Oliver & Friends Bookshop has reopened in its new location in Waterville, Maine, Mainebiz reported.

Founded in Belgrade, Maine, in 2020, the store is now located at 150 Main St. in Waterville, in a space owned by nearby Colby College. Owner Renee Cunningham welcomed customers to the new space earlier this summer.

The space, Cunningham noted, has been "built to spec" and has a "cozy cottage feel." She is also the recent recipient of a $10,000 grant from American Express and Main Street America's Backing Small Business Grant Program; Cunningham intends to put that money to use expanding the store's inventory and bringing in new fixtures.

Cunningham told Mainebiz that although her first few years in Belgrade were good, the town was highly seasonal, and between January and May the store would be open only for very limited hours. She began looking for new locations where things wouldn't be so seasonal and she could more consistently grow the business.

"I'm really optimistic that business will be a lot more steady and much more consistent year-round," Cunningham said.

Michel and Ruth Moushabeck, founders of Interlink Publishing, have transferred ownership of the 37-year-old publisher to a new generation of owners that includes their daughters Leyla, Hannah, and Maha, and their son-in-law Harrison Williams.

Leyla, Hannah, and Maha Moushabeck

Founded in 1987, Interlink is located in Northampton, Mass., and publishes fiction, nonfiction, children's books, cookbooks, and fiction in translation highlighting voices from the Global South. It is the only Palestinian-owned publisher in the U.S. and publishes approximately 80 titles each year, with a backlist of more than 1,000 titles. It also operates Booklink Booksellers, a bookstore that opened in 1997.

"Our mission remains unchanged," the new owners said in a statement. "We believe in amplifying the voices so often excluded in the mainstream. We are dedicated to sharing the history, art, music, literature, and beauty that our culture, and so many others, bring to the world, and we see this as a form of resistance."

Some of Interlink's bestselling titles include Palestine on a Plate by Joudie Kalla, Ethiopia by Yohanis Gebreyesus, Rainbow Revolutions by Jamie Lawson, We Are Palestinian by Reem Kassis, and poetry collections by Mahmoud Darwish.

Concerning the new owners, Leyla is editorial director and longtime cookbook editor at Interlink as well as the author of The Immigrant Cookbook: Recipes That Make America Great (Interlink). Maha is managing director and earlier worked at Yale University Press. Harrison Williams is a director of Interlink.

Hannah is a board member of the New England Independent Booksellers Association and the author of Homeland: My Father Dreams of Palestine (Chronicle). Until this past spring, when she joined Interlink, she was independent retail marketing manager for Simon & Schuster and earlier worked at Chronicle Books, the Quarto Group, and the Odyssey Bookshop, S. Hadley, Mass.

Barnes & Noble has confirmed that it has completed the purchase of Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver, Colo., following a bankruptcy court judge's approval of the deal on Tuesday.

B&N said that Tattered Cover staff, "supported by the IT teams at Barnes & Noble," is now working to make a transition to new book ordering systems, which has led to shortened hours at the four stores, mostly this week, and an interruption to tatteredcover.com. (Store and e-mail systems are also being changed "in the coming weeks," according to Tattered Cover.) All four stores were closed yesterday and are closed today. In addition, the Aspen Grove store will be closed on Friday. The Colfax store will close early next Monday, August 5, and the Union Station and Stanley Marketplace stores will close early on Thursday, August 8.

B&N stated that Tattered Cover is "to be run independently by its own store managers, maintaining its distinct identity. No stores are to close and all existing commitments, including the Friends of Tattered Cover benefits and Tattered Cover gift cards, will be honored."

B&N CEO James Daunt commented: "Tattered Cover today puts the challenging bankruptcy process behind it. [Tattered Cover CEO] Brad Dempsey has guided the company expertly through the court process, and we are very grateful to him, as also to the store teams for their steadfast application to running the stores through this period of uncertainty. The Tattered Cover store managers, supported by their booksellers, now begin the rebuilding of these wonderful bookstores."

Dempsey said, "I am very pleased that Tattered Cover emerges from bankruptcy fully supported and recapitalized, preserving its unique identity and able now to rebuild its reputation for bookselling excellence. I am very grateful to the Tattered Cover employees and the loyalty of our customers. The outpouring of support has been extraordinary."

Kim Shannon has been named senior v-p, sales, at Simon & Schuster, where she will be responsible for all sales and be a member of the S&S Executive Board. She was most recently executive v-p, adult retail & education sales and director of sales strategy at Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. She had worked at Penguin Random House since 2008. Earlier she was director, national accounts, for Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing and before that, held positions at Workman Publishing and Random House.

Kim Shannon

S&S president and CEO Jonathan Karp said, "The leader of our sales division must possess a strong sense of the current marketplace, where it is headed, and how best to allocate our resources to meet its demands; an unceasing dedication to our mission on behalf of our authors; the ability to balance the concerns of our publishers with the needs of our bookselling customers; and a highly attuned radar for the latest trends amidst rapidly changing reading tastes. Kim exceeds these high expectations and brings a wealth of experience in sales and management to her new role. I know she will be the leader we need: a strong advocate for our authors and books, and a superb manager and leader who can take the Sales division forward in this exciting time in publishing."

Shannon, who joins S&S September 3, said, "I'm thrilled to be rejoining Simon & Schuster at such an exciting time. I look forward to working with the talented sales and publishing teams to accelerate growth and reach new readers in our rapidly changing marketplace."

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In other personnel news at S&S, Doug Stambaugh has been promoted to senior v-p, corporate development and business operations. He joined the company in 2007 as executive director, Simon & Schuster Digital, and since 2019, he has been v-p and director, strategic operations and business development. With his promotion, Stambaugh will add corporate development and mergers and acquisitions to his responsibilities, which have already included the purchase of Dutch publisher VBK.

In an announcement to staff about the promotion, Dennis Eulau, executive v-p, chief operations officer, added, "With Doug's leadership and collaborative spirit, we look forward to continuing to pursue this strategy on a global basis to help Simon & Schuster grow and better serve our authors in the future."

James C. Scott, "one of the world's most widely read social scientists, whose studies on why top-down government schemes of betterment often fail and how marginalized groups subtly undermine authority led to his embrace of anarchism as a political philosophy," died July 19, the New York Times reported. He was 87. Scott was Sterling professor emeritus of political science at Yale University. He also taught in Yale's department of anthropology and the school of forestry and environmental studies before retiring in 2022.

His bibliography includes "disparate, iconoclastic books, several of them regarded as classics," the Times noted, adding that his wide-ranging scholarship was approachable to nonscholars, giving him "a readership that was both broad and politically diverse, including the free-market libertarians of the Cato Institute and the lefty theorists of the Occupy Wall Street movement. His study of rural ethnic groups in Southeast Asia, and the theories about resistance to power that he extrapolated, led to a new view of supposedly primitive peoples and to a new academic field, resistance studies."

Scott's most influential book is Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1998). Other works include Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1985), The Moral Economy of the Peasant (1976), The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2010), Two Cheers for Anarchism (2012), Domination and the Arts of Resistance (1990), and Against the Grain (2017). His final book, In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings, was completed in March and will be published by Yale University Press in February 2025.

In a tribute, Yale wrote that Scott "used his impeccable and on-the-ground scholarship, fierce intellect, and clear and uncompromising eye to write on a broad range of subjects, including peasant resistance, top-down state social planning, and anarchism. Often this writing captured the stories of neglected and misunderstood communities....

"Always working against the grain, always blind to what was au courant in his disciplines, always suspicious of any administrative power that reflected the power of the state, always focused on his passion for his work and the causes for which he cared, he went his way, an inspirational teacher and colleague, invested in what he believed, transforming scholarship as he went."

Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell (Morrow) is the August pick for Reese's Book Club, which described the book as "the story of two kids who fell in love before they knew enough about love to recognize it. Two friends who lost everything. Two adults who just feel lost. It's the story of Shiloh and Cary, who everyone thought would end up together, trying to find their way back to the start."

Reese wrote: "Happy 99th Reese's Book Club Pick! This month's pick invites you into the bittersweet world of Shiloh and Cary, where childhood promises are tested by time, and love finds its way back through unexpected twists."

At Simon & Schuster:

Amy Rohn has been promoted to national account manager and will now sell to Readerlink in addition to her other accounts.

National account manager Stephanie Calman will now sell to Sam's Club and BJ's in addition to Walmart.

Jerry Jensen, former national account manager, has left the company.

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Corrin Bronersky has joined Sourcebooks as publishing marketing assistant.

My Perfect Movement Plan: The Move Your DNA All Day Workbook by Katy Bowman (Uphill Books/PGW).

Tomorrow:
Kelly Clarkson Show repeat: Hadley Vlahos, author of The In-Between: Unforgettable Encounters During Life's Final Moments (Ballantine, $27, 9780593499931).

Late Show with Stephen Colbert repeat: Keanu Reeves, co-author, with China Miéville, of The Book of Elsewhere: A Novel (Del Rey, $30, 9780593446591).

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, August 3
12:30 p.m. Matthew Algeo, author of When Harry Met Pablo: Truman, Picasso, and the Cold War Politics of Modern Art (Chicago Review Press, $28.99, 9781641607872). (Re-airs Saturday at 9:30 p.m.)

5:45 p.m. Stacy Schiff, author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams (Back Bay, $21.99, 9780316441094).

Sunday, August 4
8 a.m. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, author of True Gretch: What I've Learned About Life, Leadership, and Everything in Between (Simon & Schuster, $26.99, 9781668072318). (Re-airs Sunday at 8 p.m.)

9:05 a.m. John Ganz, author of When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $30, 9780374605445). (Re-airs Sunday at 9:05 p.m.)

2 to 6:30 p.m. Coverage of the 2024 Roosevelt Reading Festival in Hyde Park, N.Y. Highlights include:

• 2 p.m. David Roll, author of Ascent to Power: How Truman Emerged from Roosevelt's Shadow and Remade the World (Dutton, $33, 9780593186442).
• 2:49 p.m. David Pietrusza, author of Gangsterland: A Tour Through the Dark Heart of Jazz-Age New York City (Diversion Books, $19.99, 9781635769890).
• 3:29 p.m. Sheryl Kaskowitz, author of A Chance to Harmonize: How FDR's Hidden Music Unit Sought to Save America from the Great Depression--One Song at a Time (Pegasus Books, $29.95, 9781639365715).
• 4:13 p.m. Molly Guptill Manning, author of The War of Words: How America's GI Journalists Battled Censorship and Propaganda to Help Win World War II (Blackstone Publishing, $25.99, 9798200961597).
• 5:36 p.m. Paul M. Sparrow, author of Awakening the Spirit of America: FDR's War of Words With Charles Lindbergh--and the Battle to Save Democracy (Pegasus Books, $29.95, 9781639366675).

6:30 p.m. Yuval Levin, author of American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation--and Could Again (Basic Books, $32, 9780465040742).

Information Desk: An Epic by Robyn Schiff (Penguin Poets) has won the $20,000 2024 Four Quartets Prize, which honors "a unified and complete sequence of poems published in America in a print or online journal, chapbook, or book" and is sponsored by the T.S. Eliot Foundation and the Poetry Society of America.

Finalists, who each receive $1,000, were The Orange Tree by Dong Li (University of Chicago Press) and West: A Translation by Paisley Rekdal (Copper Canyon Press).

Judges said that Information Desk "wanders the halls of both the physical space of the museum and the interior movements of the mind. It lives in the unknown questionings that are punctuated by almost obsessive meditations on the lives of wasps as she speaks of art, power, family, imagination, the ways in which a life is constructed as meaning is constructed.

"Both the syntax and the interventions of the linebreaks keep us moving forward but encountering surprise after surprise, whether it be anecdotal memory, historical fact or meditations on the making of art ('art history explains/this is how/to micromanage an optimal viewing distance from the eye'). Though the title and subject may sound institutional, the narrative veers off into eros, lushness, beauty, the lack of boundary between the self and the subjects that surround us. Roaming the halls of the museum, Schiff is attuned to the trespasses that attend to power, collecting, curating, and the abuses and injustices of capitalism. 'I could steer one on one’s way toward/something else. The digressions /are endless.' The digressions are, in fact, the pleasures of these long, fractal sentences.

"These poems transform the museum into a microcosm of both the high and the low, the symbols of power and the objects borne of affections, the dangers and the delights of human endeavor. The ingenious thinking--the shaping of these artifacts as narrative of both the arc of history and the intimacy of the mind when left to meditate and imagine their uses--is what gives this collection its soul, its urgency. Schiff is a docent enthralled and enthralling, intimate with all that surrounds her and ready to draw you into her world, into her captivating mind."

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Finalists have been selected for the $10,000 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award, recognizing the best books "with a horse racing backdrop." The winner's ceremony will be held November 7. The finalists:

Isaac Murphy: The Rise and Fall of a Black Jockey by Katherine C. Mooney about the winner of three Kentucky Derbys born during slavery who is considered one of the best jockeys of all time.
Lexington: The Extraordinary Life and Turbulent Times of America's Legendary Racehorse by Kim Wickens about the mid-19th century champion Lexington.
The Turcottes: The Remarkable Story of a Horse Racing Dynasty by Curtis Stock about the five jockey brothers who included Ron Turcotte, who rode Secretariat to his Triple Crown in 1973.

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, August 6:

The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss (Viking, $29.99, 9780593299920) chronicles American bookstores and their place in American cultural life.

The Art of Power: My Story as America's First Woman Speaker of the House by Nancy Pelosi (Simon & Schuster, $30, 9781668048047) is a political memoir.

Catherine, the Princess of Wales: A Biography of the Future Queen by Robert Jobson (Pegasus, $29.95, 9781639367122) is a biography of Kate Middleton.

Mississippi Swindle: Brett Favre and the Welfare Scandal that Shocked America by Shad White (Steerforth, $29, 9781586423865) reveals how tens of millions of dollars were stolen from struggling Mississippi families.

Shadow of Doubt: A Thriller by Brad Thor (Atria/Emily Bestler, $29.99, 9781982182236) is the 23rd Scot Harvath thriller.

Fire and Bones by Kathy Reichs (Scribner, $27.99, 9781668050927) is the 23rd thriller with forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher (Tor, $27.99, 9781250244079) is a reimagining of the Brothers Grimm's "The Goose Girl."

Arkangel: A Sigma Force Novel by James Rollins (Morrow, $32, 9780062893161) is the 18th Sigma Force thriller.

Hum: A Novel by Helen Phillips (S&S/Marysue Rucci, $27.99, 9781668008836) is a dystopian thriller set in a world marred by climate change and intelligent robots.

The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey (Orbit, $30, 9780316525572) is the start of a new sci-fi series by the authors of The Expanse.

HoverGirls by Geneva Bowers (Bloomsbury, $24.99, 9781547611188) is the first print edition of the popular webcomic about magical girls fighting monsters.

How It All Ends by Emma Hunsinger (Greenwillow, $15.99, 9780063158146) is the debut graphic novel from the creator of the viral autobiographical comic, "How to Draw a Horse."

Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past by Tore C. Olsson (St. Martin's Press, $30, 9781250287700) expands on the real history portrayed in a hit video game series.

Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence by Sara Imari Walker (Riverhead, $29, 9780593191897) explores new theories about the origins of life on Earth and elsewhere in the cosmos.

Paperbacks:
Consciousness Is All There Is: How Understanding and Experiencing Consciousness Will Transform Your Life by Dr. Tony Nader (Hay House, $24.99, 9781401976507).

The Canning Diva Presents Meals in a Jar: The Ultimate Guide to Pressure Canning Ready-Made Meals by Diane Devereaux (Ten Peaks Press, $26.99, 9780736989114).

Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant: How Nannying for the 1% Taught Me about the Myths of Equality, Motherhood, and Upward Mobility in America by Stephanie Kiser (Sourcebooks, $17.99, 9781728298160).

Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend: A Novel by MJ Wassmer (Sourcebooks Landmark, $16.99, 9781464218026).

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

Hardcover
The Heart in Winter: A Novel by Kevin Barry (Doubleday, $28, 9780385550598). "I found this story of two young lovers on the run in 1890s Montana to have the grit of a Cormac McCarthy novel, and the adventure and peril found in Cold Mountain. I expect this stunning novel to stay with me for a long time." --Linda Grana, Reasonable Books, Lafayette, Calif.

State of Paradise: A Novel by Laura van den Berg (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27, 9780374612207). "Unnerving, odd, sometimes spooky, sometimes very funny. Here is a world of warped reality--by grief, by pandemic, by Major Weather Events, by technology, sometimes even by our own minds. This is one of Laura van den Berg's best." --Santiago Nocera, Greedy Reads, Baltimore, Md.

Paperback
How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair (Simon & Schuster, 9781982132347, $18.99). "This extraordinary memoir explores self-actualization at the crossroads of womanhood and Black liberation. Sinclair's poetic brilliance brought grace to even her most excruciating experiences. I am in awe of her compassion and transcendence." --Evisa Gallman, Uncle Bobbie's Coffee & Books, Philadelphia, Pa.

Ages 4-8
Prunella by Beth Ferry, illus. by Claire Keane (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, $18.99, 9781665921732). "A tender story of being different and finding your perfect genus in a sea of dissimilar species. Makes me want a purple thumb--or maybe I already have one." --Stephanie Staton, CoffeeTree Books, Morehead, Ky.

Ages 8-12
Camp Prodigy by Caroline Palmer (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, $22.99, 9781665930383) "VIOLISTS FOR THE WIN! Camp Prodigy is a wonderfully vibrant and emotive graphic novel that celebrates music and the kids that play it! All about the pressure that we put ourselves under to be the best, making friends, accepting support, and navigating the gender binary." --Kimi Loughlin, The Silver Unicorn Bookstore, Acton, Mass.
                                    
Teen Readers: An Indies Introduce Title
Looking for Smoke by K.A. Cobell (Heartdrum, $19.99, 9780063318670). "This book is a powerful and thought-provoking story about the importance of community, the search for belonging, and the heart-wrenching realities of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). This book will leave you on the edge of your seat, challenging you to see through the smoke and discover the killer." --Kromeklia Bryant, Solid State Books, Washington, D.C.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

By 1853, Benito Juárez had served as judge, deputy, and governor of the state of Oaxaca, but he would not become Mexico's first indigenous president until after a period of exile. Among other locations, he spent 18 months in exile in New Orleans, a time about which relatively little is known. With Season of the Swamp, Mexican writer Yuri Herrera (Signs Preceding the End of the World; Kingdom Cons; Ten Planets) sheds speculative light on this brief chapter in Juárez's life. Herrera's regular English translator, Lisa Dillman, again brings a precise ear for Herrera's linguistic play to this spellbinding fictionalized history.

Besides Herrera's contextualizing prologue, the name Benito Juárez almost never appears. Instead, readers accompany an unnamed protagonist, in close third-person perspective, from his arrival in this remarkable "city that served up accidents on a platter" through his departure, by which time "if one day he was dropped there without anyone telling him where he was, he'd know it was New Orleans even with his eyes closed." Juárez marvels at the heat, the Yellow Jack epidemic, the local culture soaked in music and dance, and the stray dogs. He has seen other cities--"Seville, Gibraltar, New York--all of them rich, but none like this, where you could so clearly see the blood on the gold." He is dismayed at the enslaved people, referred to as "the captured," sold in open markets and subjugated, as in the novella's memorable opening scene. He meets with fellow exiles and political minds, makes new friends, settles in. New Orleans is beautiful and horrifying, and Herrera portrays both aspects simultaneously, with humor and lyricism: "A moment later, the austere innkeeper began mopping up the sanguineous intimacies smeared all over the floor."

Wordplay and a special attention to language form a persistent feature in Herrera's work. A fellow expat claims Méjico, but Juárez recognizes it's been pronounced "not with a Mexican ex but a Spaniard's jay.... 'This is the vegetable market,' Cabañas veed iberically." Juárez is attuned to new languages, including music and body language, and thinks of language learning as related to his time spent teaching high school physics: "his students began to glimpse a new world in those equations, the same way you see animals in the clouds, except these animals actually existed." A sense of wonder and play, linguistic curiosity, and a knack for being both morbid and funny, contribute to an absorbingly pleasurable read, even amid the death and tragedy. Herrera offers another brilliant novella steeped in political and historical time and place. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: Yuri Herrera applies his exceptional gift for succinct, imaginative storytelling to a fictionalized history of Benito Juárez in exile in New Orleans.