"We believe a diverse selection of books is crucial to a bookstore's role. Our store has a solid commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion that we demonstrate in various ways by ensuring representation in our inventory and equity in our business practices. At the same time, we may carry some titles that offend some people or seem to some people to be counter to that commitment. We believe a diverse selection of books is crucial to a bookstore's role of sharing ideas to bring people together, helping individuals see themselves in the stories of others, enhancing empathy and understanding of differences, and providing diverse viewpoints to broaden our perspectives. We believe our role is to make books available, and we trust that you will make your own decisions about which of these books you choose to read."

Private equity firm Veritas Capital is buying educational publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for $2.8 billion in cash, HMH announced yesterday.

The sale comes a little less than a year after Houghton Mifflin Harcourt sold its trade division to HarperCollins for $349 million. Per the Boston Globe, HMH's shares have nearly tripled in the past year, giving it a market value of close to $2.3 billion. Recently the publisher, which dates back to 1832, has pivoted from textbooks to educational services that include online components.

HMH and Veritas expect the sale to be completed in the second quarter of the 2022 fiscal year, subject to regulatory approval. Jack Lynch, president and CEO of HMH, will continue to lead the company, and the current management team will also stay on board.

"Partnering with Veritas will provide HMH with the opportunity to accelerate our momentum and increase our impact on the four million teachers and 50 million students that we support each day," Lynch said, adding that HMH is at an "inflection point" in its long-term growth. "As the promise of digital learning increasingly takes hold across the nation, we are confident this transaction will deepen our ability to bring the power of learning to even more teachers and their students, invest in our purpose-driven team, and have a positive impact on the communities we serve.”

The acquisition continues the trend of private equity firms buying not only education companies but also publishers.

Heart & Soul Books, an independent bookstore that began as an online store and pop-up shop, has opened a bricks-and-mortar location in Linglestown, Pa. Owner Ashley Bailey told Fox43 that the bookstore currently has about 1,000 new and used books in stock, with more being added day by day.

Bailey sells books for all ages and across all genres, with a focus on diversity and representation. She wants to make sure that "everyone who came to her store, no matter race or ethnicity, could see themselves represented in the books that she sells." In addition to books, Heart & Soul carries a variety of gifts and sidelines like bath salts, candles, prints and handcrafted bookmarks. Bailey also offers complimentary coffee and tea and invites customers to settle in and get cozy.

The bookstore celebrated its grand opening the weekend before Valentine's Day. The store's reception, Bailey said, has been "overwhelmingly positive," with many community members stopping by to donate books.

Simon & Schuster Canada has launched Scribner Canada, "dedicated to publishing the best literary fiction and nonfiction from Canada and around the world."

Kevin Hanson, president and publisher, Simon & Schuster Canada, said, "I've long admired Scribner U.S. and their venerable list of authors, and am excited to launch this new imprint that will complement and support our existing local publishing program, with its numerous bestsellers. The creation of Scribner Canada will broaden our publishing reach, bring new voices to readers, and grow our already stellar list of authors."

Scribner Canada's first list will appear this fall and include We Spread by Iain Reid, a genre-bending novel examining the nature of loneliness, age and memory; movie rights have been acquired by Anonymous Content. (Reid and director Minahl Baig will adapt, and the film will star Saoirse Ronan, Paul Mescal and Aaron Pierre.)

The first nonfiction Scribner Canada title is The Long Road Home by Debra Thompson, a McGill University professor and expert on race and ethnic politics. In the book, Thompson follows the roots of Black identities in North America, starting with her own family, who traveled the Underground Railroad to Shrewsbury, Ontario, and then tracing her journey across America in search of blackness and belonging.

Other Scribner Canada titles will include:

In the Belly of the Congo by Blaise Ndala, an English translation of his novel Dans le ventre du Congo, winner of the Prix Kourouma and the Prix Ivoire for African Literature, and a finalist for the Grand Prix du Roman Métis and the Five Continents Prize.

African Samurai by Craig Shreve, a historical novel based on the story of Yasuke, Japan's first foreign-born samurai and the only samurai of African descent.

The Boat in the Backyard by screenwriter/TV producer Perry Chafe, a coming-of-age story about a young boy on an island in Newfoundland and his connection to a teenage girl who has disappeared.

Stolen by Sami Swedish author Ann-Helén Laestadius, winner of Sweden's Book of the Year Award, a novel that follows Elsa, the nine-year-old daughter of Sami reindeer herders, who is threatened into silence after witnessing a man brutally killing her reindeer calf. A decade later she still struggles to defend her Indigenous heritage.

The Most Secret Memory of Men by Senegalese novelist Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, the first writer from sub-Saharan Africa to be awarded the Prix Goncourt. The Most Secret Memory of Men is an investigation into the life of a mysterious author.

PM Press, the radical publisher with facilities in Oakland, Calif., and Binghamton, N.Y., has purchased a 17,000-square-foot building in Binghamton that will be its primary distribution center. PM Press is also planning to host special events and book fairs at the site and will build a stage with a sound system. Major renovations should take place this spring or summer.

PM Press founder Ramsey Kanaan told the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, "The warehouse is ideal for what we want to do, but it also gives us a lot more potential to realize some of the plans and ideas that in Oakland, because of space constraints, would have remained a fantasy. The potential of what we can do at the Emma Street location is not boundless, but it's certainly bountiful."

He added: "We're unusual in the sense that during the two years of Covid we've actually added 25% more employees across the company. We see this as part of our continued expansion."

Andy Pragacz, one of several staff operating the new facility who has ties to the area, is co-founder of the activist group Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier, and teaches human development courses at Binghamton University, said, "Our idea is to paint the inside and outside of the building and do some beautification on the outside with muraling. We ordered seeds to plant some wildflowers this spring and beautify the neighborhood. There's a giant retaining wall out in front that was built during the New Deal in the 1930s. We'd like to rehabilitate that to make a more attractive frontage in the neighborhood overall."

The Barnes & Noble in Lehigh Valley Mall, Whitehall, Pa., served as the venue for Vashanna Fraser and Charles Johnson's wedding this past weekend. The event was Beauty and the Beast-themed, and included the couple's five-year-old daughter, Aria. (Photo: Alicia Gathers)

Silver Unicorn Bookstore in Acton, Mass., celebrated yesterday's palindromic date, posting on social media: "Since today is TWO-sday--2/22/22--we just *had* to take a picture of all of our favorite 'two' books we have in stock today--either direct sequels or companion novels. We hope you're having two times the fun today!!!

"We never get tired of customers telling us our shop is pretty," Savoy Bookshop and Café, Westerly, R.I., posted on Facebook. "From the tile work in the front entrance to the fairy doors built into the baseboards, the details are what make Savoy really shine (aside from our fab booksellers and baristas, of course)."

Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking: Poems by C.T. Salazar (Acre Books).

Tomorrow:
Kelly Clarkson Show: Katie Couric, author of Going There (Little, Brown, $30, 9780316535861).

photo: Bess Gariso

Kristen Bird lives near Houston with her husband, three daughters and two rescue labs. She teaches high school English, writes in local coffee shops, and bakes ugly cakes that taste great. Her debut novel is The Night She Went Missing (Mira, February 8, 2022), in which three friends-to-frenemies mothers in a close-knit, wealthy Texas community decide to find answers where the police have none after a high school senior is found floating in the harbor.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Ten weeks after 18-year-old Emily disappeared, fishermen find her floating in the Galveston harbor, alive but unconscious. Three mothers must find out what happened.

On your nightstand now:

I'm listening to the audiobook of Kathleen A. Flynn's The Jane Austen Project, a novel about time travelers who meet Jane Austen and her family in an attempt to save one of her never-read novels. The author does an incredible job recreating Austen's world.

I'm also reading You Can Never Tell by Sarah Warburton, a thriller set in a fictitious version of my very own neighborhood in Sugar Land about a woman whose closest friend ends up being more sinister than she would've ever imagined.

Favorite book when you were a child:

As a toddler, the book I asked my parents to reread again and again was I Am a Bunny by Ole Risom (illustrated by Richard Scarry). When I read my thick copy of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott in sixth grade, I was so proud, thinking I'd arrived into a whole new world of reading lengthy novels. As a teenager, I was captivated by Catherine Marshall's Christy, most likely because it was set in the Appalachian mountains near where I grew up. Though decades removed from my childhood, the traditions and dialect felt like what I saw and heard my grandparents do and say every day.

Your top five authors:

As a literature teacher, I love learning from other authors' techniques. A few years ago, I outlined one of Liane Moriarty's books as a personal mini-master's class in story structure. Lisa Jewell is an excellent study in multi-POV, and Ruth Ware builds eerie and captivating settings (the poison garden in The Turn of the Key!). Kate Morton seamlessly weaves multi-generational stories into timeless tales, and Adriana Trigiani's novels explore family dynamics, especially those of sisters, in a way that I devour.

Book you've faked reading:

Samuel Richardson's Pamela. I was teaching high school and working on my master's degree, and I just couldn't read any more of this sexist epistolary novel, but I was so embarrassed during a seminar discussion when I made a point that completely left out a new character from the last hundred pages or so.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. I admire and envy the way Kingsolver distinguishes each voice in this novel about a misguided missionary family traveling to the Congo.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. The mirrored roses on the cover drew me in, and the first few chapters that end in the recurring death of the main character kept me turning pages and asking myself, "How does Atkinson do that?"

Book you hid from your parents:

I had too much Southern Baptist guilt to hide anything from my parents. I remember shyly telling my mom that the word 'sexy' was in one of Francine Pascal's Sweet Valley High books. It's funny now because my mom and I pass all kinds of books back and forth to each other, insisting, "You must read this!"

Book that changed your life:

I wrote my first "practice" novel in grad school as my creative writing thesis, but after I started teaching full time and had my daughters, I didn't write much for almost six years. Shortly after the birth of my twins, I read Colm Tóibín's Brooklyn and Helene Wecker's The Golem and the Jinni, and these two books inspired me to start writing again. It took years of short writing stints to finish a historical fiction novel set in New York City--a book that may never see the light of day--but just the steady act of writing developed my love for the process again. By the time my twins were six and my oldest daughter was nine, I was ready to write The Night She Went Missing.

Favorite line from a book:

"Now that I'm dead I know everything." This is the opening line of Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad. Penelope is speaking from the Underworld, giving us her version of the ev­­­ents in Homer's The Odyssey. Flipping the traditional tale on its head invites great conversations with my students and reminds me to try to see the world through a variety of lenses.

Five books you'll never part with:

Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half
Madeline Miller's Circe
Blake Crouch's Dark Matter
Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus
Kate Bowler's Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Himself by Jess Kidd. After I read that book, I thought, I've never read anything like this. I marvel at her command of language, her voice, and her story-telling.

YA author Nancy Werlin's middle-grade debut is an unhurried and subtle bildungsroman that features a young woman trying to understand her magical powers in medieval France. Healer and Witch gracefully explores themes of identity, family and belonging.

Fifteen-year-old Sylvie comes from a long line of strong women and healers, who, unlike most women in their village, "remain in charge of their own lives." Sylvie, her mother and her grandmother are trusted in the village of Bresnois to treat injuries and illnesses. However, Sylvie's natural ability to view and manipulate the memories of others goes beyond ordinary healing, setting her apart from her mother and grandmother. When Sylvie's grandmother dies unexpectedly, Sylvie attempts to use magic to cure her mother's grief--with disastrous results. Desperate to fix her mistake, Sylvie leaves Bresnois in search of "a teacher, an adviser.... Someone who could help her with her gift." Sylvie's quest introduces her to new friends (some more trustworthy than others), including a mischievous stowaway, a stern yet kind young merchant and a self-proclaimed witch. Far away from "everyone and everything she knew," Sylvie comes to realize that the true nature of her power may be something only she can determine for herself.

There are no epic battles or grand prophecies in Healer and Witch, whose fantasy narrative remains grounded in the human stakes facing Sylvie and her companions. Werlin (Zoe Rosenthal Is Not Lawful Good) brings compassion and complexity to her depictions of the relationships between characters, challenging standard notions of good and evil. No individual is defined by a single trait and first appearances often prove misleading. Indeed, a recurring message is that positive and negative experiences are part of a full life, and repressing feelings of unhappiness can be harmful rather than helpful. Sylvie realizes that "she could not heal by removing the thing that caused pain."

Although Werlin skillfully evokes Healer and Witch's period setting, Sylvie's journey of self-discovery and its accompanying themes of female empowerment are timeless. Readers looking for a gentle, understated historical fantasy will easily sympathize with Sylvie in her struggle to "use [her] gift for good" and "choose her own future" in a "world that was increasingly hostile to women such as herself." --Alanna Felton, freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: A young woman's quest to understand her magic powers leads to self-discovery, healing and unexpected friendships in this emotionally sophisticated middle-grade fantasy novel.