In honor of the Presidents Day holiday, this is our last issue until Tuesday, February 17. See you then!

Your Brother's Bookstore, Evansville, Ind., will be moving to a new space, WEHT reported.

Your Brother's Bookstore's current location

In a message to customers, owners and brothers Sam and Adam Morris said they have made an offer on a building that is less than a mile from the store's current location, though they declined to give the exact address as the deal is not yet finalized. They noted that the new space is larger than their current space and has parking. 

"There are many, many, many reasons we are moving," the brothers explained, "but a key factor is our rent going up significantly. Like 40%. We've endured the construction, but the price of everything on Main St. is going up and a small, indie, community bookstore can't afford the neighborhood anymore.

"With that said, the store honestly does really well! We make enough money to justify staying open, the community seems to like a lot of what we’re doing, we regularly hear from people how great our store is and about the feeling it gives them. In the end, 'the love you take is equal to the love you make' and we feel the love."

The owners plan to share more information, including the new store's address as well as a moving date, in the weeks ahead.

"We are so excited about this new chapter for the bookstore and the neighborhood revitalization project we are about to be a part of," they wrote.

WanderLust Mobile Bookstore, a romance-focused, mobile bookstore, will make its debut appearance tomorrow in Madison, Wis., the Cap Times reported.

The bookstore, built out of a renovated school bus, will set up shop at Giant Jones Brewing Company at 931 E. Main St. The mobile bookstore carries an inventory of around 1,000 titles representing plenty of romance sub-genres. Local writers and BIPOC authors are emphasized, and there is also a selection of books on sexual health and wellness. Local authors E.H. Lupton and Beatrice McKinsey, along with artist Ben Mehlos, will make appearances at the opening.

Owners Allison Couture and Marie Nitschke have been friends for 15 years and first talked about opening a romance store in 2024. Initially, the idea was a joke, until the day "we just looked at each other and locked eyes and were like, we're doing this," Couture told the Cap Times.

Nitschke and Couture plan to take WanderLust to places like farmers' markets, coffee shops, festivals, and book clubs. Remarked Nitschke: "We'd really like to showcase people in our community who are writing romance novels."

The American Booksellers Association has announced the names of the 33 booksellers who will receive scholarships to attend this year's Children's Institute (Ci2026) in Schaumburg, Ill., June 26-29.

The scholarships cover registration fee, a hotel room, and up to $600 reimbursement for travel expenses. The full list of scholarship winners can be found in Bookselling This Week.

Mary Morgan has sold Reading Group Choices to Amanda Angelini, who has 25 years of experience working in editorial leadership and audience development in direct-to-consumer newsletter publishing. Angelini called the move "truly a dream come true. It allows me to combine my professional experience with the things I've been passionate about my whole life: books, reading, and meaningful connection."

She added that she intends "to continue to foster the relationships Mary has so thoughtfully developed over the years with readers, publishers, and other industry partners. And I'm also excited to look for new ways to help RGC grow, through expanded partnerships and innovative opportunities to connect readers with great stories--and each other....

"My career has really centered on content strategy and building trusted, reader-centered content brands designed to inform, engage, and grow highly loyal subscriber audiences."

Morgan commented: "I have been looking for the perfect someone to take Reading Group Choices into its fourth decade, and Amanda has all the credentials."

Reading Group Choices helps reading groups find discussible books via its annual guide, website, e-mail newsletters, and reading group events it attends and organizes.

Morgan bought Reading Group Choices in 2014 from Charlie Mead, who had bought Reading Group Choices with his late wife, Barbara Drummond Mead, from founders Donna Paz Kaufman and Mark Kaufman in 2005. The Kaufmans started Reading Group Choices in 1994.

PEN America's board of trustees has named Summer Lopez and Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf as co-CEOs, effective immediately. The organization noted that each brings a decade of management and program experience at PEN America, and have been serving as interim co-CEOs since November 2024. 

Summer Lopez and Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf  (photo: Beowulf Sheehan)

Tracy Higgins, board v-p and chair of the executive committee, noted that the board had been committed to identifying leadership that could bring deep mission knowledge, crisis management skills, and a unifying roadmap for PEN America's future.

"Summer and Clarisse undoubtedly fit that bill," Higgins said. "They are highly respected in the free expression and literary communities, and their integrity, imagination, and steady hands are already shaping PEN America's next chapter. They know this organization inside and out and bring both urgency and vision to guiding its future at a time when defending free expression is both deeply essential and highly demanding."

Board president Dinaw Mengestu added: "Summer and Clarisse have been the guiding force behind PEN America's extraordinary literary programming and robust defense of free expression. They are relentless advocates for writers and our staff and members, helping to build a stronger and more engaged organization—one that stands firmly by its values and is prepared to meet the extraordinary challenges ahead."

Lopez observed, "We are in a moment of emergency for free expression and for democracy. In the U.S. and around the world, our ability to write, read, speak, and imagine freely is under grave threat. But it is not a time for despair; instead, it is a time for coming together in community to fight for what matters most. Drawing on our 104-year history, PEN America has an essential role to play in pushing back against the brutal repression we see today, from Minneapolis to Tehran. And as we do this work, we will put our community of writers at the center--providing vital support, building effective coalitions, and crafting an affirmative vision of what a truly free and open culture can look like." 

Rosaz Shariyf commented: "At its very core, PEN America is a home for writers and a vibrant literary community that believes the freedom to write is the foundation of our democratic future and a more just world. As a membership organization of writers, academics, journalists, translators, and librarians, PEN America is uniquely positioned to be a powerful convener and act with a singular mission to protect voices that are under attack. Writers help us break through the noise and the information bubbles, and in a moment of division and anxiety, we will see to it that those who are writing the story of this time know that PEN America has their backs."    

British literary agent Andrew Hewson, founder, director, and former chairman of the Johnson & Alcock literary agency, has died. He was 83. The Bookseller reported that Hewson "began his career working front-of-house at the Newcastle Playhouse, and was hired in 1969 by the literary agent John Johnson, brother of actress Dame Celia Johnson and founder of his eponymous agency."

He acquired the agency when Johnson retired in 1977, with his wife, Margaret Hewson, joining him soon after to become a "formidable professional partnership" that lasted until her death in 2002. Noting that the agency had a "brilliantly eclectic list," the Bookseller wrote that Andrew Hewson represented some international bestsellers, including The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas, the thriller Night Sky by Clare Francis, and Candlenight by Phil Rickman. He also oversaw the early career of Maeve Binchy and in 1985 began representing Beryl Bainbridge.

A tribute to him read: "He was a man of immense culture and refinement, compassionate, with a warmth of understanding and impeccable literary judgement. His legacy survives in the agency that he ran for almost 50 years, and it will continue to champion his belief in looking after authors with kindness, humility and decency."

Author James Hamilton-Paterson said Hewson "was conscientious to a fault, intimidatingly well-read and with an encyclopedic recall of authors and titles that never deserted him. A devoted father to Anna and his grandchildren, he had a wide circle of unusual friends and acquaintances, all of whom loved him for his great good humor and unfailing kindness."

Charlie Campbell, managing director of Greyhound Literary, commented: "Andrew Hewson may well have been the nicest person in publishing. He was also a brilliant literary agent. I was lucky enough to start out as his assistant's maternity cover in 2004 and I immediately thought 'this is what publishing should be like' (just as the industry was about to change even more). Funny, warm and so self-effacing, he leaves a lasting legacy, with his agency and clients in excellent hands. He will be much missed."

Emmanuel Laroche, author of A Taste of Madagascar: Culinary Riches of the Red Island (Post Hill Press), kicked off his tour of independent culinary bookstores with an appearance at Omnivore Books on Food in San Francisco, Calif.

Click here to see the latest Independent Press Top 40, the weekly bestseller list celebrating the bestselling 40 fiction and 40 nonfiction titles from independent publishers, as sold by independent bookstores across the country. The list is sponsored by the Independent Publishers Caucus and the American Booksellers Association.

Winnie & Mo's Bookshop, Idaho Falls, Idaho, shared a Bookseller Winter Olympics video on Instagram, noting: "Watch until the end.... No books or booksellers were harmed in the making of this video."

Red Wheel/Weiser will handle sales and distribution for New World Library, effective September 1.

Founded in 1977 and headquartered in Novato, Calif., New World Library has a focus on spirituality and philosophy, personal growth, and transformative thinking. It has published numerous bestselling titles, including The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain. New World Library authors have included Joseph Campbell and Alan Watts, as well as contemporary writers such as Dan Millman, Sol Smith, Natalie Goldberg, Lee Harris, and Alice Walker.

For many years, New World Library has been distributed by Publishers Group West. New World Library publisher and cofounder Marc Allen said, "This is a bittersweet moment after a long and positive history with PGW. Our collaboration over these many years has been critical to New World Library's evolution and success. As the publishing landscape continues to evolve, we determined that joining forces with Red Wheel/Weiser at this time positions our business for the future and will allow us to achieve our strategic long-term goals. RWW shares our vision for independent publishing and mission-driven books, which has been at the heart of New World Library's publishing program over the last 50 years."

Michael Kerber, president of Red Wheel/Weiser, said, "We couldn't be more thrilled at the opportunity to work with New World Library and help them achieve their strategic goals. Their publishing program is admired throughout the industry and has inspired readers the world over. We are proud to welcome them to our stable of distributed publishers."

Red Wheel/Weiser is a leading independent publisher and book distributor with a strong focus on mind, body, and spirit titles.

In a related move, Kevin Votel has joined New World Library as director of sales & marketing and will work closely with Red Wheel/Weiser to expand the publisher's reach and connect with new audiences. Votel has been longtime v-p of business development at PGW.

At Candlewick Press, Holiday House, and Peachtree:

Sara DiSalvo has been promoted to director of publicity. Her previous title was assistant director of publicity.

Elyse Vincenty has been promoted to associate director, trade marketing. Her previous title was senior marketing manager, trade marketing.

Caitlyn Davis has been promoted to marketing coordinator, trade marketing. Her previous title was marketing assistant, trade marketing.

Adelaide Cronin has been promoted to associate national accounts manager. Her previous title was sales coordinator.

Apple TV released teaser for Margo's Got Money Troubles, based on Rufi Thorpe's bestselling novel. The eight-episode series, starring Elle Fanning, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nicole Kidman, and Nick Offerman, premieres globally on April 15 with three episodes, followed by new episodes every Wednesday through May 20. David E. Kelley serves as showrunner, writer, and exec producer.

Margo's Got Money Troubles "is a bold, heartwarming, and comedic family drama following recent college dropout and aspiring writer, Margo (Fanning), the daughter of an ex-Hooters waitress (Pfeiffer) and ex-pro wrestler (Offerman), as she's forced to make her way with a new baby, a mounting pile of bills and a dwindling amount of ways to pay them," Apple TV noted. 

The cast also includes Marcia Gay Harden, Greg Kinnear, Michael Angarano, Rico Nasty, and Lindsey Normington. Dearbhla Walsh directs the pilot and serves as an executive producer. Additional directors include Kate Herron and Alice Seabright.

We Need Diverse Books named the 2026 Walter Dean Myers Awards and Honor books for outstanding children's literature in two categories: younger readers (ages 9-13) and teen (ages 13-18). The award, also known as "The Walter," is named for prolific children's and young adult author Walter Dean Myers (1937-2014). 

Titles chosen for the annual award "commemorate Myers's memory and his literary legacy, as well as celebrate diversity in children's literature." The 2026 Walter Awards will be held on Monday, March 23, in Washington, D.C.

Younger Readers Winner: The Incredibly Human Henson Blayze by Derrick Barnes (Viking Books for Young Readers)
Younger Readers Honor: All the Blues in the Sky by Renée Watson (Bloomsbury)
Teen Winner: Champion: A Graphic Novel by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar & Raymond Obstfeld, illustrated by Ed Laroche (Ten Speed Graphic/PRH) 
Teen Honor: King of the Neuro Verse by Idris Goodwin (Atheneum Books for Young Readers) 

photo: Ayelet Tsabari

Janie Chang is a Globe and Mail bestselling author of historical fiction. Born in Taiwan, Chang has lived in the Philippines, Iran, Thailand, New Zealand, and Canada. She is the author of Three Souls, Dragon Springs Road, The Library of Legends, and The Porcelain Moon; and co-author with Kate Quinn of the USA Today bestseller The Phoenix Crown. The Fourth Princess (Morrow, February 20, 2026) is a gothic novel set in Old Shanghai and centered on two young women living in a crumbling, once-grand Shanghai mansion.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

A Shanghai gothic novel. A young Chinese woman finds work with an American heiress. Both have secrets, and so does the mansion where they live.

Favorite book when you were a child:

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. I didn't know what science fiction was back then; in fact, it took a while before I realized there were genres in fiction. It was just a really good story about travel between dimensions, good and evil, familial love. There were godlike beings but in the end, it was the children who had to save themselves.

Your top five authors:

Iain M. Banks: If anyone says that science fiction can't be literary, they haven't read the Culture series by Banks.

Emily Brontë: I read Wuthering Heights at a very young age and have been fascinated by the lives of the Brontës ever since. Two years ago, I went to Yorkshire, and I made what can only be called a pilgrimage to the parsonage at Haworth, now a museum. The museum gift shop had a very good day.

Timothy Findley: Imagination, storytelling, wonderful writing. I've enjoyed all his books including one called Inside Memory, which is about the craft of writing but also about his life in the arts.

Guy Gavriel Kay: When his first book of poetry came out, it explained his exquisite prose. He's a poet who tells stories.

Claire North: Brilliant and imaginative. She can write anything, it seems, from urban fantasy to speculative fiction, to myths, and her latest novel is a space opera.

Book you've faked reading:

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. It was so intimidatingly thick that I kept postponing, and now it's metaphorically at the bottom of my TBR stack.

Books you're an evangelist for:

Anything by Claire North but especially the trilogy of Ithaca, House of Odysseus, and The Last Song of Penelope. At first reading, it's a feminist retelling of the story of Penelope and how she managed while Odysseus and the men of Ithaca were off fighting the Trojan War and adventuring their way back. How she managed as in: on an island emptied of able-bodied men, who kept the economy going? The fishing, the farming, trade with other nations? How to feed the suitors who lounged around the palace, waiting for Penelope to choose one to marry? Read a bit deeper and there's a geopolitical dilemma: Who could she marry without starting another war or endangering her son?

Book you've bought for the cover:

The Ghost Brush by Katherine Govier. It's rare to see Japanese art on the cover of a book by a non-Asian author, and the image was so intriguing--stylized and unmistakably Japanese, a woman holding a brush and book, her lamplit skin as white as the cherry blossoms in the background. This remains one of my favorite books, the imagined life of Oei, daughter of the famous artist Hokusai of The Great Wave. She's rebellious and irascible in a time and culture that rewards obedience. There is evidence that it was Oei who created works attributed to Hokusai during his final years.

Book you hid from your parents:

Nope. They really didn't pay attention. They were just happy that I liked to read but they did worry that excessive reading would damage my eyesight.

Book that changed your life:

Dune by Frank Herbert. I was perhaps 12 when I first read this book, and while I had read other works of science fiction (Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein), none of them pulled me into the world of the story like this one. Even at that age, I sensed that there were layers of subtext in the story, politics and religion, the notion of playing the long game, and themes of our own history. It was unbelievably immersive and alien, while at the same time familiar enough to grasp quickly. Later, I would understand this was known as "worldbuilding." All I knew then was that the landscapes, people, and technology were so vivid that scenes unfurled in my mind as I read. I felt the heat of the sand dunes, the parched air of Arrakis, and understood for the first time the power of words beyond mere storytelling.

Favorite line from a book:

"My mother is a mystery to me. Between us is a barrier of language and disposition." --Birds Art Life by Kyo Maclear.

This book is a meditation on loss, a beautiful memoir that I've bought as a gift many times over for friends in grief. Maclear is part Japanese and this rather rueful quote resonates with me because it describes so concisely the interactions I had with my own mother.

Five books you'll never part with:

The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis (so actually seven). When my original box set of paperbacks fell apart, I bought a hardcover set. The illustrations by Pauline Baynes are part of the appeal for me because she spent her childhood in India and some of the background botanical elements of her drawings echo those of Indian and Persian miniatures, familiar to me from the years our family lived in Iran.

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

Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findley. The story of Noah's Ark but not the way you think. Irreverent, imaginative, astonishing. The characters mirror the best and worst of humanity without once resorting to cliché. Not easy to read, emotionally, which is why I wish I could read it again without knowing what's to come.

Willy Vlautin (The Horse; The Night Always Comes; Don't Skip Out on Me) applies his characteristic compassion and spare tone to an unlikely friendship in The Left and the Lucky, a novel of hard times and scant hope. A boy whose life has been ruled by abuse and neglect and a man whose hard work has been rewarded by betrayal and loss find each other in working-class Portland, Ore., and forge a hard-won bond to their mutual benefit.

Russell is eight years old and small for his age. He lives with his grandmother, who has dementia; his mother, who works nights; and his teenaged brother, who is angry and troubled. As the latter spins further afield and poses an increasingly serious physical threat, Russell dreams of building a boat or an airplane to take him away to an unpopulated island near Hawai'i: he can think of no nearer salvation.

Eddie lives next door. He runs a small house-painting business, working six or more days a week, and his main employee is a scarcely functioning alcoholic whose paychecks Eddie handles for him with scrupulous honesty. It will take the bulk of the novel for Vlautin to reveal the rest of Eddie's painful past, gradually filling in the reasons for his generosity. Russell turns up on Eddie's rounds of the neighborhood: out too late, hiding from something. The man offers the boy food, a ride home. Russell begins waiting in Eddie's backyard each night after work; he cleans paintbrushes after the workday. Eddie gives him odd jobs and shelter from violence. Each is lacking something in a life lived on the margins, but together they begin to build a slight, meaningful solution. They restore an old Pontiac and care for an old dog. Each finds in the other someone who needs them to survive.

In his eighth novel, Vlautin continues to focus upon an American underclass marked by desperation and poverty, people often forgotten or abandoned. With a gruff tenderness, a quiet lyricism, and moments of humor, he highlights not only the built family that Russell and Eddie assemble, but also motley characters from their neighborhood: Eddie's employees, an aging aunt, a waitress with goals, Russell's seething brother. The Left and the Lucky is often grim, but Eddie's dogged decency uplifts even in this grayscale world of limited options; his unwillingness to give up on Russell offers a slim but profound thread of hope unto the story's end. Vlautin's character sketches and the careful value he places on perseverance are not soon forgotten. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: In a gritty world bordering on hopelessness, a man and a boy form a friendship that may just save them both.