Morning Bookclub, a Latina-owned children's bookstore, has opened at 1814 Blanco Rd., Ste. 105, in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of San Antonio, Tex. For owner Jennifer Jimenez, "it is more than just a storefront where children choose their next read," the San Antonio Business Journal reported

"When I had my daughters, I knew that I definitely wanted them to grow up with books I was reading," she said. "I was in postpartum, and I started buying all the cute and beautiful books. I started learning about the authors, and I was like, 'I think this is something I would love to do.' " 

In 2024, Jimenez opened a small bookstore on the first floor of her Austin townhome, offering storytimes and music for families in her community. After a little more than a year, she decided to expand. As she looked for a new space for her concept, she also made connections and hosted book pop-ups through local clubs and events.

"One thing that I read about and got recommended from the American Booksellers Association--they've been a big part of my research process--is don't rush into a space," Jimenez noted. "Start small, and you can grow into it. Make sure that the building owner or landlord knows the concept of a bookstore and the importance a bookstore is to a community."

After nearly a year of searching, Morning Bookclub found a home at its current 1,200-square-foot location. Jimenez described opening day on October 1 and the community's response as welcoming: "This neighborhood has been really fun with that aspect of community.... I feel like as soon as this place opened, it has been that people are like, 'I'm so glad you're here.' " 

Darkly Rooted Books, which is "centering sci-fi, fantasy, and horror by diverse authors while building plans for local literacy programs," had its grand opening celebration on October 24 at 839 Joseph E. Boone Blvd. NW, Suite E103, in Atlanta, Ga., the Atlanta Voice reported. 

"It's been a long time coming," said owner and founder Camille Watwood, adding: "It was important for me, for others, to see themselves reflected in the stories that are so popular. For others who do not look like us, who aren't of the global majority, to start to expand their view outside of the same kind of FMCs (Female Main Character), the same kind of heroes, the same kind of horror."

Having lived on the Westside for four years, Watwood noticed that while the West End and South Downtown had their own Black-owned bookstores, there was nothing for the community of English Avenue to look to for diverse literature. "I think it provides people here and outside of this community with the knowledge that we're not just what you think," she noted. "We're not the box that you think we are here on English Avenue on the Westside. It's growing. It's changing for the better, and I'm excited to be a part of that growth and invite the community that has always been here to also come in and enjoy."

Watwood hopes to partner with local libraries, community centers, and schools to establish book clubs and summer literacy or year-round literacy programs for both children and adults.

She also wants customers to discover something new and exciting at her bookshop: "I'm excited for them to be surprised. I'm excited for them to walk in and it's like, 'Oh, this looks great. This feels great. This is a vibe....' Now that it's here, I just hope that the community enjoys it and sees what I'm trying to provide and do, and that it encourages readers of all ages to come in and discover something maybe out of their comfort zone, something new and unheard of."

Following its debut as a pop-up bookstore, the Crooked Nook will open a bricks-and-mortar store in Laingsburg, Mich., next month, the Argus-Press reported.

Located at 260 E. Grand River Rd., the Crooked Nook will carry general-interest titles for all ages, with an emphasis on local and independent authors. Owners and married couple Eric and Corley Wall will host events at the new store while continuing to do occasional pop-up events.

The bricks-and-mortar will celebrate its grand opening the weekend before Thanksgiving. On November 21, romance author Lyssa Kay Adams will appear for a signing, and on November 22, children's author Modestina Golnick will be on hand for a reading, with fantasy and science fiction author Thom Dettman stopping by later to sign books. Beginning November 23, the store will be open seven days per week. 

"That's a big part of what we want to do with our independent bookstore," Eric Wall told the Argus-Press. "I know that a lot of Michigan authors have a hard time getting into the bigger bookstores if the bookstore doesn’t feel like they can make money as a sure thing from their books."

The first iteration of the Crooked Nook began in early 2025, when Wall and his sister Angela started selling children's books at pop-up events. After Corley Wall moved to Laingsburg later the same year, they started offering adult book fairs. They took the book fair across Michigan, usually doing four to six events per month.  

Eric Wall recalled: "Corley started reaching out to different bars and breweries and wineries, trying to bring that nostalgia from when we were kids with the Scholastic Book Fair to grown-ups--who can now have a drink and go back to the book fair."

Once Corley and Eric Wall learned they were matched with a boy for adoption, they decided to focus less on travel and open a permanent location. 

"This is my chance to create something in my hometown that I would have loved to have growing up," Eric Wall said.

Dorothy June Booksellers in Foley, Ala., has added a cafe called the Telegraph Espresso Bar, Gulf Cost Media reported. 

The new cafe had its grand opening on Saturday, October 24, coinciding with the store’s third anniversary. The menu includes hot and cold coffee drinks as well as seasonal options like pumpkin butter lattes and spiced apple pie chai. The opening festivities included a photo booth, limited-edition ornaments, and the debut of new store-branded merch and bookmarks. 

Located at 107 W. Orange Ave., Suite A., Dorothy June Booksellers carries general-interest titles for all ages and hosts signings, release parties, book clubs, and other events. Owner Reide Irwin founded the bookstore in 2023, naming it in honor of two of her great-grandmothers, both of whom liked to read. The name Telegraph Espresso Bar, meanwhile, is a nod to her grandfather's great-grandfather, who worked as a telegraph operator in Foley.

Irwin, a lifelong reader who grew up in Foley, moved back to her hometown after working in the film industry in New York. Irwin told Gulf Coast Media that upon her return, she couldn't "believe we don't have a small independent bookstore that only sells new books and does events for the community, and so I really wanted to bring that and provide that." 

She added, "It really brings me joy every day to come in. It's my favorite thing I've ever done."

Kathy Fortney, former co-owner of Chester County Book Company in West Chester, Pa., died on October 27.

Kathy Fortney

Fortney started her career as a buyer for Barnes & Noble in New York City prior to purchasing an existing bookstore, Margaret Alburn Bookseller in West Goshen, with her then-husband, Bob Simoneaux, in 1982.

The store's growth led to a move to a larger location on Paoli Pike. Eventually they added a music section, more book space, and a New Orleans-style restaurant. Throughout the late '80s and '90s the store was a premier stop for popular author events and was one of the largest independent bookstores in the Mid-Atlantic. Fortney was an avid reader and often advocated to host events with her favorite writers.

In 2012, she married Phil Fortney and they enjoyed trips to the North Carolina beaches. Due to the lease ending, Chester County Book Company closed in 2012 and reopened in a smaller location in 2013, which closed in 2016. Fortney was the heart of the store, and she was full of warmth and humor and had a hearty laugh. Longtime employee Thea Kotroba stated, "Kathy was a great mentor and friend and boss who taught me so much about books."

Author/illustrator JooHee Yoon (left) was in conversation with Sophie Blackall at New York City's Sullaluna, a bookshop devoted to illustrated books, to present her picture book Seven Curious Ants (Chronicle).

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.

This week's debut fiction titles:

21. The Italian Obsession (House of Ferrara) by T.L. Swan (Arndell)
22. The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller (Europa Editions)
40. Glass, Irony and God by Anne Carson (New Directions) 

This week's debut nonfiction titles:

27. Patty Lyons' Knitting Er: A Step-by-Step Guide to Fixing Your Knits, Before and After Bind Off by Patty Lyons (David & Charles)
31. The Age of Alchemy: The Secret History of Chemistry from Ancient Magic to Modern Science by Kit Chapman (Greystone Books)
34. Pepper by Karl Stevens (TOON Books)
39. 42 Tales from Life: A Modern Bestiary by Richard Dawkins (Yale University Press)

"I'm a bookstore owner but I'm also a...." Little Blue Pigeon Books in Denver, Colo., shared a video explaining the wide-ranging definition of the position, noting: "They said 'bookstore owner.' They did not say it was the only job... Bookseller. Event planner. Therapist. IT department. Inventory specialist. Email answerer at 11 p.m. Hype person. Decorator. Customer service. Accountant. Book recommender. Community builder. Snack forgetter. Volunteer coordinator. Floor sweeper. Box unpacker. Fixture mover. Crying-over-a-beautiful-cover professional. Yet, it is still the best job in the world. Thank you for being the reason we show up and do all of it every single day."

Why We Buy and Why It Matters: Small Choices, Big Impact by David Gaines (The Collective Book Studio).

Tomorrow:
Today: Carla Hall, author of Carla Bakes: Sweet, Savory, and from the Heart (4 Color Books, $40, 9780593837245).

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 this weekend from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Sunday, November 1
8 a.m. Aaron Mahnke, author of Exhumed: Unearthing the History of the American Vampire (Running Press Adult, $30, 9798894141817), at Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C. (Re-airs Sunday at 8 p.m.)

9 a.m. Sam Roberts, author of Are They Dead Yet?: The Art of the Obit (Bloomsbury, $29, 9781639733651). (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m.)

12 to 7 p.m. Coverage of the 2026 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, Tenn. Highlights include:

• 12 p.m. Lamar Alexander, author of The Education of a Senator: From JFK to Trump.
• 12:50 p.m. Radley Balko, author of Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces.
• 1:30 p.m. Jim Emison, author of Murder on the Hatchie: The NAACP's First Martyr.
• 2:22 p.m. W. Jason Miller, author of Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood: Nina Simone, Langston Hughes, and the Birth of Black Power.
• 2:38 p.m. Lindsay Owens, author of Gouged: The End of a Fair Price--and What That Means for Your Wallet.
• 3:26 p.m. Emily Yellin, author of Nonviolent: A Memoir of Resistance, Agitation, and Love.
• 4 p.m. Colin Asher, author of The Midnight Special: The Secret Prison History of American Music.
• 4:53 p.m. Alex Wright, author of Empire of Ink: The Printers, Rogues, and Radicals Who Invented the American Newspaper.
• 5:23 p.m. Varina Buntin Willse, author of Beneath and Between: And Other Overlooked Words That Illuminate God.
• 6:15 p.m. Dorothy Roberts, author of Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World.

Plastic Budgie by Olivia De Zilva has won the 2026 Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. She receives A$5,000 (about US$3,500).

Organizers described the book this way: "This coming-of-age novel about growing up as a child of Asian immigrants in parochial Adelaide is autofiction at its absolute best--a joyous, delightful ride."

Chair of judges Gene Pinter called Plastic Budgie a "work of exquisite autofiction in the vein of Helen Garner's Monkey Grip and Michelle de Kretser's Theory & Practice. [It's] whip-smart, funny like a hit nerve, and devastating in its emotional precision."

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, November 3:

Monsters of Ohio by John Scalzi (Tor, $29.99, 9780765389039) is humorous sci-fi about a meat-processing plant in small town Ohio.

Have Courage by Craig Johnson (Viking, $28, 9798217379484) collects 15 holiday-inspired Longmire short stories.

Stations: A Novel by Louise Kennedy (Riverhead, $28, 9780593714607) follows two tumultuous teenagers in 1980s Ireland.

Defy the Dusk by Danielle L. Jensen (Del Rey, $36, 9780593975121) is book one in the Sundering romantasy duet.

A Glacier's Guide to Dying: A Novel by Michelle Porter (Algonquin, $28, 9781523538003) follows a Métis man whose search for his missing father leads to a talking glacier.

The Heights by Ian Rankin (Cardinal, $29, 9781538776100) is a thriller set in a London luxury apartment building.

Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? by Judi Dench and Brendan O'Hea (St. Martin's Press, $31, 9781250438928) discusses the life and career of the legendary actress.

My Book of Days: A Memoir in Moments by Eric Dane (The Open Field, $32, 9780593995662) is a memoir by a star of Gray's Anatomy who has ALS.

Castles: A Fortified History of the World by Dan Jones (Viking, $35, 9798217060306) explores 3,000 years of human fortifications.

Today We Are Cooking...: Recipes That Teach You to Think Like a Chef by Tini Younger (Clarkson Potter, $36, 9798217035410) includes 100 recipes from a social media chef.

Ocean of Bones: The Hunt for the Pirate Slave Ship Guerrero by David Kushner (Gallery Books, $30, 9781668067062) rediscovers a slave ship that sank off Florida in 1827.

The Nuremberg Women: The Untold Story of the Eight Women Who Brought the Nazis to Justice by Natalie Livingstone (St. Martin's Press, $33, 9781250345189) looks at a group of journalists, artists, refugees, lawyers, translators, and others closely involved in the Nuremberg trials.

Dog Man: A Sprinkle in Time by Dav Pilkey (Graphix, $15.99, 9781546199359) is the 15th Dog Man book in which the wicked villain Grampa alters time itself.

The Last King of Faerie by Cassandra Clare (Knopf, $28.99, 9780593903476) is the first book in the last trilogy of the Shadowhunters series. 

Paperbacks:
Seven Stories about Tammy by Elizabeth McCracken (Biblioasis, $12.95, 9781771967594).

Sunflower Season by Danica Nava (Berkley, $20, 9798217188550).

Love, Like Apples by Jeff Zentner (Grand Central, $19.99, 9781538773604).

Dams: A Novel by Irene Solà (Graywolf Press, $16.99, 9781644454237).

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:

Hardcover
Look What the Cat Dragged In: A Novel by Jason Rekulak (Flatiron Books, $29.99, 9781250895875). "Once you get past the trauma of losing a beloved pet, things take a turn into weirdness with a new, creepy cat with the dietary needs of a Chupacabra. Full of disappearances, possession, cults, murder, and a great Indiana Jones-ish ending!" --Nichole Bryant, Bryant Books & Music, Hastings, Neb.

The Slantwise Histories: Collected Stories by Alix E. Harrow (Tordotcom, $29.99, 9781250345363). "Alix E. Harrow simply dazzles and flexes with this collection of short stories. With complex yet simple writing, and a style that's uniquely Harrow's, you'll want to read this over and over again." --Jess Schneider, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Paperback
Undone: A Novel by Peyton Corinne (Atria, $19, 9781668223369). "Hey, sometimes family is a bunch of mentally ill college students (who get help!!) and their partners and a dog! I love my freak for freak weirdos who have loved each other since before they even knew what that meant. The perfect ending to this series that means the world to me." --Rachel Johnson, Tropes & Trifles, Minneapolis, Minn.

Ages 4-8
Fancy Dogs by Tini Malina, illus. by Tammi Reichel (NorthSouth Books, $19.95, 9780735846272). "I loved this adorable book about our fancy, furry friends! For all dog lovers old and young, Fancy Dogs invites you to remember even the fanciest need some time to be silly!" --Amy Cobb, Loudmouth Books, Indianapolis, Ind.

Ages 8-12
Trunk No. 3: A Story About a Life-Changing Correspondence by Allie Millington (Feiwel & Friends, $18.99, 9781250393579). "Another charming middle grade story from Allie Millington! We meet two characters, Earl Grey and Cleo, who are both struggling with finding their places. When they discover they have magical trunks that can send notes to one another, it opens up a whole new world for them." --Claire McWhorter, River & Hill Books, Rome, Ga.

Ages 13+
It's Only Dancing by Jasmine Guillory (Scholastic Press, $15.99, 9781338749434). "Jasmine Guillory makes her YA romance debut with this Dirty Dancing-inspired story. Kat, a former ballerina, is stuck spending an entire month with her family at camp. She meets a handsome dance instructor there and romance ensues." --Jenni Hill, Avant Garden, Anoka, Minn.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

Names like Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, and George Floyd made headline news in the United States, and further afield they're often represented as singular cases of extreme brutality by the police. But as Robin D.G. Kelley, the Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA, deftly shows in Making a Killing, these losses are not isolated incidents or the fault of a few overzealous officers. These deaths are drops in an ocean of state-sanctioned violence against Black people in the U.S. that dates back to slave patrols and continues through the expansion of ICE and the rise of Cop City developments. He writes, "What we're witnessing and naming as 'fascism' is an escalation and expansion of a much longer war, one that has for centuries targeted Black and other colonized people." The described fascism is "a coercive, authoritarian system that turned Indigenous people into slaves, workers, peasants, peons, police, soldiers, concubines, and corpses through violent dispossession, enclosure, taxation, forced labor, imprisonment, and law."

Kelley does not present a single timeline; instead, he disentangles the intergenerational legacies of systemic abuse, poverty, and racist destruction that tell a recursive story of Black life in the U.S., one where the process of economic extraction that was cemented during the nation's period of chattel slavery becomes inexorably tied to the country's so-called economic and social progress. In fact, Kelley demonstrates how various "wars" on issues such as crime, drugs, and militancy have simply been mechanisms that have facilitated the extension of the U.S. prison system and the further militarization of police forces especially in predominantly Black neighborhoods. The assault is not only physical but also financial: as funding is diverted to shoring up these institutions, it is at the expense of housing, education, and other community resources.

Kelley rightly frames the history of inhumanity against Black communities by the state as a war and the victims as casualties of war. He points out the consistent volume of aggression that never even made national headlines. But he also makes sure to weave the long history of resistance to these unjust systems into the narrative, to make clear that as long as the arc of the violence has been, so too has been the arc of movements, thinkers, and coordinated efforts to draw attention to this violence. Kelley emphasizes that there are still collective efforts that work to imagine that one day the killing might stop and that better futures are possible. Making a Killing is a brutal, necessary history of Black life in the U.S. that has the power to reframe how readers perceive the history and narrative of the nation. --Michelle Anya Anjirbag, freelance reviewer

Shelf Talker: Renowned historian Robin D.G. Kelley presents a horrifying but long overdue comprehensive history of the violent, state-sanctioned oppression of Black people in the United States.

Show his eyes and grieve his heart. Come like shadows; so depart.

--The Witches, in William Shakespeare's Macbeth (Act 4, Scene 1)

In the spirit, literal and figurative, of the season, I sensed that a bookselling ghost story was in the air. So I embarked on an exploration into the spectral depths of the New York Public Library's digital archives. There, I communed with an 1873 obituary in the Times for Charles Knight, a notable English bookseller, publisher, editor, and author--a bookish wraith. 

Charles Knight c. 1865 (courtesy Rijksmuseum)

His father was a respectable Windsor printer and bookseller who rose to become an alderman, and eventually mayor. The obit describes Charles as having been "a studious and observant boy... who became the companion of his father's leisure hours and from him he picked up the first scraps of that 'store of information' which he subsequently garnered and used so well."

Later, at Ealing, Charles "seems to have been but a desultory student, and one who, in spite of the gifts of a very quick and retentive memory, likes English lore far better than his Latin Syntax and Prosody," the Times noted. In his autobiography, Passages of a Working Life, he recalls that after two years at Ealing he was "uprooted from the congenial soils of school to be planted once more on the arid sands of Windsor, as his father's apprentice and to become his own instructor." 

All was not drudgery. The obituary recounts his at once imaginative and skilled restoration of a first folio of Shakespeare's plays that had been "sadly defective in many places." Although he eventually sold the copy, "many years afterwards this 'imperfect copy' of our great poet's works blossomed into the Illustrated Shakespeare with which Charles Knight's name will for ever be associated," the Times noted.

Taking advantage of his father's printing facilities, Charles began, at the age of 21, a career turn: "It now became clear to me that my only way of escape from the petty cares of the trade of a country bookseller and small printer was to make literature, in some way or other, my vocation. It was not by writing commonplace essays and occasional odes and sonnets that I was to carry out this purpose. If I was to accomplish anything, I must have a Locus Standi. There was my father's printing-office; he was not without capital. Windsor was without a newspaper. Some day, not very far off, perhaps, should my ambition gain me the conduct of a journal."

And so it did. His ghost story continues on in the obit as a chronicle of significant accomplishments in literary and publishing realms. It's a tale of seduction not unfamiliar to those of us who toil in the book trade: the irresistible lure of a life devoted to words; the challenge of finding one's way along the bedeviling twists and turns of forking pathways; the maddeningly unfinished drafts of our personal bookish ghost stories.

While exploring Charles's tale, I found myself drawn to Shadows of the Old Booksellers, an intriguing book he wrote during his "declining years" in Hempstead, where his "venerable, but genial and pleasant face and snow-white locks were familiar to rich and poor, old and young."

In the book's introduction, Charles proposes that he will attempt "some delineations of a series of personages whose doings may, upon a hasty view, appear to have too much of a commercial character to be generally interesting.... The subjects of the present outlines, with a few exceptions, are little fitted for imaginative pictures of startling adventures, or of curious details of domestic life. But they have another sort of interest. They flit before me, ever accompanied with shadows of many of the immortals of literature. They are obscure and ill-defined until the period of the Restoration; but when a reading public is beginning to be formed, they become something more than names upon titlepages. 

"As they walk the earth, from the middle of the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth, I see a band who, during five generations, have been carrying forward the great work of national enlightenment, sometimes, indeed, in a narrow and mercenary spirit, but not unfrequently in a spirit far above that of mere money-getting. I am not about to write their biographies. They will 'come like shadows, so depart'; but as they pass over the stage, they will tell something like a connected story of literary progress, in its commercial relations, up to a time when my own experience, imperfect as it was, enabled me to catch some glimpses of its modern aspects."

In his search for spirits of bookselling's past, Charles takes on the role of medium with invocations like:

• I can see the shadow of the young bookseller as he sits in his shop amidst his small stock...
• I would call up his Shadow, as it appears to me under the one gleam of romance which lighted for a moment his solitary pursuit of the great purpose of his life...
• I can scarcely resist the desire to call up the Shadow of this old man, to relate the changes which he had witnessed in his professional experience...
• Let me endeavour to realize the shadow of the figure and deportment of the young bookseller...

This, indeed, is a proper week to call upon eternal shadows of the old booksellers. Happy Bookish Halloween.