Elizabeth Arpin and Katie Rittenhouse

Soulbound Books, a science fiction- and fantasy-focused bookstore, will open in Waunakee, Wis., this summer, the Tribune Enterprise reported. 

Owners and sisters Katie Rittenhouse and Elizabeth Arpin have found a space at 112 W. Main St. that housed a meat market for more than a century. They plan to carry a wide range of sci-fi and fantasy titles and will host an assortment of community events.

"We want people to feel invited," Arpin told the Tribune Enterprise. "It's OK to escape sometimes."

The two sisters had long wanted to open a business together and were considering a bakery or coffee shop until they realized there were no other bookstores nearby. Before deciding to open Soulbound, Rittenhouse had a career in sales and marketing, which she left in April 2025. Arpin, meanwhile, had been a stay-at-home mom and wanted to work again.

"Every person we talked to said they were so excited for a bookstore in Waunakee," Rittenhouse said.

Remodeling and renovation work will take several months, with the owners aiming for an August opening.

Business partners Fox Emm and John Dixon have purchased Pro Libris Bookshop in Bangor, Maine. Noting that the transaction took place in less than seven days in February, the River Observer reported that the new owners will not change the name and plan to "keep it weird." They do hope to shift from a cash-only business to using credit-card processing, and to add newer books to the bookstore, which originally opened in 1980 and was primarily focused on used titles. 

"We had always talked about wanting to run or own a bookstore," said Emm, adding that when they first arrived in Maine four years ago, they visited all the local bookstores in the area, but there were no job opportunities.

Emm and Dixon have been working with Vera Furry, widow of former owner Eric Furry--who died in January--to learn how he would have done things and where he would have sourced books, the River Observer noted.  

The purchase included a fish named Bernard and an empty coffin, which had been a prop in the 1990 Stephen King movie Graveyard Shift. The fish is Emm's "new best friend."

Lioness Books' future home

Lioness Books, Leander, Tex., suffered a fire that has postponed the opening of its bricks-and-mortar location, the Austin American-Statesmen reported.

The bookstore, which launched as a mobile bookstore, was set to move into its new space at 208 N. Gabriel St. on March 29 and take part in the Austin Texas Book Trail on April 4, with a grand opening to follow on April 11. However, a fire broke out on Wednesday, March 25, in a storage shed at the property in which owner Sarah Ambrus was storing the bookstore's furniture and inventory. Ambrus described it as a "total loss" of inventory.

As a result, Ambrus has postponed the opening and has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help recover from the fire; so far it has raised more than $10,000 out of a $12,000 goal. Money from the campaign will help replace the inventory and furniture and rebuild the storage shed. At the same time, the town's Chamber of Commerce is accepting book donations on behalf of the store.

Per FOX7 Austin, the cause of the fire is still being investigated, though authorities have ruled out arson.

Petals & Pages, a queer, women-owned bookstore in Denver, Colo., will close on April 12, the Denver Post reported.

"In the time we've been open, we've gotten thousands of queer books into the hands of people who've needed them the most, and have become more than just a bookstore," store owner Dylah Ray wrote in an announcement posted to Instagram yesterday morning. "We've connected with our community in the most transformative way and we will always be grateful for that."

Petals & Pages will be open regular hours until April 12. Previously scheduled events will continue, but the storefront at 956 Santa Fe Dr. will be closed. 

In an interview with Denverite, Ray said the bookstore had become "financially not viable," with rent and other costs far outpacing revenue, and could only be profitable with the help of an angel investor. "It's such a hard time to be a small business," Ray remarked. 

"Thank you for an incredible chapter," wrote Ray, who founded the store in 2022. "We will miss this little bookstore, but are so thankful that we have you all in our story."

German filmmaker and author Alexander Kluge, "who elevated cinematic collages into an art form and won the top prize at the Venice film festival in 1968," died March 25, the Guardian reported. He was 94. A former assistant of legendary filmmaker Fritz Lang, Kluge "was an accomplished director of intellectually rewarding, if at times oblique filmic essays, and an ever-productive writer of short fiction."

He also played a key role in organizing the New German Cinema movement, which "brought forth better-known auteurs such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog, and he continued to bring experimental film to the small screen in his later years," the Guardian noted.

After World War II, Kluge studied law, history and church music at the Goethe University Frankfurt, where he was mentored by the philosopher Theodor Adorno. Although he began practicing law, he was increasingly drawn to literature and film. In 1962, he signed the Oberhausen Manifesto, which called on the German film industry to break free from current trends.

Abschied von Gestern (released as Yesterday Girl in the U.S.), one of the first films to emerge from the manifesto, is the story "of a Jewish woman who struggles to settle in West Germany after fleeing from the east, it was told in a jarring style, using discontinuous sound and a non-sequential narrative," the Guardian wrote. It won the Silver Lion at the Venice film festival, an honor Kluge followed up by winning the Golden Lion two years later with Artists in the Big Top: Perplexed.

As an author, Kluge's first collection of short stories, Case Histories (1962) "brought him accolades for its empathetic depiction of characters trying to navigate a country defeated in war," the New York Times noted, adding that his experimental novel The Battle (1964) "focused on the Battle of Stalingrad as seen through German eyes" and won the Bavarian State Prize for Literature.

Kluge's films often included a montage of photographs, archival footage, paintings, drawings and intertitles. This was echoed in his short stories and novels, which included documentary material like photos, maps and diagrams, complicating narratives as he melded nonfiction and fiction, the Times added. One of the best-known writers to be influenced by Kluge's use of photographs was W.G. Sebald (The Rings of Saturn).  

In the 1960s, Kluge became involved in Gruppe 47, the West German literary association whose members included Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll.

Kluge worked with the German sociologist philosopher Oskar Negt, whom he met in 1969. They co-authored three books about political and social subjects, including historical materialism and the philosopher Jürgen Habermas's concept of the bourgeois public square. In 1972, they published Public Sphere and Experience, a sociological study of television, his first book-length collaboration with Negt.

Kluge's book Chronicle of Feelings (2000) is a two-volume, 2,000-page collection of his stories. The Times wrote that he "initiated collaborations with artists, writers and thinkers for exhibitions, theater productions and staged readings. Among those he partnered with were the German artists Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz."

Kluge also collaborated with the U.S. author Ben Lerner on a "poetic dialogue" book, The Snows of Venice (2018). "My language is not as beautiful as lyrics," he told the Paris Review at the time. "This is something that you have to know how to do. Poets are diamond polishers. But there are also collectors of raw diamonds--I am a good archaeologist."

His many honors include the Georg Büchner and Heinrich Böll literary prizes and, in 2007, the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Times noted. Despite his success as a filmmaker, Kluge maintained that he always considered himself an author first, observing in his 1993 Heinrich Böll Prize acceptance speech: "This is because books have patience and can wait, since the word is the only repository of human experience that is independent of time.... Books are a generous medium, and I still grieve when I think of the library burning in Alexandria. I feel in myself a spontaneous desire to rewrite the books that perished then."

Tombolo Books in Saint Petersburg, Fla., hosted the launch event for Anywhere Else: Essays on Florida (University Press of Florida), a collection of essays by Tombolo bookseller Rachel Knox. Knox explores images of Florida in pop culture, together with her own experiences growing up in the Tampa Bay area and discussions of issues central to life in the state. More than 130 people attended the event, held in the bookstore's courtyard, and enjoyed a specialty drink made by neighboring bar Good Intentions, and some fun book swag. Knox was in conversation with local poet and journalist Tyler Gillespie.

"Thank you so much to everyone who attended the Starfall Fantasy Ball last weekend!" Hyperbole Bookstore, College Station, Tex., posted on Facebook. "It was so much fun seeing your costumes, celebrating our love of fantasy books, and dancing with you all night. Our lovely friends at Hocus Focus have shared the full album of photos from the photo booth (there are MANY), so be sure to find your group and save anything you want! Thank you again, and we hope you had a magical evening!"

Lance Serafica has been promoted to digital marketing associate at Berkley.

Her Muddy Majesty of Muck by Beatrice Alemagna (Astra Books for Young Readers).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Brandy Norwood, author of Phases: A Memoir (Hanover Square Press, $32.50, 9781335013279). She will also appear on the View.

Today: Woody Brown, author of Upward Bound: A Novel (Hogarth, $28, 9780593979976).

Also on Today: Remi Cruz Parsons, author of Let's Get Cooking: Everyday Meals, Tipsy Favorites and Comfort Food Cravings (S&S/Simon Element, $35, 9781668066836).

Drew Barrymore Show: Alex Aster, author of Starside: A Novel (Avon, $32, 9780063479791).

20th Century Studios has acquired film rights to The Marriage Bargain, Jennifer Probst's bestselling romantic comedy novel, with Laura Lekkos (Relationship Goals) adapting the screenplay. Deadline reported that the project "is notable in that it represents the first outing for Premeditated Productions, the production arm of Entangled Publishing co-founded by producer Sherryl Clark (The Gorge) and Entangled CEO and publisher Liz Pelletier, outside of a first-look deal with Amazon MGM Studios whose productivity recently led to a five-year extension." 

The Marriage Bargain "follows a bookstore owner who enters a marriage of convenience with a billionaire to save her family home, only to find the strict terms of their arrangement in jeopardy when real feelings between them emerge," Deadline noted. Cayla Tyne will oversee for Premeditated, with Sarah Shepard overseeing for 20th Century.

Sleep Tight, Disgusting Blob, written and illustrated by Huw Aaron, won the overall 2026 Waterstones Children's Book Prize, as well as the illustrated books category. The Bookseller reported that Aaron was nominated not only for his winning title, but also for Unfairies in the younger readers category, marking the first time in the award's history that an author has been shortlisted for two different titles at the same time.

The other category winners were Evie and Maryam's Family Tree by Janeen Hayat (younger readers) and A Language of Dragons by S.F. Williamson (older readers). The awards are voted for by booksellers, with the overall winner receiving £5,000 (about $6,595).

Bea Carvalho, Waterstones head of books, commented: "Huw is a storyteller and illustrator of staggering talent, a new voice to be seriously excited about: we are extremely proud to name him the overall winner of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2026. Booksellers everywhere hailed Sleep Tight, Disgusting Blob an instant bedtime story classic, falling in love with Huw's dreamy, painterly style and sweet rhyming text, and relishing the joy that it brings to little ones at bookshop story times.

"This is a gorgeously cozy tale which puts an adorable spin on all things spooky with bags of charm and a hilarious and monstrously cute supporting cast. Blob is a character for the picture book hall-of-fame: we can't wait to share his delightful story with children everywhere as the winner of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2026 alongside our brilliant category winners, Evie and Maryam's Family Tree and A Language of Dragons."

A Perfect Hand by Ayelet Waldman (Bad Mother; Daughter's Keeper; Love and Treasure) is a captivating historical drama, an appealing romance, and a story of political awakening, cleverly packaged as a novel of manners. This shapeshifter reads as an engaging and witty work of escapism until it turns to more serious-minded concerns, while never losing its charm. Set in English country estates and the grimy city of London in the 19th century, this rollicking narrative ranges from frivolous upper-class parties and fancy dress to the literal and metaphorical dirty laundry that the service class must process.

Alice Lockey, the daughter of a tenant farmer, has done well for herself, working her way up to the position of lady's maid to Lady Jemima, the silly, indulged elder daughter of a lord. Alice is skilled, intelligent, and eager to learn and to better herself; she hasn't decided what that will mean but is reluctant to follow her mother's advice to pursue marriage as a highest aim. Then she meets Charlie, a similarly above-average valet (also having climbed above his humble beginnings) to a viscount. Charlie and Alice tumble into the meager courtship that they can sneak on their half-days off, but they wish for more. Quickly realizing that their employers' marriage is the only route to their own, they determine to set up Lady Jemima--infatuated with another man, a bit of a rake--and the deeply eccentric Lord Wynstowe. This is a tall order, but the young lovers are highly motivated and well positioned for persuading.

Even as their schemes near fruition, however, Alice learns and yearns and grows. A reader (unusual for her class, but encouraged by Lady Jemima's iconoclastic spinster aunt), she encounters pamphlets by Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill. Questions of class reflect directly on her life and Charlie's; certain versions of feminism seem aimed at her lady's class rather than her own, but Alice wonders what the suffrage movement might do for even a servant girl. Between sewing ribbons and lace onto her lady's latest dresses and washing her foul undergarments, running her errands and helping her dress, Alice considers the various lives she might wish for, if she were able to choose for herself.

A Perfect Hand works subtly on several levels, exulting in the details of the Victorian setting (dress, diet, and indignities), exclaiming over Alice and Charlie's sympathetic romance, and pressing the exceptional heroine toward her best and truest self. Waldman even exposes a fun and poignant final surprise in the narrator's identity. With a nod to Jane Austen but a firm focus on the servant class, this versatile novel will entertain and stay with readers long past its final pages. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: This twist on the historical romantic drama considers a lady's maid, the valet she falls for, and the wider world for which she yearns.