The Books & Books location in the Cayman Islands has rebranded as Next Chapter, Loop reported. The new name is, the store said, "inspired by our bookstore DNA" and acknowledges the shop as a "first-stop for meaningful gifts," including, besides books, toys, games, puzzles, bookends, and more.

Opened in late 2007, the store has been a joint venture between Books & Books and development owner Camana Bay, with Books & Books emphasizing marketing and management. The store is now standing on its own, Books & Books owner Mitchell Kaplan said. "It's great to have worked with them, and it's great to see them take this next step."

While the store's name and logo have changed, its operations will remain largely unchanged. It will still sell books, toys, gifts and games and will stick to its "lowest price guarantee," store manager Patrick Swanick said, whereby the store will refund the price difference if an item can be found cheaper on Grand Cayman. All Books & Books gift cards are still valid and will not expire.

"We love that we are part of our customers' stories during every chapter of their lives," senior operations manager Simon Watson told Loop, "be it preparing for pregnancy and the birth of a new baby, or a housewarming gift for someone's new home. Every celebration is a new chapter in some way and Next Chapter can help mark this special occasion with meaningful gifts."

Green Apple's main store.

San Francisco's Green Apple Books is closing its fiction and music annex at 520 Clement Street and combining all its offerings in its longtime main storefront at 506 Clement Street. The move should be completed by September 1. Green Apple Books's other branches, Green Apple Books on the Park and Browser Books, are unaffected.

Pete Mulvihill, who owns Green Apple Books with Kevin Ryan, said in a statement that Green Apple opened the annex in 1996 "in a climate of ascendant 'superstores' like Barnes & Noble and Borders. This was before Amazon was a big player, and we were trying to increase our book inventory and add other products (like laser discs and CD-ROM games!). We are now 'right-sizing.' The depth and breadth of the book selection aren't shrinking appreciably, but we are curating to the current demand."

After the consolidation, Green Apple will be "an even more book-centric bookstore and less of an emporium," Mulvihill added. "We will still offer a small selection of magazines, LPs, gifts, and even used DVDs, but the focus will be on books."

Mulvihill emphasized that Green Apple is "not in financial distress. The Covid-19 pandemic and resultant challenges play only a small part in this decision. We have been strongly supported throughout the pandemic by booklovers, customers, the San Francisco and U.S. governments, donors, friends, authors, artists, publishers, Binc, the ABA, CALIBA, and our colleagues."

Mulvihill concluded: "Shrinking Green Apple is not a defeat; it's just another step in the continuing evolution of Green Apple to the ever-changing bookselling landscape. We think the right-sized Green Apple Books will continue to be a destination-worthy bookstore, and we look forward to our 100th Anniversary party on Saturday Oct 1, 2067. Save the date."

Booksellers at Moe's Books in Berkeley, Calif., have voted to form a union affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World and have been recognized by store owner Doris Moskowitz, the union announced. The workers' major concerns involve job security and more control over Covid-19 safety protocols.

The workers have asserted that since the start of the pandemic last year, employees and bookstore customers have been put in danger due to lax safety protocols. They also allege that staff members who advocated for stricter safety measures were ignored and sometimes retaliated against.

The unionizing booksellers wrote: "The most immediate goal of the Moe's Books union will be to get fair and equal input on the formation and enforcement of safety protocols, without fear of dismissal or retaliation." For the long term, they added, "The reputation of Moe's Books as a bastion of radical bookselling since 1959 has always been tied to the devotion and love of its workers, and [we] are unionizing with the view of keeping Moe's a place where workers are respected and treated well."

Moe's sells predominantly used and rare books along with a selection of new titles.

Pennie Clark Ianniciello

Pennie Clark Ianniciello, longtime book buyer at Costco, is leaving Costco Media, effective tomorrow, March 12. She has been at Costco for 32 years and in the book industry for 42 years. "What a ride!" she wrote.

She added that after a two-week vacation she will announce future plans.

Owspace Bookstore in Aegean Mall, Beijing.

By December 31, 2020, there were 1,994 bookstores in operation in Beijing, according to figures released this week during a conference focusing on the development schemes of bookstores in China's capital city, Global Times reported

The conference, held by the publicity department of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, concluded with a speech by deputy director Wang Yefei, who said that launching diverse cultural and creative projects was one method used to rejuvenate Beijing's bookstores in 2020, a trend that is expected to continue in 2021 "with the goal of transforming some of the isolated bookstores into cultural centers that can inspire people's interest in reading and communication."

According to a survey of more than 100,0000 residents of Beijing, the Xicheng, Chaoyang, Haidian, Dongcheng and Shijingshan districts are the five areas with the most active readers, with Xicheng taking the lead, Global Times noted, adding that the average spending for an adult resident in the capital on print books in 2020 was Y236 (about $36.50).

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The Dutch book trade is currently celebrating Het Voorwoord, a week-long special campaign launched as a preface to the annual Boekenweek, which has been postponed until summer due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The European & International Booksellers Federation's Newsflash reported that from March 6-14, various "Het Voorwoord events will celebrate books and reading, while providing readers with books inspiration ahead of the Boekenweek."

Het Voorwoord "aims to support the book trade that is suffering from the pandemic mitigation measures," EIBF Newsflash added. "Through the successful #steunjeboekhandel campaign, the event will also launch unique collector bags for customers to buy in bookshops. Through their purchase, customers can support their local bookstores, as the proceeds from the bags sold benefit the bookshop directly."

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The Danish Booksellers Association has launched a buy local campaign under the slogan "my local bookshop/my Danish bookshop," aiming to "remind customers to shop locally and in-person, where possible. Danish bookshops re-opened earlier in March," EIBF Newsflash reported.

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The African Publishing Innovation Fund, a grant program co-led by Dubai Cares and implemented by the International Publishers Association, has chosen five projects across Africa to receive $170,000 in funding in 2021. The APIF Committee, chaired by IPA president Bodour Al Qasimi, selected the winners from among 311 applications received from 26 African countries. This is the second iteration of the grants program, which is funded by a four-year, $800,000 commitment from Dubai Cares. The initiatives are receiving grants that will collectively affect 11 million young Africans in five countries.

The IPA noted that "due to the closure of schools and transition to online learning in response to Covid-19, the APIF prioritized scalable digital learning innovations to help the millions of African students in under-resourced rural communities. Many of them are beyond the reach of national efforts to transition to remote learning and do not have access to libraries."

Bodour Al Qasimi said: "The Covid-19 pandemic has set back the education of millions of learners around the world, but its effects are acutest where the infrastructure cannot support the connectivity required for distance learning. Having received far more applications than we could have imagined, we are all very excited to have found five projects that we believe will deliver significant benefits for a great number of children and young people."

Irene Marcuse Silver, mystery novelist, died on March 8 after a long fight with cancer.

Her books were mostly set on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, exploring "life among the city's disenfranchised without cloying sentimentalism or platitudes. At the same time, Marcuse has created a sleuth who is psychologically complex rather than a predictable instrument of discovery."

Her Anita Servi series included The Death of an Amiable Child (2000), Guilty Mind (2001), Consider the Alternative (2002) and Under the Manhattan Bridge (2004). She was a finalist for the Agatha Award in 2000.

She was the granddaughter of philosopher and political theorist Herbert Marcuse, author of Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man.

"Who’s ready for March madness at the bookstore?" the Magic of Books Bookstore, Seymour, Ind., posted on Facebook, along with photos of its sidewalk chalkboard, one side of which reads: "If by 'spring cleaning' you mean 'spring reading,' then yea, I'm in."

Paul Samuelson will join Scribner as a deputy director of publicity on March 22. He was most recently director of publicity for Twelve Books, where he began as publicity manager. Earlier he was a senior publicist at Random House Children's.

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Emily Fisher has joined William Morrow as senior publicist. She was previously publicist at Bloomsbury.

Ingram's Two Rivers Distribution has added four new client publishers, effective spring 2021:

Platform Books, a new publishing venture founded by Peter Osnos and his wife, Susan Sherer Osnos. Peter Osnos was a Washington Post correspondent and editor, then an editor and publisher at Random House and Perseus before founding PublicAffairs. Platform's first book will be An Especially Good View: Watching History Happen by Osnos, which will cover half century of journalism and publishing, as well as offer personal experiences, to be published in June.

LifeLines, a mental wellness company whose mission is to guide people's journey inward to self-discovery and meaning, offering tools, experiences, content, and above all community. Its recently published book, LIFELINES, is based on the story of Melissa Bernstein, co-founder and chief creative officer of toy company Melissa & Doug.

G Editions, a new independent publisher of illustrated books, principally in the areas of art and photography, with a focus on fine art and photography monographs along with author-centric titles in the gift categories. Headed by CEO Marta Hallett, the company intends to publish approximately 12 titles per year, with the first titles to launch in spring 2021. 

Girl Friday Books, the new publishing arm of West Coast book producer Girl Friday Productions, "offering the best of independent voices." Two Rivers will also distribute Girl Friday's other imprints, Bird Upstairs, focused on children's books, and Flashpoint, focusing on "cultural icons, individuals with influence, and beloved brands."

Immigration Matters: Movements, Visions, and Strategies for a Progressive Future edited by Ruth Milkman, Deepak Bhargava, and Penny Lewis (The New Press).

Tomorrow:
Kelly Clarkson Show repeat: Priyanka Chopra Jonas, author of Unfinished: A Memoir (Ballantine, $28, 9781984819215).

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, March 13
12:35 p.m. Marc Lamont Hill and Mitchell Plitnick, authors of Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics (The New Press, $25.99, 9781620975923), at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C.

1:40 p.m. Grace Olmstead, author of Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of the Places We've Left Behind (Sentinel, $27, 9780593084021).

2:40 p.m. Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire, authors of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School (The New Press, $26.99, 9781620974940).

3:45 p.m. Eyck Freymann, author of One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World (Harvard University Asia Center, $60, 9780674247956). (Re-airs Sunday at 6 p.m.)

5:45 p.m. Katy Faust, co-author of Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children's Rights Movement (Post Hill Press, $27, 9781642935967). (Re-airs Sunday at 1 p.m.)

6:50 p.m. Audrey Kurth Cronin, author of Power to the People: How Open Technological Innovation Is Arming Tomorrow's Terrorists (Oxford University Press, $29.95, 9780190882143).

8 p.m. Tori Telfer, author of Confident Women: Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion (Harper Perennial, $16.99, 9780062956033), at Left Bank Books in St. Louis, Mo. (Re-airs Saturday at 11 p.m.)

9 p.m. Jonathan Cohn, author of The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage (St. Martin's Press, $29.99, 9781250270931), at Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass. (Re-airs Sunday at 12 a.m.)

10 p.m. Charles R. Kesler, author of Crisis of the Two Constitutions: The Rise, Decline, and Recovery of American Greatness (Encounter, $34.99, 9781641771023). (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m. and Monday at 3 a.m.)

Sunday, March 14
1:35 p.m. Harriet A. Washington, author of Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent (Columbia Global Reports, $15.99, 9781734420722).

4:15 p.m. Ira Rosen, author of Ticking Clock: Behind the Scenes at 60 Minutes (St. Martin's Press, $29.99, 9781250756428).

5:30 p.m. James Carl Nelson, author of The York Patrol: The Real Story of Alvin York and the Unsung Heroes Who Made Him World War I's Most Famous Soldier (Morrow, $28.99, 9780062975881), at Lemuria Books in Jackson, Miss.

7 p.m. David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson, author and illustrator of The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History (Ten Speed Press, $19.99, 9781984857705).

8 p.m. Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox, authors of Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty (BenBella, $26.95, 9781950665464), at Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, Mass.

10:05 p.m. Walter Isaacson, author of The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race (Simon & Schuster, $35, 9781982115852). (Re-airs Monday at 1:05 a.m.)

11:05 p.m. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, author of The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice (Penguin Press, $27, 9780525560685).

The four finalists for the 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Prize, honoring "a distinguished mid-career author of fiction" and sponsored by the Simpson Literary Project, are:

Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections (Riverhead)
Jenny Offill, author of Weather (Knopf)
Darin Strauss, author of The Queen of Tuesday (Random House)
Lysley Tenorio, author of The Son of Good Fortune (Ecco)

The authors will appear with Joyce Carol Oates in a live "Meet the Finalists" event on Tuesday, March 30, 5 p.m. Pacific/8 p.m. Eastern. The authors will share stories on the theme "The Day I Realized" and then engage in a discussion on a range of topics with prize chair Joe Di Prisco and Joyce Carol Oates. This program is a co-production with the Simpson Literary Project and House of SpeakEasy. Register here.

The winner will be named in late April.

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Winners were announced in two categories for this year's Blue Peter Book Awards, chosen by schoolchildren across the U.K. to " honor amazing authors, imaginative illustrators and the best books for children." This year's winning titles are:

Best story: A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll
Best book with facts: A Day in the Life of a Poo, a Gnu and You by Mike Barfield, illustrated by Jess Bradley

Blue Peter editor Ellen Evans said the awards "give kids the opportunity to vote for their favorite books and it's fantastic to hear them talk about reading for fun. The two winners are brilliant books. I hope Elle McNicoll's A Kind of Spark will inspire kids to find their own voice, like Addie, and to stand up for what they believe in. Mike Barfield and Jess Bradley's A Day in the Life of a Poo, a Gnu and You is so visual and fun that young readers will love discovering all kind of facts about the world they live in, from the secret diary of a slug, to how your heart beats, or why volcanoes explode."

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, March 16:

Win by Harlan Coben (Grand Central, $29, 9781538748213) is a thriller about a rich vigilante and an old kidnapping case.

Meant to Be: A Novel by Jude Deveraux (MIRA, $27.99, 9780778331445) follows sisters in rural Kansas in the 1970s.

The House Uptown: A Novel by Melissa Ginsburg (Flatiron, $26.99, 9781250784186) is a coming-of-age story about a teenager sent to live with her grandmother in New Orleans.

Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure by Menachem Kaiser (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27, 9781328508034) traces the intertwined stories of a Holocaust survivor and hunters of Nazi treasure.

It's in the Action: Memories of a Nonviolent Warrior by C.T. Vivian and Steve Fiffer (NewSouth Books, $24.95, 9781588384416) is the posthumous memoir of a civil rights activist.

How Rights Went Wrong: Why Our Obsession with Rights Is Tearing America Apart by Jamal Greene (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $28, 9781328518118) is a constitutional scholar's exploration of conflicting individual rights under the judicial system.

This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism by Don Lemon (Little, Brown, $28, 9780316257572) gives a CNN host's views of racism in America.

Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight by Julia Sweig (Random House, $32, 9780812995909) is a biography about the former First Lady.

Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic by Glenn Frankel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $30, 9780374209018) tells the story behind the making of the 1969 Oscar-winning film.

Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley (Holt, $18.99, 9781250766564) is a YA thriller about an Indigenous teen working to get to the bottom of corruption and crime in her community.

Dear Teacher by Paris Rosenthal, illustrated by Holly Hatam (HarperCollins, $18.99, 9780063012745) is the fourth book in the Dear Girl picture book series.

Paperbacks:
The Twilight Zone: A Novel by Nona Fernández, translated by Natasha Wimmer (Graywolf, $15.99, 9781644450475).

Central Park by Guillaume Musso, translated by Sam Taylor (Back Bay, $9.99, 9780316590969).

Lolita in the Afterlife: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century by Jenny Minton Quigley (Vintage, $16.95, 9781984898838).

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

Hardcover
The Removed: A Novel by Brandon Hobson (Ecco, $26.99, 9780062997548). "In telling the story of a Native family in Oklahoma who lost a teenage son to a shooting, The Removed examines the power of inherited trauma and the strength of family to keep people together. The book is told in the voices of the various family members left after the death of their son/brother and explores the effects on their lives of their Cherokee ancestors who walked the Trail of Tears. Mixing several points of view along with Native myth, Hobson brings a powerful story to light where the reader really steps into the shoes of each character. The loss, sadness, and despair are palpable, but so are hope and healing, by the end. A truly beautiful book about something everyone should read more about." --Izzy Stringham, Bookbinders Basalt, Basalt, Colo.

Fake Accounts: A Novel by Lauren Oyler (Catapult, $26, 9781948226929). "This novel about our technological age is subversive from the very start. Its dense, wordy paragraphs seem the opposite of the endless bite-sized chunks of information we consume online. Yet within its density, it also mimics the internet experience through the stream-of-consciousness voice of its not-always-reliable narrator. It's a fun story with lots to say about the incessant self-branding and impossible unreliability of our lives spent increasingly online." --Edward Newton, The Literate Lizard, Sedona, Ariz.

Paperback
The Girl From the Channel Islands: A Novel by Jenny Lecoat (Graydon House, $17.99, 9781525806414). "A beautiful love story unfolds between a German officer and a Jewish woman amidst the horror and atrocities of World War II. Set in Jersey in the Channel Islands, this historical novel, with its many twists and turns, will keep you on edge. Secrets and lies become the norm for survival along with crafty plans to evade discovery. The bravery of the characters keeps the reader focused on the triumph of the human spirit against all odds. Lecoat has turned a personal connection and a family history into an engaging, touching novel!" --Diane McGuire, Valley Bookseller, Stillwater, Minn.

For Ages 4 to 8
My First Day by Phung Nguyen Quang and Huynh Kim Lien (Make Me a World, $17.99, 9780593306260). "I want to climb inside these illustrations and explore them forever. The bold colors and flowing lines bring every page alive and capture readers immediately as we follow a young student on their first day of school along the Mekong River Delta." --Stephanie Heinz, PRINT: A Bookstore, Portland, Me.

For Ages 9 to 12
Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids by Cynthia L. Smith (Heartdrum, $16.99, 9780062869944). "Reading Ancestor Approved is like being wrapped in a family hug. While telling stories of the many wonderful Native Nations, it demonstrates the important role family plays. Through each story runs the beauty, resilience, and kindness of Native culture. Each author shares a story that honors their background and gives a glimpse into the wonderful world of the powwow. This book is a fabulous way to introduce children to our Native Nations and the wonders of the powwow. A must-read for 2021." --Sally Sue Lavigne, The Storybook Shoppe, Bluffton, S.C.

For Teen Readers
Amelia Unabridged by Ashley Schumacher (Wednesday Books, $18.99, 9781250253026). "Amelia Unabridged is a love letter to bookstores, books, and the people who cherish them. Amelia is a book for the book lover, and I loved every single second I spent within its pages. It explores grief and loss while also reminding us that words and the stories they create are among life's greatest gifts." --Isabella Ogbolumani, Buffalo Street Books, Ithaca, N.Y.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

Will the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences please create an honorary Emmy Award for Jennifer Keishin Armstrong already? With Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted, Seinfeldia and Sex and the City and Us, she delivered benchmark histories of three of the most beloved sitcoms that TV has ever produced. With When Women Invented Television: The Untold Story of the Female Powerhouses Who Pioneered the Way We Watch Today, Armstrong offers a group biography of four TV iconoclasts that doubles as a captivating record of behind-the-scenes goings-on during the medium's infancy.

All of Armstrong's subjects were there in 1949 or 1950, when televisions were becoming fixtures in living rooms across the U.S. Gertrude Berg (1898-1966) was the face of and brains behind one of the first sitcoms: The Goldbergs, which centered on a Jewish family living in a Bronx tenement. Irna Phillips (1901-1973) created TV's first daytime soap opera, These Are My Children. (Phillips was also responsible for introducing the melodramatic organ blast forever associated with the soapiest of soaps.) With The Hazel Scott Show, renowned jazz pianist Scott (1920-1981) became the first Black person to host a prime-time network TV show. And decades before she was a Golden Girl, Betty White (b. 1922) was the cohost and breakout star of daytime TV's Hollywood on Television. Soon afterward came the sitcom Life with Elizabeth, which White created, produced and starred in, putting her in the company of a small group of women that included Berg and Lucille Ball.

Armstrong notes that "from the late 1940s on, women's trajectory in television would be one of revolution followed by retrenchment, several times over," but some of her subjects had rougher rides than others. In the early 1950s, the Red Scare tore apart Berg's and Scott's lives, undermining their health and torpedoing Scott's TV career. McCarthyism spared Phillips and White, but the postwar idealization of the patriarchal family invited scrutiny of their personal lives: Phillips endured the judgment of those who considered an unmarried career woman with two adopted children suspect, and the happily single and child-free White was constantly pestered about her matrimonial prospects.

The pioneering-women-rescued-from-obscurity literary subgenre is beautifully served by the authoritative and absorbing When Women Invented Television. Like all of Armstrong's books, it goes down like good TV: although it can be consumed without too much effort, its insights are likely to live on in the reader's memory in something not unlike syndication. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Shelf Talker: In this sterling group biography, television historian Armstrong profiles four maverick women who lit up the small screen during the medium's earliest days.