Plot Twist Books, a new indie located at 209 D Street in downtown South Charleston, W.Va., hosted its soft opening last weekend, WOWK reported. The bookstore offers a mix of new and used books as well as bookish gifts, author events, book clubs and other community activities. It is currently open limited hours. 

Co-owners Matt Browning and Brian Mann said they are glad to be adding another bookstore option for people in the area and were thrilled with the crowd they saw on Saturday. Browning noted: "We were calling this a 'soft launch,' but word got out. It has been a steady stream of customers today, a lot of people welcoming us to the community and they're just so glad to see more book options here in town."

Browning, the author of several books--including Bookstore Explorer: West Virginia--told the Herald-Dispatch: "I have wanted my own a bookstore as long as I can remember. Every time I'd walk by an empty storefront, I'd wonder what a bookstore would look like there. Every time I talk to a bookseller, they describe bookstores as magical places, and I agree. You walk in and there's this sense of possibility and adventure. I wanted to have my own magical place.... What was going to be my retirement goal is coming to fruition. I'm not waiting now." 

His long-term vision for the space includes eventually employing two or three staff members and hosting book signings, book clubs and other community activities. "I want this, like all great indie book shops, to be a welcome, inclusive community gathering place, and D Street is the perfect place for it," he said. "There's a bookish vibe on this street and we want to add to that and bolster that."

Plot Twist posted on Facebook Saturday: "We could not have asked for a better opening day, a more supportive community, or more wonderful customers. If you stopped by today, thank you!! We had a ball. A busy ball! And if you missed us today, we're open Sunday noon to 5."

On Monday, the bookseller added: "Thanks for a great weekend, South Charleston, during our soft opening that wasn't so soft! We're closed weekdays for a little while so our exterior work can be completed, but we'll be expanding our hours soon! Come see us next Saturday!"

Total net book sales in January in the U.S. rose 3.5%, to $1.277 billion, compared to January 2022, representing sales of 1,240 publishers and distributed clients as reported to the Association of American Publishers.

In January, trade sales rose 3.1%, to $754.9 million. Hardcover sales rose 0.3%, to $264 million, paperbacks rose 7%, to $276.9 million, mass markets fell 35.7%, to $12.4 million, and special bindings dropped 2.1%, to $15.6 million. Total e-book sales rose 3.7%, to $85 million.

Sales by category January 2023 compared to January 2022:

Christopher M. Finan

Christopher M. Finan, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship, is retiring this summer after a 40-year career defending free expression and the First Amendment.

Before joining NCAC in 2017, he was president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, which he joined in 1998. (ABFFE merged with the ABA in 2015 and became the American Booksellers for Free Expression.) Earlier he was executive director of the Media Coalition. He was also a trustee of the Freedom to Read Foundation and a recipient of its Roll of Honor Award. In May, he will receive the Authors Guild Foundation Award for Defending Free Speech and Expression.

NCAC board president Emily Knox said that Finan has been "a leader in the fight for free speech for four decades. He has defended the rights of authors, booksellers, librarians, readers, and youth and strengthened NCAC's reputation as a first responder to censorship. The NCAC board congratulates Chris on his retirement and is grateful for his years of service."

Finan said, "People have been fighting for free speech since the earliest days of the republic, and the struggle continues today in the fight against book banning. It has been a privilege to join the students, teachers, librarians, authors, and booksellers who are defending the freedom to read."

Finan is the author of several titles about free speech and the First Amendment, including How Free Speech Saved Democracy: The Untold History of How the First Amendment Became an Essential Tool for Securing Liberty and Social Justice (Steerforth Press, 2022) and From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America (Beacon Press, 2007), winner of the American Library Association's Eli Oboler Award. He received a Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award for editing National Security and Free Speech: The Debate Since 9/11 (IDEBATE Press, 2013).

He has also written Alfred E. Smith: The Happy Warrior (Hill and Wang, 2002) and Drunks: The Story of Alcoholism and the Birth of Recovery (Beacon Press, 2017).

James Alexander Thom, the author of some 15 books who was perhaps best known for his 1981 historical novel Follow the River, "about the 18th-century escape and journey of Mary Ingles, who had been captured by the Shawnee and made the 400-mile trek home," died January 30, IndyStar reported. He was 89. 

Thom's many honors included induction as a member of the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame and being an Indiana Authors Awards Lifetime Achievement Honoree and National Winner, but "it was his humor, graciousness and easy connection with people that stuck with those who met him," IndyStar noted.

"He treasured books only second to human beings," said his wife, writer Dark Rain Thom, for whom he drew the illustrations in her book The Shawnee: Kohkumthena's Grandchildren.

Early in his writing career, Thom worked for newspapers and other publications, as well as a magazine called Nuggets, which contained words of wisdom that comforted those who had lost loved ones. His "knack for connecting with readers during deeply emotional events would continue as he began writing historical fiction--a passion that would be a major part of the rest of his life," IndyStar wrote. 

Follow the River made the New York Times bestseller list and by 2021, 40 years after its release, had sold about 1.3 million copies. Thom said at the time: "The basic thing is that this was a true story and people have found it utterly inspiring. I've had thousands of fan letters from people who have been encouraged to go on through tough situations because of the story." 

Thom's other books include Time It Was Now: The Art & Craft of Writing Historical Fiction; Fire in the Water; St. Patrick's Battalion; Long Knife; From Sea to Shining Sea; Red Heart; and Warrior Woman (with Dark Rain Thom).

Blue River Press, which published three of Thom's books, paid tribute to the author, writing in part: "During his long and highly regarded career as a journalist and teacher, James impacted many people. As an author, he impacted many more. It was perhaps through his prose that most people came to know him. But James was never one of those cloistered writers we often see in the movies. He had a love for getting out there and meeting his readers. So many of us were lucky to get to know James even if just a bit....

"His mastery of the genre of historical fiction is renowned.... We at Blue River Press and Cardinal Publishers Group salute James Alexander Thom on a life well lived and a legacy that will earn him a spot in the pantheon of great Hoosier writers. He was a very lucky man who had an enviable career and an essence of peace always within himself and the family and friends that surrounded him."

City Point Brooklyn shined its Women's Month Spotlight On "Sarah McNally, owner of Independent Bookstore @McNallyJackson. Sarah wanted a place in NYC where it felt like her mom's bookstore, her very own book-haven, where it felt like she was at home, a comfortable space where you can just tuck away and read, and a space where you can host event-driven gatherings for the community. From there, she created the idea of McNally Jackson, your local friendly bookstore and slowly expanded from New York City to Brooklyn. You can find @McNallyJackson now in their third outpost in City Point BKLYN and get #reading!"

Leigh Haber, formerly the editorial director of Oprah's Book Club and books editor for O Magazine and oprahmag.com, is joining Zibby Media as strategic advisor.

At the Speed of Lies by Cindy L. Otis (Scholastic Press).

Today:
Fresh Air: Matthew Desmond, author of Poverty, by America (Crown, $28, 9780593239919).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Daymond John, author of Little Daymond Learns to Earn (Random House Books for Young Readers, $19.99, 9780593567272).

Today Show: Lela Rose, author of Fresh Air Affairs: Entertaining with Style in the Great Outdoors (Rizzoli, $45, 9780847872954).

The Talk: Michelle Miller, author of Belonging: A Daughter's Search for Identity Through Loss and Love (Harper, $32, 9780063220430).

Rachael Ray: Max Greenfield, author of I Don't Want to Read This Book Aloud (Putnam, $18.99, 9780593616581).

Tamron Hall: Will Cole, author of Gut Feelings: Healing the Shame-Fueled Relationship Between What You Eat and How You Feel (Rodale, $28, 9780593232361).

Daily Show: Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us (Adapted for Young Readers) (Delacorte, $17.99, 9780593562628).

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, a movie based on Judith Viorst's classic book, has found its title character. Deadline reported that Thom Nemer (FX series Snowfall) will star as Alexander opposite Eva Longoria, Jesse Garcia and George Lopez in the Disney+ film, which offers "a new take" on the book and a 2014 movie adaptation starring Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner.

From writer Matt Lopez and director Marvin Lemus, the project is produced by Shawn Levy, Dan Levine, and Lisa Henson. Marisol Roncali and Chelsea Ellis Bloch serve as casting directors.

Shortlists in the six categories of the Sheikh Zayed Book Awards have been selected and can be seen here. Winners will be announced in April and be honored at an awards ceremony at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair in May. Each winner will receive 750,000 UAE dirhams (about $204,200).

Dr. Ali bin Tamim, secretary-general of the awards and chairman of Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre, said: "Each year I am fascinated by the diversity of submissions from around the world and this year's shortlists represent a compelling range of thought-provoking works across academic, fiction and nonfiction publishing, as well as scholarly research. We were particularly delighted to receive so many submissions in the Young Author category, which I think anticipates a bright future for Arab publishing, and I am pleased to see a rigorous and modern engagement with Arab history and heritage across many of the prize categories. It is an honor to recognize the talent and scholarship of Arab and international authors, bringing their work to a wider audience."

The literary world lost a considerable talent when award-winning Canadian writer Steven Heighton died of cancer at age 60 in April 2022, but those who have enjoyed his work will appreciate that he has left behind Instructions for the Drowning: Stories, his third collection. In these 11 expertly constructed and memorable short stories, he excels at capturing his subjects at moments of maximum stress, in the process illuminating different aspects of the human character.

Although there's no thematic unity to the entire collection, several stories focus on the relations between men and women. That's true of the title story, about an incident during a lake vacation which exposes the tension between a couple whose marriage is fraying over their inability to conceive. "Expecting" is the story of another couple, on the verge of the birth of their first child, whose discovery of a stranger's wallet sparks a crisis that brings to the fore the husband's "old assumption that at some point, under some unforeseeable, fatal pressure, the elaborate device of his persona would crack." In "Professions of Love," a skilled plastic surgeon who fancies himself the "deft, silver-haired Inverter of Time," wrestles with the ethics of operating on his aging wife when an unexpected opportunity to do so presents itself.

In another noteworthy story about fatherhood, "Who Now Lies Sleeping," Heighton shifts perspectives among several characters to describe the difficult and poignant episode of a son's return to his rural Canadian home town with the ashes of his husband, who has died of AIDS, and the stony resistance of his father, a widower, to burying the urn containing them in the family plot.

Heighton (The Shadow Boxer) concludes the book with its most unusual story, "The Stages of J. Gordon Whitehead." Whitehead was a university student who gained notoriety for goading Harry Houdini into allowing him to punch the famed escape artist in the stomach in the dressing room of a Montreal theater in 1926, a blow later believed to have caused or hastened Houdini's death a few days later. Heighton vividly imagines Whitehead's life in the role of a faith healer after that event, as an aggressive newspaper reporter pursuing him concocts a bizarre test, trying to decide whether he's a "conscious fraud or a mad believer."

All the stories in Instructions for the Drowning reflect the same careful use of language and attention to efficient development of character. Barring a posthumous collection, this will be the final addition to Steven Heighton's body of short fiction, and it's one that will evoke gratitude amid the sadness over his premature passing. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: The 11 well-crafted stories in Heighton's final collection are worthy models of the contemporary short story.

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

1. Reinvent by Faisal Hoque
2. Something Major by Randi Braun
3. Purpose by Gina Bianchini
4. Rocked by Love by Melissa Foster
5. Profit with Presence by Eric J. Holsapple
6. The Medici Manuscript (The Glass Library Book 2) by C.J. Archer
7. Right Man, Right Time by Meghan Quinn
8. Things We Hide from the Light by Lucy Score
9. Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score
10. The Inmate by Freida McFadden

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]