Yellow Peril Books has launched a $125,000 KickStarter campaign to open an AAPI-centric bookstore, cafe, and wine bar in Brooklyn, N.Y., by the spring of 2025, AsAmNews reported, noting that creating a community center is the dream co-owners Rachel Lau and Michelle Ming.

According to the KickStarter (which has raised more than $22,000), their vision is that Yellow Peril Books will be, "at its core, a bookstore. But we want to redefine--or, really, remind people--what bookstores can and should be. Bookstores are places of learning, places of discussion, places to connect with others through books or to savor time alone with a good story, places of comfort, places to discover not just works by different writers but also different artists of all disciplines, because literature doesn't exist in a vacuum."

The shop's name is drawn from a phrase coined in the 19th Century representing the racist belief that Asian, and particularly Chinese, people would take over the world--and was used to justify colonizing much of China and limit Chinese immigration. Lau told AsAmNews: "I think I was always very haunted by the idea that there's always stories that are defining what people think are Asian Americans, but they're not written by us. They're not our stories. And so, I think for us, we wanted to kind of reclaim that name and redefine it as like, 'What are our stories?' "

The Kickstarter campaign is designed to raise funds to secure a storefront, including the security deposit, lease signing costs, five months of rent that will be paid during the store's construction and buildout; city permitting fees; furniture for the store; and equipment to operate the cafe (e.g., grinders, an espresso machine). Currently, Lau and Ming are in the process of finding a storefront in East Williamsburg or elsewhere in Brooklyn, where rents for commercial spaces average $12,000-$20,000 per month. 

AsAmNews asked the co-owners what success would look like for Yellow Peril Books. Ming replied that for her, it would be a full calendar of events: "You look into our storefront on a Saturday, and then from day to night, it's just all programming--packed with people just hanging out, drinking coffee, eating our instant noodles that we're gonna curate. And then, just hanging out until nighttime. There's a cool event going on at night. One of our friends is trying to launch a restaurant and is doing pop-ups and wants to do a pop-up in our space. So, that's what's going on that night. And you just--you see constant activity--people meeting each other, maybe a meet cute over a book. I would love that. Just stories of people making connections."

Lau added that when she worked in cafes, "I always loved when a regular would come in, and it's like, you've built a relationship with them. I know--obviously, we haven't even hit our funding goal. There's a lot in order to make this succeed... but to me, it does feel like success that people believe in this, and we've teased out something that they feel is needed. And they're excited about it, and they want to be our customers, to some degree. But I really do feel like we're serving them, too. And so, to already feel like we're getting that positive reinforcement has been really meaningful to me."

The Kickstarter model is all-or-nothing, with an August 18 deadline, but Yellow Peril Books will live on regardless of the outcome. Lau said alternatives might include focusing on online events, a bookmobile, or collaborations with local businesses until they feel ready to try again for funding for a physical storefront. "There are a lot of things we want to do that we can do virtually or without the third space, but to actually bring people together the way we want, it feels critical to our mission," she noted.

On July 10, Barnes & Noble celebrated the opening of its new bookstore in Market Street Flowood mall at 760 Mackenzie Lane, Flowood, Miss., a suburb of Jackson. Author Phyllis R. Dixon, whose most recent title is A Taste for More (Kensington), cut the ribbon and signed copies of her books at the shop, which features an updated B&N Café.

"This is a wonderful, big space which has transformed into a spectacular bookstore," said B&N.

Earlier last week, the San Francisco Small Business Commission approved Christopher's Books, among several other businesses, for the Legacy Business Registry, which began in 2015. 

Tee Minot

"Legacy Businesses anchor neighborhoods and provide the backdrop for quintessential San Francisco experiences," said SBC president Cynthia Huie. "Yet, while they are beloved, many Legacy Businesses struggle with the same economic challenges and uncertainty as younger establishments. We are happy to be able to continuously improve the program, bolstering Legacy Businesses through the Business Stabilization Grant."

In an Instagram post, Christopher's Books noted: "It's official! We're so proud and excited to say this.... We're a legacy business! Thank you so much to the Small Business Commission, the Historic Preservation Commission, and anyone else who has helped us on this journey. Christopher's Books has been perched at 18th and Missouri for 33 years. @tminot [owner Tee Minot, who began working at the store a year after Christopher Ellison founded it in 1992, and has been the sole proprietor since 1996] has been the owner for 32 of them. 

"We're open 7 days a week, recommending books and handing out dog treats. Thank you again to the city of San Francisco for deeming us a valuable cultural asset, part of the 'soul of the city,' and that our preservation is critical to maintaining the unique character of San Francisco. I speak for the whole staff here, past and present, when I say thanks to YOU. You, our wonderful customers and community, are the reason we do this. See y'all around the hill <3."

Edna O'Brien

Irish author Edna O'Brien, who explored the complications and contradictions of women's lives in a literary career lasting more than half a century, died July 27. She was 93. In a series of novels beginning with The Country Girls "that were at first banned in Ireland but feted abroad, O'Brien gave voice to women struggling with the oppressive and hypocritical expectations of rural life," the Guardian wrote. "Her focus widened in later works such as House of Splendid Isolation and The Little Red Chairs, but always maintained the keen intelligence and daring that made Philip Roth once hail her as 'the most gifted woman now writing fiction in English.' "

Faber, her publisher, called O'Brien "one of the greatest writers of our age. She revolutionised Irish literature, capturing the lives of women and the complexities of the human condition in prose that was luminous and spare, and which had a profound influence on so many writers who followed her. A defiant and courageous spirit, Edna constantly strove to break new artistic ground, to write truthfully, from a place of deep feeling. The vitality of her prose was a mirror of her zest for life: she was the very best company, kind, generous, mischievous, brave."

In a statement, Ireland President Michael D. Higgins said, "Through that deeply insightful work, rich in humanity, Edna O'Brien was one of the first writers to provide a true voice to the experiences of women in Ireland in their different generations and played an important role in transforming the status of women across Irish society. While the beauty of her work was immediately recognized abroad, it is important to remember the hostile reaction it provoked among those who wished for the lived experience of women to remain far from the world of Irish literature, with her books shamefully banned upon their early publication. Thankfully Edna O'Brien's work is now recognized for the superb works of art which they are."

In 1950, after leaving a convent where she was being educated and considered being a nun and then qualifying as a pharmacist, she married writer Ernest Gébler against her family's wishes--a hurried decision she described in 2011 as going "from them, to him; from one house of control, to another." The couple moved to London with their two sons in 1959, and O'Brien started working as a reader for the publisher Hutchinson, which soon commissioned her to write a novel. 

The Country Girls, written in three weeks, "was swiftly banned in Ireland, as were O'Brien's next six novels, beginning with two sequels that completed The Country Girls' inevitable trajectory: 1962's The Lonely Girl, and 1964's mordantly-titled Girls in Their Married Bliss," the Guardian wrote. 

After her marriage ended in 1967, O'Brien continued to publishing novels and story collections, including A Pagan Place, Time and Tide, House of Splendid Isolation, Down by the River, Wild Decembers, In the Forest, Girl, August Is a Wicked Month, and The Little Red Chairs. She also wrote a short biography of James Joyce in 1999 and Byron in Love, about the poet's love life, in 2009. Her play Virginia was about Virginia Woolf. Some of her novels were less autobiographical and featured protagonists who included a Serbian war criminal masquerading in Ireland as a sex therapist, an IRA killer, a serial killer, and girls abused by Boko Haram.

Her awards included the 2001 Irish PEN lifetime achievement award, the 2006 Ulysses medal from University College Dublin, the 2011 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award for "Saints and Sinners," the 2018 PEN/Nabokov Award, and the 2019 David Cohen Prize for Literature. In a move that demonstrated changed attitudes in Ireland, President Higgins awarded her the country's highest literary accolade, the Saoi of Aosdána, in 2015. Also, in 2018, she was made a Dame of the Order of the British Empire.

"In some ways I suppose a lot of the material of my life has been ripe for literature, but a bit of a handicap for what is laughingly called everyday life," she said in 1999. "But that's the bargain. Mephistopheles didn't come, you know. He was already there."

In the New York Times, critic Lucy Scholes recalled interviewing O'Brien in 2015: "At one point, we discussed critics who'd diminished her subject matter as 'the narrow world of the heart.' She'd almost roared her response. 'Well, the heart ain't that narrow, and the heart keeps beating!' "

Today co-host Jenna Bush Hager has chosen The Wedding People by Alison Espach (Holt) as her August Read with Jenna book club pick. The book "unfolds over a wedding weekend as two women's opposing plans converge, and compete, at a luxurious hotel in Newport, Rhode Island."

"It's about where we are when we're in the middle of our life and expectations versus reality," Jenna said. "It's about love and friendship and finding that love when you least expect it. I think you will love this book if you want to laugh, maybe shed a couple tears, but also just have a lot of fun."

Author Alison Espach said, "Here are these two women who are experiencing, like, the most important week of their life for very different reasons. Their experiences are heightened. They're about to make these big, permanent decisions and change their lives forever. It was a place to start exploring the kind of connection that could grow and evolve out of that similarity between them."

"It's summer here in San Francisco! That means cloudy skies, plenty of fog, and turning the heater on even in late July. As we head into Fogust, here's a reading list for the 'coldest winter you ever spent.' If you're somewhere sweating through a heat wave, cool down with one of these titles!" City Lights Books, San Francisco, Calif., posted on Instagram. 

I Hate It Here, Please Vote for Me: Essays on Rural Political Decay by Matthew Ferrence (West Virginia University Press).

Today:
CBS Mornings: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, author of True Gretch: What I've Learned About Life, Leadership, and Everything in Between (Simon & Schuster, $26.99, 9781668072318).

Good Morning America: James Patterson and Mike Lupica, authors of Hard to Kill (Little, Brown, $30, 9780316569910).

Also on GMA: Sue Varma, author of Practical Optimism: The Art, Science, and Practice of Exceptional Well-Being (Avery, $29, 9780593418949).

Kelly Clarkson Show repeat: Tiffany Haddish, author of I Curse You with Joy (Diversion Books, $28.99, 9781635769531).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Drew Afualo, author of Loud: Accept Nothing Less Than the Life You Deserve (AUWA, $28, 9780374614058).

CBS Mornings: Jay Ellis, author of Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me)?: Adventures in Boyhood (One World, $29, 9780593243190). He will also appear on the View.

During San Diego Comic-Con, Apple TV+ announced that the second season of the hit series Silo, which is based on Hugh Howey's sci-fi stories--including the novellas Wool, Shift, and Dust--will premiere November 15 with the first episode, followed by one new episode every Friday through January 17, 2025.

Steve Zahn (The White Lotus, Treme) is joining the season 2 cast, which includes returning stars Rebecca Ferguson, Common, Tim Robbins, Harriet Walter, Chinaza Uche, Avi Nash, Alexandria Riley, Shane McRae, Remmie Milner, Clare Perkins, Billy Postlethwaite, Rick Gomez, Caitlin Zoz, Tanya Moodie, and Iain Glen.

Silo is executive produced by creator and showrunner Graham Yost, Howey, Michael Dinner, Nina Jack, Joanna Thapa, Ferguson, Morten Tyldum, Fred Golan, Rémi Aubuchon, and AMC Studios. Silo is produced for Apple TV+ by Apple Studios. 

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon (published in the U.S. by Holt) has won the £5,000 (about $6,430) 2024 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize. The company wrote, "From the start, our booksellers fell in love with the immense humanity and humour of Lennon's unique, profound and ferociously funny work that transports readers to the Sicily of 412 BCE and stages an extraordinary story of friendship, art and ambition against the backdrop of the Peloponnesian War.

"Narrated with endless comic brilliance and a rollicking, distinctly Irish voice, Glorious Exploits follows a pair of unemployed Syracusan potters who decide to put on two of Euripides' greatest plays in a sun-baked quarry, using captured Athenian soldiers as their cast. Wildly clever, utterly disarming and filled with moments of deepest tragedy and unexpected beauty, Lennon's debut is a heartfelt, exhilarating tribute to the power of storytelling and the value of forgiveness."

Bea Carvalho, head of books, Waterstones, added: "‘Lennon brings the ancient world to life in technicolour, from the horrors of war to the moments of hilarity to be found in the mundane, with a charmingly eccentric cast of characters. It is a riotous, exuberant treat of a novel, which celebrates the redemptive power of art. Glorious Exploits is madly ambitious and devastatingly affecting, but above all pure page-turning joy from start to finish."

---

The longlist has been chosen for the $5,000 2024 New American Voices Award, which recognizes "the work of first-generation writers" and is sponsored by Fall for the Book and George Mason University's Institute for Immigration Research. Three finalists will be announced later this summer and the winner in October.

The longlist:
The Material by Camille Bordas (Random House)
Green Frog by Gina Chung (Vintage)
The Sons of El Rey by Alex Espinoza (Simon & Schuster)
A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda (Mariner Books)
Airplane Mode by Shahnaz Habib (Catapult)
Inside the Mirror by Parul Kapur (University of Nebraska Press)
Memory Piece by Lisa Ko (Riverhead)
Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil by Ananda Lima (Tor)
The Road to the Country by Chigozie Obioma (Hogarth)
There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven by Ruben Reyes Jr. (Mariner Books)
Hombrecito by Santiago Jose Sanchez (Riverhead)
Private Equity by Carrie Sun (Penguin Press)

John Banville's The Drowned transports readers to a dour small town on the 1950s Irish coast, where one tragedy after another makes a small cast of characters reconsider what they know and value in the world they inhabit. In his established style, Banville (The Singularities; Snow; Ancient Light; Holy Orders writing as Benjamin Black) offers a stark series of events in understated tones and with a handful of voices. These include Dublin Detective Inspector Strafford and the brilliant pathologist Quirke.

"He had lived alone for so long, so far away from the world and its endless swarms of people, that when he saw the strange thing standing at a slight list in the middle of the field below the house, for a second he didn't know what it was." It turns out to be a luxury motorcar, abandoned, engine still running. The loner who discovers it actively avoids human contact: "Yes, life, so-called, was a birthday party gone wild, with shouting and squabbling, and games he didn't know the rules of, and one lot ganging up on the other, and knocking each other down and dancing in a ring like savages, the whole mad rampage going on in a haze of dust and noise and horrible, hot stinks." He approaches, against his better judgment, and winds up involved in a missing-person case, which will draw Strafford to town, even as the detective wrestles with his own relationships: an estranged wife, a much younger girlfriend, and ever-complicating ties to Dr. Quirke. "We have one thing in common, at least," Quirke quips to Strafford. "Death." Death is an obvious theme, not only in the two characters' professional lives but throughout Banville's troubled setting.

Enriched by Banford's attention to detail, the narrative grows more compelling in its telling by these and other characters, each suffering more or less alone even when they are married, partnered, or set next to immediate family. "The least of remembered things are the most affecting. That walk, the birdlike turn of her head, those trim ankles." The Drowned is slow building, sedately paced, and grim, but wickedly absorbing. By the mystery's denouement, some readers will have guessed the perpetrator's identity, but it is less that identity and more the psychology of it that is Banville's final blow. Through these intricacies and its murky sense of foreboding, this inexorable novel will continue to advance Banville's considerable reputation. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: A recluse discovers an abandoned car and winds up involved in a missing-person case with Strafford and Quirke, who are back at work in this novel of secrets and quiet desperation.