Seattle, Wash.'s Georgetown neighborhood is about to get a bit more colorful. The comic book and graphic novel publisher Fantagraphics Books is "unofficially" opening a new storefront this weekend.

As Fantagraphics' Eric Reynolds noted on Flog!: The Fantagraphics Blog, further enhancements have yet to be made to the store. "But the books will be there and the doors will be open this weekend," he added. According to Reynolds, Fantagraphics plans to "pull out all the stops in November," followed by a grand opening celebration in December.

The store will sell everything the publisher has in print. Recently published titles from the Seattle publisher include The Magic Bottle, a first graphic novel by California painter Camille Rose Garcia; Drew Friedman's Old Jewish Comedians, an illustrated encyclopedia of Jewish comedians born before 1930; and The Complete Peanuts 1961-1962, a collection of 730 of Charles Schulz's daily and Sunday comic strips, which contains an introduction by jazz pianist/vocalist Diana Krall.

Discounted titles, as well as out-of-print books unavailable elsewhere, will also be sold. The store will host events starting in 2007.

Fantagraphic Books is located at 1201 South Vale Street, Seattle, Wash. 98108; 206-658-0110; fantagraphics.com.--Shannon McKenna

Congratulations to Orinda Books, Orinda, Calif., which is celebrating its 30th anniversary. The store has "a very supportive community," owner Janet Boreta told the Contra Costa Times. The store has 130 registered book groups, displays artists' work and sells tea. Boreta wants to "diversify" more to "figure out a way to be more of a hangout, and share the bookstore with something else."

Boreta said that when she and friends opened the store in 1976, "I was a bookstore nut and book nut."

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Bookselling This Week celebrates the Village Bookshop, Bradenton, Fla., which had its grand opening October 1 and 2 (Shelf Awareness, May 28, 2006). The 1,350-sq.-ft. store is is located in what once was a private home. Owner Doug Knowlton said the store's " 'blended inventory' of new and used books was a concept I learned from Richard Klein at Book Revue in Huntington, New York."

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A mention in the Hubs section of US Airways Magazine has brought a variety of new customers into Voices & Visions, the Philadelphia, Pa., bookstore near Independence Mall that opened last year (Shelf Awareness, June 28, 2005), according to BTW. The Hubs blurb called the store "spacious" and "welcoming," with "everything for any age or taste, from kids' books, thrillers, biographies, and coffee-table books, all while staying true to its Philadelphia roots and indie flavor." 

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BTW also talks with Stephanie Griffin, who bought Twenty-Third Avenue Books, Portland, Ore., in April (Shelf Awareness, May 3, 2006). She called owning the store "a dream come true. I love the people. Not just the customers, but also the publisher reps and the other booksellers. It's a great community."

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Chip Fleischer, publisher of Steerforth Press, notes that of the five fiction finalists for the Governor General's award, Canada's top literary prize, only one title has been published in the U.S.: The Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens. The August Steerforth title was a Book Sense and B&N Discover selection, made the NEIBA bestseller list and has been extensively reviewed, most recently yesterday in USA Today. Behrens will be touring at the end of the year in the upper Midwest and early next year on the West Coast. 

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Our item about the AAUP's Books for Understanding: North Korea bibliography yesterday led one publisher to mention related titles about the country that is regularly in the headlines these days:

• The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History by Don Oberdorfer (Basic, $21, 0465051626), which was recently revised.
• The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag by Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot  (Basic, $15.95, 0465011047), which was also recently revised.
• A Moment of Crisis: Jimmy Carter, the Power of a Peacemaker, and North Korea's Nuclear Ambitions by Marion V. Creekmore (PublicAffairs, $26.95, 1586484141), a new title about the negotiations with North Korea that took place during the Clinton Administration led by Jimmy Carter.

 

This morning on the Today Show, Jim Botsacos spices things up with The New Greek Cuisine (Broadway, $29.95, 0767918754).

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Today on WAMU's Diane Rehm Show: Senator Barack Obama, whose new book is The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Crown, $25, 0307237699). The Senator will appear on Meet the Press on Sunday.

Also on the Diane Rehm Show: Andrew Sullivan, author of The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back (HarperCollins, $25.95, 0060188774).

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Today on NPR's All Things Considered: Erik Larson, author of the new nonfiction tome Thunderstruck (Crown, $25.95, 1400080665).

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Today on Al Franken's show on Air America: Laurie David, author of Stop Global Warming: The Solution Is You! (Fulcrum, $9.95, 155591621X), part of the publisher's Speaker's Corner Series.

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Tonight on 20/20, Brian Wansink dishes about Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More than We Think (Bantam, $25, 0553804340).

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Tomorrow on Weekend Today:

• John Dickerson, author of On Her Trail: My Mother, Nancy Dickerson, TV News' First Woman Star (S&S, $24.95, 0743287835).
  Alex Kuczynski talks about Beauty Junkies: Inside Our $15 Billion Obsession with Cosmetic Surgery (Doubleday, $24.95, 0385508530).
  Robert Pagliarini offers advice from The Six-Day Financial Makeover: Transform Your Financial Life in Less Than a Week! (St. Martin's, $24.95, 0312353626.
  Nina Hartley, author of Nina Hartley's Guide to Total Sex (Avery, $25.95, 1583332634).
  
  

 
"I was seventeen on the day my destiny came to claim me." Carlene Cross was listening to a rain squall move into the Montana valley and over her family's farmhouse as she read the last book of the Bible. "I looked up as torrents of water slammed against the windows like buckets of silver paint, and I imagined the awful Beast of Revelation rising out of the firmament, his seven heads leering toward the shore . . . It was in that moment that that I stepped from the pathway of my normal life and detoured into another world--that of serving God rather than indulging my own sinful flesh." In 1973, the Rocky Mountain Bible Mission began preaching in her valley, and she came to believe their fundamentalist doctrine, heavily laced with the end-times prophecies of Hal Lindsey: "My attraction to fundamentalism was not out of quiet reflection but cold fear."
 
That attraction led to her enrollment at Big Sky Bible College, where she was inducted into the fundamentalist world and met David Brant, whom she would marry. Drawn to his intelligence, good looks and respect for women and their minds, she knew when he asked her to memorize Scripture with him that it was "a portentous sign [representing something] significant and eternal." But as David progressed through his seminary education, the man who had once respected women became controlling. Other seminary wives had similar experiences, attributing this change to the pressures of school and the responsibilities of being a spiritual leader. One wife said, "He keeps telling me that if we're going to be successful in the ministry, I'm going to have to keep the kitchen surfaces shinier." They laughed, but the intense scrutiny that Carlene and David endured during his pastorate at North Seattle's Calvary Baptist Church was chilling--parishioners walked into the house to use the bathroom, peered into the windows to make sure the plastic runners protecting the shag carpets were being used, criticized the color (and price) of the new couch. Her only respite from this pressure was her friendship with Susan, a church member who combined sympathy with strong martinis. Susan's husband was also a controller, but they realized they were trapped in unhappy marriages by the Bible's injunction against divorce: "Carlene, we are voyagers on this mad ship together. We can't leave these guys; we don't have the money or the biblical grounds." A defining, and shocking, break in her marriage came when David confessed that he was addicted to pornography, strippers and alcohol. Sadly for them and their three children, the charismatic and popular minister had found in the church a structure that helped maintain his façade, and thus his sickness. Her life became more of a hell than it already was, until one morning she saw an image in the mirror of "a hunched-up old woman who, at twenty-eight, looked finished, already tasting the bitterness at the bottom of her life . . . I was sick of the taste of lies on my tongue."
 
Determined to break away, Carlene concentrated on a mantra of "job, education, emancipation"; she found work as a waitress, started college and finally divorced her husband, going on pubic assistance while she pursued a degree. Fleeing Fundamentalism has many themes: disillusionment, heartache, hypocrisy, sin and, ultimately, courage. It's a cautionary tale about giving up oneself out of fear, convention, fatigue and twisted religious teaching, leavened with wry humor. A young woman started Bible college with a "gullible, greedy innocence," but lost that innocence in a setting that should have fed her openness of heart and spirit. She regained herself after a long questioning of her beliefs, and finally found a grace that seemed elusive until she was free of unquestioning conviction. Retreats to her family's farm helped her rediscover a lost spirituality. "I would sit on the porch and watch the wind sweep across the valley like a mother's hand combing her baby's hair at bedtime. The same breeze that had touched my face decades before, now reconnected me again to its rhythms and smells, its patience and tranquility. Coming back was like a prodigal's return: only by having abandoned my heritage could I now appreciate its wealth." Carlene Cross has written a compelling story with passion and charity.--Marilyn Dahl

In yesterday's mention of a story in the New York Times about big-name authors and their fall titles, we misstated one of the titles that is already selling well: it's Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier. We imagine Cold Mountain is doing very nicely, too, but that was not the Frazier title the Times mentioned!

 

The following were the bestselling titles at Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance member stores during the week ended Sunday, October 15, as reported to Book Sense:

Hardcover Fiction

1. Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier (Random House, $26.95, 0375509321)
2. For One More Day by Mitch Albom (Hyperion, $21.95, 1401303277)
3. Echo Park by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown, $26.99, 0316734950)
4. The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Knopf, $24, 0307265439)
5. On Agate Hill by Lee Smith (Algonquin, $24.95, 1565124529)
6. Act of Treason by Vince Flynn (Atria, $25.95, 0743270371)
7. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (Algonquin, $23.95, 1565124995)
8. Under Orders by Dick Francis (Putnam, $25.95, 0399154000)
9. Short Straw by Stuart Woods (Putnam, $25.95, 0399153683)
10. Motor Mouth by Janet Evanovich (HarperCollins, $26.95, 0060584033)
11. A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon (Doubleday, $24.95, 0385520514)
12. Rise and Shine by Anna Quindlen (Random House, $24.95, 0375502246)
13. Abundance by Sena Jeter Naslund (Morrow, $26.95, 0060825391)
14. The Mission Song by John le Carre (Little, Brown, $26.99, 0316016748)
15. The Afghan by Frederick Forsyth (Putnam, $26.95, 0399153942)

Hardcover Nonfiction

1. State of Denial by Bob Woodward (S&S, $30, 0743272234)
2. The Innocent Man by John Grisham (Doubleday, $28.95, 0385517238)
3. I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron (Knopf, $19.95, 0307264556)
4. Marley & Me by John Grogan (Morrow, $21.95, 0060817089)
5. Culture Warrior by Bill O'Reilly (Broadway, $26, 0767920929)
6. Paula Deen Celebrates! by Paula Deen (S&S, $26, 0743278119)
7. Saving Graces by Elizabeth Edwards (Broadway, $24.95, 0767925378)
8. Ageless by Suzanne Somers (Crown, $25, 0307237249)
9. The Greatest Story Ever Sold by Frank Rich (Penguin Press, $25.95, 159420098X)
10. Why We Want You to Be Rich by Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump (Rich Press, $24.95, 1933914025)
11. The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman (FSG, $30, 0374292795)
12. Being Dead Is No Excuse by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays (Hyperion, $19.95, 1401359345)
13. The Blind Side by Michael Lewis (Norton, $24.95, 039306123X)
14. I Like You by Amy Sedaris (Warner, $27.99, 0446578843)
15. Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides (Doubleday, $26.95, 0385507771)

Trade Paperback Fiction

1. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards (Penguin, $14, 0143037145)
2. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead, $14, 1594480001)
3. Saving Fish from Drowning by Amy Tan (Ballantine, $14.95, 034546401X)
4. The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks (Warner, $14.99, 0446697435)
5. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See (Random House, $13.95, 0812968069)
6. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (Back Bay, $15.99, 0316154547)
7. Skeleton Coast by Clive Cussler (Berkley, $16, 0425211894)
8. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (Norton, $13.95, 0393328627)
9. The Lighthouse by P.D. James (Vintage, $13.95, 0307275736)
10. Snow by Orhan Pamuk (Vintage, $14.95, 0375706860)
11. March by Geraldine Brooks (Penguin, $14, 0143036661)
12. The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory (Touchstone, $16, 0743272498)
13. On Beauty by Zadie Smith (Penguin, $15, 0143037749)
14. The Sea by John Banville (Vintage, $12.95, 1400097029)
15. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (Grove, $14, 0802142818)

Trade Paperback Nonfiction

1. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (Scribner, $14, 074324754X)
2. The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt (Penguin, $15, 0143036939)
3. Running With Scissors (Movie Tie-In) by Augusten Burroughs (Picador, $14, 0312425414)
4. SWAG: Southern Women Aging Gracefully by Melinda Rainey Thompson (John F. Blair, $14.95, 089587329X)
5. Bad President by R. D. Rosen, et al. (Workman, $8.95, 0761146202)
6. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (Vintage, $14.95, 0375725601)
7. The River of Doubt by Candice Millard (Broadway, $14.95, 0767913736)
8. The Places in Between by Rory Stewart (Harvest, $14, 0156031566)
9. An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore (Rodale, $21.95, 1594865671)
10. Night by Elie Wiesel (FSG, $9, 0374500010)
11. Bless Your Heart, Tramp by Celia Rivenbark (St. Martin's, $13.95, 0312343426)
12. Julie and Julia by Julie Powell (Back Bay, $13.99, 0316013269)
13. Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk (Vintage, $14.95, 1400033888)
14. 1776 by David McCullough (S&S, $18, 0743226720)
15. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis (HarperSanFrancisco, $11.95, 0060652926)

Mass Market

1. The Camel Club by David Baldacci (Warner, $7.99, 0446615625)
2. Predator by Patricia D. Cornwell (Berkley, $9.99, 0425210278)
3. Mary, Mary by James Patterson (Warner, $9.99, 0446619035)
4. School Days by Robert B. Parker (Berkley, $7.99, 0425211347)
5. Dance of the Gods by Nora Roberts (Jove, $7.99, 0515141666)
6. Dark Harbor by Stuart Woods (Signet, $9.99, 0451218701)
7. The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly (Warner, $7.99, 0446616451)
8. Ordinary Heroes by Scott Turow (Warner, $7.99, 0446617482)
9. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Warner, $6.99, 0446310786)
10. 1984 by George Orwell (Signet, $7.95, 0451524934)

Children's Titles

1. The End (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 13) by Lemony Snicket, illustrated by Brett Helquist (HarperCollins, $12.99, 0064410161)
2. The Beatrice Letters by Lemony Snicket, illustrated by Brett Helquist (HarperCollins, $19.99, 0060586583)
3. Blizzard of the Blue Moon (Magic Tree House #36) by Mary Pope Osborne, illustrated by Sal Murdocca (Random House, $11.95, 0375830375)
4. Mommy? by Arthur Yorinks and Maurice Sendak (Michael Di Capua, $24.95, 0439880505)
5. The Lost Colony (Artemis Fowl, #5) by Eoin Colfer (Miramax Books, $16.95, 0786849568)
6. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Clement Hurd (HarperCollins, $7.99, 0694003611)
7. Pirateology by Captain William Lubber (Candlewick, $19.99, 0763631434)
8. Angelina's Halloween by Katharine Holabird, illustrated by Helen Craig (Puffin, $5.99, 014240621X)
9. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (HarperCollins, $16.95, 0060254920)
10. Junie B., First Grader: Boo and I Mean It! by Barbara Park, illustrated by Denise Brunkus (Random House, $3.99, 0375828079)
11. Fancy Nancy by Jane O'Connor, illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser (HarperCollins, $15.99, 0060542098)
12. Is There Really a Human Race? by Jamie Lee Curtis, illustrated by Laura Cornell (Joanna Cotler, $16.99, 0060753463)
13. The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor (Dial, $17.99, 0803731531)
14. The Best Halloween Ever by Barbara Robinson (HarperTrophy, $5.99, 0060766018)
15. Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt (Golden, $9.99, 0307120007)

[Many thanks to Book Sense and SIBA!]