"Though we may not always agree, we always engage and provide a space for them to talk.... In time of political turmoil people often look to their local independent bookshop as a place of solace, just as they might a close friend.... We have observed customers connecting with each other after picking up the same political title. Good bookstores are the bastions of truth, offering books that can enlighten and inform, offering diverse and well-rounded perspectives."

Mary Grace Rodriguez has opened The Wind, The Willow Bookstore in Greenville, Tex., the Herald-Banner reported. The town has not had a bookstore since Hastings closed its stores in 2016. Rodriguez was inspired to open the store, she told the paper, by a passage in Neil Gaiman's American Gods: "A town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore, it knows it's not foolin' a soul."

The small store stocks a range of titles, from children's books to adult fiction, from poetry to self-help. Rodriguez plans to hold regular events, author visits, book readings and more. For now, she's lined up Lewis Ben Smith, author of The Gnostic Library, to appear in July and hopes soon to host Bobby Briscoe, author of Jungle Warriors. The first children's book reading is planned for later this month.

Rodriguez has a BA in philosophy and an MA in English, and has been "an avid reader and writer since I was a kid."

Barnes & Noble has chosen Clock Dance by Anne Tyler (Knopf) as its second, summer selection for the Barnes & Noble Book Club. The company will sell an exclusive edition of the book that includes an essay by the author and a Reading Group Guide for discussion. It is also hosting a book club night to discuss the book in B&N stores across the country on Wednesday, August 8, 7-8 p.m. Customers can order the book in advance and sign up for the book club in local stores or online.

B&N described Clock Dance as "the latest novel from the critically acclaimed author Anne Tyler, who is loved by readers for books including The Accidental Tourist, Breathing Lessons, and A Spool of Blue Thread. Clock Dance follows the arc of a woman's life from childhood to adulthood, and is filled with wonderful characters and surprising twists."

Senior director of merchandising Liz Harwell added: "Ms. Tyler is one of the most beloved and respected writers working today, and Clock Dance adds to her incredible repertoire with a story of second chances."

B&N launched the book club earlier this year with The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer.

A redesign of the iBooks app was among the developments announced during Apple's recent Worldwide Developers Conference. The Verge reported that iBooks is getting a new update in iOS 12, including a redesign and new name, Apple Books, which "will now feature a new 'Reading Now' section when you first open the app, showing you a live preview of the book you most recently were reading and where you left off. There's also an updated library view that puts a better emphasis on your content, and a new Apple Books store that appears to be inspired by the App Store redesign from iOS 11, with the same highlighted content for books and audiobooks that Apple's already been offering with apps." Apple Books is expected to launch alongside iOS 12 sometime this fall.

Barbara Kafka, a food columnist and cookbook author "who horrified American epicures by publishing recipes that placed her imprimatur on the microwave oven and the food processor as respectable tools for home cooking," died June 1, the New York Times reported. She was 84.

"How could you not love a woman who liberates us from the tyranny of conventional wisdom?" said Ann Bramson, her longtime editor. "I remember balking at a verb choice in one of her books--she had us 'slick' the vegetable with oil. I pictured the Exxon Valdez. But she was right. Slick--it's so vivid and visual and immediate. Who wouldn't love such precision and decisiveness in word choice?"

Kafka's books include The Microwave Gourmet (1987), The Opinionated Palate: Passions and Peeves on Eating and Food (1992), Food for Friends (1984), Roasting: A Simple Art (1995), Vegetable Love (2005) and The Intolerant Gourmet: Glorious Food Without Gluten & Lactose (2011).

Food journalist Corby Kummer said Kafka's writing displayed "the relentless intellectualism of the voracious reader that she became as the only child of two very successful parents ('two self-made men,' she called them) who weren't there much and left her in the care of a helper and cook she adored.... The food world was and is full of people who never really fit in anywhere until they discovered the kitchen, and could come together with the common vocabulary of cooking. She was one of them."

An eight-time James Beard Award winner, she was also inducted into the JBF Awards Cookbook Hall of Fame in 2015.

Mitchell Davis, executive v-p of the James Beard Foundation, said: "The food world has lost a strong, definitive, unequivocal voice about taste and quality with the loss of Barbara Kafka. Through her work in restaurants, her books and columns, her openness to new technologies, and her love of good food, she helped shape the way we eat and laid the groundwork for the great American food revolution of which we are the fortunate beneficiaries."

Booksellers Present Indies Introduce Authors, held during BookExpo on the Downtown Stage, showcased eight of the 18 indie booksellers on the committee that chose the Indies Introduce Summer/Fall 2018 titles, along with five of the authors on the list. They gathered together for brief readings and q&a sessions, as well as a discussion of the selection process.

The authors featured were Tommy Orange for There There, Gabriela Alemán for Poso Wells, Adib Khorram for Darius the Great Is Not Okay, Nicole Chung for All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir and Martin Riker for Samuel Johnson's Eternal Return.

(l. to r.): Brechner, Yasinsky, Cummins, Yeomans, Watson, Yturralde, Martini, Herrmann.

Booksellers in attendance included Adult Debut panel chair Michael Herrmann of Gibson's Bookstore in Concord, N.H.; Adlai Yeomans of White Whale Bookstore, Pittsburgh, Pa.; Elijah Watson of A Room of One's Own, Madison, Wis.; Vanessa Martini of City Lights Books, San Francisco; Maryelizabeth Yturralde of Mysterious Galaxy, San Diego, Calif.; Middle Grade/YA Debut panel chair Kenny Brechner of Devaney, Doak & Garrett Booksellers, Farmington, Maine; Buffy Cummins of Second Star to the Right, Denver, Colo.; and Nicole Yasinsky of Novel, Memphis, Tenn.

"It was so much fun to work with this great panel of booksellers from all around the country and all kinds of backgrounds," said Herrmann, adding: "I think of how we whittled down this list.... First and foremost, they had to be good stories, a good book, but a lot of the times the conversations settled on 'I'd really like to promote this kind of writing. I want this type of person to have a voice.' And I thought that was very valuable."

Brechner observed that there are many things he loves about the Indies Introduce process, including a recognition of the concept of discovery: "It's very much the absolute core and center of what we do here. And we think about it in unusual ways.... We're looking at books and we're making basic assumptions that they are not going to have a big push coming out into the world around us.... We think a lot about which books are the most worthy, but also those we can do the most for. And that's interesting."

Yturralde said she thought "everybody who participated was really good about recognizing their moments of 'I didn't like this because of this element' or 'I did like this because of this element,' but knowing that might be a completely subjective rather than objective take. At the end of the day, objectivity is a good goal, but recognizing that we all have our personal foibles I think actually made for more interesting discussion."

"I found it made me think about, as a reader, what do I value most," Brechner said. "The books that I gravitated to were a gut punch, books that affected me strongly, viscerally as a reader, that grabbed me by the throat and made me really feel and think. That was the value I put above all others when I was going through the process and advocating which ones go forward and which get left behind."

The final results intrigued Herrmann: "If we had started a month later or a month earlier, we might have ended up with a different list of books. Or if one person on the committee had been changed to somebody else.... That's the magic of books, really. There's so many great books out there. So many great books to discover. You really just can't go wrong putting together a list like this." --Robert Gray

Park City Television invited viewers to "take a peek inside one of Utah's oldest bookshops," noting that the King's English in Salt Lake City "has more than just great reads! They feature tons of fantastic events where you can meet and greet your favorite local and A list authors. Stop in and check it out!"

Porter Square booksellers at Reader Prom.

Last Saturday, Porter Square Books, Cambridge, Mass., hosted a Reader Prom and Book drive at the Davis Square VFW, with all proceeds going to the Porter Square Books Foundation. Guests were invited to "dress up in your finest prom fashion. Bring a copy of your favorite book as your date to donate to the Y2Y Homeless Shelter in Harvard Square. (It's the only prom where you're supposed to dump your date at the door!)."

Like any prom, this one had a "King" and "Queen," but Porter Square noted that "because this is a Reader Prom (and we're not that big on monarchy as a system of government or strict genders as a system of interpersonal relationships) we'll have an 'Author' and 'Illustrator.' Our Reader Prom Author and Illustrator will be randomly selected from all of the attendees and will each receive a $50 gift card. (A celebratory Author and Illustrator dance is not expected but we certainly won't stop you!)"

Chaperones for the prom were author Celeste Ng (who tweeted a selfie in her prom dress); educator, writer and performer Krysten Hill; and illustrator Raul the Third. Porter Square also tweeted photos from the event.

Leila Siddiqui has been promoted to assistant marketing manager at Dutton.

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Lizzie Lewandowski has joined Sourcebooks as events marketing specialist.

Three Days Missing by Kimberly Belle (Park Row Books).

Tomorrow:
Today Show: Fatima Farheen Mirza, author of A Place for Us: A Novel (Hogarth, $27, 9781524763558).

Steve Harvey: Jon Taffer, author of Don't Bullsh*t Yourself!: Crush the Excuses That Are Holding You Back (Portfolio, $26, 9780735217003).

Daily Show: Ian Bremmer, author of Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism (Portfolio, $27, 9780525533184).

FremantleMedia North American (American Gods), with Random House Studio, is partnering with fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson "to develop drama Dark One for television, part of a multi-pronged project," Deadline reported, adding that in addition to a TV series, Sanderson is "concurrently creating a graphic novel that will be published by Vault Comics" and "writing a supplementary, multi-volume book series that will expand on the storyline from the show and further explore subsidiary characters." The multi-media project includes a Dark One podcast.

"I'm used to painting a picture in words. Dark One came to life when I freed myself to think of it as a project for actual visual media, with the setting, characters and outline all coming together," said Sanderson. "I'm excited to be able to partner with FremantleMedia North America and Random House Studio on this for television."

"Brandon Sanderson is a powerful storyteller and one of the world's most admired fantasy writers," said Dante Di Loreto, president of scripted entertainment, FremantleMedia North America. "The narrative of Dark One will examine the dual roles we often take on in life--the ability to be a savior as well as a destroyer, and this innovative creative partnership with Brandon will serve as a catalyst for deepening the connection between him and his many fans."

Peter Gethers, executive v-p and general manager, Random House Studio, called Sanderson "one of the most exciting storytellers within the enormous group of authors published by the Penguin Random House Group. We are thrilled to be working with him to create one of his extraordinary worlds for a television audience for the first time."

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has won the PEN Pinter Prize 2018 for her "refusal to be deterred or detained by the categories of others," the Bookseller reported. The prize honors a writer from Britain, Ireland or the Commonwealth who, as Pinter said in his Nobel speech, casts an "unflinching, unswerving" gaze upon the world, and shows a "fierce intellectual determination ... to define the real truth of our lives and our societies." She will be presented the award in October.

Author Antonia Fraser, one of the judges and Pinter's widow, commented: "Not only is Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie a brilliant, compelling writer but she embodies in herself those qualities of courage and outspokenness which Harold much admired."

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Jennifer Craig won the C$15,000 (about US$11,550) Stephen Leacock Medal for Humor, which honors the best book of humor written by a Canadian, for Gone to Pot. The other finalists, who each received C$1,500, were Laurie Gelman for Class Mom and Scaachi Koul for One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter.

After the announcement, Koul tweeted: "I lost!! But the formidable Jennifer Craig won!!!!!!!!!!!! Never forget that men are not funny, but Jennifer is." This was the first time since the Leacock Medal was first presented in 1947 that the three shortlisted writers were all female, Quill & Quire noted.

Yesterday's trailer for The Wanted by Robert Crais was made for the U.K. edition, which has just gone on sale and is published by S&S U.K. The U.S. edition, which has a different cover, was published in December by Putnam.

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

1. Stay With Me by Kristen Proby
2. Part-Time Lover by Lauren Blakely
3. The Red Ledger: 1 by Meredith Wild
4. Mine After Dark by Marie Force
5. Mogul by Katy Evans
6. The Red Ledger: 2 by Meredith Wild
7. Talk Nerdy to Me (The Sterling Shore Series Book 12) by C.M. Owens
8. The Templar's Revenge (A James Acton Thriller Book 19) by J. Robert Kennedy
9. Speakeasy (True North Book 5) by Sarina Bowen
10. Cocktales: The Cocky Collective by Various

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]