Earthquake damage at Copperfield's in Napa, Calif.

Yesterday's early morning earthquake centered in Napa, Calif., north of San Francisco, affected at least two bookstores--the Copperfield's branch in Napa and Napa Bookmine--and caused many books and sidelines to be tossed on the floor but no structural damage.

Lindsay McConnell, manager at Napa Copperfield's, called the store "a big fat mess," reporting that more than 70% of the store's books were on the floor, calendar and card racks flipped, and some sidelines like mugs, candles and jars were broken. The store, which had power turned back on relatively early, was closed yesterday for cleanup.

Vicki DeArmon, Copperfield's marketing and events director, said that at the Copperfield's store in Calistoga, which is in Napa County, just a few books fell off the shelves. At the other five Copperfield's stores there was no damage.

On Twitter, Napa Bookmine said that "lots of books" were on the floor but that there seemed to be no structural damage. On Facebook, the store said yesterday that some "seriously helpful volunteers" were helping put the store back together, and posted a short video of the quake aftermath. The store is open for business today.

Lyon Books in Chico, Calif.

Lyon Books, Chico, Calif., is for sale. Owner Heather Lyon told the Chico Enterprise-Record that the store is in good shape and its lease runs until 2016; she would like a break from retailing and would like to "find something in editing and publishing locally." The store opened in 2003.

The Prairie Bookshop, Mount Horeb, Wis., is also for sale. Owner John Stowe told the Wisconsin State Journal that he is nearing age 70 and hopes to find a buyer "with a lot of energy and ideas... someone who likes people as well as books."

Two years after Amazon began selling e-books in Brazil, the online retailer is now selling print books there as well, the Associated Press reported. In a statement posted on www.amazon.com.br, CEO Jeff Bezos said Amazon's new service will offer more than 150,000 titles in Portuguese.

Amazon Brazil v-p Alexandre Szapiro  said that by the end of the year, e-books will have a 5% share of the country's book market, the AP wrote.

Created by the Audio Publishers Association and the marketing agency GoGORILLA Media, an Audiobookmobile is traveling to five cities between August 30 and September 27 to introduce new listeners to audio and encourage readers to "take a listen to their next book." The APA calls this its biggest ever consumer awareness campaign.

The Audiobookmobile makes its debut at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., on August 30, then appears at Baltimore Comic Con on September 6; at the Darien, Conn., Public Library on September 13; at the Brooklyn Book Festival on September 21; and at the Free Library of Philadelphia on September 27.

The exterior of the Audiobookmobile has large headphone graphics and the campaign's slogan: "A Good Book Speaks Volumes." The truck has speakers and a video screen to broadcast audio and video clips from the recording studio. There's a spot for a photo op: one side of the truck asks attendees to fill in the blank "I love audiobooks because…" and share their reasons via social media using the hashtag #listenlit.

At each stop, volunteers from APA member publishers and GoGORILLA Media will talk with consumers about audiobooks and offer free downloads. Attendees will be able to spin a prize wheel mounted on the side of the Audiobookmobile for a chance to win giveaways, including headphones, T-shirts, buttons, posters and more.

John P. "Jack" Vallier Sr., a longtime Simon & Schuster executive, died last Monday, August 18. He was 88.

After serving in the Navy, he worked for nine years at American News Company in Portsmouth, N.H., where he became manager of the company. In 1958, he joined Simon & Schuster and retired in 1992 as regional v-p of sales.

Harvey Berliner of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt remembered: "Back in the time when the book business was based more on personal relationships, Jack Vallier was an inspiration and gifted teacher to the people he worked with and managed."

Edgartown Books, in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard, celebrated the release of Jon McGoran's Deadout (the sequel to his ecological thriller Drift, both published by Tor) with a reading and discussion with the author. Much of the action in McGoran's new book is set on the Vineyard.

Skylight Books

"Despite what the L.A. haters say, Los Angeles is one of the biggest book markets in the country," Studio System News reported in featuring "eight treasured indie L.A. bookstores."    

"Ripe with story ideas for both the big and small screen, these stores are treasure troves for those in the film and TV industry," SSN observed. "Whether you're a development exec, writer, director, producer, or agent, these brick and mortar gems are worth frequenting to jumpstart your creative juices."

SSN also asked "several booksellers and managers [to] tell us what's trending, which titles are perennial best sellers, and what obscure finds they think are worthy of adaptation."

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"Seven havens for book lovers in L.A." were highlighted by Wutzwut, which noted that in an increasingly digital world "sometimes it's nice to rebel by holding on to something tangible, from days gone by.... Wutzwhat may be a mobile app, but we pride ourselves in providing you with the top IRL experiences, most of which are found at brick-and-mortar stores where you get to interact with real people who are passionate about what they do. But when you do need to escape reality, our favorite pastime is to pick up and crack open a good book."

Surry Hills Library, Sydney.

Noting that Craigieburn library in Hume, Victoria, has been named public library of the year "following a cross-continent competition by the Danish Agency for Culture," the Guardian showcased it and nine other "beautiful Australian libraries," from "opulent state buildings to state-of-the-art university architecture."

Blood in the Fields: Ten Years Inside California's Nuestra Familia Gang by Julia Reynolds (Chicago Review Press).

This morning on the Today Show: Claire Thomas, author of The Kitchy Kitchen: New Classics for Living Deliciously (Emily Bestler/Atria, $26, 9781476710730).

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Today on NPR's Diane Rehm Show: Meryl Comer, author of Slow Dancing with a Stranger: Lost and Found in the Age of Alzheimer's (HarperOne, $26.99, 9780062130822).

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Today on a repeat of the View: Troy Dunn, author of Family: The Good "F" Word: The Life-Changing Action Plan for Building Your Best Family (Bird Street Books, $25.95, 9781939457028).

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Tonight on a repeat of Late Night with Seth Meyers: Joan Rivers, author of Diary of a Mad Diva (Berkley, $26.95, 9780425269022).

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Tonight on a repeat of Jimmy Kimmel: Todd Glass, co-author of The Todd Glass Situation: A Bunch of Lies About My Personal Life and a Bunch of True Stories About My 30-Year Career in Stand-Up Comedy (Simon & Schuster, $25, 9781476714417).

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Tomorrow on a repeat of Tavis Smiley: Peniel E. Joseph, author of Stokely: A Life (Basic Civitas, $29.99, 9780465013630).

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Tomorrow night on the Daily Show: David Rose, author of Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire, and the Internet of Things (Scribner, $28, 9781476725635).

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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: Lois Lowry, author of The Giver (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers, $9.99, 9780544340688).

Stonemouth by Iain Banks, which is being developed as a two-part drama by BBC Scotland and Slate North, will be the first TV adaptation of Banks's work since his death in 2013, BBC News reported.

"Iain Banks was such an important writer, I am thrilled we are bringing Stonemouth to the screen," said Christopher Aird, BBC Scotland's head of drama and executive producer of the project. "We have some very exciting ideas for the adaptation and I am sure we will be able to attract some of the very best Scottish acting talent to the drama."

Written by David Kane (The Field of Blood, Prime Suspect) and directed by Charles Martin (Run, Wallander and A&E's U.S. remake of The Returned), the project will start filming on location in Scotland this October.

The 2014 NAIBA Books of the Year are:
 
Fiction: The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri (Vintage)
Nonfiction: Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury)
Paperback Original: Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison (Graywolf Press)
Children's Literature and YA: Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan (Knopf)
Middle Readers: Under the Egg by Laura Fitzgerald (Penguin)
Picture Book: Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)

The authors will be presented with their awards at the NAIBA Awards Banquet, Saturday, September 20 in Arlington, Va., during NAIBA's Fall Discovery Conference.

What would you find if you cracked open the head of an adolescent California gamer who binges on bargain-bin Conan paperbacks and VHS copies of Gor and Krull? In his first novel, musician John Darnielle (front man, lyricist and often the sole member of the Mountain Goats; author of a fictional riff on the iconic Black Sabbath album Master of Reality for the 33 1/3 series) does just that. Wolf in White Van tracks backward in time through the life of Sean Phillips, a mid-30s survivor of a horribly disfiguring "accident" who now lives an introspective, hermetic life managing the players in an elaborate mail-order fantasy game he created during his hospital rehabilitation.

Called Trace Italian (based on a triangular Italian fort design), Sean's game is a post-nuclear-disaster quest to find shelter somewhere in the "fallow fields of Kansas." Advertised in small-circulation sci-fi magazines for offbeat gamers like his childhood classmate "Tits" Teague (with his "bound notebooks bulging with sketches of imaginary mountain ranges or mysteriously numbered dodecahedrons"), Trace Italian is an old-school postal version of the arcade video games Sean played as a kid. Subscribers mail him their moves and he replies with the next level of options. As a recluse whose closest human contacts are therapists and nurses, Sean savors the friendship of his players--until a young couple take the game too literally and suffer permanent catastrophe in a frozen Kansas ditch with "their minds gone past the point of panic to that self-drugged state where everything looks cool."

With its labyrinthine structure resembling a role-playing game, Darnielle's novel is compulsively readable--a Tom Cruise movie with brains. Sean's refreshingly unpretentious and unembittered voice tells of his many tedious months of medical treatment: staring at his hospital room's ceiling, watching Trinity Broadcasting Network ("wolf in white van" is a phrase from a Christian rock song played backward, which sounds like a "hole opening up in the earth out in the dark, abandoned desert"), and creating the twists and dead-ends of Trace Italian. Gradually he reveals his childhood isolation and fascination with the imaginary world. As he explains to his parents, "I hardly knew anything about the real world... [the game] was a place where people could feel safe and have fun, where nothing ever really happens except inside our heads." When Sean finally tells of the night of the "accident" that permanently scarred his face ("like tire tread... a shag rug... bent wheel spokes pressed into taffy"), Darnielle has already neatly pulled readers into his own game and provided a lasting glimpse inside the head of a young man trying to cope. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.

Shelf Talker: Mountain Goats founder John Darnielle's addictive first novel is a labyrinthine look inside the mind of a disfigured man's life as a gamer and fantasy freak.