Congratulations! Tomorrow Mrs. Nelson's Toy and Book Shop, La Verne, Calif., east of Los Angeles, begins celebrating its 20th anniversary with an 11-day series of events that features two author appearances a day. In addition, the children's store will have a Thomas the Train & Friends 60th Anniversary Trunk Tour event. The series leads into Halloween, when the store will stage a Haunted House Friday through Monday--and host a costume party contest on Halloween at 4 p.m.

Among the authors appearing: Barney Saltzberg (Cornelius P. Mud, Are You Ready for Bed?), Alexis O'Neill (The Recess Queen), Marianne Wallace (America's Seashores: Guide to Plants and Animals), Joan Graham (Flicker Flash), Hope Anita Smith (The Way a Door Closes), Alexandria LaFaye (Worth) and Kathryn Hewitt (No Dogs Here). As part of the celebration, Mrs. Nelson's is also holding two educators' nights of book talks, refreshments and prizes.

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On the day after Borders announced that it was lowering earnings estimates for the quarter because of "weaker than expected sales trends," the stock was downgraded by Prudential from "neutral" to "underweight." On an off day on Wall Street, Borders closed at $19.51 a share, down 7.5%, at volume more than six times the usual trading volume. The stock hit a 52-week low.

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To dispel any doubt sowed by the Borders restatement, Barnes & Noble yesterday reaffirmed its sales and earnings predictions for the third quarter ending October 29. The company expects sales at stores open at least a year to rise in the low single digits and to have a net loss somewhere between one and four cents a share.

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Barnes & Noble will open a store in the Clackamas Town Center at 12000 Southeast 82nd Avenue in Portland, Ore., in April. After it opens, B&N's store at 9078 Southeast Sunnyside Road in Clackamas will close.

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The Canada Council of the Arts has announced the 69 finalists for the Governor-General Literary Awards. The English-language fiction finalists are:

• Joseph Boyden for Three Day Road (Viking)
• Golda Fried for Nellcott Is My Darling (Coach House)
• Charlotte Gill for Ladykiller (Thomas Allen & Son)
• David Gilmour for A Perfect Night to Go to China (Thomas Allen & Son)
• Kathy Page for Alphabet (Orion)

Winners in all categories will be announced November 16. For the full list of nominees, go to the Canada Council of the Arts Web site.

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Today's New York Times notes that fear "that fuel prices will crimp spending on holiday shopping later this fall" is making retailers, advertisers and marketing begin their Christmas pitches now. Candace Corlett, a retail consultant at WSL Strategic Retail, told the paper: "If we're hit with a very cold November or December, that would really scare shoppers." She also said she has already seen markdowns on such holiday merchandise as candles and chocolates.

Next week the after-Christmas sales start?

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The Times also picks up on Penguin Press's new, stylish edition of the classic Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White, which features illustrations by Maira Kalman, the artist and children's book author and illustrator. "Each sentence was so full of incredible visual reference," she told the paper. "I said to myself, how could anyone not have illustrated this before?"

Kalman also found the text musical, which has led to an even more unlikely event than an illustrated Elements of Style: tonight the Elements of Style song cycle by composer Nico Muhly makes its debut at the New York Public Library.

Chapter 11, the Atlanta, Ga., area bookstore chain that used to have the slogan "prices so low, you'd think we were going bankrupt," filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Saturday. The company is closing seven underperforming stores and will focus on the remaining six.

Owner Perry Tanner emphasized to Shelf Awareness that he made the decision after looking at the stores by a standard of "what a store we might open in today's environment would look like," including inventory and selection. Two of the seven stores are in Gainesville and Athens while the other five are in Atlanta. The surviving stores are in Peachtree Battle, Ansley Mall, Sandy Springs, Emory, Northlake/Briarcliff and Highland Plaza in Marietta. Books in stores being closed are being moved into the remaining stores, "doubling our inventory for Christmas," Tanner said.

One of the stores being closed, in Snellville, this year had been converted into a Chapter 11 Outlet, selling mainly bargain books and, in a first for Chapter 11, used books. Tanner said the company had double-digit growth in sales of used books online, a much better performance than in the store, so all used stock will be sold only on the Web site. Laughing, he noted an advantage: "Rent online is a little easier than in real life."

Tanner and his family bought Chapter 11 just over three years ago (Shelf Awareness, August 1). In recent months, the company has closed several stores. Tanner had noted that a substantial number of Chapter 11 outlets were opened in the 1990s by the company founders in strip malls that were once cutting edge but now have been superseded by newer, fancier shopping malls or are in areas whose population has moved farther from the city center.

With the bankruptcy filing, "We now have a clean sheet and we're in a position to have a successful Christmas," he stated.

Today on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show:

• Word maven Patricia T. O'Conner, author of Woe Is I (Riverhead, $14, 1594480060) and You Send Me (Harvest, $12, 015602733X).
  
• Steven Watt, author of The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (Knopf, $30, 0375407359).

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Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: former FBI director Louis Freeh, Jr., whose most recent casework is My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror (St. Martin's, $25.95, 0312321899).

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Last night on the Daily Show: Bill O'Reilly, author of The O'Reilly Factor for Kids: A Survival Guide for America's Families (HarperPaperbacks, $13.95, 0060544252).

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Yesterday on Talk of the Nation, professor James Shapiro emoted about A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 (HarperCollins, $27.95, 0060088737).

Living with Wolves

For six years, award-winning film documentarians Jim and Jamie Dutcher lived in the Idaho wilderness with wolves of the Sawtooth Pack. Originally established with two adults and four pups, the pack now lives in a wolf enclosure on Nez Perce land, needing a circumscribed area since it is habituated to humans. In Living with Wolves (Mountaineers Books, $34.95, 1594850003, May 2005), the authors share their view of the wolf as "neither demon nor deity nor biological robot . . . an intelligent and highly sensitive animal that can be at once both individualistic and social . . . an animal that cares for its sick, protects its family, and desperately needs to be part of something bigger than itself--the pack."

Most people will be drawn in by the incredible photographs, including a short section with life-sized images. But the text is just as fascinating. The Dutchers discovered that filming in slow motion allowed them to observe nuances of a wolf's behavior that would have otherwise been unseen. The wolves display care, empathy, collaboration and contention: "Few animals on earth display the same intensity of commitment to family in the collaborative care of their young. Expressions of joy are evident at the birth of new pups, as are those of sorrow when a pack member dies. Play, complex in its rules and manifestations, is essential to the emotional stability of the pack." They have distinctive personalities: Kamots "led with intelligence and benevolence," Matsi was the peacemaker and devoted babysitter, Amani played the clown. Some of their behavior is unexplainable, like the playful relationship between wolves and ravens.

Living with Wolves provides information about reintroduction of wolves to remote and wild territories, education about wolf myth and reality and a strong caution for some wolf fans: "Trying to keep a wolf for a pet or interbreeding wolves and dogs has only one outcome: trouble." A fine bonus is a CD of Sawtooth Pack vocalizations.--Marily Dahl

A masked marketing maven writes:

Halloween has grown as a holiday for children and adults, and while tykes may be poring over a Harry Potter novel or classic ghost stories, here are three novels that are perfect for a night of history, shadows and adventure--for grown-ups. These bestsellers also round out the perfect display for the upcoming Halloween festivities in-store to entice customers to read of foreign lands and the creatures of the night.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

Halloween is the perfect opportunity to discover the treasures of Kostova's debut novel. The Historian is a dark and detailed journey into the world of a particular vampire. But it's also the tale of a 16-year-old girl who opens a book in her father's study and begins a journey into the heart of darkness--through a secret history.

The Priest of Blood by Douglas Clegg

The Priest of Blood is Bram Stoker Award-winner Douglas Clegg's medieval tale that is lush, romantic and dark--with chilling scenes and breathtaking battles. The Priest of Blood launches the historical series The Vampyricon and moves between Brittany and the Middle East as its hero faces the trials of love and betrayal, the Crusades and a journey into a kingdom buried beneath the earth where he may discover the secrets of the vampyre race.

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

With Fledgling, her first novel in several years, Nebula and Hugo award-winning author Octavia E. Butler offers yet another twist on the vampires. Fledgling is centered on Shori, who awakens in a cave with amnesia, only to piece together that she is a genetically-modified human-vampire hybrid--and someone is hunting her and her kind.

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To dress up your vampire display, put mini-candy that comes in small packets (candy corn, little packets of M&Ms, mini-Snickers, etc.) in shallow plastic Halloween-themed bowls around the table, between the books. Halloween masks are also fun to hang from the table as a border. To do a bit more, if you're ambitious, lighten up--with Halloween lights of bats or jack-o-lanterns strung like Christmas tree lights to edge the table or window display to really attract the eye.

Get creative. It's October, and for a harvest theme spread out decorative corn, synthetic autumn leaves and a small pumpkin around the books. For an elusive but simple gothic look suitable to Dracula, drape the table with a basic black cloth, arrange a gargoyle book-end or two and set out a small, unlit candle so that readers and customers will think they're in Dracula's library.