Effective today, Cris Cooke joins Shelf Awareness as director of business development. Among her responsibilities are the bookseller newsletter platform and ad sales to independent and smaller publishers and to other companies.

Cris fell in love with publishing during a summer publishing course and began her career as a bookseller at the legendary Shakespeare & Co. on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, where frequent lavish tips from neighborhood resident Mick Jagger allowed her to play Oliver Twist at Zabar's. She was most recently a rep and sales manager at John Wiley & Sons.

Cris is a biography addict who also loves to read history and historical fiction. We're happy, too, that she is a Mad Men aficionado and a big sports fan, particularly of the New York Giants.

Jenn and John met Cris for the first time at the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association annual trade show in 2005, when she was so gung-ho about Shelf Awareness that it felt she was selling us on the idea of her taking ads in the newsletter. She has continued to dazzle us ever since.

Cris lives in Los Osos, Calif., and can be reached at cris@shelf-awareness.com and 805-305-1867.

Starting this week, Target is offering a gift card for e-book versions of six bestsellers from Random House and HarperCollins, according to paidcontent.org. Titles offered are Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James, State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, 44 Charles Street by Danielle Steele, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz. The service is provided by Livrada, a relatively new e-book company. The gift cards will be sold in all 1,700-plus Target stores and are redeemable on Nooks and Kindles. The pilot program will be expanded to other platforms by the end of the year.

Congratulations to Fiction Addiction, Greenville, S.C., which moved on Saturday to a larger location that will allow the store to host book clubs and more author events. Staff, family and volunteers pitched in to make the Bastille Day trek to the new site at the Shops by the Mall shopping center. Fiction Addiction's new address is 1175 Woods Crossing Road, Greenville, S.C. 29607.

 

Analog Books, a "community fixture" that was "a hangout spot for students, Berkeley residents and authors alike," closed June 15, the Daily Californian reported, adding that former owner Nima Shokat was unavailable for comment.

Analog "has been there for a long time, it's a part of the community, and the trend of independent bookstores dying is unfortunate," said landlord Mori Herscowitz, who was uncertain what would become of the property.

Former staff member Elaina Marshalek called Analog "a really great place to work. (It) was a bookstore with a quirky personality.... If anyone would like to open another bookstore, people are excited to come and work at it."
 

Addison & Sarova, the auction house handling "the Last Book Sale" of several hundred thousand books at Larry McMurtry's Booked Up bookstore in Archer City, Texas, has details about the auction that will be held August 10-11. Check out the 100 books chosen by McMurtry that will be auctioned separately. The event features music, Texas BBQ and cold beer.

The books will be sold in 1,400 lots of about 150 books. "Most books are hardcover, and the overall quality of each shelf lot is quite good," the auctioneer said. "Each lot typically contains around 8 shelves with some having more and some having less."

And in comments about why he is holding the sale, McMurtry wrote: "Because we believe that in the book world generational migration is healthy: old pages await new eyes. Yesterday in Lubbock, Texas I found a copy of Sons and Lovers in the oil-cloth Modern Library with my bookplate in it. Twenty eight thousand volumes have my bookplate in them; they reside in my big house in Archer City, and yet this one strayed. How it got to Lubbock I'll likely never know. It's home again now; but three-hundred and fifty-thousand of its cousins will be flooding into the great river of books that delights and refreshes. Good reading and good luck!"

Aiming to help New York City's St. Mark's Bookshop, which continues to look for a smaller, less expensive space, blogger Jeremiah Moss is organizing what he hopes is "the biggest St. Mark's cash mob yet" this coming Saturday, July 21, at 3 p.m. In honor of the fifth anniversary of his blog, Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, Moss has added an incentive: "The first 20 people to spend $10 and say 'Jeremiah sent me' will receive a $5 gift certificate toward their next visit to St. Mark's Bookshop." Another incentive: after the event, participants are invited to nearby Bar 82 "to drink and celebrate with your fellow cash-mobbers."

 

The New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association is under cyber assault: naiba.com and all e-mails associated with it have been compromised. Moreover, executive director Eileen Dengler's personal e-mail, readingent@aol.com, has also been taken over by hackers.

Until the problems are corrected, please use newatlanticbooks.com and send e-mail to naibabooksellers@gmail.com.

 

To help celebrate its fourth anniversary this coming Saturday, July 21, the Morris Book Shop, Lexington, Ky., is holding a "big ol' shindig," according to owner Wyn Morris. To promote the event, Lexington's Cricket Press designed this poster; Morris is "papering Lexington with 100 signed and numbered pieces of original artwork!" Cricket Press also did the store's grand opening and other posters. Morris Book Shop sells its work, including greeting cards and notebooks and will soon unveil its custom-designed, laser-etched Moleskine notebooks.

 

Last Thursday's appearance by E.L. James at Comic-Con in San Diego was considerably more frenzied than her first trip a few years ago when she attended "to participate in a panel for fans who wrote fiction inspired by the Twilight series," the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

"It's just crazy," she said. "This whole thing has just been mindboggling, how it's happened and how it's exploded, and so quickly."

Citing a fan who exclaimed, "We are Team Christian now," the Hollywood Reporter wrote that the "declaration sums up the passing of the romantic-series torch which occurred at Comic-Con on Thursday. The day began with a panel devoted to the final Twilight movie and ended with an overflow crowd clammering for James's signature on their copy of the hit erotic thriller."

Fifty Shades fans "lined up at 9 a.m. for tickets to the afternoon signing. Within an hour, all three hundred tickets were gone," THR noted, adding that the crowd "at the signing skewed older and more female than your average Comic-Con event."
 

On its Facebook page, HarperCollins Canada showcased the "perfect little town for bookish people! 'Like' this if you would like to live here."
 

Goodbye for Now by Laurie Frankel (Doubleday), a trailer the author made herself.

 

This morning on CBS's This Morning: James Carville, co-author of It's the Middle Class, Stupid! (Blue Rider Press, $26.95, 9780399160394).

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Today on CBS's the Talk: Meghan McCain, co-author of America, You Sexy Bitch: A Love Letter to Freedom (Da Capo, $26, 9780306821004).

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Today on NPR's Diane Rehm Show: Stephan Talty, author of Agent Garbo: The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent Who Tricked Hitler and Saved D-Day (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $28, 9780547614816).

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Today on Access Hollywood Live: Carol Alt, author of Easy Sexy Raw: 130 Raw Food Recipes, Tools, and Tips to Make You Feel Gorgeous and Satisfied (Clarkson Potter, $18.99, 9780307888693).

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Tomorrow morning on Good Morning America: Victor Cruz, co-author of Out of the Blue (Celebra, $26.95, 9780451416155). He will also appear on the Daily Show.

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Tomorrow on Live with Kelly: Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi, author of Gorilla Beach (Gallery, $25, 9781451657081).

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Tomorrow on Tavis Smiley: Jimmie Walker, author of Dynomite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times (Da Capo, $25, 9780306820830).

The first official trailer for Disney's Oz the Great and Powerful, a prequel to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was screened at Comic-Con. The movie, based on the books by L. Frank Baum, is directed by Sam Raimi and stars James Franco, Michelle Williams and Mila Kunis. It is scheduled to open open March 8, 2013.

During the clip unveiling event, Raimi "explained origins of the Wizard as a carnival magician with bad social skills who seeks fame. 'His life becomes untenable in Kansas.... He's an adulterer, he's chased out of Kansas," the Hollywood Reporter wrote, adding that the clip "made everybody excited--it's clear Raimi working in 3D will be fun. Kansas stuff is in black and white just like the MGM classic The Wizard of Oz. The gradual fade to color when the wizard's balloon enters Oz airspace is a wonder. The tiny porcelain kingdom seems to play a part, and the clip ends with winged monkeys (savage, fanged, black) and a familiar green hand clawing its way toward the camera."
 

Winners of the 2012 International Thrillers Awards, sponsored by the International Thriller Writers, are:

Best Hardcover Novel: 11/22/63 by Stephen King (Scribner)
Best Paperback Original: The Last Minute by Jeff Abbott (Sphere/Little, Brown UK)
Best First Novel: Spiral by Paul McEuen (Dial Press)
Best Short Story: "Half-Lives" by Tim L. Williams (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
Thrillermaster Award: Jack Higgins
Silver Bullet Award: Richard North Patterson
True Thriller Award: Ann Rule
 

In Broken Harbor, Tana French returns to Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy, the in-your-face cop from her third novel, 2010's Faithful Place. This time, he takes the lead in a Dublin murder squad investigation.

Patrick Spain and his two young children have been murdered in their home; Jenny, wife and mother, is barely hanging on to life in intensive care. At the beginning of the investigation, Scorcher and his rookie partner, Richie Curran, think it will be a slam-dunk, but there are many weird and unexplained things going on.

Despite the bleakness of their neighborhood (a never-completed development where the money ran out), Pat and Jenny, sweethearts since they were teenagers, strive to keep their home looking perfect. Everything matches, the house is squeaky clean, but wait--why are there several holes punched in the walls? Why are there baby monitors and infrared cameras pointed up inside the holes? Why have computer files been erased? Who is the never-seen prowler, defying all locks and alarms?

These are the questions that plague Scorcher and Richie as they talk to Jenny's sister, Fiona, and eventually to Jenny herself. An old friend, Conor, is also questioned, and this psychological thriller becomes more and more complex with each conversation.

Pat was convinced that he heard an animal in the attic; thus the holes and monitors. No one else ever heard anything. Could Pat be going off the rails because he has lost his job and is about to lose his home?

Scorcher has his own painful history with Broken Harbor, the area now called Brianstown, where he and his family used to spend two halcyon weeks each summer in a caravan. That is, until the last time, when tragedy struck. That family loss has resonated through the years, mostly affecting his younger sister, Dina, who has always been mentally unstable. Hearing about murder in Broken Harbor has sent her reeling. Scorcher and Geri, his older sister, try to care for Dina, but she eludes them. Scorcher doesn't have his own memories as tightly under control as he once thought.

These two separate and very sad stories are multifaceted, complicated by many unknowns and draw the reader deeper and deeper into the psyches of her characters. This is Tana French at her writerly best. --Valerie Ryan

Shelf Talker: Tana French brings back brash detective Scorcher Kennedy, now involved in the strange circumstances of a triple murder. Psychological suspense of the highest order.