After seven years as a "bookstore without a store," featuring online and pop-up sales, the Snail on the Wall bookstore hosted a grand opening celebration last weekend for its new bricks-and-mortar location at 816 Wellman Avenue in the historic Five Points district of Huntsville, Ala. 

Owned by Lady Smith and Christina Tabereaux, the Snail on the Wall features new books in every genre, including a wide range of titles for children and teens. The bookstore also plans to host regular author events. 

"We want to connect readers with writers and their stories, and we hope that Huntsville will be a destination for authors making stops in neighboring cities like Nashville," said Smith.
 
The Snail on the Wall launched in 2017 as a pop-up and online business. Since then, it has grown into a community bookstore serving not only readers with delivery to doorsteps but working with local nonprofits, businesses, and the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library system. 

"Now, with a brick-and-mortar location, we can do even more to build a strong community of readers, not to mention helping people discover their next exciting read," Tabereaux noted.

The co-owners added: "We hope you love the specially selected reads that will constantly rotate through our collection, and that you have a new experience each time you visit The Snail."

During the opening festivities, Smith told WHNT: "I'm completely overwhelmed that people were waiting at the door. It means so much. This is a risky thing to do, but it makes us feel great that people are excited about it."

Taberaux added: "We know that customer when they walk in the door. We always joke that it's a little like Norm from Cheers the TV show a while ago, where that person walks in the door, we know them, we know what they like when we are ordering books, we can look at that and say 'oh so and so, so and so's gonna love this one.' "

Sunbound Books, "with the goal of shining a spotlight on female authors and their stories," opened last week at 3215 N. Anthony Blvd. in Fort Wayne, Ind., WANE reported. The bookstore features books by women authors in a variety of genres, as well as a section for children's books.

Owner Liz Kelpin said she started looking into the idea of opening a bookstore last year: "It kind of aligned with my work experience, and about a year ago I started looking seriously into doing it.... It just became important to me to highlight female authors or at least authors who weren't as well-known. What I kind of gravitate towards is reading stories about women or for women. It's what I'm familiar with... it really was kind of just mashing up what we know with what we feel like is also something the community wants."

After initially considering a space at Electric Works, Kelpin opted for the North Anthony Boulevard location because it is near where she lives and close to two coffee shops and other local businesses.

"They were remodeling this strip, and I love that this area is right on the trail and is really close to other cafes, the Wooden Nickel, The Garden does a lot of events, so I knew it was a good foot traffic [area]," she said.

Kelpin hopes to host book clubs and author talks in the future and to see Sunbound Books turn into a go-to destination for those who like to read, noting: "I see it as a place that is not just for buying books, but for also meeting people and making friends and finding new things through books."

Barnes & Noble will launch its new Tucson, Ariz., bookstore tomorrow, September 25, in the Tucson Mall at 4500 North Oracle Road. The store is one of nine new B&N locations to open in September, alongside bookstores in Texas, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, Nevada, and Tennessee. 

"The ongoing growth in book sales as a whole--and particularly for Barnes & Noble--allows us to open new bookstores at a pace we have not achieved in decades," B&N said. "Now we open beautiful bookstores of all sizes, including this one, our third in Tucson."

Total net book sales in the first six months of 2024 in the U.S. rose 5.6%, to $6.3 billion, compared to the first half of 2023, representing sales of 1,277 publishers and distributed clients as reported to the Association of American Publishers. In June, net book sales rose 6.2%, to $1.1 billion.

Year-to-date trade revenues rose 5%, to $4.3 billion. Hardback revenues were up 4.3%, to $1.5 billion. Paperbacks grew 3.9%, to $1.5 billion. Mass market was down 15.6%, to $62.1 million. Special bindings were up 5%, to $92.1 million. Excluding mass market, adult categories rose in the range of 3.3%-7%. By contrast, excluding special bindings, children's categories fell between 2.3%-4.4%.

In the first six months, e-book revenues were up 2.8%, to $507.3 million. Digital audio rose 9.7%, to $503.4 million. Physical audio dropped 21.4%, to $4.5 million.

Sales by category for the first six months of 2024:

Neil King Jr., a former Wall Street Journal reporter and the author of American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal, died on September 17, the Washington Post reported. He was 65.

Neil King Jr.

King loved to travel from an early age, becoming a journalist in his early 30s "after years of following his wanderlust curiosity across the world," the Post wrote. "He picked up jobs such as hauling nets on a fishing boat in Alaska and spent several weeks in a Buddhist monastery in Sri Lanka."

He spent more than 20 years at the Wall Street Journal in a variety of positions, including as a chief correspondent in Brussels; in the Washington, D.C., office, where some  reporting he worked on about the 9/11 attacks received a Pulitzer; a national political reporter; and editor of the paper's economic coverage. He left the paper in 2016.

He had thought about taking his long walk for decades. Then, "on March 29, 2021, Mr. King slipped on his gray-and-green backpack, put on his tweed cap, gave one last stretch to his lanky 6-foot-5 frame and walked down the front steps of his Capitol Hill townhouse," the Post wrote. "Over the next 26 days and 330 miles, he followed the back roads through Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and finally over the Bayonne Bridge into Staten Island. There, he was joined for a few miles by a local man who surprised Mr. King with literary references to the 14th-century wayfarers in The Canterbury Tales." His route skipped cities and larger towns, and when he arrived in Midtown Manhattan, "he celebrated with a Negroni at a Fifth Avenue sidewalk bar."

That trip became the basis for American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal, published last year by Mariner Books. In Shelf Awareness, we wrote in part: "American Ramble is the wise, warmhearted account of a journey that was pedestrian in its execution, but miles from that in the depth of King's experience and his ability to share it in a clear and affecting way…he generously shares his sense of discovery and delight on every page." A paperback edition was released in March.

Volumes Bookcafe in Chicago, Ill., hosted Lyndsay Rush (l.), aka @maryoliversdrunkcousin, author of the new poetry collection A Bit Much (St. Martin's Griffin). She was in conversation with author Kate Kennedy (One in a Millennial) at the sold-out event.

Bookmarks, Winston-Salem, N.C., is getting ready for the 19th annual Bookmarks Festival of Books and Authors, which will take place September 26-29.

Posted on Instagram by Dorothy June Booksellers, Foley, Ala.: "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Stop by Dorothy June today."

The Paris Understudy by Aurélie Thiele (Alcove Press/Crooked Lane).

Today:
Fresh Air: Aaron Zebley, co-author of Interference: The Inside Story of Trump, Russia, and the Mueller Investigation (Simon & Schuster, $28.99, 9781668063743).

Tomorrow:
CBS Mornings: Lance Bass, author of Trick or Treat on Scary Street (Union Square Kids, $18.99, 9781454952176).

Today Show: Coco Mellors, author of Blue Sisters (Ballantine, $30, 9780593723760).

Drew Barrymore Show: Ms. Rachel (aka Rachel Accurso), author of Ms. Rachel and the Special Surprise (Random House Books for Young Readers, $19.99, 9780593811252).

Oscar-nominated actress and producer Margot Robbie (Barbie) and BAFTA-nominated actor Jacob Elordi (Saltburn) will star in a film adaptation of Emily Brontë's classic Wuthering Heights. Describing the casting decision as "an A-list pairing," Deadline reported that Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) will write, direct and produce. In addition to being the studio on the project, MRC will also finance it and has set LuckyChap to produce. 

The film is currently in pre-production, gearing up for a U.K. shoot in 2025. Robbie plays Catherine Earnshaw and Elordi is Heathcliff. Deadline noted that Wuthering Heights reunites Elordi and Fennell, with the actor starring in the director's most recent movie, Saltburn.

The shortlist has been selected for the £50,000 (about $66,560) 2024 Wolfson History Prize, honoring "the best history books from the past year." The winner will be announced December 2.

The shortlist:

Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century by Joya Chatterji
Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire by Nandini Das
Traders in Men: Merchants and the Transformation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by Nicholas Radburn
Our NHS: A History of Britain's Best-Loved Institution by Andrew Seaton
Winnie & Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage by Jonny Steinberg
Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942-2022 by Frank Trentmann

The Greatest Lie of All by Jillian Cantor (Half Life; The Hours Count; Margot; The Lost Letter) is a propulsively paced story of intrigue, romance, and suspense starring two women a generation apart navigating family, love, secrets, and art. In one of their several parallels, each uses a professional pseudonym, so that four names delineate these two character arcs.

Readers meet the young, up-and-coming actress Amelia Grant just after the death of her beloved mother, and in the moment when she discovers her actor boyfriend in bed with his costar. At this low, Amelia is primed to accept her biggest role yet: to play the fabulously successful romance author Gloria Diamond in a biopic. Gloria had been Amelia's mother's favorite; it feels like a sign and a way to be close to the mother she's lost, the only person who had called her by her birth name, Annie.

Heartbroken but determined, Amelia travels from Los Angeles to Gloria's remote Seattle-area home to get to know her subject before filming begins. But "the Gloria Diamond" is distinctly unfriendly, cold, and dismissive. Even as Amelia finds a tentative friendship with Gloria's son, Will ("cute, in an academic kind of way"), she despairs at ever understanding what makes the older woman tick. Gloria's career was built on her famous, brief romance with her late husband, Will's father. But the more Amelia learns, the less convincing that story is. She embarks on an informal investigation fueled by shadowy motives: her desire to play a "true" Gloria Diamond; her curiosity about the nature of love, especially as her mother so appreciated it in Diamond's fiction; and Will's reluctant desire to understand his mother. As she pursues the history of the author once known as Mary Forrester--Mare to her friends--Amelia begins to wonder about her own role in the drama unfolding before her.

In chapters that shift between Amelia's perspective and that of the young Mare, The Greatest Lie of All shines in its plot twists and surprises, and, most of all, its pacing, which accelerates from a slow burn to a heart-thumping momentum. The tension increases, stakes rising as Gloria/Mare and Amelia/Annie must reckon with their pasts to chart their shared present. Danger accompanies every possibility of romance, and family history matters more than it originally appears. Cantor's experienced hand shows in this classically crafted thriller, which will keep its readers tautly engaged to the final scene. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: A young actress takes on the role of a glamorous romance author and gets more mystery--and romance--than she'd reckoned for.

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

1. Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton
2. The Reset Mindset by Penny Zenker
3. The Happy Hustle Version 2.0 by Cary Jack
4. Truly Madly Deeply by L.J. Shen
5. Wild Eyes by Elsie Silver
6. Twisted Love by Ana Huang
7. Mindset Training by Nekeshia Hammond
8. Fall into Temptation by Lucy Score
9. Madness by Shantel Tessier
10. Wrecked by Lauren Asher

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]