After opening its doors in Hollister, Calif., last weekend, Hill's Bookstore has a grand opening celebration scheduled for this coming Saturday, February 15, BenitoLink reported.

Kimberly Hill

Located at 650 San Benito St., Hill's Bookstore carries new and used titles for all ages, along with games, puzzles, and bookish gifts. A wide variety of genres are represented, and the store features a children's play area as well as a self-serve tea station.

Store owner Kimberly Hill, who is a U.S. Navy veteran and nurse practitioner, told BenitoLink she wanted to provide the community with a "good, diverse selection" and "a little bit of something for everybody, so that everybody can feel welcome."

Hill's Bookstore made its debut in February 2024 as a pop-up store. Her first appearance was at Ohana Shaved Ice, and despite being "very nervous," she was "blown away" by the response. Over the course of two days, she sold about 85% of the pop-up's inventory. From there her pop-up appearances took her to local coffee shops, the farmers' market, and other locales.

Hill will continue working as a nurse practitioner during the week while running the store on the weekend. Her husband, Adam Hill, will manage the store on weekdays.

The opening celebration on Saturday will feature coffee, cupcakes, treats, and sparkling cider.

"We want to be a place where we can just kind of set aside everything else and come here to congregate over our love of books," Hill told BenitoLink.

Mossrose Bookshop, a Latina-owned pop-up romance bookstore, will open a bricks-and-mortar location on March 8 at 711 Milby St., suite 27, in the Ironworks building, Houston, Tex. The Chronicle reported that the bookstore "specializes in romance novels from a diverse range of authors and romance genres, aiming to create a vibrant, inclusive space for romance lovers to connect and celebrate love."

Founder Andrea Sifuentes-Echavarria hosted her first pop-up in May 2024 at Ironworks, and has since continued to expand its title selection, leading to the need for a bricks-and-mortar location. She created Mossrose Bookshop after struggling to find diverse romantic stories that resembled her own life. 

"I found that there are so many independent authors that don't get seen, and so many that are diverse in every way," she said. "There are books that are more like my reality and the reality of other people who don't see themselves or didn't [while] growing up.... I like to make sure that I'm always including as many different types of love stories as possible. If it's a good story and people are talking about it, or it's one I think people should be talking about, I'm going to include it." 

Mossrose Bookshop also offers Spanish translations of novels whenever possible. "If somebody were to say, 'Hey, do you know if this has a translation?' if I don't have it and you want me to track it down, I will do what I can," Sifuentes-Echavarria said.  

The bookstore will feature book signings by local authors, "a full-circle moment for the shop, whose name is rooted in Houston," the Chronicle wrote.

"Mossrose is actually a street I grew up on... here in Houston," Sifuentes-Echavarria noted, adding that her husband, Joseph Echavarria, came up with the name, stressing that the city is where she built her own library and is now coming back to fill a void. "Anyone who's looking for those stories, I want to provide them," she said. "Yes, there is a traditional romance story, but there's also romance novels for everyone."

Israeli police raided two Educational Bookshop locations in East Jerusalem--on Salah al-Din Street and in the American Colony Hotel complex--on Sunday. Haaretz reported that "after seizing the books and arresting the store owners, the police decided to change the charge from incitement to suspicion of disturbing public order."

Initially closed on Monday, the bookshops later reopened despite a judge ordering the owners "to remain in detention until Tuesday morning amid a police investigation," the New York Times reported, noting that they were ordered to be held under house arrest for five days following their release and banned from returning to their bookshops for 15 days. As of this morning, the owners are now under house arrest.

The Educational Bookshop chain operates three locations in East Jerusalem, specializing in Arabic and English books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the history of Jerusalem. On Sunday afternoon, police searched the premises, examined the books for an extended period, confiscated dozens of books from both stores and arrested the owners, Mahmoud Muna and his nephew, Ahmad Muna. 

"They used Google Translate on the books, and anything they didn't like, they took," said Mourad Muna, Mahmoud's brother. "They even found a Haaretz newspaper with a picture of the hostages and asked what it was, saying it was incitement. They took every book with a Palestinian flag on it."

The Israeli police said their investigators "began various investigative operations, in which they were exposed to many books containing content of incitement with nationalistic Palestinian characteristics."

Diplomatic representatives from the Netherlands, the U.K., Belgium, Brazil, France, Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, and the EU visited the courthouse where the hearing was due to be held to show support for the bookshop owners.

Steffen Seibert, German ambassador to Israel, posted on social media that he is "concerned to hear of the raid and detention [of the owners] in prison.... I, like many diplomats, enjoy browsing for books at Educational Bookshop. I know its owners, the Muna family, to be peace-loving proud Palestinian Jerusalemites, open for discussion and intellectual exchange."

Mourad Muna said he was surprised by the crowd that showed up after he reopened the store: "We were surprised from the solidarity of the people from all over the world and the local people." He denied that the books sold there promoted violence, noting that the books had passed Israeli censors when they were imported from abroad. 

Nasser Oday, lawyer for the two booksellers, said, "We believe that this is a political, not a legal detention."

"They started throwing books off the shelves. They were looking for anything with a Palestinian flag," Mai Muna, Mahmoud Muna's wife, told the Times.

The Educational Bookshop stores have over the years hosted talks, film screenings, and book launches, including one last July for the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Day in the Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall, who "was among a small crowd of protesters on Monday who gathered across from the entrance to the courthouse during the hearing." 

Thrall said the arrests send "a very strong message" about police authority: "It reflects a boldness, a sense that there will be absolutely no consequences, that they have total impunity, that they can go after two of the most well connected Palestinians in East Jerusalem." 

Grove Atlantic is launching an imprint focused on crime and mystery called Atlantic Crime that will debut this fall and is expected to publish 18-24 titles per year. Senior editor Joe Brosnan will oversee the new imprint, and its inaugural list will include What About the Bodies, the second novel from Edgar Award-nominee Ken Jaworowski.

Previously, Grove Atlantic's crime and mystery titles were published by several of the company's imprints and include three Edgar Award-winning novels--Gone by Mo Hayder, The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Flags on the Bayou by James Lee Burke.

"Over the years we have cultivated a fine mystery and thriller list, from New York Times bestselling author Donna Leon, award-winning author Thomas Perry, and the world-renowned Len Deighton to wonderful emerging writers, three of whom are finalists for this year's Edgar Awards: Henry Wise for Holy City, Mindy Mejia for World of Hurt, and Tom Ryan for The Treasure Hunters Club," said Grove Atlantic CEO and publisher Morgan Entrekin. "It is time to bring these authors together under one imprint."

"I'm incredibly excited to launch this imprint," said Brosnan. "With Atlantic Crime, our ultimate goal is to give our authors an imprint they're proud to call home. One that's designed with author care in mind and dedicated to growing careers, whether they're debut writers or seasoned pros."

Morty Mint

Morton (Morty) Mint, who was born and raised in Montreal, but after graduation from McGill University moved to Toronto and entered the world of book publishing, died January 25, Quill & Quire reported. He was 81.

During his career, Mint rose to become president and CEO of Penguin Canada and then president of Penguin USA. He left the corporate world in the 1990s to start his own publishing company, as well as Mint Literary Agency. He moved to Nelson, B.C., in 2005 and entered the Kootenay literary world. 

"Professionally, the work he did during this part of his life was the most rewarding," his obituary noted. "His energy, drive, imagination, humor and huge enthusiasm and support for his authors and the local book scene changed lives remarkably. His contribution to the Kootenay book world has been significant. He lived books, authors, ideas."

"Our employee of the month is in today. Bonnie says hello!" Love's Sweet Arrow, Tinley Park, Ill., posted on Facebook.

Simon & Schuster will handle U.S. and Canadian sales and distribution for the University of New Mexico Press, effective July 1.

Founded in 1929, the University of New Mexico Press is one of the oldest university presses in the West and is a founding member of the Association of University Presses. The Press publishes commercial and scholarly books, Southwest regional books, and fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for general audiences worldwide; it is committed to publishing historically underrepresented voices of the Southwest and borderlands, including seminal works of Chicana/o and Native literature by writers such as Rudolfo Anaya and N. Scott Momaday. Under the UNM Press and High Road Books imprints, the Press also publishes books for children and adults, and it is a leading publisher of books for scholars in the fields of Native Studies, Chicana/o Studies, Archaeology, Literary Criticism, and Latin American history.

At Scholastic:

Brooke Shearouse, formerly associate director, publicity, is being promoted to director, publicity.

Mandy Earles, previously publicist, is being promoted to senior publicist.

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Hannah Boardman has been promoted to publicist at TvS Media Group. She was previously associate publicist.

Nemesis: An Orphan X Novel by Gregg Hurwitz (Minotaur Books).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Bailey Ruskus, author of Breaking Up with Dairy: 100 Indulgent Plant-based Recipes for Cheese (and Butter, Cream, and Milk) Lovers Everywhere (Balance, $32, 9780306833526).

Jesse Garcia (The Mother, Flamin' Hot) and Will Yun Lee (San Andreas, The Good Doctor) have joined the cast of Christopher Nolan's film adaptation of The Odyssey, a "mythic action epic, shot with new Imax cameras," Deadline reported. 

The cast includes Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong'o, Benny Safdie, Charlize Theron, Himesh Patel, Elliot Page, Bill Irwin, and Samantha Morton. The film will be screened in Imax when it hits theaters on July 17, 2026.

A longlist has been released for the 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. The shortlist will be unveiled March 5 and the winners named on May 14 during the Auckland Writers Festival. Check out the complete NZ Book Awards longlist here.

The winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction will receive NZ$65,000 (about US$36,725), and each of the other main category winners will receive NZ$12,000 (about US$6,780). Each of The Mātātuhi Foundation Best First Book winners (for fiction, poetry, general nonfiction and illustrated nonfiction) will be awarded NZ$3,000 (about US$1,695). 

New Zealand Book Awards Trust Te Ohu Tiaki i Te Rau Hiringa chair Nicola Legat said: "Across poetry, prose and nonfiction the list includes books by some of our finest thinkers and most inventive writers. Some tackle today's burning issues and others are entertaining and escapist reads. All deserve our admiration."

In Permission, memoirist Elissa Altman offers heartening advice on writing about traumatic family history.

Altman (Motherland) and her father, Cy, shared a "non-secret secret": his mother abandoned him when he was three years old. He and his eight-year-old sister spent time in an orphanage and foster home. Although their mother did return home three years later, permanent psychological damage had been done. Cy served in the navy during the Second World War and went into advertising. His dreams of going to university and becoming a poet would remain unfulfilled, as well as his desire to write the story of his mother leaving, because he "had been warned not to." Altman, like her father, felt that the secret "was the story that changed everything I, too, thought," and she was caught in "an intergenerational sin of omission." For divulging the abandonment in her first memoir, Altman became persona non grata in her family. "We did not give you permission. It was not your story to tell. You don't own it," a cousin fumed to her at a relative's wedding.

While acknowledging the emotional pain of being cut out of her family, Altman responds with a defiant mantra she recites to her students: "If this particular story touched you directly, you have every right to write it." To illustrate, she draws on a stunning roll call of autobiographical works: Barry Lopez coming to terms with childhood sexual molestation; Honor Moore revealing her bishop father's bisexuality; Dani Shapiro learning that her father was not biologically related; Tara Westover and Jeanette Winterson enduring religious abuse.

It is worth taking the risk to recount traumatic memories, Altman argues, because it defuses shame. She cautions against writing for revenge and portraying anyone as either wholly good or bad; "what makes for good memoir" is "ambiguity." To that end, she tries to understand her grandmother's motivations, discovering unexpected patterns of inheritance. A Central European immigrant to Coney Island, her grandmother was a pianist before marriage. Altman, too, is musical. Did her grandmother leave to pursue her passion, she wonders. In that case, her father was the second generation in a row to be an artist manqué. The familial connections are almost uncanny: Altman's mother also gave up music to have children; and Altman, who came out at age 34, learns that her maternal grandmother was a secret lesbian.

The book loops through the same stories across its thematic chapters, but fascinating ideas and examples mostly make up for repetition. Practical chapters on giving oneself permission to write by eliminating distractions, devoting time, and developing rituals will be particularly useful for aspiring memoirists. Those captivated by family history will also find much of interest. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck

Shelf Talker: Full of stories drawn from Elissa Altman's life and other authors' experiences, Permission is an inspirational guide to defusing shame through self-disclosure and claiming the time and focus to write.

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

1. Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton
2. Hunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton
3. Where Did You Go? by Jeneane O'Riley
4. Overexposed by Heather Long and Tate James
5. The Boyfriend by Freida McFadden
6. Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future by Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato
7. Twisted Love by Ana Huang
8. God of Ruin by Rina Kent
9. Kingmakers: Year Four by Sophie Lark
10. The Hermit by Michelle Heard

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]