"I felt I was in a long-standing marriage [with Simon & Schuster], and I wanted to have a hot affair. St. Martin's was my hot affair, and they have really performed."--Jackie Collins, answering USA Today's question: "Why did you switch book publishers recently?"

Rick Vanzura is resigning as executive v-p, emerging business and technology, and chief strategy officer, at Borders Group. His position is being eliminated, and he will leave the company in September when the new chief information officer, Susan Harwood, begins.

Borders CEO George Jones said in a statement that Vanzura had "a key role in development of our strategic plan for the future, the launching of our e-business and the development of Paperchase. Now that the strategic plan is set and its initiatives are being executed within the individual business units, Rick and I agree that this is a logical time for him to transition away from his strategic duties."

Vanzura was an executive at Borders between 1994 and 1999, then after stints at Lifemasters and General Motors, returned to the company in 2003 as president of Waldenbooks.

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"Wild Thing" unleashed at last. In January, Larry Portzline, founder of Bookstore Tourism, bid nearly $3,000 for the opportunity to sing "Wild Thing" with the Rock Bottom Remainders during BEA. The auction was held to benefit 826NYC, Get Caught Reading and the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression.

"I don't know why I did it," he wrote at the time. "It just sounded very, very cool."

It is. Check out Larry's rockin' performance, now appearing on a YouTube screen near you.

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Mary Jane DiSanti has decided not to sell the Country Bookshelf, Bozeman, Mont., after resolving health issues that had led her to consider the move. According to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, "When the proposed sale was announced, a number of people expressed interest in buying the store, she said, but she wasn't ready to discuss a price."

"As I thought more of selling, I realized how much I'd miss it," DiSanti said. "I wasn't ready to let the bookstore out of my nest. It meant too much to me."

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Independent publishers in the U.K. "continue not only to survive but thrive," according to the Observer, which profiled Philip Kogan, chairman of 40-year-old "Kogan Page, by some distance this country's largest indie publisher of business books."

Kogan attributed his company's long-term survival to "Forty years of obduracy! . . . You could argue that as independents we have to be better than the big companies to survive." Ultimately, he said, the "fundamentals of publishing don't change. It's about acquiring good intellectual property and getting it to market."

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The literati of Second Life's role-playing world are taking virtual classes, discussing Kate Chopin's The Awakening, and even creating buildings based on the novels of Gloria Naylor. In addition, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the "American Library Association has joined Second Life too, in an area called Cybrary City. ALA Internet Development Specialist Jenny Levine said the professional group uses the service to disseminate ALA news, and also to hold events and interact with the public."

Falls Church, Va., is the "Harry-est town'' in America, according to Amazon.com. The residents of the Washington suburb placed more pre-orders per capita for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows than any other town in the U.S. To mark the distinction, Amazon will donate a $5,000 Amazon.com gift certificate to the Mary Riley Styles Public Library Foundation Trust of Falls Church.

The other top-10 Harry-est towns were Gig Harbor, Wash., Fairfax, Va., Vienna, Va., Katy, Tex., Media, Pa., Issaquah, Wash., Snohomish, Wash., Doylestown, Pa., and Fairport, N.Y. Using recent census data, Amazon included all U.S. towns and cities with a population of more than 5,000 people to determine the winner.

Vermont was named the "Harry-est state," even though the District of Columbia led all 50 states on a per capita basis. A full list of the Harry-est towns and states can be found at Amazon.com.

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"The numbers are staggering" was how the Los Angeles Times opened its financial retrospective on the Harry Potter phenomenon, before proceeding to show that "staggering" and "profitable" are something less than synonymous in this case.  

Two Southern California independent booksellers offered opinions, including Katie O'Laughlin of Village Books, Pacific Palisades, who said, "I don't think [the Harry Potter series] has been the profit center it could have been if the publishing world had tried to keep this a book for booksellers. That's a sad thing. This was the one time you had a book that people really wanted."

Alex Uhl, owner of A Whale of a Tale, Irvine, wasn't pleased that discounting had cut profits, but said, "There's so much Harry Potter has done for hardcover fiction. The kids that read Harry Potter then want to read something else. We're able to suggest things."

The Times also featured a box at the end of the article that illustrated "where the money goes for each copy sold."

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Harry Potter party pooper bulletin: The Boston Globe reported that several bookstores in the Northeast that were planning events for HP7, "including some intended to benefit charities," have been compelled to change their plans because "Warner Bros.--which controls the movies, merchandise, and all nonbook aspects of the Harry Potter brand--is clamping down on the fun."

According to the Globe, "In the past few weeks, Warner's London legal office has sent e-mails to booksellers and party organizers around the country, warning them against unauthorized celebrating, under the threat of legal action. '[Your event] appears to fall outside our guidelines,' said one e-mail. 'Therefore, HARRY POTTER cannot be used as a theme for your event.'"

Steve Fischer, executive director of the New England Independent Booksellers Association, said, "It strikes everybody as heavy-handed. It seems to me they're missing the good-faith piece of what bookstores are trying to do, which is to sell a lot of copies of a children's book."

Elizabeth Bluemle, co-owner of the Flying Pig Bookstore, Shelburne, Vt., agreed. "We have to jump through 45 hoops in order to celebrate and sell their book," she said. "It feels frustrating to a lot of booksellers. The independents were the ones who discovered Harry Potter, who got it in the eyes of the national market."

The Globe also noted that "organizers of Mugglefest in Portland, Maine, allied with local bookseller Books Etc., built a theater set in an old warehouse and had planned a party with 25 local retailers participating, each selling their own goods. Several corporate sponsors had planned to contribute, and their contributions, along with the fees from the stores in the warehouse, were to be donated to a preschool program for Somali and Sudanese refugees. But then came the e-mail from London."

This morning on Good Morning America: Taylor Hicks, author of Heart Full of Soul: An Inspirational Memoir About Finding Your Voice and Finding Your Way (Crown, $24.95, 9780307382436/0307382435).

Also on GMA: Jim Collins, author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don't (Collins, $27.50, 9780066620992/0066620996).

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This morning on Fox & Friends: Blair Underwood, author of Casanegra: A Tennyson Hardwick Story (Tantor Media, $75.99, 9781400134939/1400134935).

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Today on Fresh Air with Terry Gross: Peggy Orenstein, whose memoir is Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, an Atomic Bomb, a Romantic Night and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother (Bloomsbury USA, $23.95, 9781596910171/1596910178).

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Tonight on the Charlie Rose Show: Robert D. Novak, author of The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington (Crown Forum, $29.95, 9781400051991/1400051991).

Editor's note: magically fewer books are being published this coming week, so that this column is one of our shortest ever.

Selected books appearing next Tuesday, July 24:

Justice Denied: A J. P. Beaumont Novel by J. A. Jance (Morrow, $25.95, 9780060540920/0060540923) is about a Seattle homicide investigator who works three cases at once. This is the 18th J.P. Beaumont novel.

First Among Sequels: A Thursday Next Novel by Jasper Fforde (Viking, $24.95, 9780670038718/0670038717) features detective Thursday Next in a series of bizarre subplots.

The Secret Servant by Daniel Silva (Putnam, $25.95, 9780399154225/0399154221) follows Gabriel Allon, Israeli agent, as he investigates the death of a professor.

Psychic Children: Revealing the Intuitive Gifts and Hidden Abilities of Boys and Girls by Sylvia Browne and Lindsay Harrison (Dutton Adult, $25.95, 9780525950134/0525950133) explores the phenomenon of psychic abilities in children and the growing number of "indigo children."

This first novel by a young Iranian-American is another heartwrenching story of fundamentalist brutality, imprisonment and a family attempting to escape. Sofer knows what she's talking about: in 1982, at the age of 10, she fled from Iran with her family. Unfortunately, there must be five new novels and memoirs of flight from repressive regimes in bookstores right now, and this novel contains all the expected elements. 

What sets Sofer apart, however, and what I didn’t expect, is that she can write. Her style is simple, sophisticated and restrained. Though her tale is a potboiler of desperate scenes, she doesn't go for melodrama. She always knows what to leave out, letting your anxiety pump the story full of adrenalin and do most of the work. She never goes poetic, never milks a scene, tells just enough.

Though the prison scenes can be harrowing, you soon find yourself in a morally gray world where even the revolutionaries have a point of view and a story--including the terrifying prison investigator, Mohsen.

The story unfolds in 47 short chapters, in Tehran, 1981, and is seen from three points of view: Isaac Amin, a 35-year-old Jewish gemologist arrested at the very beginning of the story in his jewelry shop by armed revolutionaries; his wife of 25 years, Farnaz, estranged from her husband but still in love with him, forced to face house-inspecting soldiers and office looters alone; and nine-year-old Shirin, their daughter, who discovers files in her playmate's basement that lead to the arrest of her uncle.

An alternate story, not quite as successful, takes place in Brooklyn, told from the point of view of Parviz, Isaac’s 18-year-old son, and covers his adoption by Hassidic Jews and his repressed romance with his landlord's religious daughter. The two stories don't intersect enough to be satisfying.

But the book abounds in great character moments, mistress/housekeeper confrontations, boss/employee face-offs and Isaac's terrifying interrogations by the man with the missing finger. During the last hundred pages, I read slowly, not wanting to leave the characters, worrying up to the last page that something bad would happen to my favorites.

The book's title is a nostalgic reflection on the long-ago Septembers when Isaac and Farnaz first met at college in the romantic city of Shiraz, when their love was strong and real. Sofer's novel is a melancholic and tender tale, told with elegance, judgment and discrimination.--Nick DiMartino

In last week's review of Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression (Bantam Books, $22, 9780553804959/0553804952), we misstated the author's name. It is Mildred Armstrong Kalish. Our apologies.

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Bookstore sales dropped 4.3% in May 2007 compared to May 2006, as estimated by the Census Bureau, not 0.4%. We miscalculated in doing percentages; perhaps it was a slip we made in favor of bookstores. Still, as ever, it's important to remember that the Census Bureau bookstore sales figures are of new books and do not include "electronic home shopping, mail-order, or direct sale" or used book sales.