Publishers Newline (PNW), an online news outlet covering books, music, indie film, and software that has operated since 2004, announced its semi-annual "Books to Bookmark" list for the third quarter of 2026 on September 25, highlighting ten newly published titles from small publishers based in North America. The list is specifically intended to draw attention to works that, in PNW's view, are frequently overlooked because they do not originate from major New York publishing houses.
"This quarter we saw a great mix of fiction, family and parenting, memoirs, and financial topics," said PNW editor and publisher Christopher Laird Simmons, who also serves as CEO of the parent company Neotrope. "Even with the economic struggles this year, books continue to be one of the best forms of affordable entertainment."
Among the selected titles, Neal Winsomer's Calling Out the Shadows: A Father's Stand Against the Current functions simultaneously as memoir, manual, and personal chronicle, documenting a decade of contested co-parenting across 999 documented hours of writing. Ani Lalazarian's debut picture book, Into the Heart of the Forest: A Journey to Love, draws on her 2020 career shift from fashion to energy healing and breathwork, positioning the illustrated story as a tool for emotional resilience and nervous system awareness in children and adults alike.
Mark Robinson's Pitch Black: The Best Black Ads of the Past 50+ Years is described as a comprehensive coffee table book chronicling how advertising created by and for Black people functioned as an instrument of the Civil Rights movement, documenting what PNW characterizes as a previously unrecorded chapter in American business, fashion, and culture. David Brandon — identified as an author, pilot, and flight instructor — contributes Rings of Saturn: Enemy Within, a military science fiction novel drawing on theories surrounding secret space programs, including Solar Warden, and released into what PNW describes as a cultural moment of renewed public interest in UAP phenomena and government transparency.
Mohsen Rifaat's memoir Spaces Between the Nile and the True North: Negotiating Egyptian-Canadian Cultural Fusion traces his journey from British-occupied and revolutionary Egypt to Canada, illustrated with his own watercolors, sketches, photographs, and personal memorabilia. Author, teacher, and coach Shaffa contributes The Feeling You Cannot Admit, a parenting and healing title that addresses a specific emotional experience some parents carry toward a particular child — notably, the book withholds naming that feeling directly, leaving that step to the reader. Rounding out the highlighted titles, Dr. Martin W. B. Jarvis OAM CM, Ph.D., offers The Other Bach: The Mysterious Magdalena Wilcke, a historical novel exploring the life of Johann Sebastian Bach's second wife, Anna Magdalena Wilcke, informed by Jarvis's work in eighteenth-century music manuscripts and forensic document analysis.
This article is based on a primary source. The text was editorially reviewed and fact-checked prior to publication.
