Around Indies

Barbara’s Bookstore to Open in Macy’s

The Macy’s store in Boston’s Downtown Crossing is adding a 300-square-foot Barbara’s Bookstore section in its lower level to fill the void left by the closure of the area’s Borders. This will be the eighth location for Barbara’s, which currently has stores in Illinois and Massachusetts. Plans are also in the works for Barbara’s in several other Macy’s stores in the coming weeks.

“We have a project with Macy’s in which we are bringing books back to the department stores,” Barbara’s co-owner Don Barliant told the Boston Herald.

Eagle Harbor Spreads Its Wings

In October, Eagle Harbor Book Company in Bainbridge Isle, Washington, is planning a literary tour to Paris through Earthbound Expeditions.

Highlights of the trip include private wine and cheese tastings, outings to neighborhood markets, visits to cafés, boulangeries, pâtisseries, confisseries, and boucheries, walking tours of Paris neighborhoods, highlighting the history of famous artists and writers, a tour of the Rodin Museum, and a visit to the Père Lachaise cemetery.

The tours hosts will be Janis Segress and Suzanne Droppert, who said, “We’d love to have some of our Book friends join us.”

Former Booksellers Start Their Own Chapter

Former Atlantic Books managers Ginny Jewell and Marie Shane are planning to open Acorn Books, an independent bookstore in Dover, Delaware, this August.

Jewell and Shane plan to use their bookselling experience to sell new and used books, set up a coffee bar, and provide exceptional service. They’ll also be putting to good use more than 2,000 names of former Atlantic customers, six of its staff members, and equipment from the Dover store, which closed in February.

“We are boots on the ground,” Jewell told Delmarva Now. “They (Atlantic) left the market, but the market is still here. I like to think of it as an interruption of service. If even just a quarter of their sales were ours, we would be doing very well.”