Yesterday, Amazon officially launched Kindle Scout, a "reader-powered publishing" initiative that employs crowdsourcing to choose content for publication. On the program's home page, Amazon invites would-be writers to "submit your book to Kindle Scout and be considered for a publishing contract with Kindle Press in 45 days or less," with a specific request for "English-language books in Romance, Mystery & Thriller and Science Fiction & Fantasy genres."

The online retailer describes Kindle Scout as "a place where readers help decide if a book receives a publishing contract. Selected books will be published by Kindle Press and receive 5-year renewable terms, a $1,500 advance, 50% e-book royalty rate, easy rights reversions and featured Amazon marketing."

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Amazon is expanding its "Pick-up Location" program in the U.K. to include Same-Day pick-up service, through which customers can order products as late as 11:45 a.m. for collection beginning at 4 p.m. Also available is an Express Morning collection, with orders placed up to 7:45 p.m. being available for guaranteed collection the following morning.  

The online retailer is collaborating with newspaper and magazine distributor Smiths News on the project, which Amazon Prime members will be able to use free until the end of the year. It is available at more than 500 newsagents and convenience stores with "Pass My Parcel" branding. Nonmembers can opt for Same-Day collection or Express Morning collection for £4.99 (US$7.93) for a limited time.

Barnes & Noble will close its landmark Chateau Theatre store on the Peace Plaza in downtown Rochester, Minn., at the end of the year when its lease expires, the Post-Bulletin reported. David Deason, B&N's corporate v-p for development, confirmed Monday that the store will close December 31, adding: "The Chateau Theatre store was a special place for our booksellers and customers. We have enjoyed taking care of the space and our customers for more than 15 years, and we look forward to continuing to serve them at the nearby Apache Mall store."

Carlos Lozada, a five-year veteran of the Washington Post's Outlook section, has been named nonfiction book critic at the newspaper, where he will write weekly reviews and "contribute to online coverage of nonfiction books and long-form nonfiction." He will begin his new role by the end of the year.

During the summer, Lozada "developed a detailed proposal on how to reimagine the role of the nonfiction book critic for a digital age--and proceeded to pitch himself for the role," the Post noted. "He had a great idea, and we agreed that he'd be perfect for it." Lozada joined the Post in 2005, after working as managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine.

Bloomsbury Children's Books is launching the first Harry Potter Book Night February 5, "when fans will be able to go along to a range of events in London and around the U.K. to share their love of the boy wizard," the Guardian reported, noting that "a special Harry Potter kit for hosts will shortly be available with quizzes, activities, posters, games and ideas for dressing up (though sadly, there's not a wand or a cauldron to be seen)." More details on Harry Potter Book Night are available here.

Stefan Lübbe, publisher and majority shareholder of Bastei Lübbe, died Monday, the Bookseller reported. He was 57. Lübbe took over the family-owned company in 1995 after his father's death and "was the driving force in transforming Bastei Lübbe from a moderately successful trade publisher into an innovative powerhouse with strong interests in digital publishing under the helm of Lübbe Entertainment," the Bookseller wrote. 

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Literary publicist Claire Walsh, an "inspiration to the author J.G. Ballard, her long-time companion" and "a well-known figure in the London literary and artistic world of the 1960s and 70s," died October 6, the Guardian reported. She was 73.

From Nicole Magistro, proprietor of the Bookworm of Edwards, Edwards, Colo.: "Governor John Hickenlooper visited the Bookworm on Sunday for breakfast and a short stop on the campaign trail. He chatted with supporters and made a brief speech. He ate a Lonesome Dove crepe and his son Teddy even bought the newest Rick Riordan novel! All and all, a great event for the Bookworm!"

After 25 years as the popular storyteller for preschool story hour at Andover Bookstore, Andover, Mass., 77-year-old Susan Lenoe told the Eagle-Tribune that "it's simply time to hand her bookmark over" to professional storyteller and teaching artist Nicolette Nordin Heavey.

"The time has come where I can't quite lead them in the jumping and marching quite as easily as I could in the past," said Lenoe, who once worked as children's book buyer and was in charge of the children's department. "And, with toddlers, you need some stretches and activities. I said to myself, 'Susan, you can sit and tell, and let them jump and touch their toes or tummies,' but I always ended up doing it, too."

Store owner John Hugo added: "It's been 25 years of pure amazement and wonderment. Susan is an Andover and bookstore legend."

Heavey praised Lenoe as a great mentor: "I remember the wonder in my children's eyes when they listened to Susan spread her story magic, and now that my children have graduated from college, I strive to create the same effect upon my young listeners. I couldn't be more pleased that she asked me to lead the Friday story times at the Andover Bookstore."

"From a Canadian bookshop opened by Alice Munro in the 1960s to one in the island of Santorini started by drunk Oxford students, some of the world's most exotic booksellers feature in The Bookshop Book, published as part of a U.K.-wide Books Are My Bag campaign to support the bookselling industry in the run-up to Christmas," the Guardian reported in featuring photos of some of the shops, introduced by author Jen Campbell.

She of the Mountains, a debut novel by Vivek Shraya, illustrated by Raymond Biesinger (Arsenal Pulp Press).

Tomorrow on the Sean Hannity Radio Show: Danny Aiello, author of I Only Know Who I Am When I Am Somebody Else: My Life on the Street, on the Stage, and in the Movies (Gallery Books, $26, 9781476751900).

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Tomorrow on the View: Alan Cumming, author of Not My Father's Son: A Memoir (Dey Street Books, $26.99, 9780062225061).

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Tomorrow on the Diane Rehm Show: Colm Toibin, author of Nora Webster: A Novel (Scribner, $27, 9781439138335).

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Tomorrow on Tavis Smiley: Wesley Clark, author of Don't Wait for the Next War: A Strategy for American Growth and Global Leadership (PublicAffairs, $26.99, 9781610394338).

Also on Tavis Smiley: Joe Perry, co-author of Rocks: My Life in and out of Aerosmith (Simon & Schuster, $27.99, 9781476714547).

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Tomorrow night on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: Kara Cooney, author of The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt (Crown, $28, 9780307956767).

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Tomorrow night on the Daily Show: Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (Spiegel & Grau, $28, 9780812994520).

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

Constantin Film, the production company that controls the rights to Cassandra Clare's the Mortal Instruments book series and produced the less-than-successful movie adaptation The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, is relaunching the series "as a high-end drama series" for TV, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Ed Decter (Helix, Unforgettable, In Plain Sight, The Client List) will be showrunner for the Mortal Instruments series, which "is currently in development, with Constantin planning to begin production next year. No broadcast partners are yet attached to the series," THR wrote.

"It actually makes sense to do (the novels) as a TV series," Constantin film and TV head Martin Moszkowicz said. "There was so much from the book that we had to leave out of the Mortal Instruments film. In the series we'll be able to go deeper and explore this world in greater detail and depth."

A trailer is out for Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher, based on the book Foxcatcher: The True Story of My Brother's Murder, John du Pont's Madness and the Quest for Olympic Gold by Mark Schultz and David Thomas. Entertainment Weekly reported that there "are all kinds of messed up familial relations at play in the trailer, which highlights Vanessa Redgrave as du Pont's mother, who witheringly tells him that wrestling is a 'low' sport." Foxcatcher's cast also includes Channing Tatum, Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo, Sienna Miller and Anthony Michael Hall.

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A clip has been released from the documentary Burroughs: The Movie. Indiewire reported that the film about William S. Burroughs began "as a thesis project in the late 1970s at New York University by director Howard Brookner (with sound by Jim Jarmusch, and cinematography by Tom DiCillo)." Production "spanned over five years, with the filmmaker not only logging plenty of time with his subject, but also with fellow travelers like Allen Ginsberg, Terry Southern, John Giorno and Brion Gysin." When Brookner died in 1989, his film was thought to be lost, but his nephew Aaron Brookner later discovered it. Burroughs: The Movie will open November 14 at Anthology Film Archives for a week-long run before touring nationwide. A DVD/Blu-ray release through the Criterion Collection will follow in 2015.

Richard Flanagan won the £50,000 (US$80,362) Man Booker Prize for Fiction for The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Knopf). The Tasmanian-born author is the third Australian to win the award.

Chair of judges A.C. Grayling commented: "The two great themes from the origin of literature are love and war: this is a magnificent novel of love and war. Written in prose of extraordinary elegance and force, it bridges East and West, past and present, with a story of guilt and heroism. This is the book that Richard Flanagan was born to write."

Noting that this was "the first year that the Man Booker Prize had been open to all authors writing in English, regardless of nationality," BBC News wrote: "Some writers had expressed fears that the change in the rules could lead to dominance by U.S. authors." American writers Joshua Ferris (To Rise Again at a Decent Hour) and Karen Joy Fowler (We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves) made the Booker shortlist.

"In Australia the Man Booker is sometimes seen as something of a chicken raffle," Flanagan said. "I just didn't expect to end up the chicken."

photo: Sonya Sones

Mac Barnett is an excellent communicator, as his new book, Telephone (Chronicle, October), attests. His message--in this case, "It's time for dinner"--gets through loudly and clearly to kids. His book Extra Yarn, illustrated by his friend Jon Klassen, won a Caldecott Honor, and Battle Bunny, co-authored with Jon Scieszka and illustrated by Matthew Myers, broke the boundaries of bookmaking. Here he discusses the reading habits that led to his upturned nightstand.

On your nightstand now:

I recently returned from a book tour to find my nightstand collapsed under the weight of books. I improvised something sturdier and things are okay now.

Before

After

Favorite book when you were a child:

Over the course of my childhood I think it probably went from The Monster at the End of This Book to The Stupids Step Out to Frog and Toad Are Friends to The Phantom Tollbooth to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Your top five authors:

Oh, brother. Franz Kafka, Margaret Wise Brown, Russell Hoban, David Foster Wallace, Jorge Luis Borges, I guess. I'm bad at picking favorites. 

Book you've faked reading:

Hmm. I don't really do this!

Book you're an evangelist for:

Isol's It's Useful to Have a Duck. It's a perfect board book. I'm an evangelist for Isol generally. She is one of the greatest picture-book makers alive right now.

Book you've bought for the cover:

I buy a lot of books for their covers. Picture books can and should be judged by their covers. And I judge novels by their covers, too, whether that's fair or not. I bought The Enchanted Wanderer by Nikolai Leskov for its cover. You can see it in that photo of the wrecked nightstand, partially obscured by that book of nursery rhymes, which has a pretty good cover itself, actually. A frog in a waistcoat! Now I feel like Burl Ives.

Book that changed your life:

Well, The Stinky Cheese Man changed my life dramatically--reading it in college made me want to write picture books. But I'm changed by a lot of the books I read, even the bad ones. In the last year or so, my life's been subtly but measurably altered by Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, T.H. White's The Once and Future King, Yusef Komunyakaa's The Chameleon Couch and Cece Bell's El Deafo. None of those are the bad ones, by the way--they're all terrific. 

Favorite line from a book:

The sentence I probably think about more than any other is from the catechism section of Ulysses, when Leopold Bloom and Stephen Daedalus go out into the night:

What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from the rere of the house into the penumbra of the garden?

The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.

That's two sentences. It's the second one that I think about a lot, but it needs the first one to really sing. I love it. "The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit." The image is immediately apprehensible, but it's also completely surprising. The expected thing would be to make the night sky the tree and the stars the fruit. Joyce does the opposite, and he's right, and when I first read it I realized that lesser writers' lazy lyricism had made me see the world backwards.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Probably Lonesome Dove. I know I already mentioned it above. This was a good chance to introduce a new book to the conversation, and I blew it. I apologize to everyone. 

With an economy of words, unembellished language and her signature flat, child-centric illustrations, Jeanette Winter (The Librarian of Basra) creates a quietly magnificent tribute to two extraordinary human beings.

The story of Malala Yousafzai, the 17-year-old Pakistani pro-education activist who survived the Taliban's attempt on her life and is the youngest-ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is paired with that of Iqbal Masih, a Pakistani boy who escaped slavery, became an anti-childhood-bondage activist and was shot and killed at the age of 12 in 1995. The front-to-back story features Malala, the reverse tells the story of Iqbal, and Winter smoothly joins them together in the center spread.

Malala's story opens as her would-be assassin descends upon her school van, then backtracks to tell how Malala spoke out repeatedly against the Taliban's ban on educating girls. As kites bob overhead, Malala attends school alongside girls wearing bright, beautifully patterned hijabs, and stands on a crate so that she can see over a podium to deliver a speech. Winter describes the Taliban attack, and Malala's miraculous survival, in simple, child-appropriate language: "He shoots Malala. The van rushes her to the small hospital in Swat Valley. A helicopter lifts her to a bigger hospital far away." Malala's story concludes with her 2013 address to the United Nations, as a kite flies above her, a symbol of rising above suffocating strictures.

Iqbal is four years old when a carpet boss yanks him from playing with his kite and shackles him to a loom, bonded by a $12 loan his parents took out. Iqbal secretly weaves an image of a kite into his carpet pattern. After six years, the boy learns that Peshgi--the loans that create bondage--have been outlawed. He starts school and speaks out about the evils of child slavery, eventually traveling to the U.S. to give a speech. Threatened by the carpet industry, Iqbal refuses to be silenced--until he is killed while riding his bicycle at age 12. Sensitive to a child audience, Winter depicts an explosion behind a building, and one bicycle wheel; 800 mourners attend his funeral. A kite ascends, unfettered, into a purple sky.

In the luminous full-page center spread, Malala and Iqbal stand on mountains, gazing at each other under a starry sky, flying kites that dance across to the other's side. Malala keeps a firm grasp on her kite string, while Iqbal releases his. Even as Iqbal's story saddens us, we must remember him in conjunction with Malala, living proof that hope thrives alongside death. Coupling the stories creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Winter has created a radiant, transcendent book. --Allie Jane Bruce, children's librarian, Bank Street College of Education

Shelf Talker: The biographies of two children's rights activists, Malala Yousafzai and Iqbal Masih, together in one book; their stories balance each other to create a radiant whole.

With Halloween fast approaching, Shelf Awareness has put together a selective list of scary books--fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, kids' books and young adult titles, frontlist as well as backlist. This list is not meant to be exhaustive; it was compiled from the recommendations of many of our bookseller friends and represents their diverse tastes and interests. 

Many thanks to Carol Spurling and her staff at Bookpeople of Moscow in Moscow, Idaho; Suzanna Hermans and Tracy Wynne of Oblong Books & Music in Rhinebeck, N.Y.; Patrick Heffernan, Maryelizabeth Hart and their team at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego and Redondo Beach, Calif.; Mary Laura Philpott and the booksellers at Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tenn.; Helen Jordan and her team at Bear Pond Books in Montpelier, Vt.; Jenn Northington and Molly Templeton from WORD Bookstores in Jersey City, N.J., and Brooklyn, N.Y.; Jeremy Ellis and his staff at Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Tex.; and Candice Huber, the owner of Tubby and Coo's Mid-City Book Shop in New Orleans, La.

This is the second part of our three-part series, compiled by Alex Mutter; part one is here.

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (Vintage, $14, 9780307745316). Written in the style of a 19th century gothic novel, Susan Hill's novel follows a young London solicitor who stays at the secluded house of a deceased client while trying to settle her estate. "While there, he hears echoes from the past: a horse and cart crash, a child crying in terror, and a rocking chair in a locked room," recalled the team at Bear Pond Books. "He also encounters a shadowy woman in black. Creepy."

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (Vintage, $15.95, 9781400078776). A young woman named Kathy recalls her childhood at a sequestered English boarding school and gradually starts to piece together what was really going on there. Bookpeople of Moscow's Nick Brunsfeld recommended it as a suspenseful, disturbing, yet beautifully written book that slowly pulls back the curtain to reveal dark truths.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (Penguin Classics, $16, 9780143039983). In Jackson's 1959 novel, four people come to Hill House: a doctor in search of the supernatural, his assistant, a young woman who has been haunted by ghosts before, and the heir to Hill House. The force that inhabits Hill House quickly gets its hooks in one of them. According to the booksellers at Bear Pond Books, it's more than just an average ghost story. "Of course, the woman who wrote "The Lottery" is able to fill the story of a haunted house with dread and sinister psychology," they explained.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (Penguin Classics, $16, 9780143039976). The single most recommended book on this list, We Have Always Lived in the Castle tells the story of a twisted, isolate family and what transpires when a cousin comes to visit. Said Tracy Wynne, from Oblong Books and Music: "Jackson was the master of creating an eerie and unsettling atmosphere where her stories would unfold. Her writing makes you want to hold your breath until whatever that is has gone past your door." Maryelizabeth Hart from Mysterious Galaxy called Shirley Jackson "the maven of stories in which little is more horrifying in life than family." And Jen Catlin, also from Mysterious Galaxy, added: "This story has haunted me for years. It is one of the most compellingly creepy stories I have ever read."

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (Modern Library, $3, 9780486266848). In James's 1898 classic, a young woman is hired to serve as governess to two young children, a little girl and a little boy, on an isolated estate in the English countryside. The governess quickly realizes that there are dark forces inhabiting the estate, and the children themselves are not as innocent as they seem. Recommended by the team at Parnassus Books.

Misery by Stephen King (Signet, $7.99, 9780451169525). In this Stephen King classic, bestselling author Paul Sheldon is held captive by a crazed fan who demands that he write a masterpiece just for her. "For anyone who likes to write and who works with authors on a regular basis, this is absolutely terrifying," said Candice Huber, the owner of Tubby and Coo's Mid-City Book Shop.

Needful Things by Stephen King (Signet, $8.99, 9780451172815). Bunny Hand from Mysterious Galaxy called Needful Things one of her favorites. "Mr. Leland Gaunt, who just happens to be Satan himself, opens a new shop in Castle Rock, Maine. You can buy anything that you really desire there, but at a price that will demand your heart and soul and often your body," she said. "Nerve-shattering reminder of what it is to be human and tempted."

The Long Walk by Stephen King (Signet, $7.99, 9780451196712). Written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, this Stephen King novel depicts Ray Garraty and 99 other teenage boys in a race called the Long Walk. Only one of the boys can win, and the losers get shot in the head. Recommended by the booksellers at Parnassus Books.

The Shining by Stephen King (Anchor, $7.99, 9780307743657). For multiple employees at Bear Pond Books, King's novel, about the dark forces inhabiting a hotel and the havoc they wreak on the isolated Torrance family, was a "grown up" book that gave them serious nightmares when they read it as kids. Candice Huber, meanwhile, felt that she'd be remiss if she didn't recommend a Stephen King novel, one whose reputation speaks for itself: "The Shining is one of his most well-known novels, and I'm sure I don't have to explain why I chose that one."

California by Edan Lepucki (Little, Brown, $26, 9780316250818). In the post-apocalyptic near future, Cal and Frida have managed to escape what's left of Los Angeles and eke out a comfortable enough existence in an isolated house in the wilderness. That all changes, though, when Frida discovers that she's pregnant, and they decide to risk contacting the nearest community. "I found the prospect of being pregnant and living in the wilderness at the end of the world absolutely terrifying," said Mary Laura Philpott of Parnassus Books.

Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin (Pegasus, $14.95, 9781605981109). After a young couple moves into an old apartment building in New York City, their eccentric, older neighbors take a bizarre interest in their affairs. Her actor husband lands a role on Broadway and shortly afterward Rosemary becomes pregnant. As Rosemary becomes increasingly isolated by both her husband and their neighbors, she begins to fear for herself and her baby. "There's so much more to a brownstone building than you ever want to know," remarked Mysterious Galaxy's Patrick Heffernan.

Little Star by John Aljvide Lindqvist (St. Martin's Griffin, $16.99, 9781250037190). In Little Star, the fourth novel by the Scandinavian author of Let the Right One In, a baby girl is found left for dead in the woods. She is rescued, and as a child entered into a national, televised singing competition. From there she attracts the sinister attention of another young girl. Said Emilio Florez from Mysterious Galaxy: "A sociopathic child goes on a killing spree. What more could you want?"

Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin (Bantam, $7.99, 9780553577938). Published long before A Song of Ice and Fire became famous worldwide, Fevre Dream is the story of a struggling 19th-century riverboat captain who is commissioned by a wealthy vampire to take him up the Mississippi River. Mysterious Galaxy's Patrick Heffernan called it "chilling and poignant."

They Thirst by Robert McCammon (Out of print: Pocket, 9780671735630). Andre Palatazin and his mother barely manage to escape from their tiny Hungarian village after Andre's father is turned into a vampire. Years later, long after they've found their way into the United States, Andre is a policeman in Los Angeles. Soon, the vampires that haunted him in Hungary find their way to him in L.A. Recommended by Linda Tonnesen at Mysterious Galaxy.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Vintage Books, $15, 9780307387899). Cormac McCarthy's stark, harrowing novel about a father and son fighting for survival in a post-apocalyptic world won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007. "The general consensus was that anything by Cormac McCarthy qualifies as scary and disturbing, but the one of his that popped to mind as his scariest is The Road," said Carol Spurling.

Beloved by Toni Morrison (Vintage, $16, 9781400033416). Morrison's harrowing novel follows Sethe, a former slave who escaped from the slave plantation Sweet Home to a life in Ohio. Sethe and her family are haunted by the ghost of her child Beloved; shortly after the vengeful spirit is forced out of her house, a young woman calling herself Beloved appears on Sethe's doorstep. Before long, Beloved has Sethe in her clutches, and has no intentions of letting her go. A recommendation from the team at Parnassus Books.

1984 by George Orwell (Signet Classic, $9.99, 9780451524935). Although the year 1984 has long since come and gone, Orwell's dark vision of the future remains as powerful and striking as ever. A classic dystopian tale that coined the terms doublethink and thoughtcrime, 1984 was recommended by booksellers at Parnassus Books.

The Best of Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, The Cask of Amontillado, and 30 Others by Edgar Allan Poe (Prestwick House, $5.99, 9781580493871). This collection includes 33 of Poe's best poems and short stories. "We all agreed that for purely scary stories, no one can top Edgar Allan Poe," explained Carol Spurling. "I can get shivers just thinking of The Cask of Amontillado and that brick wall in the cellar, decades after reading it."

Haunted by Tamara Thorne (Kensington, $4.99, 9781420129946). A bestselling author in need of inspiration moves into a supposedly haunted house with his teenage daughter. Intending to write a masterpiece of horror, he finds his plans are quickly derailed when it turns out the house is even more dangerous than the urban legends say. Gordon Van Such at Mysterious Galaxy called it "just plain scary."

John Dies at the End by David Wong (St. Martin's Griffin, $16.99, 9781250035950). A spoof of the horror genre that is itself rather scary, John Dies at the End focuses on Wong, his best friend John, and a paranormal drug called soy sauce. "It's a weird book, but I give it a lot of credit for being different," said Sam Griffith from Mysterious Galaxy. "If you can get past the somewhat immature humor, then the experience is unique, funny and terrifying."