Wandering Crow Bookshop will open in downtown Statesville, N.C., later this summer, the Statesville Record & Landmark reported. 

Sam La Flamme

The general-interest bookstore, at 108 W. Broad St., will carry new and used titles. Owner Sam La Flamme, who also has a photography studio in Statesville, said she wants to evoke a "cozy, moody forest cottage," and she told the Record & Landmark that along with books, she hopes the store "can offer a safe space and a sense of community." 

She wants the bookstore to be a community meeting space and plans to host book clubs and other events. La Flamme is soliciting online feedback about events the community would like to attend and what books they want to see on the shelves. She wrote on Facebook that the response to the bookstore "has been overwhelming (in the best way)," and community members have donated more gently used books than "anything I imagined."

While La Flamme has not set an opening date, she hopes to have the store open in July.

Lostintheletters, a creative writing and literacy empowerment nonprofit based in Atlanta, Ga., plans to open a studio and bookstore in Candler Park later this summer. Lostintheletters was founded in 2012 as a quarterly reading and workshop series, and in 2013 launched The Letters Festival.

In an Instagram post announcing the expansion, Lostintheletters wrote that the space will feature a "reading lounge & bookstore (we will only sell books by past LITL readers, which includes many fantastic authors!) during daytime hours; a writers studio in the evenings & select hours on the weekends; and a venue for our writing workshops, live readings, & pop-up creative events."

"We are overjoyed to create a permanent presence for Atlanta's rich writing and reading communities," Scott Daughtridge DeMer, the founder and executive director of Lostintheletters, told RoughDraft Atlanta. "In this space, we will continue presenting accessible programs and resources that inspire people to expand their creative practices. Now is the perfect time to support individuals who want to change the world around them by harnessing their creative potential. The more we invest in that as a community, the more we can realize the vision of Atlanta growing as a beacon for arts and culture on the national and international levels."

The space will also feature rotating visual art exhibitions, curated by co-founder and creative director Stephanie Dowda DeMer, who said, "Our studio and store will be the perfect platform for us to expand on our core values of creating an intersection of art disciplines. To cultivate a visual conversation between writing and art through the exhibition series, we will feature visual artists who explore language, text, and line in their work."

Penguin Random House has acquired Wonderbly, a U.K. publisher specializing in personalized gift books.

Wonderbly will operate independently within PRH, and co-founder and CEO Asi Sharabi will continue to lead the business. Wonderbly is headquartered in London and no changes are planned in that regard. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

Asi Sharabi

"We're thrilled to welcome Wonderbly to Penguin Random House," said PRH CEO Nihar Malaviya. "Asi and the Wonderbly team have built a remarkable company at the intersection of storytelling, technology, and thoughtful giving. We are excited to support their continued growth and to learn from their dynamic, customer-centric approach."

Founded in 2013, Wonderbly is a certified B Corporation and has a catalog of more than 150 personalized children's and adult titles. It has sold more than 11 million books in over 140 countries. In 2021 it was acquired by Graphite Capital, a private equity firm, and in 2023 Wonderbly acquired Historic Newspapers, which publishes bespoke historical newspaper compilations.

Wonderbly was named Children's Publisher of the Year at the 2021 British Book Awards and was shortlisted for Children's Publisher of the Year and Publisher of the Year at the 2025 awards.

"Wonderbly has been one of the most wondrous adventures; built by an extraordinary team, powered by passionate customers, and fueled by a shared belief in the power of books to spark joy and human connection," said Sharabi. "We’re incredibly proud of the moments our stories have created for families around the world. As we join Penguin Random House, we're stepping into an exciting new chapter--one that gives us the platform to dream bigger, reach further, and create even more meaningful connections for and between readers everywhere." 

"I have long admired what Asi and his team at Wonderbly have created, and I'm delighted we'll be joining forces," said DK CEO Paul Kelly, who was instrumental in bringing about the acquisition. "How they've redefined storytime for millions of children around the world is truly inspiring. We’re excited to support Wonderbly’s expansion into new genres and publishing models, and to help grow their already impressive international reach. By combining the strengths of DK and Penguin Random House with Wonderbly's exceptional direct-to-consumer capabilities, I'm confident we'll reach even more audiences and create even more book lovers than ever before."

Edmund White, "who mined his own life story, including his vast and varied catalog of sexual experiences, in more than 30 books of fiction and nonfiction and hundreds of articles and essays, becoming a grandee of New York literary life for more than half a century," died June 3, the New York Times reported. He was 85.

Edmund White (photo: Andrews Fladeboe)

White had success early, beginning with Forgetting Elena (1973), about the rituals of gay life on a fictionalized Fire Island. The Times praised it as "an astonishing first novel, obsessively fussy, and yet uncannily beautiful." His epistolary second novel was Nocturnes for the King of Naples (1978), a series of letters from a young gay man to his deceased ex-lover. Other novels include A Boy's Own Story (1982), a tale of coming out set in the 1950s. His semi-autobiographical novels, The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988) and The Farewell Symphony (1997), "follow the same unnamed protagonist into adulthood during the 1960s, then through the horrors of AIDS as he approaches middle age."

White's nonfiction works include several memoirs: My Lives (2005), City Boy (2009), Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris (2014), and The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir (2025). He also published biographies of the French authors Jean Genet, Marcel Proust, and Arthur Rimbaud. Other nonfiction books include The Joy of Gay Sex (1977, with Charles Silverstein), States of Desire (1980), and its sequel, States of Desire Revisited (2014), as well as The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading (2018).

After graduating from the Cranbrook School for Boys, outside Detroit, in 1962, White moved to New York, where he worked for Time-Life Books and did his own writing at night. The Times noted that he was passing by the Stonewall Inn during the early morning of June 28, 1969, when the police raided it and were met by fierce resistance by patrons in what became known as the Stonewall Riot. 

In City Boy, White later recalled: "Up till that moment we had all thought that homosexuality was a medical term. Suddenly we saw that we could be a minority group--with rights, a culture, an agenda."

He left Time-Life that year and spent six months in Rome in 1970, then moved to San Francisco to work as an editor for the Saturday Review. He returned to New York in 1973 to write, a form of therapy that, as he told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2006, "has always been my recourse when I've tried to make sense of my experience or when it's been very painful."

White won numerous awards for his work, including being named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1994 for his Genet biography. In 2018 he received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, and in 2019 the National Book Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.

He taught writing at several universities, including Brown and Princeton, where he was on the faculty from 1999 to 2018.

He was one of seven members of The Violet Quill, a gay writers' group founded in 1979 that included the soon-to-be celebrated authors Andrew Holleran and Felice Picano, the Times wrote, adding that "the members met regularly to critique one another's work. In 1982, he helped found the group Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York City."

White moved to Paris in 1983 and stayed there until 1998. He discovered that he was H.I.V. positive in 1985. Four of the seven members of the Violet Quill died of AIDS, as did his two closest friends, the literary critic David Kalstone and his editor at Dutton, Bill Whitehead, as well as many other friends and lovers.

Reflecting on living into old age while so many gay men died young, White told the Guardian in 2000: "I do feel some degree of guilt. It's also hard not to feel numb, and the worst thing for a writer is to feel numb. Your natural tendency is to want to forget; but your deepest sense of duty and obligation is to history and to the people you knew and loved."

White produced some of his most original work while in his 80s, the Times wrote, citing in particular A Previous Life (2022), in which "a married man and woman holed up in a ski chalet in 2050 share their sexual histories, including details of the husband's affair 30 years earlier with an elderly writer. The writer is named Edmund White."

To celebrate the release of Battle of the Bookstores by Ali Brady (Berkley), romance bookstore HEA Book Boutique (l.) challenged their neighbor, Swamp Fox Bookstore (r.), a multi-genre bookstore, to see which store could sell the most copies of Brady's novel before the book's pub date, June 3. Both stores are located in Marion, Iowa, just blocks from each other.

Inspired by the book’s plot, which features two rival bookstore owners, the stores took to social media to document their challenge with playful stories and customer shout-outs. The stores shared the happy-ever-after result: it was a tie, with each store having sold 36 copies. And the author is providing signed bookplates to go with each purchase.

Today co-host Jenna Bush Hager has chosen A Family Matter by Claire Lynch (‎‎Scribner) as her June Read with Jenna book club pick. A Family Matter "alternates between two timelines, the 1980s and the early aughts," Today said. "In the '80s, we meet a young mother who falls in love and is punished for it. In the early aughts, we meet Heron, who is an older man who has to reckon with the decision he made and tell the story of her life."

Hager said she was struck by how "the book uses real court cases to tell the story of what was really happening during that time. It's a story about family, truth and most of all, about love."

A Family Matter is Lynch's debut novel. "The book was inspired by the idea of a family that's always been just a dad and daughter," Lynch said. "Then I was facing into this question of, like, where is the mom? Then, like, what happened in this family? There's this really great, tight bond between the two of them. Then there's this absence all the time about where this mother is."

---

Atmosphere: A Love Story by Taylor Jenkins Reid (‎‎Ballantine) is the GMA Book Club pick for June. Good Morning America described the book as: "Set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program, the novel follows Joan Goodwin, a reserved physics professor at Rice University, who unexpectedly finds herself selected for NASA's first class of female scientists in space.

"As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe. Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.

"With Reid's signature emotional depth and cinematic storytelling, Atmosphere is a soaring tale about following your passion and finding your place among the stars."

"We have a few surprises behind our bookstore." Daffodil Romantasy Books and Gifts, Eugene, Ore., shared a video tour of its space and neighbors, noting: "Mini donuts, shave ice, and a magical alley behind us?? I love this unique building."

Today:
Fresh Air: Ocean Vuong, author of The Emperor of Gladness (Penguin Press, $30, 9780593831878).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Casey Elsass, author of What Can I Bring?: Recipes to Help You Live Your Guest Life (Union Square, $30, 9781454955344).

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, June 7
9:30 a.m. Jared Cohen, author of Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House (Simon & Schuster, $20.99, 9781982154554). (Re-airs Saturday at 9:30 p.m.)

7:05 p.m. Diane Kiesel, author of When Charlie Met Joan: The Tragedy of the Chaplin Trials and the Failings of American Law (‎University of Michigan Press, $30, 9780472133581). 

Sunday, June 8
8 a.m. David McCormick and Dina Powell McCormick, authors of Who Believed in You: How Purposeful Mentorship Changes the World (HarperCollins, $29.99, 9781400235919). (Re-airs Sunday at 8 p.m.)

8:45 a.m. Jeanne Theoharis, author of King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Life of Struggle Outside the South (‎The New Press, $30.99, 9781620979310). (Re-airs Sunday at 8:45 p.m.)

2:25 to 8 p.m. Coverage of the 2025 Gaithersburg Book Festival in Gaithersburg, Md. Highlights include:

• 2:25 p.m. Barbara Bradley Hagerty, author of Bringing Ben Home: A Murder, a Conviction, and the Fight to Redeem American Justice.
• 3:13 p.m. Casey Burgat, author of We Hold These "Truths": How to Spot the Myths that Are Holding America Back.
• 4 p.m. Alan Weisman, author of Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future, and Malcolm Harris, author of What's Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis. 
• 4:48 p.m. David Hajdu, author of The Uncanny Muse: Music, Art, and Machines from Automata to AI.
• 5:29 p.m. Russell Shorto, author of Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America.
• 6:17 p.m. Amanda Becker, author of You Must Stand Up: The Fight for Abortion Rights in Post-Dobbs America, and Colleen Long, author of I'm Sorry for My Loss: An Urgent Examination of Reproductive Care in America.
• 7:06 p.m. Rick Atkinson, author of The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780.

Winners have been named for the 2025 Jhalak Prize, which celebrates books by writers of color in the U.K. and Ireland. The Guardian reported that N.S. Nuseibeh's Namesake: Reflections on a Warrior Woman, a "timely" and "timeless" essay collection, took the prose award, with Mimi Khalvati's Collected Poems winning the inaugural poetry prize and the children's and YA honors going to Nathanael Lessore for King of Nothing. Each of the winners receives £1,000 (about $1,355).

"These are books full of courage, insight and panache," said prize director Sunny Singh. "They compassionately and with utmost honesty confront terrible realities and explore painful and complex histories and lives even as they exemplify playful stylistic experimentation and mastery of form and language."

Selected new hardcovers appearing next Tuesday, June 10:

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab (Tor, $29.99, 9781250320520) follows three lesbian vampires across several centuries.

The Life of Chuck by Stephen King (Scribner, $20, 9781668208786) is a novella originally published in the collection If It Bleeds and is now a feature film.

The River Is Waiting: A Novel by Wally Lamb (S&S/Marysue Rucci, $29.99, 9781668006399) is a redemption story about a man sent to prison after a tragic accident.

King of Ashes: A Novel by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron Books/Pine & Cedar, $28.99, 9781250832061) is a thriller about a man who returns to his hometown to save his family from dangerous criminals.

With a Vengeance: A Novel by Riley Sager (Dutton, $30, 9780593472408) is a thriller about a woman planning revenge against passengers lured onto an overnight luxury train.

Always Be My Bibi by Priyanka Taslim (Simon & Schuster, $19.99, 9781665901130) features one U.S. teen facing culture shock (and maybe finding romance) when she attends her sister's wedding in Bangladesh.

Confessions of a Junior Spy by Rosaria Munda (Feiwel and Friends, $8.99, 9781250363794) is the beginning of a middle-grade series about a girl raised in a secret spy sanctuary.

Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream by Megan Greenwell (Dey Street, $29.99, 9780063299351) reveals the corrosive impacts of private equity on American life.

Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser (Penguin Press, $32, 9780593657225) connects a disproportionately high number of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest to toxic smelter plants.

Joy Goddess: A'Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance by A'Lelia Bundles (Scribner, $29.99, 9781416544425) is a biography about a Harlem Renaissance socialite written by her great-granddaughter.

Kuleana: A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai'i by Sara Kehaulani Goo (Flatiron, $29.99, 9781250333445) is a memoir about a Native Hawaiian family trying to keep ancestral land.

How to Save the Amazon: A Journalist's Fatal Quest for Answers by Dom Phillips (Chelsea Green, $27.95, 9781645023203) was posthumously completed after the author was murdered in the Amazon by environmental criminals.

Paperbacks:
Never Been Shipped by Alicia Thompson (Berkley, $19, 9780593640951).

Far and Away: A Novel by Amy Poeppel (Atria/Emily Bestler, $18.99, 9781668022856).

Making Friends Can Be Murder by Kathleen West (Berkley, $19, 9780593335536).

The Sweet Life by Debbie Mason (Forever, $17.99, 9781538768792).

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

Hardcover: An Indies Introduce Title
The Original Daughter: A Novel by Jemimah Wei (Doubleday, $30, 9780385551014). "It's 1996 and Genevieve's family lives in a tiny apartment in Singapore. Her grandfather had a secret family, and her family is saddled with an unwanted daughter to raise, changing Genevieve's world. An accomplished and absorbing debut." --Robin Glossner, Odyssey Bookshop, South Hadley, Mass.

Hardcover
The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman by Niko Stratis (University of Texas Press, $27.95, 9781477331484). "Muddled by memory and alcohol, a picture of Niko's life forms: she's made you a mixtape in the form of an essay collection. The stories that make up her life gently remind us it's never too late to recover or rebuild yourself." --Kitri Madera, Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, Wash.

Paperback
Don't Swipe Right: A Novel by L.M. Chilton (Gallery/Scout Press, $17.99, 9781668045718). "Twisty, smart, and kept me guessing until the very end--and the absolute skewering of dating apps is so entertaining. I felt breathless page after page as Gwen races around town to find a serial killer. Loved it!" --Carolyn Hutton, Mrs. Dalloway's Literary & Garden Arts, Berkeley, Calif.

Ages 4-8
Little Big Man by Varian Johnson, illus. by Reggie Brown (Orchard Books, $18.99, 9781338807431). "Varian Johnson's picture book debut is a delight! A poignant story about learning how to balance work and play, all young readers (and their grown ups) can benefit from Little Big Man's message." --Lorie Barber, The Silver Unicorn Bookstore, Acton, Mass.

Ages 8-12: An Indies Introduce Title
The Queen Bees of Tybee County by Kyle Casey Chu (Quill Tree Books, $19.99, 9780063326958). "Follow young basketball champion Derrick Chan as he spends the summer with his grandmother and journeys to discover a whole new understanding of self. This exploration of family, culture, and identity is unique and powerful. This book is right on time." --Jonathan Pope, Prologue Bookshop, Columbus, Ohio

Teen Readers
Eliza, from Scratch by Sophia Lee (Quill Tree Books, $19.99, 9780063372634). "The fall after her grandmother's death, an ambitious student is unexpectedly assigned a cooking class in school, helping her reconnect with her Korean heritage. A poignant, heartwarming debut on grief and family expectations." --Matilda McNeely, Little Shop of Stories, Decatur, Ga.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

Mark Kurlansky, perhaps best known for his impeccably researched nonfiction (Salt, Cod, and The Last Fish Tale), humorously and accurately chronicles the dramatic changes in Manhattan's Upper West Side during the 1980s in his sixth work of fiction, Cheesecake.

This vibrant, funny, and at times bittersweet story unfolds primarily through the eyes of the Katsikas family, who arrive in New York from a "small rock-bound Greek island." Two brothers--Art (born Achilles) and Niki (né Nikodemos)--and Niki's wife, Adara, open (what else?) a Greek diner on the corner of 86th Street and Columbus, and call it Katz Brothers. Although when they first get there, it is "not the best neighborhood," it is "affordable" and has "real potential." Art is the wheeler-dealer; Niki is "the seducer" host; Adara runs the kitchen and raises the goats that produce the diner's cheese at their home in Queens. Art has his eye on buying up real estate up and down the block; this eventually puts him at odds with his longtime diner customers, whose rents he raises.

These regulars add depth and dimension to the novel. Ruth Arnstein hands out treats for local dogs, alms for the street people, and breadcrumbs for the pigeons. Violette, born Veronika Patowski, is captivating; at age 14, while attending a Catholic boarding school, she decides "Bodies were made to be seen. Otherwise, why have them?" and promptly runs away to New York. She changes her name to Violette de Lussac and her age to 23, goes to work as an artist's model for Guy Witman and then marries him. Mimi Landau, a "long-established Upper West Sider" and former pastry-maker, knows that the Katsikas brothers are interested in buildings like hers, and recognizes that "they were the enemy." Cato is her beloved black standard poodle and happens to share a name with the author of the first recorded cheesecake recipe. Several of the novel's characters attempt this recipe, with comedic results. Kurlansky endows Mimi with a wonderful wit--the "pleasant-looking Greeks" remind her of a Baudelaire line: "Where evil comes up softly like a flower." Art's rent hike forces her to move to Hoboken, N.J. But Mimi's old friend Gerta has a proposal that could bring her back (at least business-wise) to West 86th Street and restore its karma.

Longtime New Yorkers may feel wistful for a bygone neighborhood so lovingly rendered in Kurlansky's portrait of family-run bakeries, boutiques, and Barney Greengrass (still there); and others will enjoy this glimpse of a small town within a metropolis. --Jennifer M. Brown

Shelf Talker: Mark Kurlansky lends his considerable skills to this loving tribute to Manhattan's Upper West Side during the booming 1980s.

I don't assume there is a bookseller's perspective to everything that happens in the world, but sometimes I almost think that. It's a logical approach to life--a filter--for somebody like me, optional equipment for my identity as a reader. 

Maybe that's why when I saw that the winner of this year's International Booker Prize was Heart Lamp by Indian author Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi (And Other Stories/Consortium), I had a couple of immediate reactions. 

The reader in me sought out a copy of the book, written by a writer, activist, and lawyer in the state of Karnataka, southern India. Originally published in the Kannada language between 1990 and 2023 and praised for their dry and gentle humor, "these portraits of family and community tensions testify to Mushtaq's years as a journalist and lawyer, in which she tirelessly championed women's rights and protested all forms of caste and religious oppression," the prize organizers noted.

Indian booksellers have been celebrating the book's success: 

Kitabkhana Books, Mumbai: "We knew it in our hearts that Heart Lamp would win the International Booker Prize 2025 and it did!... Banu Mushtaq's portraits of family and community tensions testify to her years of tirelessly championing women's rights and protesting all forms of caste and religious oppression. Heart Lamp is available at KitabKhana. A huge congratulations to Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhasthi (translator)."

Banu Mushtaq

Pagdandi Bookstore & Coffee, Pune: "A morning of thoughtful conversation, curious questions, and heartfelt sharing. We gathered around Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq--and found stories that stayed with us long after the session ended. Thank you to everyone who joined us--for reading, listening, and being part of the circle."

Faqir Chand Bookstore, Delhi: "Banu Mushtaq's Heart Lamp winning the International Booker Prize is a moment of immense pride for India! A testament to the country's rich literary talent and global recognition."

Bahrisons Booksellers, New Delhi: "Congratulations to Heart Lamp, originally written in Kannada by Banu Mushtaq who is the winner of the International Booker Prize 2025! The book has been translated by Deepa Bhasthi who is a writer and literary translator based in Kodagu, southern India."

Storyteller Bookstore, Kolkata: "Heart Lamp wins The International Booker Prize 2025. Congratulations to Banu Mushtaq and Translator Deepa Bhasthi. Proud moment for Indian Literature."

After the prize announcement, the reader in me became fully engaged with the stories, while the bookseller was curious about the story behind the stories, how these tales originally found their way into print. So I went exploring. 

At Blossom Bookhouse

And a good story it is. Blossom Bookhouse in Bengalaru posted on Instagram: "The International Booker Prize-winning book Heart Lamp, a powerful English translation of the acclaimed Kannada work Hasina Mattu Itara Kathegalu by Banu Mushtaq, is now available again--in both Kannada and English editions! Don't miss your chance to own this unforgettable collection of stories."

Tthe Deccan Herald reported that "bookstores across Karnataka have seen a rise in demand for veteran Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq's Hasina Mattu Itara Kathegalu, a collection of short stories." Published by Abhiruchi Prakashana, the book includes original Kannada versions of the stories in Heart Lamp. 

"We have sold about 1,000 copies in the last one week since the book won in London," said Abhiruchi Prakashana's owner "Abhiruchi" Ganesh. He has received orders from bookstores for nearly 3,000 copies of the 776-page revised edition--featuring 47 short stories--that was released on April 30 in Mysuru, after the International Booker shortlist was announced. "Since then, the book has been in demand from across the state, especially after the win." 

Ganesh met Mushtaq in Hassan during a protest in 2002 and initially published two of her collections: Safira and Badavara Magalu Hennalla. He subsequently decided to bring all of Banu's stories together in Hasina Itara Kathegalu (2013), which included five of her early books. In 2023 Ganesh released another collection, Hennu Haddina Swayamvara.

"Banu called me at the beginning of this year, asking if I could make another compilation of her stories. That's when I decided to include the new collection as well in the revised edition of Hasina Mattu Itara Kathegalu," Ganesh said.

At the beginning of his career in the book business, Ganesh sold Kannada books from a bicycle. The Deccan Herald noted that in the 1990s, the Kannada Pustaka Pradhikara (Kannada Book Authority), under the leadership of author L.S. Seshagiri Rao, was offering a grant of Rs25,000 (about $180) to open Kannada bookstores across Karnataka. 

"The members of the organization suggested I take this grant to open a bookstore. I was just 18 then," Ganesh recalled. In 1995, he opened the bookstore Abhiruchi Kannada Pustaka Malige and later added a publishing operation. 

"Since I had experience in the sale of books, it was easy for me to pick books for publishing," he said. "I also had the privilege of the company of many Left-leaning progressive groups, like Dalit Sangharsh Samithi and Raitha Sangha. Rangayana was also just next door. They also became my customers." Abhiruchi Prakashana has published about 440 books thus far.

He told the Times of India: "I took this responsibility to support the progressive movements in Karnataka." And the story continues.