Howard Family Bookstore, a bookstore, cafe, and community space, officially opened on April 25 in Detroit, Mich., Local 4 Detroit reported.

Located at 13803 Puritan Ave. in west side Detroit, Howard Family Bookstore sells general-interest titles for all ages and serves coffee, tea, and a variety of juices in its cafe. There is ample seating and a connected community garden, as well as event programming that includes reading workshops, bingo nights, poetry nights, author readings, and more. 

Owner Jerjuan Howard, who previously created a neighborhood nonprofit called the Umoja Debate League, has been working to open Howard Family Bookstore for about a year and a half. 

In 2024, he purchased the property at 13803 Puritan, which had been abandoned, and set to work creating a bookstore and third space for the community. Howard noted that with six schools within a mile and a half of the store, promoting literacy is one of his major goals.

"I believe that this will begin to kind of shift the culture of what this community is and how it values itself, and how it values the things that are in it," Howard told Local 4 Detroit.

Willowdale Bookshop is scheduled to open June 6 in Rowley, Mass., the Local News reported.

Located at 169 Main St. in downtown Rowley inside the former Rowley Pharmacy building, Willowdale Bookshop will sell general-interest titles for all ages. Owner Jesse Janelle told the Local News the inventory will be "intentionally curated for readers who value thoughtfulness, emotional depth, and perspective."

In addition to books, there will be gifts, journals, tote bags, and other sidelines, and Janelle intends to host plenty of community events, including author signings, writing workshops, book clubs, and arts and crafts sessions.

"My hope is to build something that feels alive with ideas and rooted in community," Janelle explained. "A place where you can come to think, to create, and to be part of something meaningful."

Janelle moved to the area with her family about a decade ago and has wanted to open a bookstore in Rowley ever since. Construction on the bookstore began May 2, and when she shared the news on social media, it met with an enthusiastic response.

Wild Sisters Book Co. will open a second location in Sacramento, Calif., this summer, the Sacramento Bee reported.

The new store will reside at 1115 Front St. in the Paperworks Building in Old Sacramento, with owners and sisters Claire Bone and Noelle Baganz aiming for a June 26 opening. The pair announced the expansion about a week ago, writing on Instagram: "This has been nearly two years in the making and our whole team is SO excited to share that we are opening a second location in Old Sacramento at the newly remodeled Paperworks Building this June!"

Wild Sisters, which carries new and used titles for all ages across a wide range of genres, opened in Sacramento's Tahoe Park neighborhood in 2021. In 2023, the store moved to a larger space at 3325 Folsom Blvd. in East Sacramento; that location will remain open.

Baganz and Bone began looking at spaces in Old Sacramento around 2024. Eventually the "perfect one materialized and we could not say no!"

The National Book Foundation has elected four new members to its board of directors: Greg Greeley, the new CEO at Simon & Schuster; Franklin Leonard, founder & CEO of the Black List; Elizabeth McNamara, partner, Davis Wright Tremaine; and Miwa Messer, executive producer of author events and content at Barnes & Noble. These additions bring the foundation's board to 22 governing members.

(l. to r.) Greg Greeley, Franklin Leonard, Elizabeth McNamara, and Miwa Messer

"We are gratified to welcome four exceptionally talented individuals to our board of directors," said David Steinberger, NBF's board chair. "This announcement follows the launch of our new strategic plan, deepening our commitment to books and to readers over the next five years. We look forward to working closely with Greg Greeley, Franklin Leonard, Elizabeth McNamara, and Miwa Messer to amplify the foundation's mission to celebrate the best literature published in the United States, connect books with readers of all ages, and champion the literary arts as a vital part of our culture."

NBF executive director said Ruth Dickey commented: "Greg, Franklin, Elizabeth, and Miwa bring significant experience in the literary ecosystem, a deep commitment to the written word, and a shared vision that access to books and reading are for everyone, everywhere. It is our honor to work alongside them to champion the work of writers and translators and celebrate the joys of reading."

Japanese author Koji Suzuki, "sometimes called the Stephen King of Japan, whose bestselling Ring series helped create a genre known as J-horror that relied more on psychological suspense than on gore, spawning a multimedia franchise that included a 2002 blockbuster Hollywood movie," died May 8, the New York Times reported. He was 68.

Suzuki earned a degree in French literature from Keio University in Tokyo, where he focussed on literary fiction, particularly the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Thomas Mann. "I actually don't like all that supernatural stuff," he told the Times in 2004. "I really dislike most horror writing."

Suzuki's 1991 novel Ring, the first of a trilogy, "was about a cursed videotape whose viewers would die unless they copied it and passed it on to someone else within a week," the Times wrote. It sold nearly three million copies in Japan. The trilogy featured a vengeful intersex ghost called Sadako, who also appears in Spiral (1995) and Loop (1998).

He later told the British tabloid Metro that his viewpoint on the horror genre shifted when he felt he could write "an epoch-making story" and create something unusual in horror because he was an outsider. "I managed to write a good horror story," he said, "because I don't actually like horror. If I liked it and was always reading it, I would have written typical horror."

Suzuki expanded the Ring franchise to include the story collection Birthday (1999) and the novels S (2012) and Tide (2013), along with a 1998 Japanese film titled Ring and a 2002 American remake, The Ring. Other movie spinoffs, a TV series, manga adaptations, and video games followed. By 2004, Suzuki's books had sold more than 10 million copies in Japan.

At one point, he vowed never to write horror fiction again, but that decision came to feel too "constricting," he told the Times in 2004. He later published the novel Edge (2008), "blending horror and science fiction, about a world in which, among other troubling developments, the value of Pi begins to change, suggesting that the structure of the universe is breaking down," the Times noted. The book won a Shirley Jackson Award for best novel in 2012.

In his final work, Ubiquitous (2025), Suzuki returned to classic J-horror with a novel about plants ruling the earth. It was intended to be the first volume of a tetralogy. In a 2023 interview with the Horror Writers Association, Suzuki said the theme of the four books would be simple: If the universe had free will, "what kind of life would it wish for the human race?"

Melanie Harlow and Liz Tomforde (the Windy City series) enjoyed a full house at Ruby's Books, Folsom, Calif., to celebrate the release of Harlow's Hart's Landing (Entangled: Amara). The authors spoke about trends and tropes within the romance genre, sweet covers on spicy books, their own writing routines, and the excitement generated by so many recent TV adaptations.

Posted on Facebook by Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore in Berkeley, Calif: "Congratulations to our bookseller Isabella who graduates today from UC Berkeley! She's been an incredible addition to our team, and how lovely is it that the shop was the setting for her grad photos? Go Bears and Go Isabella!!"

"The BEST dog in the world and in the bookstore! We love our bookstore dog, Wally!" Gramercy Books in Bexley, Ohio, proudly posted on Instagram.

"Plot twist (It's too hot outside). Come in for the books. Stay for the A.C." That was the sidewalk chalkboard message in front of Published bookstore and bar in in Huntington, N.Y.

At HarperCollins:

Rich Thomas has been promoted to senior v-p, group publisher of HarperCollins Children's Books.

Heidi Richter has been promoted to v-p, marketing and publicity for HarperCollins Children's Books.

May Chen and Tessa Woodward have been promoted to v-p, publishers of the newly formed Avon Group, which includes the Harper Voyager, Avon A, and Avon imprints.

Morgan Pager is joining HarperCollins as senior director, marketing, for Avon, effective June 1.

Today:
Fresh Air: Andrew Weissmann, author of Liar's Kingdom: How to Stop Trump's Deceit and Save America (Little, Brown, $29, 9780316601306).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Robin Arzón, author of Eat to Hustle: 75 High-Protein Plant-Based Recipes (Voracious, $35, 9780316594271).

Today: Jodi Kantor, author of How to Start: Discovering Your Life's Work (Little, Brown, $25, 9780316609555).

Jennifer Hudson Show repeat: Brandy Norwood, author of Phases: A Memoir (Hanover Square Press, $32.50, 9781335013279).

Philippa Donovan

Veteran literary scout Philippa Donovan "wants to reverse engineer the books-to-screen market through her new business, Two Script Studio," Deadline reported, adding that the operation will create "reverse adaptations," allowing producers and screenwriters to turn screenplays into novels at an early stage of development. Book rights will then be pitched to literary agents and publishers to build an audience or developed as underlying IP for the film or TV project.

Donovan will also "help writers rework dormant scripts for publishers, and is offering mentoring where a pitch deck or script is used for narrative structure," Deadline noted. Donovan spent decades working in the U.S., U.K., and Australia, and Two Scripts will be available as a service in those countries. She has run her own business, Smart Quill, since 2011 after a 15-year career as a literary agent, scout, and commissioning editor.

"Two Script draws on my decades of experience in literary scouting, structural editing, and introducing authors to agents," she said. "When I moved from London to L.A. in 2014, I actually planned to facilitate a publishing trajectory for screenwriters, but life got in the way, so I am overjoyed to return to this original vision. It is nothing short of a miraculous alchemy when a book is given a second life on screen, so I think it's high time that books returned the favor."

Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King (Graywolf Press), has won the International Booker Prize 2026, supported by Bukhman Philanthropies. The award honors "the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories translated into English and published in the U.K. and/or Ireland." The £50,000 (about $66,985) prize money is divided equally between author and translator. 

Chair of judges Natasha Brown said: "Can love overcome a power imbalance? Taiwan Travelogue... teases out the nuances of this question against a backdrop of 1930s Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule.... This book doesn't shy away from the complexities (both real and fictional) of its journey into the English language. Instead, it uses the hallmarks of a more traditional text--introductions, footnotes, afterwords--to wrap an intriguing metafictional layer around its core love story. Lin King's deft translation perfectly conveys the nuances of the novel's narrative voices.

"Taiwan Travelogue pulls off an incredible double feat: it succeeds as both a romance and an incisive postcolonial novel. As judges, we've enjoyed rich discussions about the many layers of this book. It's a captivating, slyly sophisticated novel."

photo: Dui Jarrod

Ashton Politanoff is a frequent contributor to the literary journal NOON, and his writing has also appeared in McSweeney's, Southwest Review, Conjunctions, New York Tyrant, Egress, and elsewhere. He is a former Division I tennis player and his childhood coach was Robert Lansdorp, who is credited with coaching Pete Sampras, Tracy Austin, and Maria Sharapova. He is now an English professor at Cypress College. Politanoff's first novel, You'll Like It Here, was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2022. His second novel is Dad Had a Bad Day (Astra House, May 19, 2026), a deeply moving portrait of what happens when a "sad da" reconnects with a passion from his past.

Handsell readers your book in 30 words or less:

If you like the shows Breaking Bad, Your Friends & Neighbors, and the film Election, Dad Had a Bad Day is your sad-dad summer grand-slam read!

On your nightstand now:

Death and the Gardener by Georgi Gospodinov, translated by Angela Rodel. Anything James Wood recommends, I buy.

The Hunter by Tana French. I recently read The Searcher, my first French, and I'm hooked. I'll be ready to travel back to western Ireland soon.

River of Angels by Stephen Cooper. Cooper was my thesis adviser in graduate school. He's an incredible writer and teacher and a John Fante scholar. I can't wait to read his new collection put out by What Books Press.

I also have a couple books edited by Emily Bell, my amazing editor, on my nightstand: Steve Almond's down-to-earth and insightful craft book, Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow, and Lucia Berlin's collection A Manual for Cleaning Women. I've been thoroughly enjoying both.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Stone Soup by Ann McGovern, illustrated by Winslow Pinney Pels. I loved this book as a child, and I bought it for my own children.

Your top five authors:

Michael Ondaatje
John Cheever
Rachel Cusk
Diane Williams
Denis Johnson

Book you've faked reading:

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. Embarrassingly, I've never read this sea tome. As a waterman--a surfer--and a voracious reader of anything maritime, I know I should.

Book you're an evangelist for:

I recently read and loved The Promise by Damon Galgut, and I've been telling every reader I know about it. The book is a torrent of language and emotion, and I admire the innovative architecture of the narrative.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Any book by Astra House, the publisher of my book Dad Had a Bad Day. Astra has the best covers! Recent favorites include the brilliant Are You Happy? by Lori Ostlund and the prescient Happy Bad by Delaney Nolan. Both covers are incredible, and the pages within live up to the eye-catching designs.

Book you hid from your parents:

Junky by William Burroughs. I went through my Beat phase in college. I didn't want my parents getting the wrong idea here.

Book that changed your life:

NOON is a literary journal edited by Diane Williams. I discovered so many of my favorite contemporary authors in the pages of NOON--Clancy Martin, Kathryn Scanlan, Brandon Hobson, Lucie Elven, to name a few--and I felt deeply inspired by the short story form as presented within the pages of the annual. I stumbled upon an issue in 2012, and I started sending my own stories to Diane Williams in 2013.

Favorite line from a book:

I'm not much of a line hoarder, but I recently read Tana French's slow-burn literary mystery The Searcher, and this line stuck with me:

" 'All's you can do is your best,' he says. 'Sometimes it doesn't work out the way you intend it to. You just gotta keep doing it anyway.' "

This is a great philosophy for daily living, something I've embraced.

Five books you'll never part with:

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell. All-time favorite. I have more to say about this later.

The Driftless Area by Tom Drury. I'm a sucker for noir, and this is one of my neo-noir favorites.

Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje. This book for me marks a transitional period for Ondaatje as an author. He is still embracing the avant-garde here, but the characters are fully alive, and the story has a racing heart that propelled me to the final pages.

Prosperous Friends by Christine Schutt. Schutt infuses this evocative tale with masterful language, style, and understatement.

The Collected Stories by John Cheever. I return to these stories repeatedly. Cheever speaks to my soul.

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

Either The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer, or So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell. I read The Savage Detectives in my early 20s, and the innovative approach showed me what was possible in the novel form. Style aside, I also could not put the book down. This book had such an impact on me that when I was in Barcelona, I made the pilgrimage to Blanes, the seaside town where Bolaño spent his final years.

I came to So Long, See You Tomorrow much later, only a few years ago. I had read some of Maxwell's short stories, and I was aware of his role in editing the works of writers like John Cheever at the New Yorker, but it took me awhile to get to So Long, See You Tomorrow. In fact, I had tried reading it before, but for some reason I had trouble breeching. However, once I did finally settle down with the novel, I consumed it. I read the second half with shaking hands. I was so enrapt, and the book haunted me for some time. I thought about it daily for over a year. I want that feeling again.

The teen daughter of a convicted murderer attempts to prove her own innocence after a deadly weekend getaway in the chilling and captivating YA horror thriller I Didn't Do It by Elle Gonzalez Rose (The Girl You Know).

It's been more than a year since Dina Soto's "beloved soccer coach" father was sentenced to life in prison after confessing to the murder of two teenage boys. The shocking crime turned the Sotos into "villains" in their small town of Millcreek, and Dina's already overprotective Mami now insists that Dina and her younger brother, Mikey, stay close to home when they're not at school. Dina's only escape is her volunteer time at Sunny Hills Assisted Living, where she meets Kai Thompson-- popular, charming, Black and Puerto Rican, and one of the only people who treats her like "a person and not just a small-town mystery."

When Kai invites Dina for a getaway at his parent's cabin in the nearby woods, Dina is determined to go. However, attendance means defying her Mami and spending the weekend with teens--including Kai's twin sister, the "beautiful and cruel" Kiki--who see Dina as the daughter of the man who killed their classmates.

By the end of the group's first night at the cabin, the house is "soaked in blood" and Dina is the "only girl left standing." Unsurprisingly, the police consider Dina, "the murderer's daughter," the obvious culprit. As Dina tries to clear her name, the truth of what really happened unfolds through a combination of Dina's first-person narration, police evidence, and news articles.

I Didn't Do It is a taut, sinister thriller that pairs shocking twists with moving explorations of grief and fraught familial relationships. Rose makes skillful use of slasher horror movie tropes--an isolated setting, a friend group riven by secrets, a frightened-yet-resourceful final girl--combined with memorable characterization to create a distinctly suspenseful and emotional narrative that includes thoughtful commentary about prejudice and persecution.

Heavy emotions and frightening scenes are balanced out by the sweetness of Dina's blossoming relationship with Kai. Both characters experience persecution in different ways: Dina for her father's actions and Kai for being trans. Their slow-burn romance is based in mutual acceptance and respect, Dina assuring Kai he has "nothing to hide--not from me, or the rest of the world."

I Didn't Do It is a satisfyingly unsettling story for readers who, as Rose writes in the novel's acknowledgments, "find comfort in stories that take place in the dark." Fans of Kara Thomas and Nick Brooks should enjoy this sophisticated, socially conscious thriller. --Alanna Felton, freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: A teen whose father is imprisoned for murder must prove her own innocence after a weekend getaway ends in murder in this riveting and frightening YA thriller.