"Leonardo da Vinci, star of The Da Vinci Code, is hot."--One of the selling points in the fall Watson-Guptill catalogue for Lady with an Alien: An Encounter with Leonardo da Vinci by Mike Resnick, a YA time travel novel.

Brunswick Bookland, Brunswick, Me., one of the Bookland of Maine stores bought by some of its employees following the former parent company's 2000 bankruptcy, is showing that the store is not just surviving but thriving: it plans to open a branch in Rockland, Me., as early as October but in time for the holidays. Brunswick and Rockland are both on the Maine coast, about 50 miles apart.

The new 18,000-sq.-ft. store will be in the Breakwater Marketplace Building, an older building that is being renovated. The new store will be much like the original, with its broad selection of titles, audiobook rentals, some used paperbacks, magazines, gifts and stationery and a cafe. "Once we open and get a feel for the customer base, our selection could change somewhat," assistant manager Bertha Brown told Shelf Awareness.

Not long after the change in ownership, a developer in Rockland approached Brunswick Bookland about opening a store in a project he was building. But "it was too soon for us," Brown said. When he approached the store again about the new opportunity, the timing was "much better," Brown added.

We all have to admit a bit of tiredness after the big weekend. But Harry has hardly begun to ebb.

Among the continuing bits of news and magic:

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sold more than two million copies in the U.K., and first-day sales were up 13% over Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, according to Harry's U.K. publisher, Bloomsbury.

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Borders sold more than one million copies of the book over the weekend.

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Barnes & Noble stock rose $2.02 or 5% on a down day on Wall Street yesterday, which the Wall Street Journal attributed to Potter financial magic.

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Among libraries making magical buys: the St. Joseph County Public Library in South Bend, Ind., bought 314 copies of the book, all of which were checked out within an hour of the library's opening on Saturday. The New York Public Library, which has 80 branches, bought 1,774.

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Midnight revelers (l.) at the Copperfield's Books store in Calistoga, Calif.; Potter fans breakfast in the 'dining hall' at the Stanford Bookstore, Stanford, Calif., the next morning.

(Thanks to Art Carson and Michele Carson!)

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Elisabeth Grant-Gibson of Windows, A Bookshop, in Monroe, La., got 15 minutes of fame--and counting--after she was interviewed by an Associated Press reporter who quoted her in a story that went out on the wires on Saturday. "Next thing I knew," she wrote Shelf Awareness, "I was getting calls from friends all over the country saying that I had been quoted in New York, Minnesota, on the Yahoo and AOL news sites, etc. It was some pretty exciting pub for a little independent in a little town in northern Louisiana."

Her only lament: that the store doesn't yet have a Web site. Or as she put it, "WHY OH WHY HAVEN'T WE GOTTEN OUR DOGGONE WEBSITE UP AND RUNNING?"

The publicity cycle continued today when a local dj who attended the party talked about it on air and took calls. "Several kids who had been at the party (razzing the dj for having gotten sorted into the Slytherin house) called in, and one of them said, 'Please tell the nice ladies at Windows thank you for such a great party.' These kids were probably at the party [in the first place] because the same dj had talked about it on his show Friday. I am amazed."

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At Book Passage, which has stores in Corte Madera and San Francisco, Calif., "about 500 kids crammed into the [main] store on Friday night for an extravaganza of readings, games, prizes and all kinds of stuff," Bill Petrocelli wrote. "I know everyone there bought at least one book. We also had a lot of media coverage all day Friday, capped off (so to speak) with Elaine wearing a pointed hat on live TV on KGO at 11 p.m. and surrounded by a lot of screaming kids in costume."

The next day beginning at 7 a.m., staff that "could make it out of bed" delivered copies of the book to many people at home, what Petrocelli called "an important part of our promotion."

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Fulcrum Publishing, Denver, Colo., offered thanks--and treats--"for all of the hard work and enthusiasm that booksellers, not only in the Denver area but throughout the country, have exerted in preparation for the release of the new Harry Potter book. The great lengths bookstores have taken to bring the excitement of Harry Potter to their stores does the most magical thing of all: encourages children to read." Jessica Dyer reported yesterday that on Saturday morning, Fulcrum delivered a dozen doughnuts each to 20 bookstores in the Denver area.

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And last but not least, Shelf Awareness's John Mutter was quoted in an article about Harry that appeared in yesterday's USA Today. The role reversal makes him very nervous.

MBI Publishing Co. has bought Voyageur Press, the Stillwater, Minn., company that specializes in travel, nature and country living, and will make it an imprint of MBI.

Voyageur staff, including editorial director Michael Dregni, associate publisher Dave Hohman and managing editor Andrea Rud--all of whom have worked at MBI--will move to MBI's offices in St. Paul, Minn., by September 1. Voyageur's distribution clients--Specialty Press, CarTech, Colin Baxter Photography, Tetra Press, Fountain Press and Hove Books--will be distributed by the new company. Voyageur publisher Tom Lebovsky and CFO Jim Heintz are retiring.

Currently MBI consists of three imprints: Motorbooks, which not surprisingly publishes car, motorcycle and motorsport titles; Zenith Press, which focuses on military history, national security and aviation; and MBI, which schedules books on trains, tractors, boats, bicycles and hobbies. MBI also distributes for 25 publishers.

As of August 1, all Voyageur Press orders and correspondence should go to the MBI Distribution Center, 729 Prospect Ave., Osceola, Wis. 54020; 800-458-0454; fax 715-294-4448.

Founded in 1972 by Robert DuBois, Voyageur publishes 40 titles a year. Its lead book for the fall is Surfing USA! An Illustrated History of the Coolest Sport of All Time by Ben Marcus, former editor of Surfing magazine ($35, 0-89658-690-1).

Tomorrow Leonard Lopate hands the ball to Rob Trucks, author of The Catcher (1578601649, $14.99) and The Starting Pitcher (1578601630, $14.99), the leadoff titles in Emmis Books's Baseball Behind the Seams series. Each book in the series focuses on a single position on the baseball field and includes interviews with players, unusual profiles, photos, history and stats. So far, according to Emmis, Catcher leads Starting Pitcher in sales, as many ex-catchers believe it should.

Lopate also has words with Patricia T. O'Conner, author of You Send Me: Getting It Right When You Write Online (Harvest, $12, 015602733X) and Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English, Second Edition (Riverhead, $14, 1594480060), while Alan Burdick, author of Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion (FSG, $25, 0374219737), discusses the invasion of everything from bivalve mollusks to brown tree snakes.

On Diane Rehm tomorrow readers review A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin (Spectra, $7.99, 0553262505), the first volume of the Earthsea Cycle.