Executive Shelf for 02/14/2025
A weekly review of events in bookselling from the editors at Shelf Awareness, led by editor-in-chief John Mutter
Israeli police raid bookstores in East Jerusalem.
Last Sunday's raid by Israeli police on two East Jerusalem bookstores and arrests of the owners has been denounced by booksellers, writers, and publishers in Israel and many other countries. (Even foreign diplomats in Jerusalem protested the action.) The ABA's American Booksellers for Free Expression, for example, called the raid "nakedly political" and said "erosion of the right to read anywhere threatens the right to read everywhere."
The two Educational Bookshop locations have reopened, and owners Mahmoud Muna and his nephew, Ahmad Muna, are now under house arrest.
Hachette celebrates 7% sales gain in 2024, joins Batch for Books.
Hachette sales rose 7% in 2024, and in comments on the year, CEO David Shelley said Grand Central, Orbit, and Little, Brown Books for Young Readers had "particularly exceptional results." Other areas of strength: backlist was "notably resilient" and audio continued to grow. He also had a refreshing take on DEI efforts, noting that the company recently hired Sarah Munjack as director of DEI, a new position. As for 2025, the lineup looks "extremely vibrant."
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Hachette Book Group has joined Batch for Books, the service that streamlines invoice management and payment processes for both booksellers and publishers and is widely used in the U.K., where it originated, and elsewhere the world. With Hachette joining, Batch's publishing partners in the U.S. include four of the Big Five.
Crime, Mischief, Mayhem, & Music: four new imprints from three publishers.
A comment on our times?
Grove Atlantic is launching an imprint focused on crime and mystery called Atlantic Crime that will make its debut this fall and is expected to publish 18-24 titles per year, beginning with What About the Bodies, the second novel from Edgar Award-nominee Ken Jaworowski. Crime and mystery is not new to Grove Atlantic, which has published, under other imprints, three Edgar Award-winning novels--Gone by Mo Hayder, The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Flags on the Bayou by James Lee Burke.
Entangled Publishing, which publishes Rebecca Yarros's wildly popular Empyrean series, is launching two YA imprints: Mischief Books and Mayhem Books, offering "stories that align with varying levels of maturity, ensuring that every teen finds their perfect literary match," the company said. Mayhem is for readers aged 16 and up; Mischief is for readers 13 and up.
Grand Central is reviving the Da Capo name for a new imprint that will focus on music and publish about a dozen books a year, beginning this summer.
Readers continue to embrace romance bookstores.
On Valentine's Day, it warms our heart to note that the wave of new bookstores--and new romance bookstores--continues. Two romance bookstores in the news this week show a similar slow but steady buildup: they start as pop-ups, establish themselves, then open in storefronts. Mossrose Bookshop in Houston, Tex., which began as a pop-up in May 2024, is moving into a bricks-and-mortar location on March 8.
And The Well Red Damsel, a pop-up romance bookstore making appearances in and around Milwaukee, Wis., aims to open in a storefront eventually. This store also has a most unusual event coming up: a hockey romance night in partnership with the Milwaukee Admirals, an American Hockey League team and affiliate of the Nashville Predators. The hockey romance-themed pop-up will appear at the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena on February 28.
Big books, big film Cape Fear.
Jane Austen is a crowd pleaser when the crowd loves books. Next Tuesday is pub day for Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend by Rebecca Romney (Marysue Rucci), which explores the writers who inspired Austen.
This Sunday a three-hour special celebrates the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, which is perfect timing for a biography of Lorne Michaels, who created the show and has led it for most of the last 50 years. The book is Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live by New Yorker articles editor Susan Morrison (Random House).
Also appearing on Tuesday is a sadly topical book: Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy by Katherine Stewart (Bloomsbury).
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A third version of Cape Fear, based on John D. MacDonald's novel The Executioners, is in the works: it's a 10-episode series for Apple TV+ from Nick Antosca, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg. Javier Bardem will co-star and exec produce. Previous adaptations were the 1962 film directed by J. Lee Thompson, starring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum, and the 1991 remake directed by Scorsese, starring Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte.
Shelf Awareness reviews.
Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted by Ben Okri (Other Press); Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create by Elissa Altman (Godine); Cute Animals That Could Kill You Dead by Brooke Hartman, illus. by MarÃa GarcÃa (Sourcebooks Explore); Accidents Happen by F.H. Batacan (Soho Crime); and All the Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman (Putnam).
In Memoriam.
Author Tom Robbins; photographer and author Hugh Holland; Canadian publisher and literary agent Morton Mint; British crime writer Amer Anwar.