At Gramercy Books, Bexley, Ohio

On its first day of publication, Tuesday, January 10, Spare, the memoir by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, sold more than 1,430,000 copies in all formats and editions in the U.S., U.K., and Canada, Penguin Random House has announced. This is the largest first-day sales for any nonfiction book ever published by PRH. The U.S. printing was two million copies; PRH has already gone back to press on the title.

Spare was released in print and digital formats in the U.S. by Random House, in Canada by Random House Canada and in the U.K. by Transworld. An unabridged audio edition of the book, read by the author, was published by Penguin Random House Audio. Altogether Spare has been published in 16 languages.

Random House Group president and publisher Gina Centrello commented: "While many books by public figures can be fairly categorized as 'celebrity memoir,' Spare is not that. Vulnerable and heartfelt, brave and intimate, Spare is the story of someone we may have thought we already knew, but now we can truly come to understand Prince Harry through his own words. Looking at these extraordinary first day sales, readers clearly agree, Spare is a book that demands to be read, and it is a book we are proud to publish."

Barnes & Noble was one of many booksellers benefiting from Spare sales, saying on Tuesday that Spare was "certain to set record-breaking day-one sales" at the company. B&N stores across the country "have experienced exceptional numbers of customers today," B&N continued. "Most booksellers report customer levels comparable to day one of Michelle Obama's Becoming, the publishing sensation of 2018."

B&N noted that Prince Harry's writing partner is "the exceptional J.R. Moehringer, well known for partnering also with Andre Agassi on his autobiography, Open, and with Phil Knight on his memoir, Shoe Dog. Both of these searing and fascinating autobiographies rank among the bestselling memoirs of all time."

B&N director of books Shannon DeVito commented: "We are experiencing the most extraordinary first-day sales, buoyed by the explosive headlines and litany of press. The leaking of extracts has only heightened the frenzy and is drawing customers into our bookstores in amazing numbers. The appeal of Spare is vast, piquing the interest of both fans and followers of the Sussexes, as well as their critics, and anyone interested in the British Royal Family."

Ed Spade

Ed Spade has been appointed president of sales at HarperCollins and will sit on the company's global executive committee. He succeeds Josh Marwell, who is working in an advisory role before retiring in April.

Spade has been senior v-p, online sales, since 2021, when he joined HarperCollins when it acquired HMH Books & Media, where he had been interim president. He had joined HMH in 2017, eventually serving as v-p, national accounts & sales and head of audio. Earlier he was a sales executive at Ingram Content Group and Viacom and began his career at Penguin Young Readers Group.

HarperCollins president and CEO Brian Murray said, "In his short tenure with HarperCollins, Ed has done a tremendous job of enhancing our strategic and operational online sales efforts. Ed has a long history of innovating within the business. His experience on both the publishing and customer sides gives him a unique perspective on the work we do on behalf of our authors and customers. We are excited to have him lead the sales efforts for our U.S. publishing."

E. Shaver, Bookseller, Savannah, Ga., has opened a second store. In a post on social media, the bookseller reported that the new E. Shaver, Starland is a partnership with Foxy Loxy Print Gallery and Café. It is located at 1921 Bull St., with customer entry available "from the front along Bull Street or via the back courtyard at Foxy Loxy Cafe.... Stop by to browse, sip and read!"

Author Taylor Brown shared some photos of the new space on Instagram, noting: "Y'all! E. Shaver Starland opened TODAY in the @foxyloxycafe Gingerbread House! Come support your new neighborhood bookstore--it's just damn LOVELY!"

Farley's Bookshop in New Hope, Pa., has closed temporarily while owners Julian Karhumaa, William and Katie Hastings and Charlie Balfour carry out some updates and renovations, Bucks Co. Today reported.

The bookstore, which has operated in New Hope since 1967, will be closed for all of January and February while new walls, floors and a ceiling are installed. The team will continue to fulfill online orders for the duration of the closure, and every Saturday Farley's will set up a mobile bookshop at Manoff Market Gardens and Cidery.

Karhumaa, Balfour and the Hastings purchased the bookstore in October. All four were longtime booksellers.

Books and Crannies, Martinsville, Va., will close its physical bookstore on January 21 and move to online sales only, the Bulletin reported. Owner DeShanta Hairston will remain in the community as the executive director of Fayette Area Historical Initiative, a role she began in October.

Hairston, who opened Books & Crannies in 2016, said, "I've always been an avid reader and we just hadn't had a bookstore here for quite some time. I really missed having one and that's really what sparked the idea." The bricks-and-mortar location helped her make a greater connection with the community, allowing for more outreach through event hosting, author signings, book clubs and more.

"When you have just an online platform, it's a little harder," she added. "But I do feel like Covid has kind of shifted a lot as well where people are more comfortable being at home and joining Zoom or a live feed.... I think it's different but it's still possible to have the same effect just in a different way."

Hairston recalled that her online platform "really took off during the summer of 2020 during Covid," when she posted on the store's Twitter account: "Can you imagine, I refrained from putting black owned in my bio for years in fear of losing out on potential white customers? Well I am indeed black and this is my store and I will be screaming it from the mountain tops moving forward."

This prompted substantial growth in online sales "and the store saw a shift where online business outside of Martinsville began to boom even more so than local purchases. Her store's Twitter account now has over 30,000 followers," the Bulletin noted.

Moving business fully online was not an easy decision for her to make, but she said "the current state of the economy and just the inflation" made the decision necessary: "It was definitely a hard decision but as a mother of two... I just wanted to create more of a balance in my life without sacrificing the work that I've put into this store and I think I've done a good job of building the online platform."

In a Twitter thread announcing the closure, Hairston wrote: "Over the last few months with the passing of my grandma, life has shown me not to take on more than I can bear. I've learned to put my mental health above all. I've learned that nothing in this world matters more to me than the stability of my children. Thanks to everyone who kept our doors open by buying and ordering books directly from us in-person. And thank you for understanding my need to put my family first. This is not a goodbye, but a new version of hello!"

Vicki Cobb

Vicki Cobb, the author of more than 100 children's books, died on January 9. She was 84.

After working as a laboratory researcher and science teacher, Cobb became a full-time writer of science books for children. Her hands-on science books for children included Science Experiments You Can Eat; Bet You Can, Bet You Can't; We Dare You!; and the Science Play series. Her books covered physics, chemistry and biology, biographies, weather and climate change, geography, and the human body. She received a Lifetime Achievement Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Sibert Honor for I Face the Wind.

Cobb also was a pioneer in cable television in the early 1970s as the host of the Science Game as well as one of the first group of writers for Good Morning America. Cobb was the founder and president of Ink Think Tank, Inc. (Innovative Nonfiction for Kids), a company of nonfiction authors from K-12 dedicated to bringing nonfiction literature into the classroom. The organization has grown to include the Nonfiction Minute Channel on SchoolTube, iNK Media and Books, and the Nonfiction Minute, a daily blog for kids with original 400-word essays by more than two dozen iNK authors. She was also a regular blogger for Education Update and the Huffington Post and made hundreds of school visits, with original creative programs that she developed. She had a lively sense of humor, adding vitality and sparkle to her presentations.

Donations may be made in Cobb's name to InkThinkTank or Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Volumes Bookcafe in Chicago, Ill., has gone viral after co-owner Rebecca George vented on Twitter about a customer asking to return $800 worth of art books purchased in early December, NBC Chicago reported.

The tweet, which George posted on Monday and has since been viewed more than 6.6 million times, reads: "Turns out one of our biggest sales last month was for the person to stage their home for the holidays and now they want to return them all. Please don't do this to a small business, people. That one sale was a third of our rent."

George told NBC that "the fall was tough," and the team was thrilled about the art book purchase. "We needed it right then."

The customer called about returning the books on Monday, which was after the end of the store's 30-day return period. George noted that "much negotiation" led to a compromise of store credit.

The viral tweet, meanwhile, has led to Volumes Bookcafe "getting tons and tons of orders overnight from all over the U.S., and we are so thankful for it."

Check out a Burned by Books podcast featuring three booksellers on their favorite titles of 2022, the titles they're most looking forward to selling in 2023, and bookselling in general. The trio are Lisa Swayze, general manager and buyer at Buffalo Street Books, Ithaca, N.Y.; Hillary Smith, founder of Black Walnut Books, Glens Falls, N.Y.; and Hannah Oliver Depp, owner of Loyalty Bookstores in Washington, D.C., and Silver Spring, Md. The podcast is hosted by Chris Holmes, chair of Literatures in English and associate professor at Ithaca College, who writes criticism on contemporary global literatures and is the co-director of the New Voices Festival.

Alex Kanenwisher, book buyer at Costco, has selected The Maid: A Novel by Nita Prose (Ballantine, $18, 9780593356173) as the pick for January. In Costco Connection, which goes to many of the warehouse club's members, Kanenwisher writes:

"The Maid is Nita Prose's debut novel. It tells the story of Molly, an eccentric maid who sets out to uncover who killed one of the guests at the hotel where she works. Molly, who has been alone since her gran died and who struggles with social skills, is used to being overlooked. It's that quality that gives her an advantage in solving the mystery.

"Molly is a delightful character, and this novel is full of heart while also serving as a reminder that we're never as alone as we think we are."

Joseph D'Onofrio has been named executive director and general manager of the Chicago Distribution Center and Client Services unit of the University of Chicago Press. He joined Chicago in 2016 and formerly director.

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At Berkley:

Jin Yu has been promoted to director of marketing.

Cat Barra has been promoted to marketing associate.

The Ancient Lives series (Yale University Press).

An episode of the Discovery+ show Storefront Stories, featuring Fabled Bookshop & Café, Waco, Tex., dropped last Friday. On the Magnolia Network show, "shopkeepers of beautiful and unique shops all over the country uncover the heart, vision and history of their retail spaces."

"We are delighted and honored to share our episode on Storefront Stories, now streaming on Discovery+!" the bookseller noted on Facebook. "A HUGE thank you to Magnolia and Discovery Plus for letting us be a part of this beautiful series and share a part of our story. We hope you enjoy it, and long live the bookshop! Follow our stories for more info and behind the scenes glimpses of this process, and long live the bookshop! Head to Discovery Plus and the Magnolia App to stream a new episode of Storefront Stories."

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, January 14
3:15 p.m. David N. Gellman, author of Liberty's Chain: Slavery, Abolition, and the Jay Family of New York (Three Hills, $36.95, 9781501715846). (Re-airs Sunday at 3:15 a.m.)

4:15 p.m. Daniel Gagnon, author of A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse (Westholme Publishing, $35, 9781594163678). (Re-airs Sunday at 4:15 a.m.)

Sunday, January 15
9:10 a.m. Elsa Sjunneson, author of Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman's Fight to End Ableism (Simon Element, $24.99, 9781982152406). (Re-airs Sunday at 9:10 p.m.)

10 a.m. Armstrong Williams and Ben Crump, co-authors of Crisis in the Classroom: Crisis in Education (‎Skyhorse, $26.99, 9781510776883). (Re-airs Sunday at 10 p.m.)

2:20 to 6:55 p.m. Coverage of the Texas Book Festival in Austin, Tex. Highlights include:

• 2:20 p.m. Elizabeth Williamson, author of Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth (Dutton, $28, 9781524746575).
• 3:05 p.m. James Kirchik, author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington (Holt, $38, 9781627792325).
• 3:51 p.m. Anand Giridharadas, author of The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy (‎Knopf, $30, 9780593318997).
• 4:37 p.m. Peniel Joseph, author of The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century (Basic Books, $27, 9781541600744).
• 5:21 p.m. Becca Andrews, author of No Choice: The Destruction of Roe v. Wade and the Fight to Protect a Fundamental American Right (PublicAffairs, $29, 9781541768390).
• 6:06 p.m. Beth Macy, author of Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America's Overdose Crisis (Little, Brown, $30, 9780316430227).

6:55 p.m. Gordon Sondland, author of The Envoy: Mastering the Art of Diplomacy with Trump and the World (‎Bombardier Books, $28.99, 9781637585283).

Shadows of Pecan Hollow by Caroline Frost (Morrow) has won the $5,000 Crook's Corner Book Prize for the best debut novel set in the American South.

Judge Ben Fountain commented: "With Shadows of Pecan Hollow, Caroline Frost delivers a stunner of a debut novel that reads more like the work of an accomplished master. Everything you could want in a novel is here: rich, evocative settings, conflicted loyalties and hearts, and a slow fuse of a plot that throws off plenty of sparks on its way to final ignition. This immersive, full-bodied novel will keep its hooks in you long after the last page is read, and marks the arrival of a tremendously wise and talented writer. I think we can look forward to many more fine books from Caroline Frost."

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, January 17:

Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell's Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People by Tracy Kidder (Random House, $30, 9781984801432) chronicles a doctor who works with Boston's homeless population.

Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy by Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud (Holt, $28.99, 9781250858696) exposes an Israeli company's insidious cyber-surveillance weapon.

Windfall: The Prairie Woman Who Lost Her Way and the Great-Granddaughter Who Found Her by Erika Bolstad (Sourcebooks, $26.99, 9781728246932) retraces family connections to a North Dakota homesteader.

Flower Porn: Recipes for Modern Bouquets, Tablescapes and Displays by Kaiva Kaimins (DK, $24.99, 9780744069587) is a colorful guide for florists.

The Cabinet of Dr. Leng by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (Grand Central, $30, 9781538736777) is the 21st thriller with FBI Special Agent Pendergast.

The Sense of Wonder: A Novel by Matthew Salesses (Little, Brown, $28, 9780316425711) follows an Asian American NBA player.

Forbidden Notebook: A Novel by Alba de Céspedes, trans. by Ann Goldstein (Astra House, $26, 9781662601392) is a new translation of a Cuban-Italian feminist writer.

The Lost Year: A Survival Story of the Ukrainian Famine by Katherine Marsh (Roaring Brook Press, $17.99, 9781250313607) is a middle-grade novel about the Holodomor, the famine that took place in Soviet Ukraine in the early 1930s.

The Enchanted Bridge by Zetta Elliott, illus. by Cherise Harris (Random House, $16.99, 9780593427743) is the fourth novel in the middle-grade fantasy series.

Paperbacks:
Ending the Crisis: Mayo Clinic's Guide to Opioid Addiction and Safe Opioid Use by Dr. Holly Geyer (Mayo Clinic Press, $21.99, 9781945564567).

What Happens Next by Christina Suzann Nelson (Bethany House, $16.99, 9780764240409).

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

Hardcover
A Dangerous Business: A Novel by Jane Smiley (Knopf, $28, 9780525520337). "An incredibly thought-provoking new novel from Jane Smiley. Her characters are so well drawn out that I felt like I was living the narrative alongside them. The writing is evocative and makes the pages fly. I can't wait to sell this!" --Brooke Beehler, Books Revisited, St. Cloud, Minn.

Weightless: Making Space for My Resilient Body and Soul by Evette Dionne (Ecco, $26.99, 9780063076365). "Dionne's essays cover fat-shaming, plus-size characters, love and sex, the pain of weight loss due to illness, and weight-discrimination legislation. Based both on research and her own experiences, there's much here to think about." --Susan Posch, The Book Shoppe, Boone, Iowa

Paperback
Wahala: A Novel by Nikki May (Mariner, $17.99, 9780063084254). "Wahala offers a fresh, suspenseful, and insightful exploration of the darker complexities of friendship, romance, and ambition from the perspectives of three Anglo-Nigerian women." --Alyssa Raymond, Copper Dog Books, Beverly, Mass.

For Ages 3 to 5
Little Owl's Love by Divya Srinivasan (Viking Books for Young Readers, $18.99, 9780593204047). "Little Owl loves so much, and there is much to discover in the forest. The illustrations bring those discoveries right to you. I'm not sure I love mushrooms as much as Little Owl, but I do know I love to discover with Little Owl--so will you." --Carolyn Roys, Anderson's Bookshops, Naperville, Ill.

For Ages 10 to 14
Never After: The Broken Mirror (The Chronicles of Never After #3) by Melissa de la Cruz (Roaring Brook Press, $16.99, 9781250827258). "I loved this storyline and the continued adventure of Filomena and her friends! The way the story unfolds is masterful and kept me reading to see what happens next. I can't wait for the next book!" --Donna Powers, McLean & Eakin Booksellers, Petoskey, Mich.

For Teen Readers
Never Ever Getting Back Together by Sophie Gonzales (Wednesday Books, $18.99, 9781250819161). "This brings all the drama of The Bachelor with a perfect dose of feminist rage. A story about the perfect revenge against a cheating narcissistic ex, finding love, and moving on--in Maya's case, with the very girl her ex cheated on her with." --Caitlin Bagdasarian, Bank Square Books, Mystic, Conn.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

Lynn Cullen's seventh novel, The Woman with the Cure, opens with a startlingly familiar setting: empty playgrounds in summertime as parents fear their children will be infected by a deadly disease. But the time period is the 1940s, and the disease is polio, a crippling, often fatal diagnosis affecting thousands of children--with no cure or even a vaccine in sight. Cullen (The Sisters of Summit Avenue; Twain's End; Mrs. Poe) constructs a thrilling narrative focused on the work of Dr. Dorothy Horstmann, whose passion for defeating the polio virus would require grave personal sacrifices.

The too-tall daughter of working-class immigrants, Horstmann fights hard for her right to attend medical school. Cullen gives readers a glimpse into Horstmann's background and her complicated but loving relationship with her parents. Most of the novel, however, centers on Horstmann's quest to find a cure for polio and her insistence, despite early evidence to the contrary, that the secret to the virus's transmission lies in its presence in the blood. Mixing medical details with the often-fraught politics of securing funding for research and equipment, Cullen vividly portrays both the dangers of polio (to its patients and even to researchers) and the urgency to find--and claim credit for--a cure. Horstmann, less interested in fame or accolades than her (mostly male) colleagues in the field, learns to work with all of them, including Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk, as they argue over methods, medicines and even research monkeys.

Cullen frames her narrative with brief interludes from a variety of other women: a mother, a scientist, a wife and nurse, all affected by the polio pandemic. Some have direct connections to Horstmann and some do not, but their perspectives help drive home the far-reaching effects of the disease for 21st-century readers with little direct experience of polio. The novel explores the tricky social dynamics between the leading scientists in polio research as they jockey for funding (including from the nascent March of Dimes) and try to balance personal ethics with professional ambition. Although Horstmann's male colleagues often trade time with their families for time in the lab, she and her few female compatriots struggle with the effects of making similar decisions under different expectations. Complex Cold War politics also come into play, as the U.S. and the Soviet Union each pursue a vaccine.

Fast-paced, illuminating and sometimes heartbreaking, The Woman with the Cure is a fitting tribute to an unsung heroine of modern medicine. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Shelf Talker: Dr. Dorothy Horstmann and her colleagues race to find a cure for polio in Lynn Cullen's seventh novel.

Disaster books whose heroes fail up was on the menu this month. You know, something terrible happens, but our heroine powers through and her luck begins to change. Recently I found myself in need of gritty characters whose lives had been upended. Maybe they didn't exactly live happily ever after, but I was looking only for happier, at least for a little while...

Wallace Stegner never disappoints, and his Angle of Repose is a perfect novel. It doesn't have the pacing of a thriller, but it will keep you up all the same. The narrator, a wheelchair-bound historian, researches his famous grandmother's life of high adventure through her papers. In one memorable passage, he considers the influence of the Doppler Effect on our lives. In the book, one of many disasters had just befallen his grandmother. Perhaps it was when her house had burned to the ground. But many decades later, he knew about all the good stuff that was still coming her way, including new houses, new lovers. He considered how her life must have felt like a freight train barreling down on her as opposed to how it sounded to him many years later--still like a train but only softly blowing in the distance. The Doppler Effect. It’s a beautiful lesson in perspective that was perfect for me and may be for other readers. All the other Stegner books, including Crossing to Safety and Spectator Bird, will get you there, too.

Everyone should read Elenore Pruitt Stewart. Letters of a Woman Homesteader is a lively account of a Denver woman who moved to Wyoming in the early 1900s and proved that a woman could ranch. It is a rare, first-hand account of the Wild West by a woman. There were plenty of women on the frontier, of course, but their accounts have been obscured by the cowboys who got to tell most of the stories.

In 1909, Pruitt went to work for Clyde Stewart, whose ranch was near Burnt Fork, Wyo., and within six weeks she married him. "Ranch work seemed to require that we be married first and do our sparking afterward," she wrote Juliet Coney, her former employer. She maintained her independence by filing on a quarter section adjacent to her husband's land and proving it up herself. This is an outstanding feminine perspective, and bravery abounds.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho made a big splash a few years ago, and it's time to introduce the next generation of dreamers to Santiago. It's a classic hero's journey about an Australian shepherd who is dying to travel the world. It's a follow-your-dreams book, but also a book about trusting your gut, looking for omens and metaphors and then trusting those, too. They are, after all, just physical manifestations of your gut.

And if you know a child who needs a little rallying, put Heidi by Johanna Spyri in their hands. This little orphan girl goes bravely to live with her cantankerous grandfather in the Swiss Alps and changes everyone's life with her cheering observations. Give her a hunk of homemade bread and fresh goat's milk cheese, and she is happy. She keenly observes the world--whether it be the goat's view or the villager's--and misses nothing. The girl knows unhappiness, but she talks herself out of it with a perspective beyond her years. It doesn't have to be a kid who needs bucking up. Heidi is good for everyone no matter what bad thing has come along. There is luckily another corner to turn. Hang on is a message everyone needs from time to time. --Ellen Stimson