In an article headlined, "The little indie that could," Macleans profiled McNally Robinson Booksellers: "With stores in Saskatoon, Calgary and Manhattan, McNally Robinson, named bookstore of the year a record five times by the Canadian Booksellers Association, has become one of Canada's largest independent book chains. It has doubled its $30-million revenue since 2000 and will grow again in 2008, adding two new stores, including its first in Ontario, in the Toronto suburb of Don Mills."

Paul and Holly McNally opened their first bookstore in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1996, "modelling it after Denver's beloved Tattered Cover Book Store." In 2004, their daughter, Sarah, opened McNally Robinson NYC in Manhattan, "city of 11 Barnes & Nobles--a move the New York Times called either 'quaintly quixotic' or 'downright batty.' Year-over-year sales increases at the store, nestled between Greenwich Village and Wall Street, are a staggering 30 to 40 per cent."

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Noting that shares of Borders and B&N are down 30% and 16%, respectively, since May (a period when the Dow Jones Industrials lost 2.2%), the Ahead of the Tape column in today's Wall Street Journal says "investors have fled the shares" because competition from discounters and online retailers is "pressuring the old-line booksellers to slash prices to lure customers, squeezing profits."

One statistic that does not please Wall Street: excluding Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, sales at B&N superstores at least a year rose just 1% in the last quarter.

Borders releases quarterly results late this afternoon. Some 20% of shares are held by short sellers, the Journal wrote, meaning they are betting on bad news. "That means any goood news from Borders today could provide a pop for the stock that would be boosted again if the shorts were to then run for cover." 

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Tweedle Brothers Children's Bookshop, Manitowoc, Wis., will close for the month of September, then reopen in early October under new ownership. According to the Herald Times, current owners Tina and Carson Kugler announced in a press release that "the new owners are going to be a perfect fit. We are happy Tweedle Bros. will remain open. We are proud of what the store has become and glad to see it will continue in good hands."

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Barnes & Noble has picked Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen (Bantam, $20, 9780553805482/0553805487), which goes on sale today, as its fifth selection in the B&N Recommends program.

In a statement, B&N CEO Steve Riggio called the book "a tender, bewitching love story, told with captivating invention."

A B&N bookseller who helped pick the title said, "Combine two parts Alice Hoffman (author of Practical Magic) and one part Rebecca Wells (Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood) with a splash of Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees), and you have Garden Spells. A great read for anyone who loves cooking, Southern fiction, or just a great love story." Another bookseller said, "A sweet story that adds hope to the world."

Garden Spells will be supported by discussion groups about the book at B&N stores across the country; author appearances; an online book club; a free guide for reading groups; and more.

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Random House is donating $1 million to First Book, the nonprofit organization that since 1992 has distributed more than 50 million books to children in low-income families so that they may be able to read and own their first new books. In a note to company staff, Random House chairman and CEO Peter Olson called the contribution "the largest single philanthropic donation in our history."

Through Random House Children's Books, the company has been a charter member of First Book and has donated more than 13 million copies of its books. Olson said that First Book has been successful in getting books to children, "but they want to do much more--and we want to help them."

In addition, the company is establishing a matching gift program for employees dedicated just to First Book: Random will match any contributions made by employees to First Book 100% up to $2,500. The company is also matching contributions to First Book from authors, illustrators, vendors, literary agents and booksellers, up to $1,000 each.

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Next June, Barnes & Noble plans to open a store in the Red Cliffs Mall in St. George, Utah, in the far southwestern part of the state.

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Cooper Square Publishing, the new joint venture of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group and a hedge fund, has acquired the assets of Northland Publishing, Flagstaff, Ariz., which has two children's imprints, Rising Moon and Luna Rising. Earlier this month, Cooper Square bought the book publishing program of T&N Children's Publishing (Shelf Awareness, August 6, 2007). Effective immediately, Northland's titles will be distributed by National Book Network.

Northland specializes in Western and Native American art and architecture and cookbook titles. The house recently published titles by Dances with the Wolves author Michael Blake and former baseball player and announcer Joe Garagiola. Rising Moon publishes the Do Princesses . . . ? series and Luna Rising publishes bilingual titles.

 

"Anyone who says life is boring certainly does not live in my shoes," declared Deb Hunter when Shelf Awareness caught up with the busy bookseller to discuss her new store in Princeton, N.J.

When Hunter opened a second Chicklet Books outpost earlier this month--the flagship store is in nearby Hillsborough--it wasn't in a modestly-sized storefront on the town's main street as she had originally planned. Instead the newly minted Chicklet Books occupies a two-story space encompassing nearly 10,000 square feet in the Princeton Shopping Center.

Hunter's aim had been to convert her Princeton shop Glen Echo Books, which sells primarily used tomes with an emphasis on "more highbrow-type reading," into the Chicklet Books brand. In keeping with the tradition of its 1,300-sq.-ft. Hillsborough predecessor, Hunter also intended to keep the store small to cater to "soccer moms on the go and customers who need to pick up their book club reads." But after two of her employees saw the space in the shopping center (previously occupied by Chestnut Tree Books) and gave it an enthusiastic endorsement, Hunter took a look. "After numbers crunching for four days, we decided we could make it work," Hunter said. "I'm a little daunted by its size, but I'm rising to the challenge." (She had considered closing Glen Echo, but is keeping that store.)

Among the immediate challenges for Hunter, who is also a partner in a Hardy, Ark., bookstore and owns two warehouses, are learning to operate the café and a U.S. Postal Service branch that she inherited with the space. Another is defining the store's décor: making Chicklet Books' signature colors of bright pink, purple, apple green and turquoise work with permanent fixtures in hues of navy and light blue. Setting the scene is an important part of creating what Hunter described as "a fun and upbeat shopping experience." Her creative touches include a sign above the cash wrap area with the word "ka-ching." Hunter commented: "We're going to be a little different. That's who we are."

The store's main level features new-book displays as well as the café, where those with a sweet tooth will be tempted with an array of the store's signature dessert: cupcakes in flavors like brownie and carrot cake.

A lower level houses the post office, a selection of used books and an events area for author signings. For larger events, such as a recent appearance by Walter Isaacson to promote Einstein: His Life and Universe, Hunter partners with the Princeton Public Library. The in-store events space will also be used as a venue for children's birthday parties, which several customers have requested, and festivities will be spearheaded by the event planning company Entertain Me.

The Princeton Shopping Center contains businesses such as a jewelry store, a salon, a bank, a gourmet supermarket, a pet supply purveyor and a pediatric doctors' office. "During the day the center is a place where people run errands," Hunter noted, and in the evenings consumers are drawn to its several restaurants. While many shops in the center shut down at 5 o'clock, Chicklet Books has extended hours and benefits from both the daytime and dinnertime crowds.

In the two weeks since Chicklet Books opened, customers have expressed a range of preferences about what merchandise the store should carry--from someone who purchases only used and bargain books to a bibliophile excited about having an upscale bookstore. Hunter welcomes the challenge of satisfying a range of interests. "With a store this large," she said, "I'm going to do it all."

Besides being fueled by Hunter's business savvy and enthusiasm, the latest retail outlet in her mini-empire has benefited from the advice, support, and helping hands of family, friends, fellow booksellers and eager patrons, Hunter said. "This store is being built on friendship and love. It really is a team effort."--Shannon McKenna

The new store is located at 301 North Harrison St., Princeton, N.J. 08540; 609-279-2121; chickletbooks.com. 

This morning on the Today Show: Alek Wek, author of Alek: From Sudanese Refugee to International Supermodel (Amistad, $24.95, 9780061243318/0061243310).

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Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Alec Klein, author of A Class Apart: Prodigies, Pressure, and Passion Inside One of America's Best High Schools (S&S, $25, 9780743299442/0743299442).

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Today on Oprah: in a repeat from last year, Dr. Mehmet Oz, co-author most recently of You: On a Diet: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management (Free Press, $25, 9780743292542/0743292545).

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Tonight on the Colbert Report, in a repeat: Mike Huckabee, Governor of Arkansas, presidential hopeful and author of From Hope to Higher Ground: 12 STOPS to Restoring America's Greatness (Center Street, $19.99, 9781599957043), and Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture (Currency/Doubleday, $22.95, 9780385520805/0385520808).

 

Friends of David Halberstam, who died in a car crash in April, will tour for the author's last book, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (Hyperion, $35, 9781401300524/1401300529), which is being released in a month, the New York Times reported.

The friends include Bob Woodward, Joan Didion, Seymour Hersh, Anna Quindlen and others--"surrogates," as Woodward called them--who will offer "personal reminiscences and readings." The tour starts on pub date, September 25, and ends October 15 at the Union Square B&N in New York City with a panel that will feature Didion, Gay Talese, Robert MacNeil and Jon Meacham, managing editor of Newsweek.

Halberstam's widow, Jean, told the Times that the tour was Hyperion's idea but noted a bit of earlier good karma. "Someone reminded me that when Tony Lukas died just after Big Trouble came out, David organized a number of writers to represent it in the Boston area." She also said that his friends' eagerness to help would have made Halberstam feel "amazed and humbled, and that's not necessarily a word used to describe him."

Connie Sayers of Market Partners International predicted that the tour would be effective because Halberstam's "best friends are high-profile people, big names. You can also put them on local television and radio. It should create a wave of news because each person is going to say something different."

Incidentally Jean Halberstam said her husband's favorite bookstore was Mitchell's Book Corner on Nantucket in Massachusetts. "He tried really hard to be loyal to independent bookstores, and would have Mitchell's U.P.S. him books in New York during the off season," she continued. "We tried to split the money we spent on books between independents and the others."

Selected titles appearing next Tuesday, September 4:

Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World by Bill Clinton (Knopf, $24.95, 9780307266743/0307266745) gives examples of charitable acts by companies and individuals and explains how each of us can contribute in some way. Clinton will launch the book with an appearance on Oprah on Tuesday; incidentally Giving praises Oprah's Angel Network.

Stolen in the Night: A Novel by Patricia MacDonald (Atria, $24.95, 9780743269568/074326956X) follows amateur sleuth Tess DeGraff as she attempts to find her sister's killer two decades after the murder.

The Tale of Hawthorn House: The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter by Susan Wittig Albert (Berkley, $23.95, 9780425216552/0425216551) is the fourth Beatrix Potter Cottage Tales book.

The Girl With Braided Hair by Margaret Coel (Berkley, $23.95, 9780425217122/0425217124) is the 13th Wind River novel. Painful history is revived when a skeleton is discovered at the bottom of a ravine on a Native American reservation.

The Sunrise Lands by S.M. Stirling (Roc, $24.95, 9780451461704/0451461703) takes place a generation after the mysterious Change destroyed almost all technology.

Heartsick by Chelsea Cain (St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95, 9780312368463/0312368461) is a thriller about a cop addicted to pain medication and two sadistic serial killers, one in prison and another still murdering young girls.

Songs Without Words by Ann Packer (Knopf, $24.95, 9780375412813/0375412816) follows two grown childhood friends as they cope with a tumultuous past and their current relationship.

The View from Mount Joy: A Novel by Lorna Landvik (Ballantine, $24.95, 9780345468376/0345468376) chronicles the life choices of two high school seniors.

House to House by David Bellavia and John Bruning (Free Press, $26, 9781416574712/1416574719) is Staff Sergeant Bellavia's narrative of the intense urban combat in Fallujah, Iraq, during 2004.

Egonomics: What Makes Ego Our Greatest Asset (or Most Expensive Liability) by David Marcum and Steven Smith (Fireside, $25, 9781416533238/1416533230) explains the role of ego and humility in business.

The Secret Things of God: Unlocking the Treasures Reserved for You by Henry Cloud (Howard Publishing, $18.99, 9781416563600/1416563601) is a Christian version of The Secret.

Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire--Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What We Do by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa (Perigee, $23.95, 9780399533655/0399533656).

Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush by Robert Draper (Free Press, $28, 9780743277280/0743277287).

Blonde Ambition: The Untold Story Behind Anna Nicole Smith's Death by Rita Cosby (Grand Central, $23.99, 9780446406116/0446406112)

I Dare You: Embrace Life with Passion by Joyce Meyer (FaithWords, $22.99, 9780446531979/0446531979) encourages people to bring meaning to their lives.

All the Money in the World: How the Forbes 400 Make--and Spend--Their Fortunes by Peter W. Bernstein and Annalyn Swan (Knopf, $26.95, 9780307266125/0307266125) explains the financial habits of America's wealthiest through anecdotes and charts.

Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself by Alan Alda (Random House, $24.95, 9781400066179/1400066174) gives insight into the actor's meditative view of life that he achieved after a near-fatal incident.

Appearing on Thursday, September 6:

For Liberty and Glory: Washington, Lafayette, and Their Revolutions by James R. Gaines (Norton, $29.95, 9780393061383/0393061388) presents a detailed history of the two generals' friendship and their respective revolutions.

 

Appearing in paperback on Tuesday, September 4:

Caressed By Ice (The Psy-Changeling Series, Book 3) by Nalini Singh (Berkley, $6.99, 9780425218426/0425218422).

Fresh Disasters (Stone Barrington Novels) by Stuart Woods (Signet, $9.99, 9780451221650/0451221656).

Lara Santoro would like to drag you into the heart of the African AIDS crisis, and she does so in her hilarious, harrowing new novel, Mercy.

It's a passionate book, with intense characters who have intense feelings. No one whispers. Everyone shouts. The novel is noisy with arguments and vocal explosions, mostly because of the alcoholic narrator, Anna, a 29-year-old Italian news correspondent in Africa. Anna's got more handsome, interesting boyfriends than she knows what to do with, most of whom she betrays and treats terribly, and she isn't much easier on her long-suffering editor back in Rome. Of course, she is Italian, which explains some of the hot-headedness, but even this Italian reader became exhausted by all of her angry emotionalism.

But that's being picky. In spite of occasional excesses, the novel is vibrantly alive and two characters, in particular, are so moving and funny they practically burst out of the plot.

Father Anselmo would be worth the price of admission alone. He's a grizzled old priest who, to the horror of his religious order, leaves the monastery to live in the most wretched, violent slum of Nairobi. He's been there 12 years, tending to the sick, the dying, the poor. His eloquent prayers, outrageous philosophies and visionary comments on the blindness of evil, or the relationship between God and time, make you want to grab a pen and jot them down. He's a flinty old saint for our era, and delightfully comic--he doesn't realize the tea he serves, made with contaminated slum water, gives everyone who drinks it violent bowels.

But the book belongs to the title character, Mercy Achungo. She's a product of the slum, where she had become the most powerful dealer of the poor man's trash alcoholic drink, muratina. Now she's reformed. She's six-feet-tall, loud, feisty and authoritarian, and she dresses like a disco queen going clubbing. She's Anna's housegirl and soon takes control of the house. It takes Mercy to teach Anna how to act like "the big people of the world." Every scene she's in is a joy.

Author Santoro comes at you two-fisted, but you've gotta love her for it, because like Mercy's mission to demand affordable anti-retroviral drugs for the poor of Africa, Santoro and her larger-than-life character, Mercy, are in your face for the best of human reasons.

Santoro is a journalist who has covered every aspect of the AIDS crisis. She's seen hell, but she also knows the joy of African laughter, and her comprehensive portrait of a continent in crisis, her simmering anger and authority give this novel a bite and realistic vivacity that set it apart. You really owe it to yourself to meet Mercy.

As Mercy would say, "You! How are you making yourself useful?"--Nick DiMartino