Kinokuniya in Dubai

Kinokuniya Book Stores of America, which in the past year opened its first two stores in Texas, plans to open another, in Austin, according to CultureMap Austin.

The store will open in spring 2018 at 6929 Airport Blvd., several miles north of downtown. Real estate agent John Nguyen of NewQuest Properties, who has worked with Kinokuniya, said the company will "very likely open another store in Austin, possibly even two."

Kinokuniya's two Texas stores are in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. The Carrollton location opened in February; the Plano store in March. Kinokuniya has a dozen stores in the U.S., all of which offer both Japanese- and English-language books as well as many other products. Founded in Tokyo in 1927, the company has nearly 100 stores worldwide.

The Book Nook, a new and used independent bookstore in downtown Monroe, Mich., reopened this week after nearly a year of clean-up and renovations following a fire in an adjacent building, the Monroe News reported. The fire broke out last December 31 in a vacant retail building next to the Book Nook, and while the fire did not spread to the bookstore, it and some upstairs apartments suffered extensive smoke and water damage. Owner Janet Berns told the Monroe News that she "never in a million years" thought it would take so long to reopen, but customers and community members rallied around the store.

In the months since the fire, Berns has worked with "claims adjusters, contractors, insurance representatives and the City of Monroe building department" to put things back together. She's installed new carpeting, repainted the store, repaired drywall, replaced damaged bookshelves and made several other improvements to the nearly 100-year-old building, including making the store's bathroom handicapped accessible.

She also took the opportunity to redesign the store's layout. A former storage room has been turned into the store's fiction section and a secondary entrance, and now Berns stocks all books by subject matter, with new and used books mixed together. Another addition is a mural on the back of the building that includes Berns's father, who built many of the store's original bookshelves.

While renovations were underway, Berns began selling used books online. Though that has come to a halt with the store reopening, she does plan to continue at some point, probably after the holidays. Berns also told the Monroe News that while the store was closed, she "couldn't bear" to look at book catalogues, and now that the store is open, she has to catch up with new books. She added that her goal now is to make it until 2019, when the Book Nook will mark its 50th anniversary.

Barnes & Noble has unveiled the new Nook GlowLight 3, featuring enhanced front-light technology, which "allows users to read with a cool white light during the day, then manually or automatically switch to an 'Auto Night Mode.' " The e-reader can be ordered at BN.com and will be available at B&N stores beginning tomorrow, November 8, for $119.99.

Fred Argir, chief digital officer at B&N, said the Nook GlowLight 3 is "designed with the Barnes & Noble reader in mind. We listened to our customers and incorporated their most requested features, including night mode and page turn buttons."

American Girl, the company known for its line of historic dolls, books and accessories, has donated $1 million in books to the New York Public Library so that any child or teen with an NYPL card or who signs up for a card at their local branch will be eligible to bring home and keep one of the 100,000 books while supplies last.

The book giveaway is part of a multi-faceted donation from American Girl to the NYPL in celebration of American Girl Place, a new store opening in Rockefeller Plaza on November 11. In addition to the books, the company also donated one doll to every NYPL children's room and a set of books to each branch to be placed in circulation.

"The New York Public Library is thankful to partners like American Girl, who understand the importance of children developing a lifelong love of reading, curiosity, and learning from an early age," said NYPL President Tony Marx. "We expect this partnership to get kids excited to read, excited to get library cards, and excited to visit their local branches. We look forward to welcoming them, and to check out many more free books to them in the future."

Katy Dickson, president of American Girl, commented: "We're incredibly proud to partner with the New York Public Library to celebrate the grand opening of our new American Girl Place store at Rockefeller Plaza. For more than 30 years, literacy and storytelling have been at the heart of what we do at American Girl, so we're thrilled to provide a diverse selection of our popular character books to New York area children in support of the library's ongoing efforts to encourage reading and strengthen communities."

Nancy Friday, "whose books about gender politics helped redefine American women's sexuality and social identity in the late 20th century," died November 5, the New York Times reported. She was 84. The "shocking premise" of her first book, the 1973 bestseller My Secret Garden: Women's Sexual Fantasies, "was that women had erotic thoughts. Ms. Friday, however, who based the book on hundreds of interviews, said those thoughts were accompanied by considerable guilt and secrecy," the Times observed.

Friday went on to write Forbidden Flowers: More Women's Sexual Fantasies; My Mother/My Self: The Daughter's Search for Identity; Jealousy; The Power of Beauty; Lulu: A Novella; Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women's Sexual Fantasies; and Men in Love: Men's Sexual Fantasies: The Triumph of Love Over Rage.

Noting Friday "was not considered a friend of the women's movement," the Times wrote that she "talked about preferring the company of men to that of women and seemed to take pride in a Ms. magazine review of one of her books, which included the observation 'This woman is not a feminist.' "

Last week, PublicAffairs celebrated its 20th anniversary at the home of Casey Jennings in New York City. Pictured (l. to r.): publisher Clive Priddle; Susan Weinberg, group publisher at Perseus Books; founder Peter Osnos; associate publisher Jaime Leifer; and former sales director Matty Goldberg.

Bards Alley bookstore, which opened earlier this year in Vienna, Va., is offering free coffee and tea every Monday in November to participants in National Novel Writing Month. The bookstore's owner, Jennifer Morrow, noted that she wants to encourage writers in Vienna and the larger Northern Virginia community to participate and to feel supported. 

NaNoWriMo is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (formerly known as the Office of Letters and Light) whose mission is to "provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people find their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds--on and off the page." Bards Alley said that in that same spirit of providing community and support, it is a member of the organization's Come Write In program, which connects the store to thousands of participants in the Northern Virginia region.

Rita Maggio, owner of BookTowne, Manasquan, N.J., talks with Inc.com and the UPS Store about "winning at holiday sales." Also see a related Inc.com story about Rita and the store.

Faye Bi has joined Holiday House as publicity manager. She was most recently senior publicist at Simon & Schuster and earlier worked at Hachette.

Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance: A Novel by Ruth Emmie Lang (St. Martin's Press).

Today:
Fresh Air: Pete Souza, author of Obama: An Intimate Portrait (Little, Brown, $50, 9780316512589).

The List: Milan Ross, co-author of The Change Cookbook: Using the Power of Food to Transform Your Body, Your Health, and Your Life (Square One, $17.95, 9780757004384).

Pickler & Ben: Elizabeth Heiskell, author of What Can I Bring? (Oxmoor House/Time Inc. Books, $30, 9780848754389).

Tomorrow:
Morning Joe: Donna Brazile, author of Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House (Hachette Books, $28, 9780316478519). She will also appear on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports and Fox News's Tucker Carlson.

Late Night with Seth Meyers: Hillary Clinton, author of What Happened (Simon & Schuster, $30, 9781501175565).

An Italian TV adaptation of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, starring Rupert Everett and John Turturro, has found an international distributor. Deadline reported that Germany's Tele Munchen Group "has acquired international rights outside of Italy for the eight-part series, commissioned by Italian public broadcaster Rai." The bestselling novel was previously adapted as a 1986 film directed by Jean-Jacques, starring Christian Slater and Sean Connery and Annaud.

Turturro stars as William of Baskerville with Everett playing Gui. The series is written by Andrea Porporati, Nigel Williams and Giacomo Battiato, with Battiato directing. Principal photography starts this January in Rome and on location around Lazio and Abruzzo. It is expected to air in the first quarter of 2019.

TMG managing director Herbert L. Kloiber said: "Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose is a monumental masterpiece. We are thrilled to be part of this high-class, state-of-the-art adaptation, which will also resonate well with a young audience that loves the suspenseful story in a gloomy and thrilling medieval setting. Those who are already familiar with the book will see a new modern take and details to this multilayered story that can only be told in a series."

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The Cantillon Company has teamed with Brillstein Entertainment Partners to develop a drama series adaptation of I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad by Souad Mekhennet. Deadline reported that the project "will be a contemporary hourlong drama series, which follows Mekhennet as she pursues Jihadi leaders around the globe, putting her own life on the line to expose the complicated truths behind the War on Terror." Elizabeth Cantillon is producing with Brillstein's Jon Liebman and Missy Malkin. Laura Quicksilver will oversee for the Cantillon Company.

The winners of the 2017 Legacy Awards, sponsored by the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation, included:

Debut Fiction: Damnificados by JJ Amaworo Wilson (PM Press)
Fiction: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
Nonfiction: Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America by Kali Nicole Gross (Oxford University Press)
Poetry: Bestiary by Donika Kelly (Graywolf Press)

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The winners of the 2017 World Fantasy Awards, presented at the recent World Fantasy Convention in San Antonio, Tex., are:

Novel: The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North
Long fiction: The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson
Short fiction: "Das Steingeschöpf" by G.V. Anderson (Strange Horizons 12/12/16)
Anthology: Dreaming in the Dark, edited by Jack Denn
Collection: A Natural History of Hell by Jeffrey Ford
Artist: Jeffrey Alan Love
Special Award--Professional: Michael Levy and Farah Mendlesohn for Children's Fantasy Literature: An Introduction
Special Award--Non-Professional: Neile Graham, for fostering excellence in the genre through her role as Workshop Director, Clarion West
Lifetime achievement: Terry Brooks and Marina Warner

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Amy Goldstein has won the £30,000 (about $39,450) 2017 Financial Times and McKinsey & Company Business Book of the Year Award for Janesville: An American Story (Simon & Schuster), a book organizers described as exploring "the human consequences of the General Motors assembly plant closure in the American town of Janesville [Wisconsin]."

The runners up, each of whom received £10,000 ($13,150), were:

The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History by David Enrich (Custom House)

Adaptive Markets: Financial Evolution at the Speed of Thought by Andrew W. Lo (Princeton University Press)

The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone by Brian Merchant (Little, Brown)

Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change by Ellen Pao (Spiegel & Grau)

The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century by Walter Scheidel (Princeton University Press)

Quinn hasn't seen her sister, Nora, in months. When she shows up unexpectedly with a young girl named Lucy, Quinn is full of questions. They remain unanswered, however, when Nora hurriedly departs again, leaving the girl behind. Nora's last statements ring in Quinn's ears: "Promise me you'll keep her safe.... Don't let anyone know that she's staying with you, okay?"

Key Lake is a small, close-knit town where secrets are hard to keep, so it's not long before Quinn's mother, Liz, discovers Lucy hiding in the cottage Quinn and her artist husband are renting for the summer. Although somewhat distant and estranged from both her daughters, Liz becomes Quinn's reluctant ally as they race to discover the truth about the little girl with the stone-colored eyes and cornsilk hair who's landed in their lives.

In Little Broken Things, Nicole Baart (The Beautiful Daughters) shifts point of view among Nora, Liz and Quinn for a slow unveiling of the story behind Lucy and her mother, Tiffany, a high school friend of Nora. The tension continues to ramp up as more details about the four women and the various men in their lives are added to the twisting plot line that spans a four-day period. Baart shows how these women have been affected and changed in subtle and large ways by the men, who carry the burden of some stereotypes, yet are distinguishable as individuals with their own sets of problems. Text messages, references to Facebook and other current events help ground this timeless story in the here and now. 

Some details about the past are a bit extraneous, which creates a lengthier than necessary build-up to the ultimate reveal. And the satisfying ending is almost too quick and easy. However, Baart's true talent shines in her ability to re-create the strong bonds a woman feels for a child, particularly if there is even a hint of a mother-child relationship. All the women care for Lucy and go out of their respective ways to connect emotionally with the distant and wary little girl. And in doing so, they are forced to reexamine their own relationships with each other as siblings and mothers/daughters.

Sweet, scary and sometimes sordid, Little Broken Things is filled with determined women tenacious in their love for a girl whose childhood has been anything but easy. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer

Shelf Talker: When Quinn's sister, Nora, leaves a young girl with her, Quinn tries to keep her safe while unraveling the truth about the girl's origins.

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

1. Gansett Island Episode 2: Kevin & Chelsea by Marie Force
2. Falling Fast by Aurora Rose Reynolds
3. Marked by Fate by Various
4. Go to Hail (The Hail Raisers Book 2) by Lani Lynn Vale
5. Cuffed by K. Bromberg
6. Well Hung by Lauren Blakely
7. Hard Wood by Lauren Blakely
8. Ryder by Barbara Freethy
9. Killing Kryptonite by John Bevere
10. The Surprise by Alice Ward

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]