News & Events

March 2023

More news, Cellar Door Family!

Thank you Clarissa Cervantes and the Riverside City Council for Cellar Door Bookstore's Ward 2 Pride Success Story!

Canyon Crest Town Center has decided to give us until May 15th to vacate the premises. That will make moving to our new location much less problematic, so thank all of you for all the support you gave us in order to make this happen. We also want to thank Ken MacVey and his firm, Best, Best & Krieger for giving Cellar Door their wonderful help pro bono! Ken's work has woven together with all of your support to allow us a more fair timeline to move our business. We will let you know as soon as we do when we have a new location secured.

We are excited to begin working with some new partners in the Inland Empire to bring our books to new locations. Look for posts, "Cellar Door Out and About" so you can catch us as we do pop-ups and author events throughout the Inland Empire.

• We'll be at the San Bernardino Literacy Day Festival on March 4th along with Isabel Quintero and Tamika Burgess.
• March 11th 9am-11am - RUSD Virtual School Cellar Door Book Fair

We are working on pop-ups in San Bernardino and with some of our wonderful partners here in Riverside, so keep a watch for where Cellar Door will be popping up around town. If you would like to have us. Please let us know at [email protected] or 951-787-7807.

Remember how much you loved those book fairs when you were a kid? We are also working on Book Fairs for Adults! Want a Cellar Door pop up at an event you're hosting? Let's talk about it!

I just returned from the American Booksellers Association Winter Institute, and I'm so proud to be one of many indie booksellers and store owners who are actively fighting against corporate monopolies like Amazon, who are struggling to keep the conversations about equity and inclusion alive and at the forefront of our book choices, and who are couageously confronting the waves of book bannings that remind us how easily facism can find it's way into our country. Together we are stronger, and it's good to know that people in this industry are standing up to these challenges from Oklahoma to Idaho, from Florida to California, from Montana to Texas.

Here is what is coming up!

The 'So Emotional' Book Club: Join our friend Myisha Cherry, UCR Assistant Professor of Philosophy and author of The Case for Rage on Zoom on the second Tuesday of the month at 5pm! The first meeting will be on March 14th and the book that will be discussed is Daniel H. Pink's The Power of Regret. Buy your copy here and we'll sign you up for the book club!

The Diverse Romance Book Club: This club features books that shake up our ideas about who and what makes for exciting romance. We'll read books with a diverse cast of characters, from protagonists of color to disabled characters, queer heroes and heroines, and other unexpected romantic leads. UCR Associate Professors Jade Sasser and Victoria Reyes will be leading the book club. Jade: From my teenage years when I was stealing my mother's Harlequin Romance bodice rippers, I've been hooked on romance! Thankfully, the genre has come a long way since then. I usually read contemporary romance with diverse authors, but am interested in all of the subgenres, including historical, YA, and seasoned romance. Victoria: Like many, I started reading VC Andrews when I was way too young! Then, as I started getting older, my grandma and I read supernatural romances together. I haven't had a chance to read many romances lately, so am excited for this book club! Date, time, and books being discussed to be determined!

Join us for a virtual conversation with debut middle grade authors!

Sunday, May 21st at 12 pm PST

Debut middle grade authors Tamika Burgess (Sincerely Sicily), Meg Eden Kuyatt (Good Different), Sydney Dunlap (It Happened on Saturday), and Karen S. Chow (Miracle) are joining Cellar Door Bookstore for a virtual conversation and Q & A about their books!

We'll be hosting these amazing authors on Zoom on Sunday, May 21st at 12 pm PST/3 pm EST to discuss their books. Here's a little info about each of these incredible books:

The captivating and empowering story of Sicily Jordan—a Black Panamanian fashionista who rocks her braids with pride—who learns to use her voice and take pride in who she is while confronting prejudice in the most unexpected of places. Buy here.

An extraordinary novel-in-verse for fans of Starfish and A Kind of Spark about a neurodivergent girl who comes to understand and celebrate her difference. Buy here.

After thirteen-year-old Julia nearly becomes a victim of human trafficking, she must find the courage to speak up about her experience or else her friend could end up becoming a victim too. Buy here.

When her father dies, Amie's ability to play music dies, too. Nothing short of a miracle can bring back what she has lost. With hope and harmony lighting the way—and with help from the people who care about her most—Amie must find the strength to carry on. In the end, she’ll learn that healing, while painful, can be its own miraculous song. Buy here.

You can purchase any or all of these books from us and also register for the virtual event below!

Lone Women by Victor LaValle (Available March 28): I LOVE this book! These are the stories not in history books, not included in the tales of the tough settlers who came to the wilds of the west to tame a land that wasn’t theirs- women without men, women with secrets more easily kept in the vastness of the west, secrets they would kill for or be killed by. In the early 1900s, Adelaide Henry grew up separated from the other Black farmers in the Lucerne Valley by a family secret, but when her parents are killed, she takes her burden and flees to the wilds of Montana where she plans to keep her monsters away from others. Instead, she finds other women, women with their own demons who, together, consider the nature of demons. Literary horror or historical fiction? Either way, it is literature at its finest. - Linda

My grandmother asked me to tell you she’s sorry by Fredrik Backman: Difficult times call for powerful books, books that remind us that despite all the shits in the world, despite the parts of us that fit that category, we all have our stories, and telling those stories can help us heal. Told from the wisdom of Elsa, an almost-eight-year-old who doesn’t fit, doesn’t tow the line, makes her principal uncomfortable, this is the story of Elsa’s journey to deliver letters of apology from her recently deceased best friend and bat shit crazy grannie. There are monsters, mysterious friends, and a wise child guaranteed to make you laugh out loud. A beautiful, tender story of healing, laughter, and love narrated with the expertise of radio actors of old by Joan Walker. - Linda

The Hospital Book by Lisa Brown (Available March 21): With adorable, inclusive illustrations, we follow a child from the pain of a bad belly ache to the inner workings of a surgery room, with all its noises, needles, and kind faces. Honest and reassuring, this beautiful book will be an absolute must for any child discovering their bravery in the corridors of a hospital! Every hospital will need multiple copies! - Linda

HONORABLE MENTION: March 3rd is apparently "If Pets Had Thumbs" Day. We don't know why this exists as a whole holiday, but it made us laugh really hard. Nya thinks it's really dumb and would prefer a "what if humans could ACTUALLY smell" day, but?? What else can we really say? We just needed you all to know about it.

Cellar Door Book Club

Meets the second Sun at 2 pm

March 12: The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois p.400-end

April 9: How High We Go in the Dark

Mystery Book Club - HYBRID

Meets the third Thurs at 6 pm

March 16: Woman in the Library

April 20: Death on Gokumon Island



Sci-Fi & Fantasy Book Club

Meets the third Sat at 5 pm

March 18: Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories

April 15: Babel (Chapters 1-15)

Historical Fiction Book Club

Meets the fourth Sat at 5 pm

March 25: Beneath a Scarlet Sky

April 22: Kaikeyi 

Classic Detectives Book Club

Meets the third Tues at 6:30 pm

March 21: The Mystery of the Yellow Room

April 18: The House Opposite

Philosophical Horror Book Club

Meets the third Mon at 6 pm

March 20: The Silence

April 17: City of Ash & Red

Black Lit Book Club

Meets the fourth Fri at 6 pm

March 24: Black Buck

April 28: People Person

History Book Club

Meets the first Wed at 6 pm

**Monday March 6: The Great Influenza

April 3: The Invention of Nature

LGBTQ Book Club

Meets the fourth Thurs at 6 pm

March 23: The Paris Bookseller

April 27: The Lavender House

Bucket List Book Club 

Meets the third Sun at 3 pm

March 19: This Is Happiness

April 16: You Can't Go Home Again (Books 1-3)

Phy-Sci Book Club - HYBRID

Meets the fourth Tues at 6 pm

March 28: First Light

April 25: Empire of the Scalpel

Feminist Book Club

Meets the first Tues at 6 pm

March 7: Of Women and Salt

April 4: Americanized

Outdoor Lit Book Club

Meets every other month, first Sun at 2 pm

March 5: Bears Ears

May 7: Wild New World

Latinx Book Club - HYBRID

Meets the fourth Sun 2 pm

March 26: Where They Burn Books They Also Burn People

April 23: The Family Izquierdo

Self-Care Book Club - IN-STORE

Meets the second Fri 6 pm

March 10: Set Boundaries, Find Peace

April 14: Mating in Captivity

NEW 'So Emotional' Book Club

Meets the second Tues at 5 pm

March 14: The Power of Regret

April 11: Expressly Human

NEW Diverse Romance Book Club

Meets the second Thurs at 6 pm

April 13: You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty