"My favorite thing about independent bookstores is really the booksellers. Like Renée mentioned earlier, they are our community. If you're working at a bookstore or visiting a bookstore as a customer, you're the kind of person that I want to be around.

"Obviously the books are important, but the people will give you the best recommendations for those books. They know what books that they carry, why they carry them, and they can help you find the right books for you."

At News Corp., home of HarperCollins, revenues in the third quarter ended March 31 rose 9%, to $2.19 billion, and net income rose 13%, to $121 million.

The company said that book publishing revenue grew 8%, or by $41 million, to $555 million, in the quarter, "led by strong sales of Rachel Reid's Game Changers related to the release of the Heated Rivalry streaming series." Results were also helped by "a $6 million impact from recent acquisitions," as well as a $7 million gain because of favorable foreign currency rates.

Physical and digital sales both grew. Digital sales--including e-book and audiobooks sales--rose 11% and represented 26% of consumer revenues, up from 25% in the same period a year earlier. Backlist sales represented 64% of consumer revenues, down from 65% in the same period a year earlier.

Incidentally, in commentary on the current plague of AI-related phishing scams and thefts of copyrighted material, News Corp. noted in unusually colorful language for an earnings release: "We are also tracking a number of dodgy digital firms scraping illicitly, illegally our precious content and shamelessly reselling this purloined property. We have these baleful bad-boy bots in our sights and intend to pursue them vigorously. And we believe companies that willingly buy this stolen content from these nefarious fences are also culpable."

Amazon has confirmed earlier media reports that Prime Day 2026 will take place in June rather than in July, when it has been held since 2015. The company gave no reason for the change and has not yet officially released dates for the four-day sales event for Prime members, saying only: "Stay tuned--we'll share more details as the event approaches." 

In March, Bloomberg had reported that the change was coming, citing people familiar with the matter and noting: "The change will affect both Amazon and its constellation of third-party vendors, which count on the discounting surge to attract shoppers. Since Amazon captures about 40 cents of every dollar spent online, the timing of Prime Day is also closely watched by competitors, which look to draft off of the promotions and web traffic."

Bloomberg also noted that the June dates have implications for Amazon’s financial reporting, with sales from the event coming in the second quarter rather than the third. 

Independent bookstores will have to reschedule their "Anti-Pr*me Week" strategies, which have become increasingly creative in recent years. In 2025, Bookshop.org also got in on the action with its own Anti-Prime Sale promotion, in the form of a mock wedding invitation satirizing the impending, extravagant Venetian nuptials of owner Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez; and Libro.fm ran a Love Your Indie Sale all month. 

Some Books has expanded its offerings since making its debut in Ridgefield, Conn., late last year, the Westfair Business Journal reported.

Located at 346 Ethan Allen Hwy., Some Books spans less than 300 square feet and initially carried all used titles. Recently, however, owner Justin Rose has added new books from several independent publishers.

In addition to being a bookseller, Rose works as a graphic designer and has a background in the fashion industry as a photography producer and magazine photo editor. Rose is subletting the bookstore's space from a coffee shop called Ridgefield Vintage & Coffee, which previously carried a small book selection. 

During a conversation with coffee shop owner Charles Moschos, Rose told the Westfair Business Journal, he asked whether the store would ever expand its book inventory. "They admitted they lacked the expertise or capacity to expand beyond the single bookshelf," Rose recalled. 

After Moschos acquired more of the building at 346 Ethan Allen Hwy., he told Rose that he wanted to sublet some of the additional space to other vendors. "I leapt and took the large back room, which has its own entrance and could conceivably be standalone," Rose said.

Looking ahead, Rose plans to add more new books from indie publishers and expand the store's event offerings. Over the summer he plans to partner with a nearby wine store to combine wine tastings with book discussions.

Moravian University in Bethlehem, Pa., will end its management contract with Barnes & Noble College Booksellers for the Moravian Book Shop and transition to a new consulting firm by July 30, lehighvalleylive.com reported. B&N College has managed the store since 2018, when the university acquired it.

The university said it will work with ANC Consulting to oversee operations and strategic direction for what is widely considered the oldest continuously running bookstore in America. The change marks a shift in how the nearly 300-year-old institution will operate as it seeks greater control over inventory and stronger ties to the local community.

"Barnes & Noble College took a Book Shop that was losing money and turned it into one that pays its own way, and we are grateful for that work over the last eight years," said Bryon Grigsby, president of Moravian University. "They stood with us when we acquired the store in 2018 and helped us keep it as a staple of Historic Downtown Bethlehem."

The university now wants a different approach that reflects the bookstore's position within Bethlehem's UNESCO World Heritage Site designation, reported lehighvalleylive.com. Grigsby noted that the shop serves students, alumni, tourists, World Heritage travelers, and longtime local customers: "We want a model that serves all of them, with more local artists and craftspeople on the shelves and more direct control over the inventory that tells the story of Bethlehem and the Moravian Church Settlements."

British poet Carol Rumens, "whose Guardian poem of the week column ran for nearly 20 years and was beloved among its loyal readership," died April 25, the Guardian reported. She was 81. Rumens's poems were published in more than a dozen collections, including Animal People, De Chirico's Threads, and Blind Spots. She also wrote plays, fiction, and criticism, and translated poetry.

Her first collection, A Strange Girl in Bright Colours, was published in 1973. In the mid-1970s, she worked as an editor on Pick magazine before becoming poetry editor at Quarto and Literary Review in the early 1980s.

Rumens published several collections in the 1980s, including Star Whisper and The Greening of the Snow Beach, as well as her first volume of selected poems. She also collaborated on several translated volumes by Russian poets, including Evgeny Rein and Irina Ratushinskaya. 

She taught at a number of universities, including the University of Hull, where she established an MA in creative writing, and the University of Bangor. Rumens was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984. Her work was twice shortlisted for the Forward poetry prize for best single poem, and she won a Society of Authors Cholmondeley award.

In October 2007, she began writing the Guardian poem of the week column, choosing "Far Rockaway" by the Welsh-language poet Iwan Llwyd, translated by Robert Minhinnick. She would ultimately write nearly 1,000 columns, with the final one appearing in February and featuring two poems by Matthew Rice. The Guardian noted that In 2019, a collection of 52 poem of the week columns and their accompanying commentaries were published in a book titled Smart Devices.

Writing about the columns on the Carcenet blog in 2019, Rumens observed: "I think I wanted to learn how to think about poems, as well as find out what I thought of them. That's the selfish, self-loving bit. The more altruistic motive is that I feel poets owe each other (or each other's poems) a duty of care. One person can't do very much but they can do something, make a few sounds to erase the stupid silence which hangs around poems and collections of poems.

"I'm sick of hearing that too much poetry is written and published. No, too little poetry is taught and read. A poem isn't usually a butterfly or a mobile phone. It deserves a longer life. I wish I wrote better about poems and poetry, but I know I should go on writing, anyway, as best I can."

This week, HarperCollins celebrated the launch of the HarperCollins American Classics, a collection of seminal works of American literature published since the company's founding in 1817 and honoring the 250th anniversary of the country's founding. Pictured: (from left) Tara Parsons, v-p, deputy publisher, HarperOne; Jennifer Hart, senior v-p, deputy publisher, Morrow Group, Fiction; and Amy Baker, v-p, associate publisher and editorial director, Harper Perennial and Harper Paperbacks.

Tomorrow an exhibition celebrating the 90th anniversary of the publication of the classic The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf, illustrated by Robert Lawson, the tale of a bull that didn't want to fight, opens at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass. The exhibition includes the original manuscript and drawings for the book, as well as material from the animated Disney film and Ferdinand memorabilia. Under the Cork Tree: The Story of Ferdinand runs until November 8.

"It's not wise to upset a bookie," BookPeople in Austin, Tex., posted an Instagram reel in anticipation of last Sunday's Star Wars Day events, challenging "our booksellers to give us their best Star Wars impressions because, as we all know, do or do not. There is no try.⁠"

"Rodney received his first piece of mail to the bookstore today!" One More Page Books in Arlington, Va., posted on Instagram. "Here he is modeling the enclosed gifts, courtesy of @putnambooks and the amazing @camilleperri! Sadly, you can't buy Rodney, but you CAN buy SOCIAL ANIMALS, which comes out in June! Pre-order today!"

"Bee inspired by a book." That was the springtime message on the sidewalk chalkboard in front of Luminary Books in Gardnerville, Nev., which noted: "It's finally starting to feel like spring!"

Today:
Science Friday: Daniel H. Wilson, author of Hole in the Sky: A Novel (Doubleday, $30, 9780385551113).

Fresh Air: Jeffrey Seller, author of Theater Kid: A Broadway Memoir (Simon & Schuster, $20, 9781668064191).

James Nelson Joyce, Richard E. Grant, and Dominic West will star in The Man Who Stole Portugal, based on the true crime book by Murray Teigh Bloom. Variety reported that principal photography has begun on the project, "a darkly comic period heist inspired by one of the most audacious financial frauds of the 20th century."

Directed by Thomas Napper (Jawbone, Widow Clicquot) from a script by Richard Galazka, the film's cast also includes Emily Fairn, Joel Fry, Herbert Nordrum, Kim Bodnia, and Nia Towle. Michael Elliott produces for EMU Films, with Walli Ullah and Jim Mooney as executive producers. Terry Smith is an exec producer and also finances via Moviedrome. The production will shoot in the U.K., Portugal, and South Africa.

"Alves Reis is fascinating because he doesn't set out to destroy the system, he wants a way into it. He wants security, respect, and a future for his family," said Napper. "That feels very alive now, when so many people feel the odds are stacked against them. What makes the story so thrilling is watching an outsider learn how to open those doors, bluff by bluff, and for a while make the system work for him. It's outrageous and funny, but it also speaks to something very current: who gets access, who gets shut out, and what people will do to cross that line."

Elliott called the movie "funny, stylish and full of momentum, with a character at its center who is impossible not to watch. Thomas has a brilliant instinct for the human story inside the spectacle, and with this cast we think audiences are going to get a film that is hugely entertaining, surprising and has a real edge."

Finalists in four categories have been named for the 2026 Doug Wright Awards, which celebrate excellence in the field of Canadian comics. The awards ceremony will be held in Toronto on June 6. Each winner receives a small cash prize, with the winner of the Nipper (for emerging talent) award getting a week-long stay at the Valleyview Artist Retreat, in Caledon, Ont. See the complete list of finalists here.

This year's Giants of the North (Canadian Cartooning Hall of Fame) inductees are Emily Hearn (1925-2015) and Mark Thurman, co-creators of The Mighty Mites, which appeared for many years in Owl magazine, and Arch Dale (1882-1962), an editorial cartoonist and creator of The Doo Dads.

photo: Natalia Dotto

Laurie Frankel is the author of six novels, including Enormous Wings (Holt, May 5, 2026), a fresh, funny, timely story of bodily autonomy, women's rights, elder rights, reproductive rights, family, love, grandmas, paparazzi, sex, profane priests, and hamsters. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, and other publications. She is a recipient of the Washington State Book Award and the Endeavor Award. A former college professor, she now writes full-time in Seattle, Wash., where she lives with her family and makes good soup.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Enormous Wings is about a 77-year-old who moves into a retirement community, falls in love, falls ill, then finds out she's not sick. She's pregnant.

On your nightstand now:

Angela Flournoy's latest, The Wilderness. Sarah Domet's new one, Everything Lost Returns. T Kira Madden's new one, Whidbey. Alexandra Oliva's new one, The Radiant Dark. Sara Novic's new one, Mother Tongue. Nina LaCour's soon-to-be new one, Meet Me in the Garden. Brian Trapp's relatively new one, Range of Motion. Currently in the middle of rereading Leon Uris's (not at all new) Mila 18. And at the bottom of that teetering pile, E.L. Doctorow's (also not-remotely-new) The Book of Daniel, which somehow I've never read (possibly because it keeps getting pushed to the bottom of really tall, heavy piles).

Favorite book when you were a child:

Impossible! All of Beverly Cleary. All of Judy Blume. E.B. White, especially Charlotte's Web (still an all-time favorite). Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking books; Robert McCloskey's Make Way for Ducklings; Munro Leaf's The Story of Ferdinand, illustrated by Robert Lawson; Ludwig Bemelmans's Madeline books; and, speaking of Madelines, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time series; Eve Titus's Anatole books, illustrated by Paul Galdone; A.A. Milne's everything; and, speaking of bears, Michael Bond's Paddington books. John D. Fitzgerald's The Great Brain series. Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series. This list could go on and on. I read a lot as a child.

Your top five authors:

Also impossible! How about top five(ish) living authors? Only slightly less impossible. Ruth Ozeki, Karen Joy Fowler, Naomi Alderman, David Mitchell, Percival Everett, Kate Atkinson, Omar El Akkad.

Your top five William Shakespeare plays:

Basically impossible but let's say: Hamlet (to read), As You Like It (to see), Measure for Measure (to teach), The Tempest (which I recently told the great History of Literature podcast I would choose as my deathbed read), and The Winter's Tale (for the surprise ending).

Book you've faked reading:

They actually taught this skill when I was in graduate school, or at least they assumed you had it and encouraged you to use it. Unfortunately, I am a terrible liar, so I'm not sure I've ever successfully faked reading anything. I have definitely read books I never would have had I been confident I could successfully fake that I had.

Books you're an evangelist for:

LOL there are so many books I never shut up about. Toni Morrison's Beloved, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy, all 2,000-some pages of it. Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is my go-to book club rec. Naomi Alderman's The Power is my best recommendation for having your mind blown. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler. Percival Everett's The Trees. I will never stop recommending Joseph Heller's Catch-22. And an audiobook rec: I found Leslie Odom Jr. reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby to be life-changing.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Billy Collins's Dog Show, which I could tell from the cover was going to be a book of poems a) about dogs and b) by Billy Collins. Deal. And Chris Cleave's Little Bee, not for the image on the cover but the text, the flap copy, which reads, "We don't want to tell you what happens in this book. It is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it." Again, deal.

Book you hid from your parents:

Not a one. But I'll tell you about a book I had to hide from my kid. Killer Style: How Fashion Has Injured, Maimed, & Murdered Through History by Serah-Marie McMahon and Alison Matthews David, which features two half-dressed, half-rotting Victorian skeletons on the cover. My husband and I bought it at the Tate Modern for our fashion-obsessed, macabre-curious eight-year-old, and she was in no way old enough for that book. It scared the shit out of her, so it lived behind the bookshelf for many years. (She is now using it for a project for a college class, so I got back all my revoked parenting awards.)

Book that changed your life:

All of them? Maybe not all of them. But lots of them. Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go demanded, in 2008, that I start keeping notes on every single book I read to figure out how they worked and how I could write one too, a practice I maintain religiously to this day. Ruth Ozeki's My Year of Meats led me directly to my husband, my city, and my literary agent, so hard to overstate the change wrought by that one. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby so shook me to my 15-year-old core that I think of Nick Carraway as my high-school boyfriend. Hamlet reorders my world every time I read or see it.

Favorite line from a book:

Absolutely impossible to choose, but my wedding quote was Jaques from As You Like It: "You to a love that your true faith doth merit." (Yes of course I had a wedding quote.)

Five books you'll never part with:

I mean, you should see my house. I have 10 bookcases worth of books I'll apparently never part with, and still I have books piled on the floor, on the end tables, under the bed, double-stacked on the shelves. We had to convert the wine rack in our kitchen into bookshelves. (Priorities.) I probably need to work harder at parting with some books.

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

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. It felt like that novel and I were dating the first time I read it. I carried it everywhere. I brought that book to the grocery store with me. Also, speaking of Russians, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (from which, speaking of favorite quotes and a good note to end on: "It's pleasant sometimes to detain a holiday midnight for a while.").

"It took Benjamin Franklin twenty-seven minutes and fourteen seconds to discover there was pornography on the internet. It was pretty impressive, considering the boy had started from zero."

These two small sentences at the start of Meg Ellison's Foundling Fathers set the tone for this small but mighty work, a brilliant and absurd bit of speculative fiction that poses as many questions as answers in considering one key hypothetical: What if human cloning were possible?

What follows is a brutal imagining of this kind of scientific potential in the context of 21st-century U.S. politics, driven by power and greed and a desire to be "great," absent the moral reckoning required in unpacking the mythology of history. In the real world of 2026, billionaires are launching spacecraft, big tech is pouring unseemly amounts of money to deregulate AI, and society has made little to no progress on ensuring basic human rights for all people. So it's not so hard to believe that in Elison's speculative 2026, the ability to clone humans has been used not to advance scientific breakthroughs, cure diseases, or feed the hungry, but instead to rebirth the Founding Fathers in a misguided attempt to return their perceived genius to the political mess that is the United States. "The only way forward is to go back," the moneyed elite argue in a board meeting miles from where the cloned boys are being raised to believe it's 1750; "to re-center this nation on its founding principles."

"Every country has a myth," Elison notes in her afterword, "but we have an easier time spotting propaganda when it isn't ours." Foundling Fathers points readers in the direction of that myth, revealing truths about both contemporary U.S. politics and its historical context. Like all good satire, some of these revelations are uncomfortable, some disturbing. But Elison's sharp sense of humor keeps the novel from ever feeling heavy or pedantic; turns out imagining the Founding Fathers as teen boys imprisoned on a small island in they believe is 1750 provides no shortage of laughs, whether it's Franklin's discovery of porn or the bickering and in-fighting among the boys that will feel all too familiar for anyone with siblings of their own.

Foundling Fathers is a timely send-up (and takedown) of the billionaire ruling class, a delicate unpacking of the myths of the U.S.'s earliest days, and a sharp and insightful work of satire that cracks the very foundations of the present political moment in ways that are as necessary as they are unsettling. --Kerry McHugh, freelance writer

Shelf Talker: This sharp and insightful work of speculative satire pokes holes in the formative myths of the United States via a world in which human cloning is used to rebirth the Founding Fathers.

The following were the most popular book club books during April based on votes from book club readers in more than 94,000 book clubs registered at Bookmovement.com:

1. My Friends by Fredrik Backman (Atria)
2. Project Hail Mary: A Novel by Andy Weir (Ballantine)
3. The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali (Gallery)
4. The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick (Harper Muse)
5. Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall (Simon & Schuster)
6. Theo of Golden by Allen Levi (Atria)
7. Wild Dark Shore: A Novel by Charlotte McConaghy (Flatiron)
8. Atmosphere: A Love Story by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Ballantine)
9. The Names by Florence Knapp (Pamela Dorman Books)
10. The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon (Doubleday) 

Rising Stars:
The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett (Ballantine)
Maya Blue: A Memoir of Survival by Brenda Coffee (She Writes Press)