"Books are one of the most important things in my life, both as a reader and as a writer. And there's nothing quite like having a regular indie bookstore where you feel at home and comfortable enough to explore titles you might otherwise never have approached, or found. As someone who reads and writes in English but lives in Spain, where most bookstores are lacking English-language stock, the indie bookstores I turn to are an especially valuable resource for me to discover new (and old) titles from English-language markets."

"In many ways, it was like we opened a big, expensive pop-up to get through the holidays, and now we're finding our footing," said Karah Rempe, the owner of the Fountain Bookshop, an all-ages bookstore, ice cream shop, and soda fountain that opened in Upper Manhattan in November.

Located at 803 W. 187th St. in Washington Heights, Fountain Bookshop spans about 1,100 square feet across two floors. The first floor contains the soda and ice cream counter, which sits "right where you come in," along with classic and contemporary adult fiction and several categories of nonfiction. The downstairs space, which makes up about two-thirds of the overall square footage, contains the store's children and YA sections along with science fiction and fantasy, mystery and thriller, romance, and graphic novels

Given the neighborhood, Rempe explained, it was always very important to her to have a robust children's section, as the area is full of "young families with young kids." It's almost impossible to walk down the sidewalk, she added, without seeing "a dog or baby or both." Rempe has also made sure to have Spanish-language titles available, and she and her team are "growing that collection every day."

Karah Rempe

Within the store's adult fiction offerings, she noted, mystery and thriller, science fiction, and romance are particularly strong. Rempe has a culinary background--she is a pastry chef, and she and her husband, Hugo Pinto, own the restaurant and bakery Dutch Baby, which is just down the street from Fountain Bookshop--and as a result, "cookbooks are important to me."

When it comes to nonbook items, Rempe said about 40% of the store's gift merchandise is sourced from makers throughout New York City and sold on a consignment basis. The remaining portion includes book-related products, puzzles, and games sourced from places like Faire.

Discussing the store's ice cream and soda selection, Rempe said she and her team have been slowly expanding their options since opening, and she called it "shocking" how much ice cream the store has managed to sell in the middle of winter. Ice cream sundaes will be coming in the spring, along with root beer floats, affogatos, cream sodas, cherry sodas, and egg creams. In fact, Rempe said, the most frequent question the store gets is "when are egg creams coming?"

Rempe sources the ice cream from Jane's, a family-owned creamery near Kingston, N.Y. She praised the creamery's "level of pride and quality control," adding that it has a "good amount of vegan flavors." As a pastry chef and someone who loves making ice cream, Rempe initially considered making the ice cream herself, but "some wise people in my life talked me away from that dream."

Rempe does, however, create the syrups for the store's soda fountain herself. While syrups are available from big distributors, the "quality is better" when they are made in-house. "There are certain things we can't compromise on," she said.

Fountain's downstairs space

The first events Fountain Bookshop started hosting were storytime sessions; the shop now does two storytimes each week, including bilingual sessions. The first book club meeting took place early this month, and Rempe said she's working to "build out the calendar." While there is limited event space in-store, Rempe can hold larger events at Dutch Baby.

She said the store was lucky in that the neighborhood is full of local authors, from academics to poets to children's authors. When the store opened, Rempe created a form meant to gauge whether local authors would be interested in appearing for events. The response blew her away, with more than 200 people indicating they were interested.

Touching on her professional background, Rempe called books her "first love" and said opening the bookstore was a "full-circle moment." She began her career as an English professor, with an emphasis on American literature, before leaving academia to go to culinary school. She then became a pastry chef, and nearly a decade ago opened Dutch Baby with her husband.

Fountain's fiction section

Rempe said she's loved bookstores for years, calling them "calming places" and refuges for her while she was getting her Ph.D. When a retail space opened up very close to Dutch Baby, she felt it was the right time to create a space like that of her own. She wanted a food and beverage component to help diversify the income stream, but decided against a cafe due to the plethora of coffee shops in the area, as well as the proximity to her own bakery and restaurant. From there she decided on the ice cream and soda fountain concept.

Asked about the community's response, Rempe said it's been "really pretty special." Over the summer, while there were construction delays with the storefront and Rempe's husband was prohibited from re-entering the U.S. for three months due to complications with his visa, the community "rallied behind us." Community members helped write letters to congresspeople, and a petition that Rempe thought might garner a few hundred signatures ended up getting thousands. Her husband was able to return at the end of August, and it was a "sprint to get open by November 15."

When Rempe and her team pulled the paper out of the windows and opened the doors for the first time, it happened to coincide with school buses dropping kids off in the neighborhood. It was like the kids had a "homing pigeon instinct" for ice cream, and the store's soft opening proved to be a "deluge from day one." --Alex Mutter

In response to the current political climate, last week Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C., issued a statement--a "community check-in"--of support for the community and "unflinching noncompliance with fascism in all forms":

Hi. Community check-in. Every day at our store we have the privilege of interacting with you, our friends and community members, in hundreds of small vignettes. Lately, when we ask how you are, we hear the same things: you're scared and exhausted. Our staff echoes your fears in our own conversations. You're not exaggerating. This is happening. It's only going to get more difficult.

This is a declaration of the store's ownership and management's commitment to supporting our community, especially its most vulnerable members. This means that Flyleaf Books is committed, first and foremost, to unflinching noncompliance with fascism in all forms.

We will not share any customer information with any government agency.

We will never willingly volunteer any personal details about our customers to law enforcement and will fight any attempt to compel us.

We will fight censorship and advocate for the circulation of books that special interest groups seek to ban.

We will continue to work with local organizations to get books into the hands of kids who need books right now, especially those who need to see themselves in books.

We will never call immigration enforcement.

We will never tell you what bathroom to use.

We will stand for accessibility services and support community resources.

We will always ask ourselves how to reduce harm.

The Book Industry Charitable Foundation has named the four recipients of $750 scholarships for attending the ComicsPRO industry meeting in Glendale, Calif., which will be held February 20-22.

They are Erik Jones of Four Color Fantasies, Winchester, Va.; Andrea Gilroy of Books with Pictures, Portland, Ore.; and Zacharie Lasiter and Shannon Merritt of 901 Comics, Memphis, Tenn. The funds can be used for travel, replacement wages, lodging, and meals, while ComicsPRO will cover the registration fee.

"We are pleased to continue our support for comic retailers with these scholarships," said Pam French, Binc's executive director. "When we learned there would not be a Diamond Summit this year, we decided to redirect those scholarship funds and award four scholarships for ComicsPRO. We look forward to meeting them in California."

Author Tom Robbins, author of bestselling books, including Jitterbug Perfume, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and Still Life With Woodpecker, died February 9. He was 92.

His "early books defined the 1960s for a generation and [his] publishing career spanned more than 50 years," the Seattle Times wrote. Robbins "was unclassifiable, and he liked it that way. He was a shy, dreamy kid who became a class clown and bad boy, a native Southerner who moved to Seattle from Virginia." 

Tom Robbins

Speaking on behalf of Robbins' family, friend Craig Popelars said: "Tom's wise and weirdly wonderful novels were filled with magic, mayhem, mythology, imagination, and high-wire humor--always humor. His books touched readers in the most profound ways, and up until his death he continued to engage with them by responding to their fan mail, sending them hand-written thank you letters. He loved connecting with readers in every way imaginable."

Robbins was born in Blowing Rock, N.C., and the mountains, woods, family, and friends in that Appalachian community shaped Robbins' sense for adventure, storytelling, and for odd and the unknown. When he was still a child, his family moved to Richmond, Va.

After arriving in Seattle in 1962 to attend the University of Washington's Far East Institute, he also started working at the Seattle Times. He soon "left graduate school and evolved into an art critic, and his freewheeling style earned him the label 'the Hells Angel of Art Criticism,' in the words of one Seattle Art Museum associate director," the Seattle Times wrote.

In 1966, an editor at Doubleday asked him to do a book of art criticism, but Robbins pitched a novel about the kidnapping of the mummified body of Jesus Christ, which he hadn't written yet. Published in 1971, Another Roadside Attraction drew praise from Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Graham Greene and lackluster sales, but "word of mouth spread throughout the counterculture and it became a phenomenon, as its paperback version, dubbed the "quintessential Sixties novel" by Rolling Stone, was snapped up by young counterculture readers," the Seattle Times noted.

His second novel, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976), led Rolling Stone to call him "the new king of the extended metaphor, dependent clause, outrageous pun, and meteorological personification." By 1978, his first two novels had sold two million copies. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues was adapted into a 1993 film by director Gus Van Sant. 

Robbins published 12 books, including the novels Skinny Legs and All (1990), Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994), Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000), and Villa Incognito (2003); a children's book, B Is for Beer (2009); and his memoir, Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life (2014). In a New York Times interview about the memoir, journalist Rob Liguori asked, "Have you ever been to Tibet?" Robbins responded, "I didn't go to Tibet for the same reason I never slept with Jennifer Lopez. Sometimes it's better to imagine things."

In 1997, he won Bumbershoot's Golden Umbrella Award, which recognizes "one artist from the Northwest whose body of work represents major achievement in his or her discipline." He was a "member at large" of the nonprofit service Seattle 7 Writers.

The Seattle Times noted that Robbins once described his books as "cakes with files baked in them..... I try to create something that's beautiful to look at and delicious to the taste, and yet in the middle there's this hard, sharp instrument that you can use to saw through the bars and liberate yourself, should you so desire." 

In 1970, Robbins adopted the small artist community of La Conner, Wash., as his home. Eventually Robbins married Alexa D'Avalon and together they created a joyous and adventurous life, lovingly surrounded by family, friends, art, the natural world, and cosmic interlopers. D'Avalon shared, "Tom's hope was that his books would continue to be discovered and embraced by new readers, and that we would all find every opportunity to smile back at the world."

Ellen Burns and Darwin Ellis, long-time owners of Books on the Common, Ridgefield, Conn., were celebrated recently as the inaugural Keeler Icons, awarded by the Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center to members of the community who have made lasting and meaningful contributions to the town.

"We were thrilled to honor Ellen and Darwin as our first-ever Keeler Icons and recognize the extraordinary work they've done for decades to build community and nurture our town's love of reading," said KTM&HC executive director Hildegard Grob. 

Burns said, "We were honored to be named the inaugural Keeler Icons, and to gather with so many friends of the bookstore and supporters of Keeler Tavern Museum to celebrate the history and culture that bind us. In such a divided time in our country, it's even more important to focus our efforts to educate, challenge, engage, and yes, entertain our customers, patrons, and supporters. We hope to continue to do so for years to come."

Books on the Common celebrated its 40th year in business in 2024.

Pictured: (l.-r.) First Selectperson Rudy Marconi, state senator Julie Kushner, Darwin Ellis, Ellen Burns, state representative Savet Constantine, KTM&HC executive director Hildegard Grob, KTM&HC board president Sara Champion (photo: Katie Burton)

Cyrus Kheradi has been promoted to executive v-p, international sales, marketing, and business development, at Penguin Random House. He will continue to lead the multinational team as well as head strategic initiatives in key international markets, collaborate with PRH publishing divisions and clients on distribution opportunities worldwide, in addition to leading the PRH China and South Korea sales and marketing teams on behalf of all English-language PRH companies.

Kheradi has more than 30 years of experience in international sales and marketing and joined PRH in 2010.

Ingram's Two Rivers Distribution will handle U.S. distribution for Michael O'Mara Books, London, England. Beginning July 1, Michael O'Mara Books will launch 50 new titles with Two Rivers in the first season, with plans to grow the list, creating new editions from proven backlist to supplement the new U.S. program.

For 40 years, Michael O'Mara Books has published a range of titles from adult non-fiction, including biography, popular science, language, and humorous and quirky gift books, to middle grade and picture books with children's imprint Buster Books, and art with the imprint LOMART.

Chairman Michael O'Mara said, "We are thrilled to be working with Two Rivers and look forward to bringing our 40 years of experience in independent publishing and extensive catalogue of standout titles. We always seek to publish with creativity and curiosity and find new audiences for our books--so this is the perfect partnership to reach even more readers."

Nick Parker, v-p of Ingram Publisher Services, added that Michael O'Mara's "program inspires and delights readers of all ages across the globe and we are looking forward to significantly increasing their profile in North America."

Fever: The Complete History of Saturday Night Fever by Margo Donohue (Citadel Press/Kensington Books).

Tomorrow:
Tamron Hall: Rickey Smiley, author of Sideshow: Living with Loss and Moving Forward with Faith (Thomas Nelson, $29.99, 9781400342990).

Several actors have been added to the cast of Last Samurai Standing, based on the Ikusagami series by historical novelist Shogo Imamura, a recipient of the 166th Naoki Prize. The TV series is set to premiere in November.

From the logline: "In the Meiji period, at Tenryuji Temple in Kyoto, 292 skilled warriors gathered at nightfall, lured by the promise of a huge cash prize. The rules are simple: whoever can steal the wooden tags distributed to each of them and reach Tokyo will win the prize money. Among them is Shujiro Saga, who enters the deadly game with one goal: to save his ailing wife and child."

Leading the cast is Junichi Okada, who stars as Shujiro Saga, and also serves as the action choreographer and producer. Joining him are Riho Yoshioka, Yumia Fujisaki, Kaya Kiyohara, Taichi Saotome, and Yuya Endo. The series also features Masahiro Higashide, Shota Sometani, Hiroshi Tamaki, Takayuki Yamada, Jyo Kairi, Wataru Ichinose, Hideaki Ito, Yasushi Fuchikami, and Kazunari Ninomiya. 

A 12-title shortlist in three categories (illustrated, young readers, older readers) has been released for the 2025 Waterstones Children's Book Prize, chosen by Waterstones booksellers, the Bookseller reported. Category winners receive £2,000 (about $2,480), then vie for the overall title of Waterstones Children's Book of the Year and an extra £3,000 (about $3,720). Winners will be announced March 27. Check out the complete shortlist here.

Bea Carvalho, head of books, Waterstones said: "Sharing a love of books with young readers is the most important thing we do as booksellers, and we have been proud to celebrate the very best emerging talent in children's publishing for over 20 years with this special prize. Every year our booksellers are blown away by the ingenuity of children's writers and illustrators, and this year was no different..... Booksellers have prioritized reading for pleasure with this shortlist and we can't wait to share all 12 books with readers young and old, far and wide."

Nigerian poet, playwright, and novelist Ben Okri (Prayer for the Living; Dangerous Love) won the 1991 Booker Prize for The Famished Road, a lengthy novel noted for its singular style. Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted is slimmer, plunging readers into a dizzying masquerade where little is as it appears to be.

By combining the fantastical elements of A Midsummer Night's Dream with allusions to T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," Okri creates a world that feels lush while exposing the barren landscapes--both physical and emotional--of modern humanity. Following epigraphs from Shakespeare and Heraclitus, the book offers a quiet warning: "Read slowly." Though Viv and Beatrice (and their husbands, Alan and Stephen) are British, the bulk of the story takes place in an enchanted forest in France, where Viv is holding "a festival for people who've been smashed up by love." The idea comes to her at a party, but it feels more like a vision--"her epiphany." Once the festival becomes a reality, it feels more like a dream with the metaphysical and the spiritual mingling with the mundane. Central to both the real and the magical elements is the famed fortune-teller Madame Sosostris, who agrees to attend Viv's festival and promises those who visit "La Fôret Sacrée" will be transformed: "Things happen to people there and they find the mirror they have been looking for. Everyone who goes there finds the truth about themselves and afterwards they are not the same." The guests who encounter Madame Sosostris wrestle with the costs of removing their masks and living as themselves.

Divided into four books, each with short, dialogue-heavy chapters, Madame Sosostris often reads like a play. Many of the exchanges have a sharp, almost caustic nature, putting one in mind of the absurdities of Tom Stoppard. Punctuating these moments, however, are beautiful descriptive passages and thoughtful evaluations of culture and society, pointing up the ways people will hide behind the public faces they have created. At times, the relentlessly cyclical nature of the tale might cause readers to feel they, too, are among the enchanted, like Eliot's "crowds of people, walking round in a ring," but maybe that's the point. Okri, like Madame Sosostris herself, invites readers to be transformed, to recognize that "Being rejected, abandoned, makes us human," but "it is only among the broken that you find those with the humility and the vision to create a new world." --Sara Beth West, freelance reviewer and librarian

Shelf Talker: Blending magic with realistic commentary on the human condition, this novel is loaded with literary allusions and aphorisms about love, loss, and the ways we hide ourselves behind public personas.