"Books have made me feel more, and they've granted me access to spaces and ideas I never would have encountered. In many ways, the sum of literature is the sacred for me, and without it I don't know where I would be. To imagine a world without books... impossible. And the same for indie bookstores, which are the very places that carry the sacredness of story. But who opens that door? The indie booksellers, the ones who give so much of their lives to making books available to people. I suppose what I'm saying is those indie booksellers (and anyone who is spending their life doing this kind of work) are the reason I am here. They're the storykeepers--the ones we, or at least I, need to keep going."

Black Garnet Books in St. Paul, Minn., is up for sale. Owner and founder Dionne Sims announced last week that she is looking for a buyer to take over the store, which sells books and art by authors and illustrators of color, as she leaves to pursue her lifelong passion for writing.

Sims, who founded Black Garnet Books in 2020 as a way to support Black authors and Black-owned businesses in the wake of George Floyd's murder, wrote on Instagram: "This bookstore has the foundation to continue for years to come, and I realized that's what I wanted to accomplish. Following that realization, a new desire started to slowly well up, filling in the gaps of my thoughts about the future. I’ve always loved to write, both personally and professionally... I think about it every day.

"I do it every day. And I want to go back to school to take my craft to another place--a braver place--than I've been able to go on my own. Because I'm someone who throws myself head-and-heart-first into my goals, I refuse to half-ass running Black Garnet, or half-ass my schooling."

To prospective bookstore owners, she noted: "Have you ever wanted a bookstore but the idea of scouting locations, fundraising/applying for funds, building out a retail space from scratch, curating (by hand) an opening inventory of 2,000 titles, and doing grassroots marketing for two years sounds like a lot of work?... Might I point you in the direction of a completely set up, established, thriving, well-loved bookstore in the heart of the capital city of Minnesota?"

Schuler Books will host a grand reopening celebration on June 29 to introduce customers to the expanded children's and YA books section at its Ann Arbor, Mich., store. MLive reported that the bookstore spent about a year on renovations on the area that "was constructed in a space next door previously occupied by the Old Siam restaurant, which closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic."

Schuler Books marketing coordinator Alana Haley described the children's/YA section prior to renovations, which gives the bookstore 1,100 new square feet of space, as "very tight. We weren't able to carry everything we wanted to. It basically doubles the amount of space that we had before for kids and young adult books."

The former kids and YA area will now become a used book section, bringing the Ann Arbor location in line with Schuler's other stores in Grand Rapids, Okemos, and West Bloomfield.

A Novel Romance, a romance-focused bookstore that opened in Louisville, Ky., last summer, hosted a grand reopening celebration recently at its expanded new location in an almost 2,400-square-foot building at 10512 Watterson Trail in downtown Jeffersontown.

Owner Jonlyn Scrogham said the store now features hundreds of new titles, space for additional subgenres, an expanded variety of bookish merchandise, a writer's room called the Noveling Nook, and many areas to relax, read, and build community. 

With romantic decor and photo opportunities, A Novel Romance "will be a must see on any trip to or through Louisville," she noted. In addition, book clubs, writer's workshops, and other events will be hosted on-site to continue to expand and foster the community that has been built over the past 11 months.

Scrogham told the Louisville Courier-Journal she opened A Novel Romance as a way to honor a friend who died: "I lost someone very close to me, and I was trying to figure out how to channel that." She had spoken to the friend about what they would do with their lives if they had all the money and resources in the world and Scrogham said she would own a bookstore.

"I had taken myself to Asheville for a week to get away from everything. The very first book I picked up after going through the things I had gone through was One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston," Scrogham recalled. "I finished it 20 minutes after I arrived in Asheville and it was just so cathartic and beautiful. There were parts that were sad but still so hopeful, and I thought 'this is what I want to provide for people.' "

Scrogham hopes to offer that same healing journey to others through her bookstore, which she described as her "love letter to the community."

Wibke Grutjen has been named senior v-p, global chief marketing and communications officer, for Simon & Schuster, effective August 5. She will also be a member of S&S's executive committee. She has been chief marketing officer of Hachette Book Group since 2019.

Wibke Grutjen

Grutjen started her career in the U.K. as an editor of ARTbibliographies Modern. After moving to the U.S. in 2003, she worked in TV production for WETA, ABC News, and the History Channel. In 2007, she joined Penguin UK as head of business information, and in 2010 she joined the digital marketing department at Macmillan Publishers in New York, ultimately rising to v-p, digital marketing.

S&S president and CEO Jonathan Karp said that Grutjen's "international background in media and marketing makes her an ideal choice for this new position, which will combine our corporate marketing and communications teams to establish a more unified approach to our messaging on behalf of our authors and their books throughout the world. Wibke possesses the vision, experience, acuity, and skill to lead Simon & Schuster's superb marketing and communications departments through an increasingly sophisticated landscape of data analytics, artificial intelligence, e-commerce, targeted advertising, social media, and public relations."

Grutjen said, "I have watched with admiration [S&S's] dynamic approach to delivering impactful multi-channel marketing campaigns and reaching consumers for their authors, while boldly pursuing innovation in a time of transition for their company and our industry. I look forward to working with them to take their stellar record of accomplishment to even greater levels."

Chris Santella

Chris Santella, outdoor enthusiast and creator of the Fifty Places series, died on May 23 after a battle of several months with cancer. He was 61.

Santella turned his greatest recreational passion--fly fishing--into a successful book, which in turn became a successful series of books published by Abrams. Fifty Places to Fly Fish Before You Die came out in 2004 and was followed by 18 other Fifty Places books, focused on golfing, camping, paddling, drinking beer, and more. The books were based on interviews Santella conducted with experts who discussed their favorite places.

He also published a children's picture book, Biking with Grandma, in 2022 with Abrams Books for Young Readers; other fly-fishing books; and a natural science book--Cat Wars--with Princeton University Press in 2016. His first novel, Belgian Flats, about a fly-fishing guide who becomes manager of a salmon lodge in Russia, is due out in August from Lyons Press. His final book, Fifty Places to Travel Solo, will be published in October.

Abrams publisher Michael Sand said, "We are deeply saddened by Chris's passing. Abrams has proudly been Chris's publishing home for nearly 20 years. All his Fifty Places books--and perhaps most poignantly his final title, Fifty Places to Travel Solo--reflect Chris's passion for travel, adventure, and discovery. His entire body of work spanning locales and landscapes around the world will forever be a legacy to the joy of living life to the fullest."

On Trout Unlimited, Kirk Deeter posted: "The fly-fishing world is a little bit less 'adventurous,' and quite a bit less 'literary' now, because we recently lost one of the purest, most inspiring writing voices the sport has ever known. Chris Santella gracefully succumbed to cancer at the age of 61 on May 23. I chose those words carefully, because Santella never 'lost' anything--he fought... he won... he taught... he inspired... and most important, he was a role model, a great friend and one of the most genuinely caring people I've ever had the honor of knowing and working with. I know many others who feel just the same way."

Memorial donations may be made to the American Cancer Society.

Boulder Book Store, Boulder, Colo., worked with Kyla Scanlon on a preorder campaign for her new book In This Economy?: How Money & Markets Really Work (Crown Currency). She came in before the store opened and signed more than 700 books. Pictured: Scanlon with Stephanie Schindhelm, the store's marketing & promotions manager.

"It's a Poetry kind of A-M," City Lights Books, San Francisco, Calif., posted on Instagram.

The Bookloft, Great Barrington, Mass., shared a photo on Facebook of the shop's sidewalk chalkboard sign, noting: "The Magical Fireflies are out... 'Light Up' your summer with a book! Pop in and support your local Indie Bookstore."

Artbook | D.A.P. is adding The Song Cave to its worldwide distribution list, effective immediately.

Founded by Ben Estes and Alan Felsenthal in 2009, The Song Cave, Brooklyn, N.Y., has published more than 50 books of poetry, translations. and art criticism. Advocates of avant-garde literature and contemporary poetry, the press is "dedicated to recovering a lost sensibility and creating a new one." Recent titles include The Sphinx and the Milky Way: Selections from the Journals of Charles Burchfield, the abridged edition of the American painter's collected journal entries, and Punks, a collection of poetry by fiction writer, translator, and MacArthur Fellow John Keene, which won the 2022 National Book Award for Poetry.

Artbook | D.A.P. will take on The Song Cave's backlist, formerly represented by SPD, in addition to three 2024 frontlist titles: Emily Hunt's Stranger; The Selkie, New York author and librarian Morgan Võ's first book of poetry; and Hereafter, Felsenthal's second volume of poetry.

Estes and Felsenthal said, "Working with D.A.P. is a dream come true. They care about our books and we trust them wholeheartedly with our catalog."

Sharon Helgason Gallagher, executive director of Artbook | D.A.P., remarked, "We have long admired The Song Cave's authentic and individual approach to publishing. Equally literate in visual culture and the language arts, Alan and Ben are excellent artists and writers themselves who are driven by a keen intellectual curiosity and sincere desire to support their community."

Al Roker's Recipes to Live By: Easy, Memory-Making Family Dishes for Every Occasion by Al Roker and Courtney Roker Laga (Legacy Lit).

Tomorrow:
Jennifer Hudson Show repeat: Joshua Weissman, author of Joshua Weissman: Texture Over Taste (DK, $35, 9780744063509).

Writer-showrunner Emily Whitesell (Siren) will adapt Lindy Ryan's debut novel, Bless Your Heart, for TV, in conjunction with Rain Productions and Boilermaker Entertainment, Deadline reported.

Boilermaker co-founder Louis Milito said, "We are thrilled to partner with Emily who is the perfect writer to adapt Lindy's incredible novel as she is exceptional at balancing serialized story telling with indelible characters. Having a strong female creator to bring the Evans women to the screen was a priority for us in honoring Ryan's novel."

Whitesell commented: "The beauty of well-formed horror, for me, is its nod to the fear and horror we all confront as human beings, along with our own shortcomings. Lindy's book not only created a new genre of horror but her characters embodied that deep well of emotional resonance."

The shortlist for the 2024 Royal Society of Literature Christopher Bland Prize has been released. The £10,000 (about $12,690) award honors "outstanding achievements for a debut novelist or nonfiction writer first published aged 50 or over." The winner will be named July 10. This year's shortlisted titles are:

Now I Am Here by Chidi Ebere 
The Silence Project by Carole Hailey 
The Box with the Sunflower Clasp by Rachel Meller 
High Caucasus by Tom Parfitt 
Ashes & Stones: A Scottish Journey in Search of Witches and Witness by Allyson Shaw 

photo: Holt Grant

Kimi Cunningham Grant is the author of the novels These Silent Woods and Fallen Mountains, as well as a memoir, Silver Like Dust. She is a two-time winner of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Prize in Poetry and a recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowship in creative nonfiction. Her new book, The Nature of Disappearing (Minotaur Books, June 18, 2024), is a captivating novel of suspense that explores what it takes to start over--and the cost of letting the past pull you back in. Grant lives with her family in Pennsylvania.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Fishing guide Emlyn must team up with the man who ruined her life and head deep into the Idaho wilderness when the friend who introduced them goes missing.

On your nightstand now:

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. I lucked out and snagged this off a special shelf at the library, even though I was number 40 in line with my hold! Within a few paragraphs I was hooked. Lawhon wonderfully captures 18th-century life, and with skill and beauty, she builds one mystery after another in her small New England community.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. I recently re-read it with my kids, and wow, I was still blown away by Babbitt's beautiful coming-of-age tale. It's so lyrical and so ambitious in the themes it explores. I loved it when I was 11, and I loved it as an adult!

Your top authors:

Oh, boy--this is tough. I'll narrow it down to favorite contemporaries: Anthony Doerr, Amy Jo Burns, Leif Enger, Barbara Kingsolver, Marilynne Robinson, Hannah Tinti.

Book you've faked reading:

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (in 12th grade! But then I did actually read it as a senior in college, for a post-colonial literature class. I learned a lot, reading it within the context of that course).

Book you're an evangelist for:

I also absolutely love Hannah Tinti's The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley. A few years ago, when my agent felt These Silent Woods was ready to submit to editors, we knew we needed to come up with a list of comparable titles for the pitch, so I reached out to all my reader friends and asked for any father-daughter books they could think of. A friend suggested Tinti's book, so I read it. I fell head over heels for it. This novel is an absolute masterpiece in literary suspense, with scenes that range from heart-pounding to heart-shattering. I later taught this book in a fiction writing class because it's just so brilliant--I felt every reader in the class could gain something from it.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Idaho by Emily Ruskovich. Okay, not so much for the cover, but for the title! Central Idaho is one of my favorite places, and my new novel takes place there, so last winter I finally picked this up. It blew me away. As a fiction writer, I always love a good story. But I also absolutely need the writing to be lyrical and evocative if I'm going to finish a book. (I realize that sounds snooty, but it's really just a thing for me!) Idaho hit all the marks.

Book you hid from your parents:

Forever... by Judy Blume. My friend read it and loaned it to me. (We all had that friend, right?! The one whose parents didn't have rules about what they read, watched, or did.) My mom rarely picked up my books, but for some reason, she found this one and read it. She had a few questions for me, obviously. (Picture my teenage self blushing.)

Book that changed your life:

The Bible

Favorite line from a book:

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" --from Mary Oliver's poem "The Summer Day," first published in House of Light

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

Oh, such a great question! I'm gonna go with Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. It's got multiple storylines, all of which I loved, but I remember reading it, and thinking to myself, "In less capable hands, I would doubt whether these storylines could come together in a meaningful way... but it's Anthony Doerr, so I have no doubt he's gonna pull it off." And boy oh boy, he did. I absolutely loved this book. (Maybe even more than All the Light We Cannot See, which I also adored!)

In her delightfully offbeat middle-grade mystery, A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall, Newbery Honor-winning author Jasmine Warga (Other Words for Home; A Rover's Story) gracefully interlaces a middle school coming-of-age tale with an art heist whodunit. A painting has gone missing at the museum where almost-12-year-old Rami Ahmed's mother works as cleaning crew supervisor. She is under suspicion, and Rami thinks that if he can crack the case, he'll keep her out of jail.

Middle school has gotten off to a rough start for Rami, who sometimes wonders if things would be better for him "socially" if his name ended with a "y" (like his former friends Henry and Matty) instead of an "i." Rami, whose parents were born in Lebanon, is also self-conscious, which makes it difficult to connect with people: "He... always found that initial approach so awkward.... How do you know if someone actually wants you to say hi?" Loud, confident Veda, whose parents were born in India, ignores the awkwardness; she and the rest of her lunch table took him in "after everything bad went down with his old friends." Now, Veda gets right to business helping Rami solve the art theft. Adding to the mystery, Rami has repeatedly seen a girl with bare feet hovering above the floor in Cherry Hall, the room where the painting had hung. Once he gets over his initial shock, he deduces she must have something to do with the missing painting.

A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall is charmingly reminiscent of early- and mid-20th century novels like Half Magic by Edward Eager and Five Children and It by E. Nesbit, as well as those by more contemporary authors like Kate DiCamillo and Erin Entrada Kelly. Matt Rockefeller's black-and-white illustrations at the open and close of the book set the scene with elegant images of the museum and its grounds. A portrait wall captures each character's essence with simple, deft strokes. A somewhat omniscient character named Agatha pops up throughout the book, in repeating spot art as well as in "person." She is a curious, art-loving turtle who lives in the garden behind the museum and sees more than most of the humans. Of course, "this is a story with lots of mysterious and strange things, but it is not a story that features a turtle who can speak with humans," so Agatha is able to contribute to solving the case only indirectly. Warga's novel, like the floating girl, contains a delicious "multitude of mysteries." --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor

Shelf Talker: In this Newbery Honor-winning author's delightfully offbeat mystery, a socially struggling sixth grader learns to connect with people as he attempts to solve the case of a missing museum painting.