powerHouse has moved its Park Slope, Brooklyn, store to Columbus Circle on Manhattan's Upper West Side, I Love the Upper West Side reported. It opened May 22 and occupies the same space in the Shops at Columbus Circle that once housed an Amazon Books.

"We're moving kit and caboodle over to the Upper West Side, which is in desperate need of a curated book, stationery, and gift store," wrote founder Daniel Power in an announcement. After its 2012 opening, Power noted, the Park Slope store, at 1111 8th Ave., was doing well for several years, "but the loss of Ladybird [a bakery] across the street has had an impact, and as wonderful as our hardcore supporters have been, we have needed more of our Haunted Bookstore fans to have stopped in a bit more frequently." 

Power added that he and his team are considering what to do with the storefront on 8th Ave. and are soliciting feedback from the community about what they'd like to see open in that space. The other powerHouse locations in Dumbo and Industry City are continuing to operate as normal.

The Columbus Circle Amazon Books opened in 2017. In 2022, Amazon announced that it was closing all of its bricks-and-mortar bookstores.

Bub's Bookstore in progress.

Bub's Bookstore held a grand opening celebration Friday in Carson City, Nev., Carson Now reported. The all-ages bookstore is located at 110 S. Curry St. in downtown Carson City and sells general-interest titles, with an emphasis on local authors, northern Nevada history, and outdoor recreation. 

Owners Rob Fuller and Demi Pettway celebrated the opening with a ribbon cutting, followed by a day of author appearances, book signings, giveaways, live music, and food trucks.

Pettway and Fuller hope to create a third place for the Carson City community, and they plan to host plenty of events and create partnerships with a variety of local organizations. To help open the bookstore, they launched a GoFundMe campaign that has raised $3,400 toward its goal of $4,000.

"There's no real third spaces in Carson," Fuller told Carson Now in April, shortly after he and Pettway started renovating the space. "People want to have a place where they don't feel pressured to buy something or get a drink or go somewhere just to eat or whatever--they can just kind of hang out and exist. So we ran with it."

Barnes & Noble will close its Cumberland store in Atlanta, Ga., later this summer and relocate its Peachtree Corners, Ga., store in October.

The Cumberland B&N, located at 2952 Cobb Pkwy., will close permanently as its lease comes to an end. Its last day of business will be August 19. The store is around 30 years old, and B&N is looking for a new location in the immediate neighborhood.

The Peachtree Corners B&N, meanwhile, will close in its current location on October 7 before reopening in its new home on October 28. The store will remain in the Forum on Peachtree Parkway shopping center, where it has operated for nearly 25 years.

B&N will open two additional stores in Georgia later this year, and the company will open more than 60 new locations nationwide in 2026.

Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen, who published 450 books "in practically every conceivable genre," died last Thursday at age 87, the New York Times reported, writing that Yolen "never encountered a genre she didn't like; among her early books was a history of kites. Yet running through almost all her writing was a strong through-line of deep psychological insight and a sense of wonder. Many of her works were fables and folklore, whether retellings of old stories or her own, original tales....

"She was inspired by the Eastern European Jewish folk stories she heard as a child--her father was born in present-day Ukraine--and by the writers she fell in love with as a teenager, like Robert Louis Stevenson and Joseph Conrad."

Yolen wrote children's books, folklore, fantasy, and science fiction books, and was best known for Owl Moon, illustrated by John Schoenherr, which won the Caldecott Medal; The Devil's Arithmetic, about a Jewish girl who travels in time to the Holocaust in Poland in 1942; two Nebula Award-winning novellas, "Sister Emily's Lightship" and "Lost Girls"; The Emperor and the Kite, illustrated by Ed Young, which was a Caldecott Medal Honor Book; and two series, the Commander Toad and Pit Dragon Chronicles. She published her first book, Pirates in Petticoats, at age 22.

Yolen also wrote books with her three children, writer and musician Adam Stemple, children's book author Heidi Stemple, and photographer Jason Stemple.

Among her many awards and honors, Yolen was given a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2009.

Yolen was also a university professor, songwriter, and editor. In the 1960s, she worked at Gold Medal Books, Routledge, and Knopf. From 1990 to 1996, she had a YA imprint, Jane Yolen Books, at Harcourt Brace.

Her 450th, Terror Birds, will be published July 14 by Charlesbridge Moves. The title is illustrated by Celia Lowenthal and is book 2 in the Monsters of Fife series.

This past week, Shelf Awareness sent our Kids & YA Pre-Order E-Blast to more than 330,000 of the country's best book readers. The e-blast went to 332,883 customers of 76 participating independent bookstores.

The mailing features four upcoming titles selected by Shelf Awareness editors and three advertised titles, one of which is a sponsored feature. Customers can buy these books via "pre-order" buttons that lead directly to the purchase page for the title on each sending store's website. A key feature is that bookstore partners can easily change title selections to best reflect the tastes of their customers and can customize the mailing with links, images, and promotional copy of their own.

The pre-order e-blasts are sent the second Wednesday of each month; the next will go out on Wednesday, July 15. This is a free service for indies. Stores interested in learning more can visit our program registration page or contact our partner program team via e-mail.

Ad spots are also available in the Kids & YA Pre-Order E-Blast. For more information contact sales@shelf-awareness.com for details.

For a sample of the May Kids & YA Pre-Order E-Blast, see this one from Grass Roots Books, Corvallis, Ore.

The titles highlighted in the pre-order e-blast were:

The Neverfear by Katherine Rundell, illus. by Ashley Mackenzie (Knopf)
Little Blue Truck Lost and Found by Alice Schertle, illus. by Jill McElmurry (Clarion)
Anger Is Only a Shadow by Elizabeth Acevedo (Quill Tree)
Mexikid Dreams: A Graphic Memoir by Pedro Martín (Dial Books)

House of Books, Kent, Conn., celebrated its 50th anniversary with a party on Saturday evening, featuring refreshments, live music, and special merchandise. Pictured: general manager Ben Rybeck (c.) flanked by booksellers Mary Hembree (l.) and Rye-Lynn Bell.

"Soccer, b-ball, and hockey, OH MY! Happy World Cup, NBA Finals, Stanley Cup, or third 'Off Campus' re-watch to all who celebrate," Serendipity Books in Chelsea, Mich., posted on Instagram. "No matter who you're rooting for, we can conjure up some books for you sports lovers."

Will Scarlett has rejoined W.W. Norton as publicity director. He was previously at Simon Element/S&S.

Open: Every Seed Has Its Moment by Robert Agis, illus. by Sarah Jacoby (Candlewick Press).

Today:
CBS Mornings: Dr. Cassidy Freitas, author of Mom Needs a Moment: How to Stop Your Reaction Before It Starts... and Become a Calmer, Happier, More Connected Parent (Workman, $32, 9781523533534).

Today: Kate Doerge, co-author of Reimagining Grief: A New Path to Finding Healing, Strength, and Joy after Loss (Hay House, $24.99, 9798318604416).

Fresh Air: Eddie Glaude, author of America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation's Anniversaries (Crown, $31, 9780593239803).

Watch What Happens Live: Rosebud Baker, author of Fully Baked: A Messy Memoir  (Gallery Books, $29, 9781668016220). 

Tomorrow:
Today: Toya Boudy, author of Cooking from Scratch: A Careful Selection of Useful Recipes (Countryman Press, $32.99, 9781324111610).

Also on Today: Sophie Chen Keller, author of Little Wonder: A Novel (Ballantine, $30, 9798217094608).

The View: J.D. Vance, author of Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith (Harper, $35, 9780063575011).

Late Night with Seth Meyers: Ham El-Waylly, author of Hello, Home Cooking: Do-Able Dishes for Every Day: A Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, $35, 9780593796573).

BAFTA-winner Lenny Rush (Am I Being Unreasonable?) has joined the cast of Slow Horses for season 6, which will premiere September 16 on Apple TV. Deadline reported that the new season "kicks off with the Slow Horses on the run as Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) embroils them all in a fatally high-stakes game of retaliation and revenge." The season is based on the sixth and seventh books, Joe Country and Slough House, in Mick Herron's Slough House novel series. 

The season 6 cast also includes Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, Saskia Reeves, Christopher Chung, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Rosalind Eleazar, Joanna Scanlan, BAFTA Award nominee Samuel West, Ruth Bradley, Tom Brooke, Jonathan Pryce, and Hugo Weaving. A seventh season is already in the works and will be adapted from the eighth book, Bad Actors.

The £30,000 (about $40,225) Women's Prize for Fiction was won by Virginia Evans for The Correspondent (Crown). Julia Gillard, chair of judges for the fiction award, described the book as "a remarkable novel, with an exemplary combination of originality, excellence and accessibility. It is no mean feat to write a life in letters, but Evans makes this feel effortless, asking the reader to consider the choices we make, whilst elevating an ordinary life in the most heartfelt of ways. The sheer skill required to render an emotionally resonant and engaging work in this format is spectacular. This is a novel that captured our hearts, and should be read and savored by all."

The £30,000 Women's Prize for Nonfiction was awarded to Lyse Doucet for The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People's History of Afghanistan. Thangam Debbonaire, chair of judges for the nonfiction prize, called this "a perfect work of narrative nonfiction: it is not only cleverly constructed and brilliantly researched, but each and every element is handled with extraordinary sensitivity and warmth--it will move you to tears or make you laugh, or perhaps both. Informed by decades of excellent reporting, Doucet centers the real-life experiences of people--the staff and guests, alongside the hotel itself--and with the future of Afghanistan still being written, this book's importance will only get stronger as the years go by."

In a January 2026 blog post, Welsh author Liam Higginson cited Shirley Jackson and Stephen King as two of his main literary influences. While it's obviously too early to place him in the same rank as these masters of horror, Higginson's debut novel, The Hill in the Dark Grove, is a thoroughly atmospheric and quietly unsettling story that's both original and faithful to the spirit of their works.

Set in the rugged mountains and valleys of Higginson's native North Wales, The Hill in the Dark Grove tells the story of Carwyn Gwynnant and his wife, Rhian. The childless couple in their 60s operate a failing sheep farm that's been in Carwyn's family for generations. Now mired in debt, they fear an auction sale that will transfer their property to "some rich landowner from England" who will turn it into a luxurious vacation estate. They're determined to forestall that event indefinitely through their tireless labor and some clever evasive tactics.

But the novel is far from a conventional story of rural persistence in the face of straitened circumstances. Its mountains are "the abode of witches and giants and gods," and the supernatural has long played a prominent role in the lives and culture of their inhabitants, which Higginson reveals in some of the brief, evocative glimpses of Welsh history, legend, and myth that open each chapter. Its presence grows more insistent as the story unfolds.

When Carwyn stumbles upon a carved stone face in one of his fields, he embarks on a project to excavate a site that gives him the "sense of gazing out across a dizzying abyss of time," even as it emits a "grave-scent that betokened sanctity and death entwined." His tunneling eventually produces a dozen standing stones, suggesting some sort of religious shrine that may date to the Neolithic period. But his dedication to this solitary archeological dig gradually crosses the line into obsession. As he increasingly neglects his farming duties, Rhian's dread that her partner of 40 years has summoned something dark and terrible from the earth overtakes her life. That fear drives the novel's plot and provides its psychological depth.

Higginson's lush descriptions gracefully evoke the beguiling but often treacherous beauty of the Welsh countryside. He traces the changing seasons over a span of roughly 10 months. A summer sun "already a searing ulcer on the blistered sky" and a howling blizzard composed of "shards of ice that pelted her like birdshot," subtly underscore how tightly his characters' lives are tied to forces--natural and supernatural--beyond their control. All of this enhances a sense of terror that's slow building, but no less powerful for that fact. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: Liam Higginson's debut novel is a brooding tale of a Welsh farming couple's encounter with dark forces unleashed from an ancient archeological site.