Susie Sonneborn, book fair director and children's bookseller at Watchung Booksellers: The Kids' Room, Montclair, N.J., is the 2025 Joe Drabyak Handseller of the Year, an award given by the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association to a bookseller who translates their love of books into handselling, marketing, and promotions, in honor of the late bookseller famous for his handselling abilities. Sonneborn will receive a full ticket packet and a travel stipend to attend the NAIBA summer conference, New Voices New Rooms, in Atlanta, Ga., August 3-6.

Susie Sonneborn

Sonneborn, a native Chicagoan, holds a master's degree in education and social policy from Northwestern University and has decades of experience as a teacher and curriculum development specialist, integrating the arts into the core curriculum. She said, "After over 25 years of promoting literacy and the love of reading through teaching, I feel lucky to have found the perfect way to merge all of my passions, skills, and hobbies at Watchung Booksellers. Handselling truly brings me joy. I love connecting with customers and helping to build a deeper sense of community at our store and through our school book fairs. I relish the challenge and rewards of helping adults and children find their just-right books. The matchmaking, the curating, and the infinite possibilities for classes and events is all endlessly creative!"

Evelyn Moulton, children's bookseller and social media manager at Watchung Booksellers, said, "In addition to being a long-time light in our community, when Susie joined our team at The Kids' Room location, we were finally complete. She has an ability to instantly connect with anyone who comes through our doors, and brings her love and laughter to every interaction. When Susie loves a book, she shares it in a way that makes people fall in love with it, too. I've seen her hand sell dense non-fiction to kids with such enthusiasm, it gets them excited to learn. She's built connections with so many customers; they keep coming back asking what Susie has been reading lately. We love Susie!!!"

Caroline Shurtleff, children's bookseller and school event manager at Watchung Booksellers, added, "Susie connects deeply with customers, making handselling a personal experience. She understands the root of what customers are searching for in their next read, always understanding that gift-giving is nuanced. She congratulates children in their thoughtfulness in asking for books for their friend's birthdays, and is very attentive to their requests. People seek her advice and trust her expertise. She champions quirky, heartfelt stories that are great read alouds. She makes sure each customer has a memorable experience shopping at our store."

Tome Books & Novelteas hosted its grand opening on May 24 at 6089 Salem Road in Cincinnati, Ohio. In Instagram posts on the big day, the bookstore noted: "It’s been so good seeing you all today. Wow… what a day it’s been thus far..... Wow... it's closing time. And my did you all SHOW UP, and SHOW OUT!!! Over 600 people came through our doors today. The biggest shoutout to the Anderson and Mount Washington area, we've missed you all so much. Thanks to everyone that traveled from all around Cincinnati, folks came from Dayton, Kentucky, and Indy."

In March, CityBeat had reported that a "reimagined" Tome Books & Novelteas would be reopening in Cincinnati, where Tome Books first launched in the city's Mt. Washington neighborhood in 2022 but closed the following year and rebranded as Scarlet Rose Books & Vintage Boutique in Ludlow, Ky., which closed last July.

The Tome Bookshop "was our first iteration where we focused on books and a cafe atmosphere." co-owner Jeremy Spencer--who is also an author under the pseudonym J.M. Clark--told WKRC. "It didn't quite work out the way we wanted to, with the aches and pains of starting a new business. But we're back."

He added that he and his wife, Autumn Spencer, learned several lessons while owning the bookstore at their Mount Washington location, including how to compete with large retailers: "It's really hard to compete with the big guys like Amazon because of the convenience piece and how they can offer books at a cheaper price. So, locally what we try to do is events to bring people in and build community." The bookstore now specializes in teas, offers free writing workshops, children's readings, book clubs, free Wi-Fi, and more.

"We had more than 600 people come in for our grand opening, and that tells us that the community is really interested in what we're doing right now," Spencer noted.

After a little more than a year in business, Paper Moon in Troy, N.Y., is relocating to a new, larger space, the Times-Union reported.

Paper Moon, which debuted in March 2024, will reopen in its new space at 6 Brunswick Rd. on Saturday, June 14, and owner Joshua Gruft has a grand opening party scheduled for Friday, June 27. The new location is 350 square feet, up from 150 square feet at its original home. 

Gruft noted that when he first opened Paper Moon, he carried only his magazine, Hypersaturation, and Castle Jackal, a magazine published by a friend. As he added more magazines and books from local publishers and authors, he outgrew the small space.

In the new location, Paper Moon will offer a larger selection of books, magazines, and local artwork. Gruft plans to focus less on hosting live music and instead host more author readings, poetry events, and magazine release parties. He also has an online shop in the works.

He told the Times-Union: "I hope to continue to be the spot where you can find something you didn't know you were looking for."

Belarusian publishers Nadia Kandrusevich (Koska) and Dmitri Strotsev (Hochroth Minsk) were jointly awarded the 2025 International Publishers Association's Prix Voltaire at a ceremony during the World Expression Forum in Lillehammer, Norway. The publishers, exiled in Poland and Germany, respectively, were recognized for their commitment to publishing despite threats, harassment, and ultimately having to flee Belarus.

"The freedom to publish is challenged everywhere," said Kristenn Einarsson, chair of the IPA's Freedom to Publish Committee. "We received a worrying number of nominations this year. Their stories are sometimes unknown outside of their countries or regions, but their bravery is no less great. That our laureates must continue publishing in exile as a consequence of their commitment to the freedom to publish deserves our respect and recognition."

In a statement, Kandrusevich, who was unable to attend the ceremony, said, in part: "This recognition affirms not only the importance of publishing and translating books for children but the belief in the quiet power of words to shape minds, to open hearts, and to build bridges across languages, cultures, and generations. The belief that even the smallest readers deserve stories that speak truth, nurture imagination, and offer a mirror--or a window--into the world. This award belongs to all the translators, publishers, and writers who keep working despite all circumstances. To all the children who read or listen to bedtime stories and to all the parents who believe in the power of a good book."

Accepting the award at the ceremony, Strotsev, who delivered his speech in Belarusian, said: "In March 2022, I left for the West with one small suitcase. I was fleeing political persecution, but I was also preparing for a new mission--to use 30 years of publishing experience to create a free Belarusian publishing house in exile. Today, about 30 Belarusian publishing houses have re-emerged or restored their work in exile, and we are all closely connected. We have a publishing community."

---

In Bulgaria, the Orange bookstore chain and UNICEF have renewed their partnership to improve the lives of children by working together to increase the literacy of children with an educational initiative under the motto, "Literacy is a superpower." For the past 12 years, Orange has been supporting UNICEF's causes for children.

The collaboration between UNICEF and Orange aims to promote reading from an early age, provide better access to quality children's literature, increase children's reading motivation, and develop their critical thinking, analysis and information processing skills. In addition, the program envisages increasing the capacity of adults to support the reading process and increase literacy.

According to PISA (Program for International Student Assessment for 2022), 53% of ninth-graders in Bulgaria do not have basic reading skills. In 2024, about 8.5% of fourth-graders had a poor result in the national external assessment in Bulgarian. 

"Every child has the right to quality education," said Christina de Bruin, UNICEF representative in Bulgaria. "Literacy is the key that unlocks a world of opportunities for every child. It's not just the ability to read and write--it's the foundation of self-confidence, critical thinking, and the ability to dream." 
  
---

Congratulations to Bolen Books, Victoria, B.C., Canada, which is celebrating its 50th birthday with a "Back to the '70s" pop-up store at the bookseller's original 1975 location. Quill & Quire reported that in addition to a window display featuring a poster of Peter Benchley's Jaws, the bookshop features "a disco reading corner complete with an orange shag rug and glitter balls. The shelves are stocked only with books that would have been available in the 1970s. And the large black-and-white photo mounted behind the cash desk is a glamorous shot of Bolen Books founders Mel and Patrick Bolen." --Robert Gray

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is launching a book club, and the first selection is Samantha Harvey's Booker Prize-winning novel Orbital (Grove Press).

In an announcement posted on Instagram, Stephen Colbert called Orbital "a beautiful novel about six astronauts on the International Space Station going about their daily tasks and pondering the meaning of life. It won the Booker Prize, and it won the even more prestigious prize of being my first book club pick."

Further updates about the book club will be posted on the show's Instagram page.

Frank Graham Jr., who "wrote eloquently about the natural world and conservation for Audubon magazine for nearly 50 years and published a book that updated Rachel Carson's groundbreaking 1962 exposé, Silent Spring, which had warned about the dangers of pesticides," died May 25, the New York Times reported. He was 100.

David Seideman, a former editor-in-chief of Audubon, said the subjects of Graham's writing "ran the gamut from the tiniest creatures, like spiders--about which he was a self-taught expert--to giant sandhill cranes on Nebraska's Platte River. There wasn't a creature that didn't interest him.... I'd visit him in Maine, where he had a little island, and we'd be eating plants, and he'd also be picking spiders out of his kayak and identifying them."

Graham also wrote about environmental threats. Ed Neal, the outdoors columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, called his 1996 book, Disaster by Default: Politics and Water Pollution, "a damning indictment of what industry and indifferent government have done to the nation's waterways."

In 1967, Audubon asked Graham to write about the progress, if any, of pesticide legislation and regulation in the U.S. since the publication of Silent Spring. A year later, Audubon named him its field editor, a job he held until 2013. 

Graham's three-part series about pesticides for the magazine convinced Paul Brooks, Carson's editor at Houghton Mifflin, to sign him to write an update of her classic work. Since Silent Spring (1970) described the years Carson spent researching and writing her book, "documented the attacks on her findings by agricultural and chemical companies and governmental interests, and chronicled the catastrophes caused by pesticides in the ensuing years," the Times wrote. Carson died in 1964.

In a 2012 Audubon article, Graham wrote that his book was one that Carson "should have written to rebut the all-out attack on her work and person." He attributed the modest success of Since Silent Spring to readers who were "reluctant to let Carson go" and who had "remained eager to see how her work and reputation had survived the assaults of the exploiters."

Graham served in the Navy during World War II, seeing action in the South Pacific. After he was discharged, he earned a BA in English at Columbia University, and worked as a copy boy at the New York Sun during the summers. He was later hired by the Brooklyn Dodgers and promoted in 1951 to publicity director, but left the job in 1955. He became an editor and writer at Sport magazine, where he stayed for three years, and then worked as a freelance writer for various publications.

Graham's other books include Casey Stengel: His Half Century in Baseball (1958), It Takes Heart (1959, with Yankees broadcaster Mel Allen), and Margaret Chase Smith: Woman of Courage (1964). He also wrote A Farewell to Heroes (1981), which he called a "dual autobiography" of himself and his father, Frank Graham Sr., a sports reporter and columnist for the New York Sun and the New York Journal-American.

Graham married Ada Cogan in 1953, and under the pseudonym Ada Graham, the couple wrote several children's books together about the natural world. The Times noted that Graham once wrote in Audubon about the epiphany he experienced in New York's Central Park when, using powerful new binoculars, he saw a black-and-white warbler for the first time.

It was a warbler "as I had never seen one: resplendent in its fresh nuptial plumage, every detail clear and sharp," he recalled. "It was a revelation. The memory of that long-ago bird has never left me; it amplifies my pleasure every time I see one of its descendants."

Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh, N.C., told us that Beatrix Hopper "took a break from her usual gig as a therapy bunny to become a bookstore bunny at Quail Ridge Books. (Here she is on our Instagram.) Now that she's spending so much time in the store, we decided it was high time to teach her a little bit about her namesake!"

"Books are the only form of travel that never gets delayed! Escape reality--no passport or 'Real ID' required." That was the sidewalk chalkboard message in front of the Bookworm, Bernardsville, N.J.

Jerri Helms has been promoted to senior v-p, marketing operations, at HarperCollins Christian Publishing. She joined the company in 2008, leading the digital marketing team for Zondervan Bibles. She was promoted to senior director, digital marketing initiatives in 2018, and to v-p, digital marketing/analytics in 2020. Last year she joined HarperCollins Christian Publishing's Executive Leadership Team. She is also a member of News Corp.'s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Committee.

Today:
Fresh Air: Charan Ranganath, author of Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters (Vintage, $19, 9780593467831).

Oscar winner Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain) will direct Old Gold Mountain, based on C. Pam Zhang's 2020 debut novel, How Much of These Hills Is Gold, with Hansol Jung (Pachinko) writing the movie adaptation. World of Reel reported the project "was originally conceived as a series, but plans have changed and Lee is now in charge to make something cinematic out of the source material."

Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki will be shooting the film, "which means it'll at the very least be a visual beauty," World of Reel noted. Avy Kaufman is in charge of casting, though no details have been released yet. 

Shortlists have been released for this year's Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, which "celebrates crime fiction at its very best" by U.K. and Irish authors, as well as the McDermid Debut Award for new writers. The prize is run by Harrogate International Festivals and sponsored by T&R Theakston. A public vote is now open. The winners will be revealed July 17, on opening night of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.

The winner of the Novel of the Year Award receives £3,000 (about $4,075) and an engraved oak beer cask, hand-carved by one of Britain's last coopers from Theakston's Brewery. This year's Novel of the Year shortlisted titles are:

The Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmyre  
The Mercy Chair by M.W. Craven  
The Last Word by Elly Griffiths  
Hunted by Abir Mukherjee  
Deadly Animals by Marie Tierney  
All the Colours of the Dark by Chris Whitaker  

The McDermid Debut Award is named in recognition of author Val McDermid, co-founder the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, and celebrates the best debut crime writers in the U.K. The winner gets £500 (about $680) and an engraved oak beer cask. The finalists are:

Sick to Death by Chris Bridges
I Died at Fallow Hall by Bonnie Burke-Patel
Her Two Lives by Nilesha Chauvet
A Reluctant Spy by David Goodman
Isolation Island by Louise Minchin
Black Water Rising by Sean Watkin

photo: Kyla Fear

Nini Berndt is a graduate of the MFA program in Fiction at the University of Florida. She teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, where she lives with her wife and son. Her debut novel, There Are Reasons for This (Tin House Books, June 3, 2025), is a modern love song about the fallibility of love--in all its iterations. Claire Messud says it is "a truly memorable novel. Nini Berndt wonderfully makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange. There Are Reasons for This immerses you in the unsettling but tender lives of its characters, whose yearning for connection powerfully mirrors our own."

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

There Are Reasons for This is an atmospheric, near-future dystopian queer love story that asks if desire and connection can save us from our slowly burning world.

On your nightstand now:

I just finished Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation and am furious with myself for not having read it years ago. I immediately followed it up by a rapid-fire read of Audition by Katie Kitamura, which reminded me so much of Desperate Characters by Paula Fox, one of my all-time favorites and frequent rereads. Good Girl by Aria Aber and What You Make of Me by Sophie Madeline Dess are up next. I keep Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities by my bed at all times, just in case. I had Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter next to my bed for months. I know I really love a book if I want to put it under my pillow, kiss it good night, let it seep into my head while I sleep.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I checked The Farthest-Away Mountain by Lynne Reid Banks out from the school library about once a month when I was in fifth grade. Finally, my mom bought it for me. Then it was the Weetzie Bat books by Francesca Lia Block. I was obsessed and wanted so badly to live in that glittering, sad world. It is perfect fodder for those aching teen years. I recently had a fabulous, unexpected conversation about those books, and the nostalgia was immediate.

Reading, real reading, started for me in high school after I read The Catcher in the Rye. Predictable, maybe painfully so, but true. I just hadn't known there was prose like that, really. So I followed that up with J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories, and that became my Bible. That was when I first was like, yeah, I want to be a writer, and I want to figure out how to write like this.

Your top five authors:

Grace Paley, Joy Williams, Amy Hempel, Shirley Jackson, Maggie Nelson. Those are the writers I would give my life for.

Book you've faked reading:

All James Joyce. I wrote a paper on Steinbeck's East of Eden in high school having read only the first 20 pages. We read How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayardin grad school, but I also didn't finish that book. There are a lot of books I feel confident talking about that I've read very little of.

Books you're an evangelist for:

This is where I really shine, and it's the only proselytizing I do. The Changeling by Joy Williams. After I read it, I bought copies for seven or eight people and told them we couldn't speak until they finished it. All Joy Williams, really. Go. Read her. All of it. Right now. I talk about The Lover by Marguerite Duras endlessly, especially when I'm teaching. There is just so much to learn from that book. Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles. She will never get her due. It's a book I recommend knowing people rarely love it as much as I do, but I think it's perfect. We Were the Universe by Kimberly King Parsons. Her prose is next level. Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee; yes, he won the Nobel Prize, but it still goes under-read. The Girls by John Bowen. What a fabulous little freak of a book. Other Voices, Other Rooms by Capote. It's my favorite of his, and I adore Capote.

Book you've bought for the cover:

A Little Lumpen Novelita by Roberto Bolaño, a sleeper shining jewel of a novella that caught my eye at AWP and that I could read again and again.

Book you hid from your parents:

I have no idea how I came into possession of the Story of O by Anne Desclos in high school, but I did. Victorian smut was absolutely not on my radar, but there it was, kept safely under my bed.

Book that changed your life:

I found Lydia Davis's story collection Break It Down in a bathroom stall my second year of college and read the whole thing that night. It was such a charged time for me. I don't think I really understood my literary taste yet, and reading that collection immediately unraveled me, in the best way. I was infatuated with what could happen in the space of a line, with the way words could push against each other, with the urgency of cadence, the unbelievable power of simplicity and precision in language. I wanted, needed, to be a writer then.

Favorite line from a book:

The line I think about most often is actually a whole story of Amy Hempel's, titled "Memoir": "Just once in my life--oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life?"

She's a genius.

Five books you'll never part with:

Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley
The Lover by Marguerite Duras  
The Changeling by Joy Williams  
Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
The Seas by Samantha Hunt
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel

Sorry, it has to be eight. These are my essential texts.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's sublime on every read, but reading it the first time was transcendent. The unfolding of that story, the realizations, the quiet, haunting devastation--you only get that experience once.

Esther Chehebar's juicy adult debut novel, Sisters of Fortune, provides an intimate glimpse into a community of Syrian Jewish immigrants in modern-day Brooklyn, through the intertwined lives (and fates) of the three Cohen sisters.

Chehebar's narrative opens as Fortune, the conventional middle sister, is preparing for her wedding to a perfectly nice Jewish guy. Named after her acerbic grandmother, Fortune has always been the obedient, capable daughter--but even she's starting to crack under the pressure of her future mother-in-law's expectations. Nina, the rebellious(ish) eldest daughter, moved to Manhattan for college but is back home at age 26, caught between her desire for freedom and her dependency (emotional and financial) on her family. And beautiful baby sister Lucy, nearly done with high school, has landed herself a charming, wealthy older bachelor. But will he pop the question? And if he does, is she ready to settle down? As Nina starts a new job in Bushwick and Fortune begins questioning her too-smooth path toward the altar, all three sisters wrestle with the gap between their personal longings and the stifling-yet-comforting traditions of their community.

Chehebar (I Share My Name) deftly shifts among the three sisters' perspectives, often commenting on the same events from two or three viewpoints. Although the sisters don't have many heart-to-hearts, they are watching each other's backs--while also watching each other's responses to parental pressure and neighborhood gossip. Like many sisters, they are often at odds: frustrated, confused, or downright affronted by each other's actions. But their bond--strengthened by religion, genetics, and years of shared history--matters more than their disagreements. Each one wants her sisters to be happy, though each sister would also prefer to be the happiest (and the prettiest, and the most loved). And although each of them longs for their community's seal of approval, they are also 21st-century young women with their own hopes and ambitions.

Like any insular community, the Cohens' Syrian Jewish milieu has its challenges: blatant prejudice toward outsiders; a too-strong regard for appearances; and problematic behavior (ranging from casual sexism to outright predation) disguised as tradition and protection. Chehebar explores these issues with wry humor and compassion, through Nina's semi-rebellious fashion choices, Lucy's time-consuming workouts and beauty treatments, and Fortune's efforts to please various eagle-eyed matrons. But it isn't all bad: the sisters also benefit from the warmth, stability, and acceptance offered to insiders. Each of them must weigh the risks of forging her own path versus the security of following tradition. But whether they're making knafeh in their mother's kitchen or searching for true love, they can count on each other for support as they experiment, make mistakes, and try again. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Shelf Talker: Esther Chehebar's juicy novel explores the intertwined lives of three Syrian Jewish sisters in Brooklyn as they search for love and try to forge their own paths within a traditional community.