Author Jason Reynolds will be the 2017 official spokesperson for Indies First, the American Booksellers Association announced. Indies First takes place on Small Business Saturday, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which this year falls on November 25. On that day, indie bookstores host authors, who handsell their favorite titles, sign books, give readings and act as honorary booksellers.

Jason Reynolds (photo by Ben Fractenberg)

"Bookstores aren't just for selling books, they're also community spaces and we need that," Reynolds said in a video to authors, readers and booksellers. "Make sure you show up, that we're there, that we're communing with one another, that we're buying books but also that we're talking to our neighbors, that we're giggin' on other people. Booksellers are heroes." Reynolds will spend Indies First day at East City Bookshop in Washington, D.C.

Reynolds is the author of the novels When I Was the Greatest, Boy in the Black Suit, and co-author of All American Boys. His As Brave As You was a Time Book of the Year (and one of Shelf Awareness's Best Books of 2016), and Ghost, the first book in his middle-grade Track series, was a National Book Award finalist. He is also a Kirkus Award winner, a Walter Dean Myers Award winner, an NAACP Image Award Winner and the recipient of multiple Coretta Scott King honors. He has two books coming this fall: Patina, the next installment of the Track series, and Long Way Down, a YA novel. His Miles Morales: Spider-Man, a YA novel, was recently published.

Indies First was created by Sherman Alexie in 2013. An Indies First social media sweepstakes for readers will be announced in the coming weeks.

Seattle Mystery Bookshop in Seattle, Wash., is for sale.

In a post called "We are not closing, we are just for sale," owner J.B. Dickey noted that the store's IndieGoGo campaign early last year--which raised more than $50,000--had allowed the store to "pay off overdue bills and to sock away enough to see us through this past winter. It bought us a year--but barely, and that has taken its toll. While we could do another such fund raiser, that's not a viable way to continue in business.

"What this shop needs is someone who will invest their time and money in it. Should you or someone you know seriously want to become a bookshop owner, please let us know. Founder Bill Farley used to joke that everything in the shop was for sale, even the paint on the walls. Now that is true."

While the store is for sale, it's limiting some transactions. Among them: it's no longer accepting used books for credit or collectable books for consignment; special orders must be paid for in advance; credit slips and gift certificates must be used by August 31.

Seattle Mystery Bookshop was founded 27 years ago by the late William D. Farley, who sold the store to Dickey in 1999.

Maureen Karb

Maureen Karb of Como Sales has won the 2017 Saul Gilman Award, honoring "outstanding service as a sales representative to New England independent bookstores" and sponsored by the New England Independent Booksellers Association.

NEIBA wrote that Karb "worked at a Waldenbooks in college, and quickly realized she loved bookstores, particularly when her manager broke the rules and let them run the store like it was their own. After college, she took the NYU Summer Publishing course, where Roxanne Coady [founder of R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn.] was one of the guest speakers. Maureen asked her advice on what she should do if she wanted to own a bookstore someday, and Roxanne's answer was to become a sales rep. It sounded like a great idea.

"Her first job was at Simon & Schuster, where she eventually became a field sales rep in the New York area. She then worked at Workman Publishing for a few years before taking a job at Barefoot Books in Cambridge to get back home to New England. That's when a position at Como Sales opened up, and she was thrilled to be working with bookstores again in her home turf! She's been with Como Sales now for five years, and was offered the chance in late 2014 to purchase the company and bring it back to its roots as an independent rep group. She loved adding a few new publishers to her bag, and mixing in a few gift lines too. It's always nice to keep things interesting, and she hopes to be selling in New England for many years to come! Maureen lives in Hopkinton, Mass., with her husband, Jose, and son Gabriel. When she's not reading, she's playing soccer or enjoying the outdoors with her family."

Judith Jones (photo: Christopher Hirsheimer)

Judith Jones, the legendary editor "who discovered Julia Child and advanced a generation of culinary writers that revolutionized cooking and tastes in American homes, and who for a half-century edited John Updike, Anne Tyler, John Hersey and other literary lions," died yesterday, the New York Times reported. She was 93. Authors and publishing colleagues called her "an extraordinary editor--imaginative, versatile, fascinated with stories, curious about people and places, a deft wordsmith and above all insatiable for the pleasures of French cooking. She talked about it, wrote about it and practiced its arts in her kitchens in Manhattan and rural Vermont."

Her keen sense of editorial timing was there from the start of her career. In 1950 as an editorial assistant at Doubleday in Paris, "she rescued the diary of Anne Frank from a pile of rejects and persuaded her superiors to publish it in the United States," the Times wrote, adding that Jones "was again in the right place at the right time a decade later when a shopworn 800-page manuscript by three unknown women with no literary credentials landed on her desk at the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house in New York. The book, too long and with the uninspired title French Recipes for American Cooks, had been rejected by several other publishers."

Ultimately, Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle opened a new career path for Jones, who had previously edited translations of the French philosophers Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. She began editing culinary writers: James Beard and Marion Cunningham on American fare, Madhur Jaffrey (Indian food), Claudia Roden (Middle Eastern), Edna Lewis (Southern), Lidia Bastianich and Marcella Hazan (Italian), and many others. Jones also commissioned and edited regional and ethnic food books for the Knopf Cooks American series.

Jones, who joined Knopf in New York in 1957, edited some of the country's best authors and also wrote for Vogue, Saveur and Gourmet magazines. Her books include The Pleasures of Cooking for One and The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food, as well as several cookbooks co-written with her late husband, Evan. She was honored with the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. 

"It is impossible to imagine book publishing without Judith," said Knopf chairman and editor-in-chief Sonny Mehta. "Her authors have been recipients of five Pulitzer Prizes, five National Book Awards, and three National Book Critics Circle Awards, and her cookbook authors have been recipients of 41 awards from the James Beard Foundation and 13 awards from the International Association of Culinary Professionals. And Judith herself was honored with lifetime achievement awards from both the James Beard Foundation and IACP. It is no exaggeration to say that she profoundly influenced not only the way America reads and but also the way we cook."

Sharing "with tremendous sadness" the news of her passing, Knopf noted that Jones worked at the publisher for more than 50 years, officially retiring in 2011, "but her legacy continues to this day."

To celebrate its 15th anniversary, Quirk Books is running Book Pop!, a promotion designed to bring a "comic-con experience" to bookstores, libraries and fans, wherever they happen to be. The promotion features three different categories of events: Book Pop! IRL, which brings Quirk Books authors to bookstores for traditional author events; Book Pop! Online, an online event running through August 11 that will include a digital cosplay contest, Quirk author livestreams and digital panel appearances; and Book Pop! Authorless Events, which will provide resources to booksellers and librarians so they can run events "on their own terms and timelines."

Quirk Books has published, among other books, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith, and My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix. Among the Quirk authors participating in Book Pop! are Ian Doescher, writer of the William Shakespeare's Star Wars series; Hope Nicholson, author of The Spectacular Sisterhood of Superwomen; and Tania Del Rio, author of the Warren the 13th series.

The promotion grew in part from Quirk's many appearances at comic conventions, where it learned that many of its fans are the bookish subset of comic-con attendees.

Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., held a Where's Waldo? Party on Monday, the culmination of a month-long scavenger hunt to find the beloved character hiding in 25 businesses around the city.

Congratulations Half Price Books, which celebrated its 45th anniversary last week at its flagship Dallas, Tex., bookstore. The company, which primarily sells used books, CDs, DVDs and more, has 122 stores in 17 states, and five years ago began selling new books because of customer demand, the Dallas Morning News noted. This month it's opening two more stores, in Tyler, Tex., and St. Charles, Mo.

Pennie Clark Ianniciello, Costco's book buyer, has chosen The Book That Matters Most: A Novel by Ann Hood (Norton, $15.95, 9780393354096) as her pick of the month for August. In Costco Connection, which goes to many of the warehouse club's members, she wrote:

"The stack of books that I want to read grows and shrinks with recommendations, a shift in my mood or simply picking up something that looks interesting. No matter how I make my selection, I continue to marvel at how the right book always finds me at the right time. That was definitely the case for this month's book buyer's pick, Ann Hood's The Book That Matters Most.

"When heartbroken Ava joins a book club, she has no idea how the written word, and the members of the book group, will alter her thoughts, behavior and life.

"As long as I'm a reader, I will love opening up a book and not knowing where it will take me, but having the faith that the destination is where I need to be."

Effective immediately, Casemate Group is distributing Karwansaray Publishers' print books worldwide, excluding the Netherlands and Belgium.

Karwansaray Publishers is a Dutch publisher specializing in nonfiction books with a historical focus that have new perspectives on the past. It also publishes magazines, which aren't part of the Casemate Group distribution agreement.

Mark Lee has joined the National Book Foundation as communications and marketing manager. He formerly was an associate publicist at Doubleday.

Nothing Rhymes with Orange by Adam Rex (Chronicle Books).

Today:
Tavis Smiley repeat: David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (Doubleday, $28.95, 9780385534246).

Tomorrow:
Tavis Smiley repeat: Eric Braeden, author of I'll Be Damned: How My Young and Restless Life Led Me to America's #1 Daytime Drama (Dey Street Books, $26.99, 9780062476111).

HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher: Joshua Green, author of Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency (Penguin Press, $27, 9780735225022).

Also on Real Time: Al Gore, author of An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (Rodale, $25.99, 9781635651089).

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, August 5
12 p.m. C-SPAN's Local Content Vehicles tour literary and historical sites in Tacoma, Wash. (Re-airs Sunday at 9:15 a.m.)

2:30 p.m. Steven Sloman, co-author of The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone (Riverhead, $28, 9780399184352), at MIT Press Bookstore in Cambridge, Mass. (Re-airs Sunday at 7 a.m.)

5:20 p.m. Lawrence Goldstone, author of Going Deep: John Philip Holland and the Invention of the Attack Submarine (Pegasus, $27.95, 9781681774299), at Kramerbooks and Afterwords in Washington, D.C. (Re-airs Monday at 6:45 a.m.)

7:45 p.m. Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America (Viking, $28, 9781101980965), at Regulator Bookshop in Durham, N.C.

8:45 p.m. Tom Basile, author of Tough Sell: Fighting the Media War in Iraq (Potomac, $32.95, 9781612349008). (Re-airs Sunday at 4 p.m.)

10 p.m. Jesse Eisinger, author of The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives (Simon & Schuster, $28, 9781501121364). (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m. and Monday at 3 a.m.)

11 p.m. Joshua Green, author of Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency (Penguin Press, $27, 9780735225022). (Re-airs Sunday at 3 p.m.)

Sunday, August 6
12 p.m. Live In-Depth q&a with attorney and author KrisAnne Hall. (Re-airs Monday at 12 a.m.)

5:30 p.m. Alexander Klimburg, author of The Darkening Web: The War for Cyberspace (Penguin Press, $30, 9781594206665).

7 p.m. Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, authors of Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future (Norton, $28.95, 9780393254297).

10 p.m. James Blake, co-author of Ways of Grace: Stories of Activism, Adversity, and How Sports Can Bring Us Together (Amistad, $26.99, 9780062354525).

Grace Talusan won the 2017 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, honoring "an outstanding debut literary work by a first-generation immigrant," for her memoir The Body Papers. The prize is given for fiction and nonfiction in alternating years. Talusan receives a $10,000 advance and publication by Restless Books in the fall of 2018.

The judges said Talusan "has written a remarkable memoir in The Body Papers, training an unflinching eye on the most delicate and fraught contours of her own life as an immigrant and survivor of trauma and illness. She tackles with literary subtlety and a deep reservoir of compassion the paradoxes imposed by being the 'perfect immigrant'--but also an 'illegal' one. She gives herself permission to detach from her religious, traditional, family-first Filipino culture in order to excavate a legacy of violence and abuse that, unmentionable at the time, dominated her childhood and shaped her adulthood. Throughout, she incisively navigates the ambiguities of identity that immigrants constantly face."

Talusan noted that she is "thrilled that my book about my particular immigrant and Filipino American experiences will soon exist on a bookstore or library shelf somewhere, ready for a reader to come upon it. I hope a variety of readers connect to my writing, which is about universal human experiences, and I would be especially proud if my book resonated with Filipino readers in the diaspora. Perhaps The Body Papers will encourage someone to break a silence and share a true story. It's my lifelong dream come true to publish a book, and I hope mine will soon have the good company of other underrepresented voices in literature as there are so many stories we have yet to read."

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday:

The Last Tudor by Philippa Gregory (Touchstone, $27.99, 9781476758763) continues the Plantagenet and Tudor historical fiction series.

The Good Daughter: A Novel by Karin Slaughter (Morrow, $27.99, 9780062430243) is a thriller about a defense attorney whose tragic past catches up with her.

The List by Patricia Forde (Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, $16.99, 9781492647966) features a young woman who uncovers a sinister plan in a fantasy world in which everyone must speak List, a language of only 500 words.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The Case of R.B.G. vs. Inequality by Jonah Winter and Stacy Innerst (Abrams, $18.95, 9781419725593) presents to young readers the life of the Supreme Court Justice as a court case against injustice.

Playing Hurt: My Journey from Despair to Hope by John Saunders and John U. Bacon (Da Capo, $27, 9780306824739) is the posthumously published memoir of a sports journalist.

You Can Do Anything: The Surprising Power of a "Useless" Liberal Arts Education by George Anders (Little, Brown, $27, 9780316548809) defends the economic viability of liberal arts degrees.

America 51: A Probe into the Realities That Are Hiding Inside "The Greatest Country in the World" by Corey Taylor (Da Capo, $26, 9780306825446) is a hard rock musician's look at the underbelly of American life.

Paperbacks:
The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer (Gallery, $16, 9781501139895).

You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages by Carina Chocano (Mariner, $16.95, 9780544648944) is a collection of essays from a pop culture critic.

A Promise of Ruin by Cuyler Overholt (Sourcebooks Landmark, $15.99, 9781492637394).

Movie:
The Glass Castle, based on the memoir by Jeannette Walls, opens August 11. Brie Larson, Naomi Watts and Woody Harrelson star in this story of a dysfunctional family with irresponsible adults and resilient children.

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

Hardcover
Goodbye, Vitamin: A Novel by Rachel Khong (Holt, $26, 9781250109163). "It seems impossible that Khong could tuck so much kindness, honesty, and eclectic humor into one little book! Questioning her life choices in the midst of a major breakup, Ruth, our narrator, returns home to care for her father, an Alzheimer's patient, and gives daily dispatches full of love, rich observations, and clever, unique jokes. Stuffed with rich descriptions of food and cooking and anchored by imperfect-but-tireless familial love, this book goes down as smoothly as a cool glass of water and is as nourishing and thoughtful as it is fun at every turn." --Annie Harvieux, Magers & Quinn Booksellers, Minneapolis, Minn.

South Pole Station: A Novel by Ashley Shelby (Picador, $26, 9781250112828). "Prepare yourself for a frozen and fun adventure in the Antarctic. Cooper Gosling apparently does not have enough cold weather or oddball people in her Minneapolis life, so she heads to the South Pole Station to try to reclaim her career as a painter. Ashley Shelby has collected a wonderful cast of quirky characters in this southernmost ice box and readers are in for a treat when they meet this bunch of scientists, artists, medics, and misfits. Bundle up and enjoy the ride!" --Pamela Klinger-Horn, Excelsior Bay Books, Excelsior, Minn.

Paperback
Smoke: A Novel by Dan Vyleta (Anchor, $16.95, 9781101910405). "Imagine a world where every dark thought you possessed was revealed by a wisp of smoke. And what if a portion of society could hide their darkness, while others were forever stained by their sins? Set in an alternative England, this tale reveals what really lies behind this sinful soot through the eyes of three teenagers who begin to question all they have been told. Smoke is a brilliant combination of fantasy and historical fiction, where layers of mystery and glimmers of truth will keep readers feverishly turning pages until the very end." --Luisa Smith, Book Passage, Corte Madera, Calif.

For Ages 4 to 8
This Book Will Not Be Fun by Cirocco Dunlap, illustrated by Olivier Tallec (Random House, $17.99, 9780399550614) "This is a hoot! Who can resist a glow-in-the-dark kung fu worm? And an impromptu dance party with impossible creatures? You, too, just might find yourself 'shaking [your] bottom,' as it were." --Tegan Tigani, Queen Anne Book Company, Seattle, Wash.

For Ages 9 to 12
Walking With Miss Millie by Tamara Bundy (Nancy Paulsen, $16.99, 9780399544569). "Staying with her grandma in Rainbow, Georgia, was not Alice's idea, and she is sure life is about to get a lot worse now that she's been coerced into walking cranky, old Miss Millie's mean dog. When the dog refuses to budge without his owner, Alice ends up on daily walks with Miss Millie and having conversations that change her life. Miss Millie can be crusty, but Alice learns that years of segregation have filled her heart with pain, compassion, bravery, and kindness. Alice has her own heartaches, and over time she confides in Miss Millie and a true friendship is born. I loved the witty banter between these two as they gradually open up to each other, and their remarks about the town residents they run into are priceless. Highly recommended." --Ellen Davis, Dragonwings Bookstore, Waupaca, Wis.

For Teen Readers
Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy (Balzer + Bray, $17.99, 9780062418357). "I loved everything about this book! Ramona is spectacular in her extraordinary ordinariness (and I mean that in the very best way). She is every girl, sure of herself until she isn't and struggling to find her way while remaining true to herself. Her supporting characters are the kids we encounter every day. They are gay, straight, black, white, struggling, privileged, confident, and questioning, but they are not 'issues.' They are just regular kids, and their stories are spectacular. This is the perfect addition to the We Need Diverse Books canon and exactly what bookstore shelves should be filled with!" --Laura Donohoe, Spellbound Children's Bookshop, Asheville, N.C.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

Joan Ashby always knew she would become a writer. In a notebook titled How to Do It, the 13-year-old listed the necessary steps for success. "Ignore Eleanor when she tells me I need friends," she wrote, referencing her mother. "Avoid crushes and love. Do not entertain any offer of marriage. Never ever have children. Never allow anyone to get in my way."

When Joan later meets Martin Manning, she finds a like-minded partner who "believes the same as I do--work is paramount, absolutely no children." Her two short story collections have received national acclaim and her first novel is near completion. However, two months after their wedding, Joan is stunned to discover she is pregnant. Dismayed at Martin's joy compared to her profound sense of loss and betrayal, "the underpinning on which she had agreed to marry him kicked out beneath her at the very start, forcing her to find ways to live an unwanted life."

Martin's success as a sought-after eye surgeon allows the couple to hire a Mary Poppins-like nanny, but finding the time required for writing amid the all-encompassing nature of motherhood proves (as any parent knows) elusive. Perhaps this is Cherise Wolas's nod to Virginia Woolf, acknowledging her famous words that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." After all, Joan has the former; it's the latter that she's missing.

Their son Daniel is a precocious child who shares Joan's love of words, enjoys listening to his mother's slightly macabre stories about unusual babies and is a prolific writer of his own childhood tales. Soon Joan is pregnant again with another prodigious son, a computer genius who will seize the economic dot-com boom by launching a lucrative software company at 13. Meanwhile, Joan is determined to recover her deferred dreams by secretly writing an epic novel that takes years to complete. However, the moment she is finally ready to release her work, after nearly three decades away from the literary world, another devastating betrayal threatens everything.

Who among us hasn't experienced profound disappointment, internal heartbreak and personal sacrifice, whether through parenthood or other circumstances? The Resurrection of Joan Ashby is Wolas's astonishing debut. She effectively uses an innovative structure, opening the novel with a piece ("(Re) Introducing Joan Ashby") in the fictitious Literature magazine, and following it with two of Ashby's short stories. This brilliant technique allows Wolas simultaneously to introduce her own literary talents through Ashby's. In doing so, she seemingly transforms the latter into an empathetic contemporary. The result is a hunger for more of Wolas's work. Here's hoping her new fans are spared the fate of Ashby's readers, with a wait that is fewer than 28 years. --Melissa Firman, writer and blogger at melissafirman.com

Shelf Talker: After a bestselling writer chooses motherhood over literary success, a bitter betrayal makes her question everyone she loves.

The bestselling Libro.fm audiobooks at independent bookstore locations during July:

Fiction:

1. Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz (HarperCollins)
2. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (Penguin Random House Audio)
3. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (Penguin Random House Audio)
4. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (HarperCollins)
5. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (Penguin Random House Audio)
6. Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero (Penguin Random House Audio)
7. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy (Penguin Random House Audio)
8. American Gods by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)
9. The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Nicole Galland and Neal Stephenson (HarperCollins)
10. The Underground Railroad (Oprah's Book Club) by Colson Whitehead (Penguin Random House Audio)

Nonfiction:

1. Theft by Finding by David Sedaris (Hachette Audio)
2. Al Franken, Giant of the Senate by Al Franken (Hachette Audio)
3. You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie (Hachette Audio)
4. Hunger by Roxane Gay (HarperCollins)
5. Option B by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant (Penguin Random House Audio)
6. Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (HarperCollins)
7. Bossypants by Tina Fey (HarperCollins)
8. Lab Girl by Hope Jahren (Penguin Random House Audio)
9. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann (Penguin Random House Audio)
10. Believe Me by Eddie Izzard (Penguin Random House Audio)