Bank Square Books, Mystic, Conn., which was flooded in the storm and hopes to re-open next Monday, has set up a PayPal donation button for its Sandy relief fund. As of yesterday, the tile for its new floor had been delivered and was being installed, and the new sewer trench had been dug and new pipe was being installed, too.

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Bookazine, Bayonne, N.J., is operating again. Owners Rob and Rich Kallman thanked the many people who expressed concern and offered help. "We have received an outpouring of kind words and support from the publishing community. What has overwhelmed us are the hundreds of e-mails and telephone calls from business colleagues not just offering business support but anything they could do from a personal level."

They continued: "If hurricane Sandy was good for anything, the storm taught us humility and reinforced our faith in our great employees, publishers, transportation network companies and clients in New Jersey, New York, across the United States and around the globe."

They recounted that "our main concern prior to the storm was to close the offices, secure the building and power down our servers so there would hopefully be minimal damage. Our employees put in long hours last Monday at significant inconvenience to save a warehouse full of peak season inventory.

"Starting Tuesday, the day after the storm, when Bayonne was almost under water, we tried to reach the building. The bridges to Bayonne were still closed so we enlisted friends living in Bayonne to check on our offices. We learned shortly thereafter that the building was still standing and very minimal damage was found. Our parking lot, which floods at the slightest of rain, showed no effects from the storm. We were all elated.

"Most important we received word that all of our staff were safe. This was our first and most important concern. Many of our employees live in Staten Island, Brooklyn, Bayonne and Queens, which was most severely hit by the storm. Despite all the challenges we were faced, our CFO, Bruce Morgenstern, and staff accountant Daniel Silva worked above and beyond with ADP Payroll to make sure that they would personally deliver the paychecks on Friday for our employees. We are proud to report that 56 staff members met Bruce and Daniel at our facility. Lots of tears and joy were present."

The Kallmans noted that their the Brooklyn home of their parents, Irwin and Sondra Kallman, is now "uninhabitable. Both Irwin and Sondra have shown great courage and told us to 'hold your head up and think of the less fortunate.' "

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The Argosy Book Store in Midtown Manhattan suffered damage from bricks that fell from high off a neighboring skyscraper--which created a hole in the ceiling that caused water damage--but the store didn't know about it for several days because access to the Argosy was cut off because of the well-documented crane collapse. Zack Hample, whose family owns Argosy, has some striking photographs on his Baseball Collector site.

Besides many books, some of the damaged items at the Argosy included original Acts of Congress signed by Thomas Jefferson when he was Secretary of State.

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The Strand Bookstore, New York City, is back in business: power came back on Friday evening and the store reopened on Saturday. Strand's Jessica Strand (no relation) wrote that the store "made sure that their staff's paychecks went out to each of their employees whether by bicycle, by hand, by foot," using the "good Strand network of volunteers." She noted, too, that some employees live in the most affected areas of the city, and staff "helped each other, lending cash, couches to sleep on, blankets, etc., etc. It was a true testament to the community built over so, so many years."

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The American Booksellers Association is back in operation and has information on how affected stores can be helped on bookweb.org, including links for private and government aid. The ABA's member relationship managers are already reaching out to bookstores in the areas hit by Hurricane Sandy.

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The Brooklyn Public Library is helping with disaster relief efforts by sending bookmobiles to Red Hook and Coney Island with free books for kids, by collecting and distributing supplies, and serving as a charging station for electronics.

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First Book, which promotes reading among children of low-income families, has opened a relief fund to provide books to schools and families affected by Hurricane Sandy, the Daily News reported. For every $2.50 donation, First Book will give a new book to a child and match the gift with an additional books.

"Even as first responders are working to provide these families with electricity, water, and other critical resources, First Book is joining forces with our local volunteers and partners to replace hundreds of thousands of lost and destroyed books in schools and libraries in low-income communities," First Book president and CEO Kyle Zimmer said.

HarperCollins is expanding its 2011 partnership with R.R. Donnelley in a way that will create "a global print platform and supply chain for titles that are published by all HarperCollins U.S. divisions, including Zondervan and Thomas Nelson."

For the first time, all titles published by all parts of HarperCollins in the U.S. will ship from a single, centrally located facility that is expected to open next summer. The new system will, the company said, "allow for rapid deployment to booksellers across the country. With this combination, booksellers will be able to order, track, and receive books through a common system; save time and money receiving fewer consignments from HarperCollins divisions; minimize freight costs; and benefit from increased fill rates through on-site manufacturing capabilities." In addition, Donnelley will use both offset and digital presses to provide fast delivery of hot titles.

HarperCollins will continue to manage customer service, credit, collection, IT and freight services. A dedicated customer support team will be maintained for the Christian Publishing Division. All returns will continue to be handled through the company's LaPorte, Ind., facility.

"Our U.S. publishing companies have experienced a rapid transition from a print-only to a print and digital world," HarperCollins president and CEO Brian Murray said. "This relationship with R.R. Donnelley, and the new capabilities it enables, results in a world-class global print platform that is ideally suited to meet the current and future needs of HarperCollins authors and booksellers. We have taken a long-term, global view of our print distribution and are committed to offering the broadest possible reach for our authors. From our 'Digital-to-Print at Retail' partnership with On Demand Books to our supply chain agreements with RR Donnelley, we are retooling the traditional distribution model to ensure we can competitively offer the entire HarperCollins catalog to customers regardless of location."

The United Methodist Publishing House, Nashville, Tenn., plans to close all 38 stand-alone Cokesbury bookstores and 19 stores at seminaries and focus on selling online and through its call center, the Tennessean reported.

The stores will be shut down next year between January and April and affect some 185 full-time and 100 part-time employees.

Under what it is calling CokesburyNext, the publishing house intends to increase the staff and hours at its Nashville call center so that it will operate 24 hours a day, six days a week, and upgrade its website. It also plans to increase its sales reps to 40 from 13.

Amy Smith, associate to the president and publisher of the United Methodist Publishing House, called the changes "part of the evolution that bookstores are all experiencing. CokesburyNext is another chapter in an ongoing evolution as we adapt to needs of our customers."

Last year the publisher's sales rose 2%, to $86 million, with the stores accounting for a third of that. Still, stores have been a declining percentage of sales, Smith told the paper. "The cost to operate them have been increasing. They're no longer financially viable."

A recent customer survey found "more people reported shopping online and only 15% of its customers shopped exclusively in stores," the Tennessean wrote.

Citing the difficulties of "raising a family on the earnings of an independent bookstore," Ken and Julie Tate-Libby, owners of Trail's End Bookstore, in Winthrop, Wash., have put the store up for sale. They described Trail's End, the only bookstore in the community, as "an important hub for tourists and locals alike in this spectacular recreation getaway." Trail's End recently sponsored the Mazama Festival of Books and a week-long visit from Washington state poet laureate Kathleen Flenniken. The Tate-Libbys bought the store, which is more than 20 years old, almost three years ago.

The store is solvent, grossing more than $350,000 per year. The owners must sell by December 31 or be forced to close it. For more information, call Julie Tate-Libby at 509-997-3089 or 509-996-2345.

Chinese-born author Han Suyin, whose 1952 book A Many-Splendoured Thing (released as the film Love Is a Many-Splendoured Thing in 1955) "shocked Hong Kong with its tale of her love affair with a married man and its sympathy for the appeal of communism to China's downtrodden millions," died recently, the Guardian reported. She was 95.

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Daniel R. Moore, co-founder of McIntyre & Moore, the Cambridge, Mass., bookstore, died last Tuesday. He was 62.

As noted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Moore worked for Kroch's & Brentano's in the Chicago area. In 1983, he and another Chicago bookseller, Michael McIntyre of Powell's Books, moved to Cambridge and founded their academic bookstore, which friend and fellow bookseller Gene Paquette, v-p of Powell's Booksellers, Chicago, said was "the finest used bookstore in Boston"--a high distinction. After 25 years and four locations, McIntyre and Moore closed their last shop, in Porter Square, but continued to sell books online from their warehouse in Lawrence.

Moore's family asked that memorial donations be made to Reading Is Fundamental.

Gibson's Bookstore, Concord N.H., made the following offer in its e-newsletter yesterday: "Vote! You won't see this in the papers, but to help encourage everyone to vote on Tuesday, 11/6, Gibson's will give a 25% discount on  anything in the store to anyone who comes in, raises his or her right hand, and says, 'Yes, I've done my duty, I've voted!' You can also be on your way to vote--we're on the honor system. We'll be open from 9 to 6 to reward all good citizens."
 

"Somewhere in the shelves or tottering towers of tomes at Vancouver's MacLeod's Books there has to be a copy of Fahrenheit 451," MacLean's noted in its report on a confrontation between Don Stewart, owner of "one of the most amazing, eccentric and, um, well-stocked bookstores in Canada" and the city's fire department.

According to Stewart, "The one thing we're having difficulty with is that they consider books to be a fire load. Even though we're sitting in a sprinklered building, there is a perception that we represent a danger to everyone around us." He also conceded, however, that his inventory can get out of control sometimes.
 

A time-lapse video of the creation of a painting by Jane Mount, similar to those she did for in My Ideal Bookshelf by Thessaly La Force (Little, Brown).

Tomorrow morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe: Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Simon & Schuster, $21, 9780743270755). She will also appear on the Colbert Report.

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Tomorrow morning on Good Morning America: Carla Hall, author of Cooking with Love: Comfort Food that Hugs You (Atria, $30, 9781451662191).

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Tomorrow night on the Daily Show: Nate Silver, author of The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't (Penguin Press, $27.95, 9781594204111).

Author Nicholas Sparks has shows in development at three cable networks through Nicholas Sparks Productions. The projects include A Bend in the Road at TNT, The Falls at ABC Family and Deliverance Creek at Lifetime. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the deals "position Sparks as the rare novelist to translate success as a best-selling author into a broad development slate that includes both book adaptations and original material.... The push into TV marks an expansion of the Sparks brand from feature films and a broadening from female-skewing love stories to serialized drama."
 

Disney has unveiled the first of three posters for Sam Raimi's Oz the Great and Powerful," which opens March 8, 2013. Indiewire noted that the visual "zeroes in on the green-faced Wicked Witch, who will provide some obstacles for the hero in this quasi-prequel to The Wizard Of Oz."

Indiewire also featured three posters from Ang Lee's Life of Pi. The adaptation of Yann Martel's novel hits theaters November 21.

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A visual bounty of 17 posters for Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey confirms the film, opening December 14, "has a lot of characters in it," Indiewire quipped.

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New character posters have been released for Tom Hooper's epic Les Miserables, the film adaptation of the stage musical based on Victor Hugo's novel. The Huffington Post reported that "fans can stop dreaming a dream about what Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter look like in the new film."
 

Selected new titles appearing next Monday and Tuesday, November 12 and 13:

From Germany to Germany: Diary 1990 by Günter Grass, translated by Krishna Winston (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24, 9780547364605) is the Nobel winner's chronicle of the reunification of Germany in 1990.

Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon (Scribner, $37.50, 9780743236713) reveals how children with difficulties impact families.

How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed by Ray Kurzweil (Viking, $27.95, 9780670025299) discusses the implications of reverse engineering the human brain.

The Third Wheel by Jeff Kinney (Amulet Books, $13.95, 9781419705847) is the seventh Diary of a Wimpy Kid book.

The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw (Penguin Press, $40, 9781594203763) focuses on the founder of the Kennedy dynasty.

Merry Christmas, Alex Cross by James Patterson (Little, Brown, $28.99, 9780316210683) involves Alex Cross in a hostage situation on Christmas.

Cross Roads by William Paul Young (FaithWords, $24.99, 9781455516049) follows a comatose patient's mystical mental journey.

The glittering pageantry of Elizabethan England as it is conceived in the popular imagination can be distracting--and, according to Stephen Alford, it distracts from an unsettling truth. In The Watchers, the Cambridge historian presents the Elizabethan period as a dark and uncertain time in England's history. With no successor to Elizabeth and with the forces of Catholicism arrayed against her, the government's security balanced on the edge of a knife. The monarch's peril was further exacerbated by the presence of Mary Queen of Scots, who may have actively plotted against Elizabeth and certainly represented a compelling rallying symbol for English Catholics.

Against the backdrop of such uncertainty--where the death of the queen would lead to the government's collapse and leave the nation vulnerable to foreign invasion--a sophisticated system of espionage developed. Elizabeth's councillors, in particular the renowned Francis Walsingham, engaged in many spying tactics including infiltration, double agents, forgery and cryptography. Agents in Elizabeth's service, some with mysterious and closely guarded motives, ranged across Europe to spy on the activities of dissident English Catholics in Paris and Rome--and closer to home in Scotland. Once captured, suspected traitors would be subjected to torture on the rack and, ultimately, executed in the most gruesome possible manner.

Alford populates this engaging study of Elizabethan espionage with a cast of colorful characters and exposes the dark underbelly of a period that is often better known for Shakespeare and the triumph against the Spanish Armada. Secret correspondence, infiltration into the ranks of exile English Catholics in Rome and the betrayal of double agents are some of the thrilling elements that comprise this little-known tale.

Alford draws the obvious parallel between the unscrupulous, brutal methods of the Elizabethan era and the contemporary dilemmas of Homeland Security. He suggests that at times, the fear of danger was greater than the danger itself--yet the end was thought to justify the means. Forging a treasonous letter from Mary Queen of Scots, for example, was considered acceptable if the result would be the execution of that dangerous monarch. Alford argues that the motives of Francis Walsingham, when England was embattled on all sides, were clearly in the state's best interests. But his actions were nonetheless questionable, with consequences for the monarchy in centuries to come. --Ilana Teitelbaum

Shelf Talker: An engaging study of the dark side of Elizabethan England replete with espionage, betrayal, treason and torture.