)
31. Songs My Mother Taught Me: Why the Artist Must Take Sides (Vanguard) by Saul Williams (Haymarket Books)
33. Kobuk the Destroyer: And Other Tales from the Wild, Unseen World of Test Engineering by Alex Davies (W. W. Norton)

Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, Calif., shared a photo of one of the store's displays, noting: "Vroman's Bookseller, Grant, put together our latest slat wall display titled Non-Human People! Here's more about the display:

'This display focuses on books that acknowledge and make room for personhood to animals. These are books that treat animals as conscious, sentient beings and allow them a subjective point of view. These books are great for anyone who has animals in their life or care about their wellbeing.' --Grant"

"Yep it's a real bookstore. Come on in." That was the sidewalk chalkboard message in front of Ink & Paper Bookstore in Cazenovia, N.Y.

John Hayes is joining Parson Weems Publisher Services as the primary liaison to Barnes & Noble as well as a rep, effective October 1. He was formerly director of business development at Red Wheel/Weiser. He began his career in the sales department at William Morrow, then at PGW--first as the mid-Atlantic rep and later as national accounts manager to B&N. He then held sales leadership roles at Tuttle Publishing and MotorBooks/Quarto before spending 14 years as v-p and director of sales & marketing at Inner Traditions.

Today:
Fresh Air: Kai Bird, co-author of American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump (Scribner, $32, 9781668031575).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Jodi Picoult, author of Hollow Bones: A Novel (Ballantine, $34, 9780593726259).

Today: Annie Meyers-Shyer, author of This Oak House: A Renovation Story with Interiors to Inspire Your Own Home (Chronicle Books, $45, 9781797239361).

Drew Barrymore Show: Benny Blanco, author of F*ck Failure (Simon & Schuster, $28, 9781668205242).

Here & Now: David Keohan, author of The Wind Beneath the Stone (Chelsea Green Publishing, $$28, 9781645024897).

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 this weekend from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, September 19
9:20 a.m. Nancy Beck Young, author of Lou Henry Hoover: Activist First Lady (University Press of Kansas, $29.99, 9780700622771). (Re-airs Saturday at 9:20 p.m.)

12 p.m. Scott Reich, author of One Day in September: Baseball, Brotherhood, and the Birth of the All-Star Game (Compass Rose Publishing, $32.50, 9798994195888). 

Sunday, September 20
8 a.m. Kim Phillips-Fein, author of Country of Lords: Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight against Equality in America (W.W. Norton, $33.25, 9781324074441), at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C.

9 a.m. Luke Burgis, author of The One and the Ninety-Nine: Forging Identity in the Age of Social Contagion (St. Martin's Press, $30, 9781250373038), at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C.

12:28 p.m. Jonathan Weber, author of City on the Edge: Technology, Politics, and the Fight for the Soul of San Francisco (Atria, $32, 9781668074916).

2:40 p.m. Julian Hattem, author of Shelter from the Storm: How Climate Change Is Creating a New Era of Migration (The New Press, $29.99, 9781620978474), at Schuler Books in Grand Rapids, Mich.

3:23 p.m. Thomas Levenson, author of A Pox on Fools: The True Believers, Grifters, and Cynics Who Convinced Us to Reject Vaccines (Random House, $28, 9798217155002), at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C.

5 p.m. Melvin Patrick Ely, author of A Terrible Intimacy: Interracial Life in the Slaveholding South (Holt, $31.99, 9781250381118).

The National Book Foundation is releasing longlists for the 2026 National Book Awards this week, including the Nonfiction and Poetry categories. Finalists will be announced on October 6, and winners named on November 18 at the 77th National Book Awards Ceremony. The longlisted in these categories titles are:

Nonfiction
Seasons of Fury: Four Families and the Rise of Islamophobia in America by Rozina Ali (Crown)
The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music by Colin Asher (W.W. Norton)
Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground by Zayd Ayers Dohrn (W.W. Norton)
Huna: A Memoir of Revolution, Prison, and Becoming by Abdelrahman ElGendy (Hogarth)
Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom by Camonghne Felix (One)
The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home by Wil Haygood (Knopf)
Mother Tongue by Sara Nović (Random House)
Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood by Joseph Osmundson (Bloomsbury Publishing)
The Evolution of Fire: Essays on Crisis and Becoming by Angela Pelster (Milkweed Editions)
A Dead White: An Argument Against White Paint by Wendy S. Walters (Scribner)

Poetry
Tree of Knowledge by Victoria Chang (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Hide by Carolina Ebeid (Graywolf Press)
Still House in the Desert: An eco-contemplation by Brenda Hillman (Wesleyan University Press)
The Bronze Arms by Richie Hofmann (Knopf)
Exhibit G: Poems, Essays, and Photographs of Gaza by Fady Joudah (Milkweed Editions)
We by Layli Long Soldier (Graywolf Press)
Promise/Threat by Jonah Mixon-Webster (Knopf)
JOAN by Jake Rose (University of Chicago Press)
Horses by Jake Skeets (Milkweed Editions)
Bramble by Susan Stewart (University of Chicago Press)

The winners of the 2026 New England Book Awards, sponsored by the New England Independent Booksellers Association, were announced and celebrated last night at the NEIBA Awards Banquet in Newton, Mass. The winners:

Fiction: The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout (Random House)
Nonfiction: Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden (The Dial Press)
Poetry: The Near and Distant World: Poems by Bianca Stone (Tin House)
Young Adult: A Prince Among Pirates by Katie Abdou (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
Middle Grade: The Forest Revealed: An Illustrated Year by Jada Fitch and Kateri Kosek (Storey Publishing)
Picture Book: Cat Nap by Brian Lies (Greenwillow Books)

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The winners of the 2026 Golden Poppy Book Awards, sponsored by the California Independent Booksellers Alliance, were announced Tuesday night at the first in-person Golden Poppy ceremony, held during CALIBA's Fall Fest in San Diego. The winners:

Fiction: Female Life on Planet Earth by Laleh Khadivi (Ecco)
Nonfiction: Racist by Design: Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration Control by Kelly Lytle Hernández (W.W. Norton)
Mystery: A Violent Masterpiece by Jordan Harper (Mulholland Books)
Poetry: Splashed Things by Leigh Lucas (BOA Editions)
Octavia E. Butler Award (Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror): Muñeca by Cynthia Gómez (G.P. Putnam's Sons)
Romance: You Jump First by Myah Ariel (Simon Pulse)
Martin Cruz Smith Award: Emerging Diverse Voices: Carrying by Samantha Josephs (G.P. Putnam's Sons)
Glenn Goldman: California Lifestyle & Cooking: La Copine: New California Cooking from an Oasis in the Desert by Claire Wadsworth, Nikki Hill & Ben Mims (Abrams Books)
Picture Book: Duel by Shawn Harris (Neal Porter Books)
Middle Grade: Brittle Magic by Kate O'Shaughnessy (Knopf Books for Young Readers)
Young Adult: Where No Shadow Stays by Sara Hashem (Holiday House)
Children's Nonfiction: Basket Ball: The Story of the All-American Game by Kadir Nelson (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Mirrors & Windows: Excellence in Children's Literature: Few Blue Skies by Carolina Ixta (Quill Tree Books)

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, September 22:

An Unexpected Life: A Memoir by Gloria Steinem (Random House, $30, 9780593978177) is the final memoir by the late feminist icon.

Swan Song: Diana, My Sister by Charles Spencer (Penguin Press, $35, 9798217379743) is a memoir by the brother of Princess Diana.

Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War by Catherine Grace Katz (Viking, $38, 9780593832189) chronicles the 1937 Hindenburg crash.

Hollywood, Ending by John Green (Dutton, $32, 9780525426073) follows two rising actors starring in an Andy Warhol biopic.

Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel by Lucy Foley (Morrow, $30, 9780063376694) is a new mystery with Agatha Christie's Miss Marple.

Mazywood by Tananarive Due (Saga Press, $32, 9781668075142) is a literary horror story about the grandson of a Black actress returning to her perilous estate.

The Munich Affair by James Patterson and David Ellis (Little, Brown, $32, 9780316404099) is a historical thriller centered on the 1931 killing of Hitler's niece.

Our Cut of Salt: A Novel by Deena Helm (Tor Nightfire, $27.99, 9781250434661) follows three generations of Palestinian women and their haunted ancestral home.

Beware the Sock Monkeys! by Jonathan Stutzman, illus. by Heather Fox (Balzer + Bray, $18.99, 9781250414380) is a picture book about what happens to the socks that go missing in the laundry.

Empire by Sabaa Tahir (Putnam, $22.99, 9780593616970) is the final book in the National Book Award-winning author's YA fantasy Heir duology.

Happy Snacking, Don't Die!: Foraging and Vegan Recipes with Black Forager by Alexis Nikole Nelson (Simon Element, $35, 9781668002544) is a guide to cooking with foraged food.

All Hours: Crazy Good Food for Whatever, Whenever by Kwame Onwuachi and Joshua David Stein (Knopf, $40, 9780593802588) provides recipes for any time of day.

Paperbacks:
Free Falling: A Sweetwater Peak Novel by Lyla Sage (Dial Press, $20, 9780593977798).

Fallen Rook by L.J. Shen (Bloom Books, $19.99, 9781464252082).

Well Versed by Jen DeLuca (Berkley, $20, 9780593641255).

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:

Hardcover
Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise by Katherine Rundell (Knopf Books for Young Readers, $17.99, 9798217230747). "A fun little book focused on the joys and wonders of children's books. Recommended for those who think they are too old to read kids' books and for readers who adore them." --Lauren Brown, The Story Shop, Monroe, Ga.

Books, Iced Coffee & a Side of Dragons: A Graphic Novel by Amanda Lovelace, illus. by Raquel Travé (Andrews McMeel, $24.99, 9798881600860). "This was the sweetest graphic novel ever. As a fat, sapphic bookseller myself, the ending made me tear up. Sweet, realistic but fantastical, and the cutest love stories spread as diversely as they are in real life." --Caitlyn Vanorder, Bookmarks, Winston-Salem, N.C.

Paperback
She's a Doll by Barbara Truelove (Bindery Books, $19.95, 9781967967186). "This is not your usual haunted doll story. Violent, devastating, and surprisingly serious as well as hilarious. When Lucy is killed unexpectedly, she possesses one of her grandmother's dolls and is determined to get revenge on her killer. Preferably by killing him." --Clara Gauthier, Courageous Books, Dexter, Mich.

Ages 4-8
The Wishing Well by Gideon Sterer and Emily Hughes (Union Square Kids, $19.99, 9781454963615). "Beautiful, thoughtful, bittersweet, and even cheeky. Read it once, then promptly reread right away. Wishes upon wishes." --Lindsey Leavitt, Folklore Bookshop, Midway, Utah

Ages 8-12
The Wild Season: The Remarkable True Story of a Rabbit Rescue by Dashka Slater (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, $18.99, 9780316596275). "I adore this book! This reads like fiction, and kids (and adults) will learn so much while not realizing they are learning. The author does a great job at bringing the information to a kid's level without making the reader feel like they are being talked down to. I will recommend this to so many readers of all ages!" --Jean Bartz, Books on Main, Friendship, Wis.

Ages 13+
Firstborn by M.J. Hastings (Stonefruit Studio, $19.99, 9781464244513). "This book has the same propulsive, addictive reading experience as the stories that defined my teen and young adult years. Firstborn puts an action-packed plot, the intrigue of a political thriller, and a swoon-worthy romance into one incredible adventure. I cannot wait to recommend this one to our older teen readers." --Courtney Ulrich Smith, Underbrush Books, Rogers, Ark.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

Chinese American Lucy Tan's compelling sophomore novel, Tiger's Mouth, deftly turns on themes of class, privilege, and family duty. It considers the unlikely friendship between two Jacks who have led highly disparate lives before they meet on the rooftop of healthcare tech giant K.O. Systems.

Jack Chen is a self-described "riceboy from Queens," the son of overworked caterer Chinese parents. His grandmother calls him a "shape-shifter," because of his "ability to blend in, become whatever kind of person people thought he ought to be." At home is younger brother Ivan, born with Down syndrome, battling congestive heart failure in a household unable to afford his medical needs. Deception, although not ill-intentioned, drives Chen's determination to fit in (and move up). He easily convinces his wealthy girlfriend, Caty, that he's a Columbia student, not a full-ride scholarship kid from City College. He even daringly talks his way into Columbia's recruitment fair, eventually landing a prized summer internship at K.O.

Jack Owens has never had to worry about money as the son of a self-made billionaire. He's "bright and capable, freshly graduated from MIT, but utterly at a loss for what to do with his math degree," his father, Keith, tells a colleague, hinting at his inability to understand why Jack sits poolside, "wishing to die by heatstroke." Owens's older sister, Sam, is the capable go-getter who indisputably should be their father's heir although she can't seem to hold Keith's attention. But perhaps staying below Keith's line of fire isn't a bad thing, especially when he gives his son an ultimatum: go work at the family company or move out "with nothing." Owens responds with resignation: "You always have to win, don't you?"

And so, 10 days later, Chen and Owens meet on the roof of K.O.'s New York City skyscraper. The latter intends to jump; the former prevents that. They discover they're officemates and quickly become inseparable best friends. Caty makes three. For a while, the trio comfortably converge in Owen's sprawling Central Park-facing Manhattan apartment and Chen's family's fifth-floor walkup in Flushing. But life--and various lies, omissions, betrayals--has that way of derailing best-laid plans.

Tan (What We Were Promised) writes lucidly, with fluid ease, guiding her characters through isolation, ambition, gratitude, righteousness. She reveals the self-absorption that eclipses all else, the desperation that separates, and the knowledge that reunites through her sweeping, cinematic storytelling. --Terry Hong

Shelf Talker: Lucy Tan's compelling sophomore novel expertly examines class, privilege, and family duty through the unlikely relationship between two Jacks from wholly different worlds.

I was never pals with Howard Mitcham.... I knew Howard through his book. This book. Which was presented to me by a friend pretty much the first day I began working as a cook. 

--Anthony Bourdain, in the introduction to the 2018 edition of Provincetown Seafood Cookbook

The new film Tony is about a formative time in the life of legendary chef, writer, and TV personality Anthony Bourdain. Set in Provincetown, Mass., during a summer in the mid-1970s, Tony is a fictionalized version of his initiation into the chaos, camaraderie, and multi-layered addictive qualities of professional cooking. 

The film is excellent. My response to it was also enhanced by some inside information, since I'd recently been in conversation with Dan Simon, founder & publisher of Seven Stories Press; and Tim Barry, the owner of Provincetown's Tim's Used Books who had recommended bringing Provincetown Seafood Cookbook back into print a few years ago. 

The 2018 edition features an introduction by Bourdain, perhaps one of the last things he wrote before his tragic death the same year. The cookbook also plays a key supporting role in Tony (including a spoiler alert on page 58). Can a cookbook win an Oscar?

"Seven Stories does many, many great books, but not so many fun ones," Simon noted. "Howard Mitcham's Provincetown Seafood Cookbook is fun--that rare title that captures the spirit of a place and its cuisine. Mitcham was a larger than life figure. A deaf person who was famous not only as a chef but also as a storyteller."

He added that the cookbook sold well from the start, but the film has sparked a dramatic increase, especially after director Matt Johnson shared in an interview that Barry had given him a copy, "then the director wove his story about the young Bourdain around our book, well that has really upped the ante. The book represents everything, a certain attitude towards living life with attitude, that Bourdain was looking for. In a way, he learned how to live from Mitcham. It's all in the film--which I liked a lot--and in turn it's all in Provincetown Seafood Cookbook." 

Simon also cited the positive aftereffects of a New York Times article by Pete Wells, who described the cookbook as "the Rosetta Stone" of Provincetown seafood cookery.

"Provincetown Seafood Cookbook has gone crazy," Simon noted. "We have trouble keeping it in stock. We have been reprinting, both digitally and by traditional offset printing, and have been selling many thousands, but even so the minute a new printing arrives it's out the door."

Tim Barry

How did the connection between Simon and Barry happen? The bookseller said that about 15 years ago, they had a conversation regarding "books that people have asked for over and over that we never had enough copies of.... Can't remember whose idea it was for me to isolate titles that were out-of-print and have Seven Stories Press republish them.... 

"I showed him the 1975 Provincetown Seafood Cookbook, explained its desirability, and he said 'Great, find somebody notable to write an introduction'.... I'd read Kitchen Confidential, knew Anthony Bourdain loved Mitcham's book. Did a bit of forensic Googling, realized I could maybe get through to Bourdain through my bookshop acquaintance Gabriella Doob, a young editor at Ecco Books. She hooked me up with Laurie Woolover, Bourdain's assistant, who forwarded my 'ask' letter to Bourdain, and in less than a week he replied, 'Sure, what's the deadline?" Gobsmacked, I nervously replied 'We're on a tight schedule, I'll need it in three weeks.' It was a lie; he could have said 'I'll need a year to do it,' and we'd have said 'Great!' Two days later Bourdain dropped his essay in my inbox."

Simon recalled that when he met with Barry over lunch, the bookseller "presented several titles, Mitcham's among them, and he just seemed to me to have the gift. I offered him an imprint [now Tim's Books] at Seven Stories on the spot. Before we got to having our coffee. I have never done that before or since. Provincetown Seafood Cookbook was the first title."

Barry added that the book "is more of a social history of mid-century Provincetown through the lens of Portuguese cooking, and also showcases Mitcham's charming visual art. He regarded himself as an artist, had several books of his artwork published."

In Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain writes that "Howard was a revered elder statesman of Cape Cod cookery, a respected chef of a very busy restaurant, and the author of two very highly regarded cookbooks: the Provincetown Seafood Cookbook and Creole, Gumbo and All That Jazz--two volumes I still refer to, and which were hugely influential for me and my budding culinary peers of the time."

Although Barry never met Bourdain, "it is documented that he visited Provincetown several times in the 2000s, shooting for his show, so I like to think he may have poked his head into my shop. I do think his nonfiction books are endlessly readable," he said.

The next Tim's Books project is a collection of Herbert Huncke writings, put together by one of his literary executors, Jerome Poynter. More Howard Mitcham titles are also being planned. 

"Tim is the legendary bookseller and he's the only person I've ever offered an imprint to," Simon noted. "Provincetown is a destination, a magical destination. Authors, actors, musicians, everyone goes there, in the same way that everyone goes to New York City or New Orleans. And everyone who goes to Provincetown crosses the little boardwalk from Commercial Street and visits Tim's Books. So Tim knows everybody and everybody knows Tim." Which is also why we still have Provincetown Seafood Cookbook.