"I'm lucky enough to live in Minneapolis, where there are lots of specialty bookstores a stone's throw from my house.... I literally have a bookstore for every conceivable need in absolutely any direction I want to go, and a few of them are reasonably walkable from me.

"I love going to my local shops because I'm usually looking for something odd, and the booksellers are always enthusiastic nerds with deep wells of knowledge. Absolutely nothing beats coming in with a bizarre request and watching a bookseller come alive, and I usually walk away with the story of a particular book if not the book itself. Book people are incredible."

Spellbound Bookshop, will host its grand opening celebration on Black Friday, November 28, at 37 W Lafayette Sq. in LaGrange, Ga. The 1,000-square-foot shop, owned by Ruth and Ty Heckendorf, will feature new books in every genre, as well as a wide selection of gifts and novelty items. A soft launch is scheduled for November 21.

The space will "include a comfortable seating area and a children's play space with a train table," Business Debut reported, adding that Spellbound Bookshop will also host community events such as children's story times, book clubs, yoga sessions, and "mommy and me" gatherings and, when weather allows, yoga and other events outdoors across from the square.

Ruth Heckendorf told Business Debut that she and her husband want to create "a magical and cozy place that feels welcoming to everyone." Her goal is to make the shop a comfortable "third space" for the LaGrange community: "I hope it's a safe place to hang out, exchange ideas, and meet new friends." 

Noting that Spellbound Bookshop is a true family effort, Ruth Heckendorf said their five-year-old son Henry helps choose children's merchandise and their one-year-old daughter Trenson "is helping us baby-proof the store for future one-year-olds."

Bookstore cat Midnight keeps an eye on the New Book Room

Back Again Bookshop in Myrtle Beach, S.C., hosted a grand opening celebration on Saturday, November 8, for The Back Room, a "gorgeous space at the back of the store [that] is filled with only NEW books and gifts. It's like a NEW bookstore inside of your favorite USED bookstore! Now you can grab a copy of the hottest new releases right alongside a copy of your older favorites. It's the same bookshop you know and love--but better!"

The festivities included free cupcakes and champagne, as well as prizes, book signings, raffles and giveaways. In addition, Back Again Bookshop noted that the Community Kitchen of Myrtle Beach "needs money to buy food during this season. So, this weekend only, when you bring in your used books to donate, not only will you get 20% off your purchase of USED books on the day you bring them in, the bookshop will also be donating $1.00 for each usable book to the Community Kitchen of Myrtle Beach. Start cleaning out those shelves and we will see you this weekend!!!"

Books-A-Million hosted a grand opening celebration this past weekend for its new bookstore at 1240 Stafford Market Place, Suite 101, in Stafford, Va. Potomac Local News reported that during the ribbon-cutting ceremony, held in partnership with the Fredericksburg Regional Chamber of Commerce, "residents and local business leaders joined to celebrate the long-anticipated arrival of a new bookstore in the growing North Stafford retail corridor."

"We're so excited to be within the community of Stafford now," said Julia Smith, district manager in training with BAM. "Customers have been nonstop this week and raving about how excited they are."

British author Gillian Tindall, "who brought a preservationist's fervor and a novelist's eye to books exploring the layered histories of buildings, neighborhoods and cities," died October 1, the New York Times reported. She was 87. Tindall's worldview was that "cities are palimpsests, each era engraved over the one preceding it, and all still accessible if you knew where to look."

During her career, she published a dozen novels, a story collection, and a biography of the Victorian novelist George Gissing. Her first novel, The Water and the Sound (1959), was set in Paris and focused on a young woman's efforts to track down her bohemian origins. Her sixth novel, Fly Away Home (1971)--also set in Paris--won the Somerset Maugham Award.

Tindall's nonfiction works include The Fields Beneath: The History of One London Village (1977), which the Times described as "a wonderfully discursive portrait of a community that Mary Shelley had described as an odious swamp. Ms. Tindall exhumed the vanished cow paths, hedgerows and waterways--the drains and foul effluents!--that had defined what was once a village, a small settlement that 1,600 years after its beginnings along a pre-Roman track had become a bustling inner-city neighborhood.... The book, which has never been out of print, made Ms. Tindall a local hero--with an ale, Tindall on Tap, named in her honor, and a cafe named for the book."

"She has a gift for making vivid unity out of history," novelist Glyn Hughes wrote in his Guardian review. "And in writing about a place with such a staggeringly varied past, she has found an ideal subject."

In 2019, Tindall published The Pulse Glass: And the Beat of Other Hearts, a "memoir, of sorts" in which she explored her family's Anglo-Irish history and her own traumatic childhood, the Times noted.

"I perceived clearly that I wasn't unhappy because of any mysterious hormones but because life in our home was so complicated," she wrote. "I envied school friends with mothers who arranged parties and didn't wreck holidays with fusses about how 'none of this is a holiday for me, you know.' "

For a year in the early '60s, she worked as a researcher for a welfare organization, interviewing the older residents of a neighborhood targeted for urban renewal. "That mostly meant demolition. Many would be relocated, their snug homes and the small businesses they frequented razed, and that experience, along with her realization of how much would be lost--not just the structures, but the memories they held--made Ms. Tindall an ardent preservationist," the Times wrote.

For four decades, she and her family spent part of each year at a cottage in Chassignolles, a village in central France. When she found some letters from the 1860s in an abandoned house nearby, she began working on Celestine: Voices From a French Village (1996), which W.S. Merwin, in a Times review, described as "a narrative of enigmatic beauty, a glimpse of time and mortality and of a quite earthly unearthly light."

Tindall's literary cartographies also included City of Gold: The Biography of Bombay (1982); The House by the Thames and the People Who Lived There (2006); The Tunnel Through Time: A New Route for an Old London Journey (2015); and the recently published Journal of a Man Unknown, "the imaginary diary of the life of one of her Huguenot forebears, an ironworker laboring in Britain during the 17th century," the Times noted.

"We are very ready, today, to concede people's need for 'meaningful relationships,' " she wrote in The Fields Beneath. "Yet we fail almost entirely to realize that other relationships, with places, objects, views--other supporters of the human psyche--may be just as profoundly important."

Local booksellers celebrated author Loretta Ellsworth's novel The Jilted Countess, coming January 13, 2026, from HarperCollins, at the Lexington Restaurant in St. Paul, Minn. Pictured: (left to right, back row) David Enyeart, Next Chapter Books; Holly Weinkauf, Red Balloon Books; Loretta Ellsworth; Liz Hovland, Valley Bookseller; Amanda Pesek, Excelsior Bay Books; Jenna Evans, Next Chapter Books; (front row) Pamela Klinger-Horn, Valley Bookseller; Ashley Christopherson, Niche Books; Angela Schwesnedl, Moon Palace Books.

Bookselling This Week has a roundup of some of the bookstores that are organizing food drives, collecting donations, and more to counter the administration's drive to withhold SNAP benefits to more than 40 million people. Read about some of those efforts here.

Congratulations to Anderson's Bookshops, Naperville and Downers Grove, Ill., which celebrated their 150th anniversary this past weekend. Anderson's offered a 25% discount for members and a gift with purchase from last Thursday through yesterday. And they hosted open houses yesterday at both stores, offering raffle prizes and more. (Anderson's also has a toy shop in Naperville.)

Anderson's Bookshops first opened in 1875 as a small drugstore. Located on Jefferson Avenue in Naperville, W.W. Wickel, Druggist and Bookseller, sold popular books while also providing books to local schools. The drugstore, now Oswald's Pharmacy, expanded and moved to a new location in Naperville. But the bookselling business became Anderson's Bookshops, family-owned since 1875. The current Anderson's owner, Becky Anderson, is the fifth generation of her family to run the company. Over the years, Anderson's expanded to include the Downers Grove store, the toyshop, and a book fair company.

The family and staff have long supported the community. Through programs like Book Angels, Naperville READS, and Books for Troops, Anderson's has donated tens of thousands of books to Naperville students, hosted author events with complimentary books for Naperville schools, and sent thousands of books to service members. Each year, through the Anderson's Bookfair program, Anderson's gives back more than $700,000 to partner schools. Beyond that, the business donates to community group fundraisers and local charity groups, hosts local performing arts groups in their stores, and supports local authors. 

"This is the power of truly local, independent business, which is exactly what we celebrate all year long," Becky Anderson said. "Standing still and letting challenges beat us is not in our DNA. Now, more than ever, we are immensely grateful for our community's years of support."

The two most popular books in October at Reading Group Choices were My Name Means Fire: A Memoir by Atash Yaghmaian (Beacon Press) and That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America by Amanda Jones (Bloomsbury).

There Are No Silly Questions: More than 200 Weird and Wacky Questions, Expertly Answered! by Mike Rampton, illus. by Guilherme Karsten (Nosy Crow).

Today:
Good Morning America: Alison Roman, author of Something from Nothing: A Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, $37.99, 9781984826411).

CBS Mornings: Rep. Jim Clyburn, author of The First Eight: A Personal History of the Pioneering Black Congressmen Who Shaped a Nation (Little, Brown, $30, 9780316572743). He will also appear on the View.

Kelly Clarkson Show: E. Lockhart, author of We Fell Apart: A We Were Liars Novel (Delacorte Press, $22.99, 9780593899168).

Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Ken Burns, co-author of The American Revolution: An Intimate History (Knopf, $80, 9780525658672). 

Tomorrow:
CBS Mornings: Rob Riggle, author of Grit, Spit, and Never Quit: A Marine's Guide to Comedy and Life (Grand Central, $30, 9781538769546).

The View: Sen. John Fetterman, author of Unfettered (Crown, $32, 9780593799826).

Apple TV revealed a first look at the second season of The Last Thing He Told Me, starring and executive produced by Jennifer Garner. While the first season was based on Laura Dave's bestselling novel, the new one is being adapted from the author's upcoming sequel, The First Time I Saw Him (Scribner, January 6, 2026). The eight-episode season 2 makes its debut globally February 20, 2026 on Apple TV.

Cast members also include Angourie Rice, David Morse, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Judy Greer, Rita Wilson, Augusto Aguilera, Josh Hamilton, Nick Hargrove, Michael Galante, John Noble, Michael Hyatt, and Luke Kirby.

The project is created and adapted by Dave, along with co-creator Josh Singer, who both serve as executive producers alongside Garner and Hello Sunshine's Reese Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter. Aaron Zelman joins season two as co-showrunner and executive producer with Josh Singer. 

Len Vlahos

Len Vlahos is the author of The Scar Boys, Life in a Fishbowl, Hard Wired, and other YA novels. He's also former co-owner and CEO of the Tattered Cover Book Stores in Denver, Colo.; former COO of the American Booksellers Association; former executive director of the Book Industry Study Group; and currently serves as literary content director at ReedPop, helping bring books and authors to pop culture shows including New York Comic Con and the soon to be relaunched BookCon. He and his wife, Kristen Gilligan (also a former ABA employee and Tattered Cover co-owner), launched Left Field Publishing this month, and Len's novel The Story of Oog: Or, a New Thinkers Guide to the Forest is one of the company's first two publications. When he's not doing book-ish things, Vlahos plays in a #lamedadrock band called -ish, plays ice hockey twice a week, and spends time with Kristen, their two boys, and three pets in the suburbs of Denver, Colo.

Shelf Awareness recently spoke with him about his new book, Left Field Publishing, and more.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Everyone knows I talk too much for that. Wait, are you counting THESE words? Crap. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meets Gulliver's Travels with cave people.

What was the inspiration for The Story of Oog?

The book started as a two-page short story many, many, many years ago. It was a man running through the woods, being chased by a hunter. Something about that scene--a lone person being chased in an isolated environment--stuck with me and I tried to do something with it over the years, finally landing on a newly minted thinking person being chased by non-thinking people. And that's really the conceit of the book; there are thinkers and non-thinkers, and among the thinkers there are collections of people who adhere to beliefs so dogmatic they become absurd. Oog, a pragmatist, is trapped between those two--non-thinkers and zealots--all while he's trying to make sense of the world using his newfound powers of thought. That it would be humor was sort of inescapable.

You have such a wealth of experience in the book world--from author to bookseller to association executive to your current job. Is it a good thing to know so much about how the industry works, or do you know too much?

It's true that I've seen the industry from a number of angles, but launching a publishing company is an entirely new venture. (Plus, really, Kristen, as Left Field CEO, is doing ALL of the heavy lifting.) Launching the press is kind of like taking a sip of water from a fire hose. We're flooded with new things to understand and learn and are doing our best to absorb as much as we can. So, it turns out, I don't know very much at all.

With all your work and now co-starting a publishing company, when do you find time to write?

HAHAHAHAHA! Sorry. I don't. But I try. Insomnia occasionally helps. 

What's on your nightstand?

I'm currently reading Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime by Sean Carrol, and listening to Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. I'll likely next read the ARC of Veronica Roth's Seek the Traitor's Son, and will next listen to... I'm not sure. Maybe the second Dungeon Crawler Carl book by Matt Dinniman? I tend to go where my mood takes me.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Picture book: The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf
Middle Grade: The Runaway Robot by Lester del Rey
High School: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Your top five writers:

Top five? Surely you jest. That's not possible.

David Mitchell. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is a masterpiece.

Jonathan Lethem. Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitude (both brilliant) got all the accolades. My personal favorite, Chronic City, is grossly underrated.

Jason Reynolds. His young adult novels--especially Long Way Down--are genius.

The late Tony Horwitz. His nonfiction books--Blue Latitudes, Baghdad Without a Map, Confederates in the Attic--captivated me. It was heartbreaking the world lost him so young.

Veronica Roth. I'll admit I've never read the Divergent series, but her more recent books are exquisitely written, brilliantly crafted stories, especially her recent When Among Crows.

Since you said five, the rest will be honorable mentions: Aaron Sorkin, Douglas Adams, Steve Martin, Jessica Brody, Andrew Smith, Ernie Cline... okay, I'll stop.

Left Field Publishing at MPIBA FallCon. From right: Len Vlahos, Kristen Gilligan, and consultant Cameron Berry.

Book you've faked reading:

Ulysses. Duh.

Book you're an evangelist for:

When I was at ABA, I spent a few days during one holiday season working at Maria's Bookshop in Durango. (This is before I moved to Colorado.) They hand-sold me a copy of Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. I was hooked on page one. When we owned Tattered Cover, I probably handsold more copies of it than any other book. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan is a close second.

Book you hid from your parents:

My parents let me go to The Rocky Horror Picture Show every Friday and Saturday night when I was in 10th grade, so there wasn't really a reason to hide things. (Of course, they had NO idea what it was actually about.)

Book that changed your life:

The Magus by John Fowles. During high school and the few years that followed, I was a somewhat--though not entirely--reluctant reader. When I was 21, I was living on the Jersey Shore and got the flu. My roommates and I didn't have a TV, and the Internet was still far off in the future. The house in which we were living had books, so I grabbed a copy of The Magus to read in my sick bed. It's a VERY trippy book to read with a high fever. Anyway, I've never been without a book to read since, so, yes, it changed my life.

Favorite lines from books:

"This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays." --Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up." --Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

Five books you'll never part with:

Too many to list. I'm not a collector or hoarder, but the books I love are friends. I like having them nearby.

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

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or Ready Player One. (And I wish I could watch The West Wing for the first time, too.)

Are you working on anything new?

I'm in the early stages of outlining a sequel to Oog. I have written one sequel--Scar Girl, the sequel to The Scar Boys--which was probably my hardest challenge as a writer. This one feels like it will be both easier and much more fun. 

Letters from Country Life: Adolphe Pons, Man o' War, and the Founding of Maryland's Oldest Thoroughbred Farm by Josh Pons (Eclipse Press) has won the $10,000 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award, which honors "excellence in thoroughbred racing literature."

Organizers called Letters from Country Life "a retrospective of the Golden Age of racing as viewed through a remarkable trove of correspondence to [the author's] grandfather, Adolphe Pons. Early in the 20th century, the senior Pons had served as private secretary to Racing Hall of Fame breeder August Belmont, a role in which he played an integral part in the breeding and eventual sale of Man o' War. During the Great Depression, Pons boldly struck out on his own, moving from New York to Maryland, where he acquired the 100 acres that would become Country Life Farm. It is today owned and run by his grandsons, Josh and Mike." 

Finalists included Arthur B. Hancock III for his autobiography, Dark Horses: A Memoir of Redemption (Stone Publishing), and John Perrotta, for his international mystery thriller, A Beggar's Ride (Short Dog Publishing).

In the opening scene of Emily Austin's fourth novel, a librarian named Darcy narrates her response to a patron watching porn in the library (mainly, per policy, to leave him be). From here, Darcy's story unfolds to grapple with love, grief, mental health, the importance of libraries, and the navigation of personal, professional, and public relationships. Is This a Cry for Help? continues in the vein of Austin's winsome work (Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead; We Could Be Rats) with a disarmingly candid narrative voice, outrageous humor, and serious thinking on tough topics.

Darcy has a good life. At her public library, she gets to help a messy cross-section of humanity: not only the toddlers, book clubs, and precocious teens she originally imagined, but also people who lack stable housing or who struggle with substance abuse or mental illness, job seekers, immigrants, and people with opinions different from her own. She has a wonderful wife with whom she shares her authentic self, two cats, and a lovely home. But when Darcy learns of the death of her ex-boyfriend Ben, she is thrown off balance. The disruptions to her carefully organized life are often hysterically funny even as they are harrowing and tragic.

Darcy has just returned to work after a two-month leave of absence following a mental breakdown brought on by the news of Ben's death. "Before this happened, if someone told me they were off work on stress leave, I might have been judgmental too. Now I understand that issues intensify when we smash them down into our boots." She is not at her strongest for the new challenge of an alt-right self-appointed journalist harassing the library and Darcy for what he deems a series of moral infractions, including the porn-watching patron. Her community holds an array of political views and opinions on topics as personal as Darcy's identity as a lesbian, and these values will be called into question by an attempted book ban.

Darcy's first-person narration lets the reader see her puzzle through the motivations of those around her, parsing social cues and questioning her own choices. Since the breakdown, she's been seeing a therapist (a process she finds "hokey," but she's making an honest effort), and she is well served by her earnest analysis of the actions and motivations of herself and everyone around her. "I'm not just thirty-three; I'm twenty-seven. I'm eighteen. I'm nine. I was just born. And I have to carry all of those versions of myself, the feelings they have, and the mistakes they've made, everywhere I go." Thoughtful and self-aware, if often awkward, Darcy strives intentionally to live as best she can. Is This a Cry for Help? portrays a stressful period in her life, but one she ultimately inhabits with wisdom and grace. Hilarious, wrenching, endearingly odd, Darcy's story is both enlightening and somehow comforting. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: As its protagonist wrestles with grief and challenges to intellectual freedom, this inspiring and very funny story showcases the power of love and libraries.