Books & Books, which has six stores in Florida, New York and the Cayman Islands, is opening another store: a bookstore and café in "the historic former Sears Tower on the campus of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts" in Miami's Omni area, the Miami Herald reported. The new Books & Books should open by the end of the year--possibly in time for the Miami Book Fair International, which takes place November 16-23.

The two-story space has 2,500 square feet inside and about 6,000 square feet outdoors and will, the newspaper said, "have a greater focus on the café than other Books & Books locations." The café will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner and have a full bar on the second level.

Books & Books owner Mitchell Kaplan called the store "a win-win for everybody. I'm thrilled." He noted that Center representatives approached him about the project, adding, "My philosophy is that I just want to be in interesting places. I don't sort of go actively looking, but if someone comes to me with a really, really interesting proposal or suggests something, we will jump on it. This is one of those. I wasn't even aware that that was even a possibility, and when I heard that it was, it just fit so easily."

In contrast to its usual splashy press conferences, last night Amazon quietly announced a new Fire tablet, two new e-readers and updates on other e-reading devices, changes that Bloomberg BusinessWeek called "mostly incremental" and that the New York Times said reflect this strategy: "Go after different types of people with many different devices."

Highlights of the new and updated devices, all of which will be available in October, are:

New 6" and 7" Fire HD tablets available in five colors for $99 and $139, respectively, with quad-core processors, making the smaller model "the most powerful tablet under $100," Amazon said. These also have a "kids' edition," which includes a two-year guarantee on any breakage and a year of Amazon FreeTime Unlimited, for $149 and $189, respectively.

The Kindle Fire HDX, thinner and faster than previous versions, for $379.

The seventh-generation Kindle Voyage, the thinnest ever and with a new Paperwhite display, for $199. The Voyage has an etching pattern on the glass that "serves to match the feel of paper." It also has PagePress, which allows the users to rest "your thumb on the bezel and turn the page by lightly pressing," and free 3G service.

An all-new, low-end Kindle that has 20% more speed, double the storage and costs $79.

Kindle Paperwhite, with double the storage, costing $119.

Today is the first International Read an E-book Day, sponsored by e-book and audiobook distributor OverDrive and designed "to celebrate and raise awareness for reading on digital devices." OverDrive is "giving away tablets and devices every hour on www.readanebookday.com and through social media to readers who tell their story of what e-books mean to them" using the hashtag #eBookDay.

After Valerie Ryan, founder and long-time owner of Cannon Beach Book Company in Cannon Beach, Ore., passed away this spring after a four-year battle with cancer, staff members Maureen Dooley-Sroufe and Deb Mersereau did not immediately consider buying the store.

"When she died, it was the end of spring and we were heading into summer, which is our busiest season," explained Mersereau, who has worked at Cannon Beach Book Company for more than nine years. "We were trying to run the store. We were grieving. We didn't even have time to think about the fact that we would want to have it. And yet everybody in the community just knew we would do it. It was a while into the summer that we kind of looked at each other and said, 'How can we let this gem go? How can we not have a bookstore in this town? How can we give up on something that we love this much?' "

Maureen Dooley-Sroufe and Deb Mersereau, new Cannon Beach Book Company owners

Dooley-Sroufe and Mersereau very quickly came to terms with Ryan's four children (all adults), who had inherited the store, and they officially took over about two weeks ago. Although Dooley-Sroufe and Mersereau are co-owners, all of the store's employees have taken on greater responsibilities and expanded roles in recent months. After Ryan became ill and began coming into the store less and less frequently, Dooley-Sroufe, who has worked at the store for more than 11 years and was most recently the store's manager, said the store's "four core" employees all jumped in to help take over her duties. She added: "We definitely learned all the ropes of what needed to happen to run the store."

The day after Dooley-Sroufe and Mersereau took possession of the store, the pair held an open house to welcome community members and customers. The response, Mersereau said, was overwhelming. "There has been a huge amount of sorrow with Valerie's passing. She was quite the strong personality and a wonderful person in the community," she said. "And yet we're getting a wonderful response from both our customers and our community that we've decided to take it on. They know the store will continue to be here."

The pair has some long-term plans for the store that involve hosting more and a greater variety of events that will include community members, such as musical events related to literary subjects. In the short term, they've made some relatively minor changes to the interior to allow more space for events and to accommodate more people. Although they want to make further adjustments to the store, Dooley-Sroufe and Mersereau do not plan to change too much.

"We love the direction that Val had taken this bookstore in over the last 30 years," said Dooley-Sroufe. "While we will certainly put our own personalities into it, we feel we want to continue with the eclectic choices that have been made along the way." --Alex Mutter

Store owners Peter Makin and Coleen Makin with Emily St. John Mandel (center).

Tuesday night, author Emily St. John Mandel made a return appearance to Brilliant Books, Traverse City, Mich. In anticipation of her appearance, the store set up a "Museum of Civilization" display--a key part of the plot of Mandel's post-apocalyptic Station Eleven (Random House).

Brilliant Books has long been a supporter of the author. "We read and loved The Singer's Gun," explained owner Peter Makin. "It was a book by a then unknown author from a small publisher (Unbridled Books). We invited Emily on the strength of that book, and she appeared at our Suttons Bay store in July 2010. We pitched it to other bookstores and campaigned for it during the following year's Indie Booksellers Choice Awards, which I'm happy to say, it won." Mandel also visited Brilliant Books in 2012 as part of her tour for The Lola Quartet, and Makin even advised Mandel on creating a realistic poker sequence for her story.

Congratulations to Broadside Books, Northampton, Mass., which is celebrating its 40th anniversary tomorrow and Saturday, September 19-20, with a series of events and a 20% off sale both days (except for Jordi Herold's book during his Friday night reading/signing).

Events begin tomorrow from 9-10 a.m., when Bill Newman of WHMP will broadcast his morning show from the store with interviews with writers Cathi Hanauer, Suzanne Strempek Shea, Barry Werth and Andrea Ayvazian as well as with customers and staff. From 5-6 p.m., former Northampton mayors Mary Ford and Clare Higgins join current mayor David Narkiewicz to talk about Northampton through the last 40 years. The event will also feature a Northampton history quiz.

At 7:30 p.m., Jordi Herold reads from his new book, Positively Center Street: My 25 Years at the Iron Horse Music Hall. Music critic/historian Dave Sokol will be on hand, and there will be live music and refreshments.

On Saturday at 10:30 a.m., Northampton children's authors Grace Lin, Jeanne Birdsall, Jane Dyer and Mordicai Gerstein will read from children's books they love. At noon, there is a kids' scavenger hunt in local stores, with prizes. At 2 p.m., there's live music, and at 3 p.m., free Bart's ice cream will be available outside the store.

Celebrations culminate with the 40th Anniversary Party at 7 p.m. that includes remarks by authors Tracy Kidder, Elinor Lipman, Anthony Giardina and other friends of Broadside, food, fun and reminiscences.

Banned Books Week starts this Sunday, September 21, and runs through Saturday, September 27. Check out this great video from Books Inc. in the Bay Area, which is marking the week with story times, book club discussions and more.

On Facebook yesterday, the Seminary Co-op Bookstore noted: "Renowned legal scholar/former UChicago professor/Co-Op member Cass Sunstein wrote what he calls a 'love letter' to our store for the Chicago Tribune. Touched, honored, misty-eyed--we are all of these things and more."

Cass Sunstein at Seminary Co-Op

Sunstein stated that "Hyde Park's Seminary Co-op Bookstore is not merely a bookstore. It is a community. It is a small town. It is a church, a sacred place. The air is cleaner there, and the people are more gracious, and they move more slowly. It is defined by quiet, and by gentleness, and by respect. No one disturbs anyone there. When they talk, they tend to whisper."

Recalling his introduction to the bookshop in 1981, Sunstein noted that a colleague had recommended the "Sem Co-op" as the best thing about the University of Chicago: "Of course I had no idea what a 'Sem Co-op' might be, and I had never heard of Jack Cella--and I was properly intimidated by both. A week later, I discovered the Seminary Co-op Bookstore, and I was able to see, at his small desk on the right as you enter the store, the famous Jack Cella....
 
"After a few years, I was privileged to get to know Cella, who retired just last year. He was the general manager of the Seminary Co-op, but he was (and is) much more. The gentleness of the store--its humility, its civility, its seriousness, its importance without self-importance, its absence of self-display, even its calm air--seemed a direct extension of the man, a part of his soul....

"The Seminary Co-op was, and is, a place of refuge, a port in a storm. Whenever I have been away from Chicago for a period, it is among my first destinations, and the one I look forward to most.... It's the very model of the bookstore, and in its quiet way, it's also a house of worship."

At Penguin Random House:
 
Lauren Monaco has been named v-p, director of sales, paperback and Berkley/NAL, Penguin Publishing Group. She was previously Random House's v-p, director, digital business development, and earlier was v-p, director of sales, national accounts, at Simon & Schuster.
Hank Cochrane has been named v-p, director of sales development, trade paperback & Berkley/NAL. He was formerly trade paperback sales director at Penguin.
Jeff Weber has been named v-p, director, online & digital sales, Penguin Random House, heading the newly unified Penguin Random House adult online & digital sales team. He previously led the Random House online and digital sales effort.  
Kent Anderson has been promoted to director, online & digital sales, Penguin Publishing Group. He was formerly director of online sales & marketing at Penguin.
Michael Rotondo has been promoted to director, online & digital sales, Random House Adult. He was formerly national account manager, online sales, at Random House.

With the formation of the Penguin Random House online & digital sales group, Tim McCall, v-p, director of online sales & marketing, Penguin Group, is leaving the company.

Renegade Amish: Beard Cutting, Hate Crimes, and the Trial of the Bergholz Barbers by Donald B. Kraybill (Johns Hopkins University Press).

Tomorrow morning on Morning Joe: William Deresiewicz, author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life (Free Press, $26, 9781476702711).

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Tomorrow morning on Fox & Friends: Dawn Wells, co-author of What Would Mary Ann Do?: A Guide to Life (Taylor Trade, $16.95, 9781630760281).

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Tomorrow on the Queen Latifah Show: Annabelle Gurwitch, author of I See You Made an Effort: Compliments, Indignities and Survival Stories from the Edge of 50 (Blue Rider, $25.95, 9780399166181).

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Tomorrow on Tavis Smiley: Misty Copeland, author of Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina (Touchstone, $24.99, 9781476737980).

An interactive "tapestry" has been unveiled depicting scenes from Peter Jackson's final Middle-earth film, Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Entertainment Weekly reported. The film hits U.S. theaters December 17.

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 this weekend from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, September 20
9 a.m. Louisa Lim, author of The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited (Oxford University Press, $24.95, 9780199347704), filmed at the 2014 National Book Festival on August 30.

12 p.m. Book TV interviews authors and visits literary sites in St. Paul, Minn. (Re-airs Sunday at 10:30 a.m.)

3:30 p.m. Live interview with Meryl Comer, author of Slow Dancing with a Stranger: Lost and Found in the Age of Alzheimer's (HarperOne, $26.99, 9780062130822), at Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C.

4:30 p.m. Nina Khrushcheva, author of The Lost Khrushchev: A Journey into the Gulag of the Russian Mind (Tate Publishing, $22.99, 9781629945446), at the 2014 National Book Festival.

7 p.m. Ken Burns and Geoffrey C. Ward, authors of The Roosevelts: An Intimate History (Knopf, $60, 9780307700230).

7:45 p.m. David Horowitz, author of Take No Prisoners: The Battle Plan for Defeating the Left (Regnery, $27.99, 9781621572565). (Re-airs Sunday at 2 p.m.)

9 p.m. Marianne Cooper, author of Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times (University of California Press, $29.95, 9780520277670). (Re-airs Sunday at 5 p.m.)

10 p.m. Caleb Scharf, author of The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities (Scientific American/FSG, $26, 9780374129217). (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m. and Monday at 12 a.m. and 3 a.m.)

11 p.m. A debate on war and the constitution between John Yoo, author of Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare (Oxford University Press, $35, 9780199347735), and Bruce Fein, author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, $17, 9780230617612).


Sunday, September 21
1 p.m. Valerie Matsumoto, author of City Girls: The Nisei Social World in Los Angeles, 1920-1950 (Oxford University Press, $34.95, 9780199752249). (Re-airs Monday at 1 a.m.)

4:15 p.m. Nick Kotz, author of The Harness Maker's Dream: Nathan Kallison and the Rise of South Texas (Texas Christian University Press, $25.95, 9780875655673), at the 2014 National Book Festival.

6:15 p.m. Mark Obama Ndesandjo, author of An Obama's Journey: My Odyssey of Self-Discovery across Three Cultures (Globe Pequot Press, $25.95, 9781493007516).

7:30 p.m. Malcolm Byrne, author of Iran-Contra: Reagan's Scandal and the Unchecked Abuse of Presidential Power (University Press of Kansas, $34.95, 9780700619917).

10 p.m. Morten Storm, Paul Cruickshank and Tim Lister, authors of Agent Storm: My Life Inside al Qaeda and the CIA (Atlantic Monthly Press, $26, 9780802123145).

The National Book Foundation have been unveiling longlists for the National Book Awards this week. NBA finalists will be revealed October 15, and winners named November 19. The longlisted titles in the nonfiction and fiction categories are:

Nonfiction
Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury)
The Heathen School: A Story of Hope and Betrayal in the Age of the Early Republic by John Demos (Knopf)
No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban and the War Through Afghan Eyes by Anand Gopal (Metropolitan Books)
The Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941-1942 by Nigel Hamilton (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson (S&S)
Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh by John Lahr (Norton)
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos (FSG)
When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944 by Ronald C. Rosbottom (Little, Brown)
Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic by Matthew Stewart (Norton)
The Meaning of Human Existence by Edward O. Wilson (Liveright/Norton)

Fiction
An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine (Grove Press)
The UnAmericans by Molly Antopol (Norton)
Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle (FSG)
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (Scribner)
Redeployment by Phil Klay (Penguin)
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf)
Thunderstruck & Other Stories by Elizabeth McCracken (Dial Press)
Orfeo Richard Powers (Norton)
Lila by Marilynne Robinson (FSG)
Some Luck by Jane Smiley (Knopf)

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, September 23:

Bones Never Lie: A Novel by Kathy Reichs (Bantam, $27, 9780345544018) is the latest mystery with forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles M. Blow (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27, 9780544228047) is the memoir of the New York Times columnist.

A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (Knopf, $27.95, 9780385349918) examines global philanthropy efforts.

Landslide: LBJ and Ronald Reagan at the Dawn of a New America by Jonathan Darman (Random House, $30, 9781400067084) explores Reagan and LBJ in the mid-1960s.

Juliet's Nurse: A Novel by Lois Leveen (Emily Bestler/Atria, $25.99, 9781476757445) is a prequel to Romeo and Juliet.

Rooms: A Novel by Lauren Oliver (Ecco, $25.99, 9780062223197) follows ghosts and living heirs in a country house.

Bowie: The Biography by Wendy Leigh (Gallery Books, $28, 9781476767079) is the biography of a music icon.


Now in paperback:

The Chew (Festive and Delicious Recipes for Every Occasion): A Year of Celebrations by the Chew (Kingswell, $19.99, 9781484711088).

The 21-Day Belly Fix: The Doctor-Designed Diet Plan for a Clean Gut and a Slimmer Waist by Dr. Tasneem Bhatia (Zinc Ink, $20, 9780553393644).

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:

Hardcovers
Hold the Dark: A Novel by William Giraldi (Liveright, $24.95, 9780871406675). "In a remote Alaskan village where wolves have been taking the local children, a mother calls for a stranger to help locate her missing son. This is the beginning of a harrowing tale of loyalty, dark secrets, and violence, set in the uttermost regions of the Alaskan frontier. Giraldi weaves a sinister story that involves family secrets, ritual, and the wildness of a remote land. Perfect for lovers of the works of Cormac McCarthy and Donald Ray Pollack." --Helen Gregory, Maria's Bookshop, Durango, Colo.

The Story of Land and Sea: A Novel by Katy Simpson Smith (Harper, $26.99, 9780062335944). "Simpson's debut novel is a quiet and radiant book. This story of love and loss is set during the later part of the American Revolutionary War and is told from the shifting viewpoints of a 10-year-old white girl, Tabitha; her family; their slave, Moll; and Moll's young son, Davy. While we can never know exactly what it felt like to be living on the North Carolina coast, on land and sea, at the end of the 18th century, Smith's graceful writing seems to capture the very essence of a different way of being in the world. This is an exceptionally written novel with characters whose hard lives are redeemed by moments of both beauty and mercy." --Sarah Goddin, Quail Ridge Books & Music, Raleigh, N.C.

Paperback
The Lion Seeker: A Novel by Kenneth Bonert (Mariner, $14.95, 9780544334519). "This is a perfect book, and given that it is Bonert's debut novel, it's even more astounding. He uses South African apartheid, where blacks are treated like the Jews of Eastern Europe, to convey the drama of a Lithuanian family's emigration to escape the very debasement that they then perpetrate on those who live in their new community. It's a complicated story well told, emotional, fraught with angst, but also with some of the most memorable characters in recent fictional history." --Gayle Shanks, Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe, Ariz.

For Teen Readers
Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins (Dutton, $17.99, 9780525425632). "Perkins is a master of romance and she is forever a favorite of mine. She has truly outdone herself with her latest book. I loved every minute of Isla and Josh's journey, and with the inclusion of cameos from some of Perkins' most beloved characters from previous books, readers will not be disappointed. I'm only sad that, after Anna and the French Kiss and Lola and the Boy Next Door, this is the end of this enjoyable trilogy." --Caitlin Ek, Mrs. Nelson's Book Fair Company, Pomona, Calif.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

Karen Karbo has built a brand writing the Kick A** Women series. These offbeat, inspirational biographies chronicle the lives of original, creative females such as Coco Chanel, Katharine Hepburn and Georgia O'Keeffe. The recurring theme of Karbo's work, across genres, centers on the complexities of women's lives and their resilience.

In The Diamond Lane--a reissue of a novel first published in 1991--Karbo mines the lives of everyday women in the age of videotapes, floppy discs, telephone answering machines and smoking sections on airplanes. The story is set in Los Angeles and commences with news that Shirl, the widowed matriarch of the FitzHenry family, has undergone brain surgery following a freak accident involving a ceiling fan. Amid the trauma, Mimi--Shirl's thirtysomething, romantically challenged, aspiring-screenwriter daughter entrenched in wannabe Hollywood culture--tracks down her long-lost sister, Mouse, a documentary filmmaker flitting around Africa, who hasn't been home in 16 years. The telephone connection between the sisters is a bad one (an apt metaphor for their relationship), and in the midst of summoning her sister home, Mimi thinks she hears Mouse announce her engagement.

Mouse soon arrives in the States with her longtime British beau and work partner, Tony Cheatham, whom Shirl and Mimi assume is Mouse's fiancé. Afraid to upset and disappoint her infirm mother, Mouse runs with the marriage story, even though she and Tony have a sparring, contentious relationship, and Mouse had actually refused Tony's prior proposals. But as Mouse assimilates into life in L.A., the past is unearthed and old jealousies and sibling rivalries are soon resurrected.

Life becomes even more complicated when an old flame approaches Mouse and the two begin to film a behind-the-scenes documentary called Wedding March--a sort of reality show long before such programs became commonplace--that depicts the months leading up to Mouse's impending nuptials. Tony, oblivious, is soon swept up with the lure of Hollywood, and his screenplay, which offers intimate details of their relationship (without Mouse's knowledge), is suddenly green-lit. The couple's separate agendas, along with Mimi's romantic woes, cleverly build to a social satire of farcical proportions.

Karbo's story is timeless, and her writing is seamless. She is a keen, wry observer of the hazards of Hollywood and marriage and the fraught relationships between lovers, mothers and daughters and sisters. Filled with sharp characterizations and laugh-out-loud scenes, Karbo's early '90s-era novel proves that, in the right literary hands, the comedic absurdities of life never go out of style. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines

Shelf Talker: This smart early '90s-era comedy of manners about familial, romantic and Hollywood entanglements gets a timely reissue.

The bestselling self-published books last week as compiled by IndieReader.com:

1. Combat and Other Shenanigans by Piers Platt
2. Black Lies by Alessandra Torre
3. Twice the Growl by Milly Taiden
4. Reasonable Doubt 3 by Whitney Gracia Williams
5. Shatter by Michael Prescott
6. The Arrangement 16 by H.M. Ward
7. Alpha Billionaire by Helen Cooper
8. Guarding His Heart by J.S. Cooper
9. The Wizard of Time Trilogy by G.L. Breedon
10. Alpha Billionaire 2 by Helen Cooper

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]