The Tattered Cover, the famed Denver, Colo., bookstore with three locations, plans to open another store in the next year or so about a mile north of its flagship store in the Cherry Creek area. The new store will be in a development that centers on the Lowenstein Theatre, an old stage theater on East Colfax that has been shut for years and is being extensively renovated. The developer is creating space as well for Twist & Shout, a music store. The Denver Film Society may also be a part of the development.

At the same time, the Tattered Cover is negotiating with the landlord of its Cherry Creek store, where its main store has been located since 1986, for a new lease and will likely either have less space in the building or vacate it entirely. The current lease ends next June.

"We probably won't have the full store with the five stories we have now, but there's a possibility we might have a portion of that," Matt Miller, general manager of the Tattered Cover told Shelf Awareness. "It's no secret that our business 20 years ago is not the same as it is now." Cherry Creek has high traffic and is very desirable, qualities that have boosted rents. (Besides, as Miller dryly observed, "Usually when leases get renewed, it's not at a lower rate.")

The Cherry Creek store has 40,000 square feet and a full-service restaurant. By contrast, the new space at the Lowenstein Theatre will be about 22,000 square feet. The new neighborhood is "not the same high-end shopping area that Cherry Creek has become," but it's "a really interesting space and can offer the same selection as Cherry Creek," Miller continued. "We feel it will offer book readers and book buyers in Denver a great deal." The store will have free parking, too.

The Tattered Cover also has a 20,000-sq.-ft. store in the Lower Downtown section with a special events space and coffee shop; that store opened in 1994. Exactly a year ago today, the Tattered Cover opened a 22,000-sq.-ft. store in Highlands Ranch, south of Denver. Both stores are doing well, Miller said.

Although its third quarter was less stellar than usual, Wal-Mart yesterday forecast a cheery holiday season. Declining gasoline prices are one reason, its CFO said.

Besides beginning holiday advertising several weeks earlier than usual, Wal-Mart is discounting prices on certain products, which has boosted sales of toys, electronics and home furnishings. Taking pages from Target and Neiman-Marcus, the discounter has unveiled a more fashion conscious line called Metro 7 and is offering some expensive gifts, including a diamond ring for $10,000.

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Vine Deloria Jr., author of the bestselling Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto, died on Sunday in Colorado. He was 72.

Deloria, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, served as a marine, graduated from law school and divinity school and taught for many years, most recently at the University of Colorado, from which he retired in 2000. He tried, as the New York Times put it this morning, "to demythologize how white Americans thought of American Indians. The myths, he often said--whether as romantic symbols of life in harmony with nature or as political bludgeons in fostering guilt--were both shallow. The truth, he said, was a mix, and only in understanding that mix, he argued, could either side ever fully heal."

He also argued that treaty rights should be the guiding principle in relations between the U.S. and Native Americans, and he worked to strengthen tribal sovereignity.

His other books included We Talk, You Listen: New Tribes, New Turf, God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties and The Metaphysics of Modern Existence.

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Revenues in the third quarter ended September 30 rose 34.2% to $43 million at Varsity Group. Part of the increase in sales comes from the company's acquisition of Campus Outfitters, the uniform supply company. Net income at Varsity nearly doubled to $14.2 million from $7.3 million in the same period a year ago.

Varsity is an online textbook and uniform supplier of "hundreds" of higher education, preparatory and private schools.

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Police have arrested Charles Kochersberger, 26, in the robbery of Quail Ridge Books & Music, Raleigh, N.C., on Sunday, according to the News & Observer. Police reports say he gained $167 in the heist. He's also accused of holding up two other businesses and a woman using an ATM, a robbery a day for the past four days.

No motive was given for the robberies, which netted $640 altogether. Kochersberger is the son of a journalism professor and an Episcopal minister.

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Thanks to John Crutcher, publisher of Bloomberg Press, for supplying the full Stewart Brand quotation about information, which we mentioned in yesterday's issue.

"In fall 1984, at the first Hackers' Conference, I said in one discussion session: 'On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.' That was printed in a report/transcript from the conference in the May 1985 Whole Earth Review, p. 49."--Stewart Brand

Click here for the source. (No charge!)

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As noted here last week, some people have been fired up by HarperCollins's decision to airbrush out the cigarette Clement Hurd holds in the illustrator's photograph on Goodnight Moon. People who have vented their feelings to the publisher have received a return e-mail, which said Harper made the change "out of concern that the original picture sent a potentially harmful message about smoking to children--a concern that did not exist five decades ago when the photo was first used."

Good news for those who want to stub out the controversy. Harper will replace the photograph: "As publishers who are trusted with literary treasures like Goodnight Moon, we recognize the concern over adjusting historical photographs, and have therefore decided to print an alternate picture of Clement Hurd in future reprints that does not feature a cigarette."

By the way, as of this morning the non-PC votes on www.goodnightreality.com were slightly ahead of those offended by the butt, 5,439 vs. 5,244.

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Many apologies! Yesterday's Authorbuzz showcased Alex Kava's contest information for her book A Necessary Evil. Unfortunately the information won't be on her Web site until the week after next. Please check back at www.alexkava.com on Sunday, November 27, for details.

Consortium Book Sales & Distribution has added seven publishers, who will join the distributor for the spring 2006 season. They are:

• 4N Publishing, a children's publisher founded in 2002 whose two principals live in New York and South Korea.
• Feral House, a nonfiction house in Los Angeles, Calif., that was founded in 1989. Spring titles include Prisoner of X by Allan McDonell, a memoir of 20 years at Hustler magazine, and The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber, an illustrated biography by Mel Gordon.
• Millipede Press, Denver, Colo., which publishes classic crime, suspense and horror novels and short story collections. Two "new" titles are the classic The Face That Must Die by Ramsey Campbell and Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon.
• Paul Dry Books, a Philadelphia, Pa., house with an eclectic list of new and reissued fiction and nonfiction.
• Manic D Press, San Francisco, Calif., founded by Jennifer Joseph in 1984, an alternative outlet for young writers of fiction, poetry, art, commix and alternative travel titles.
• Pegasus Books, New York City, which publishes commercial fiction--with an emphasis on crime novels, mysteries--and serious nonfiction.
• Wave Books, a new Seattle, Wash., poetry house that has formed a couplet of sorts with Verse Press to expand its poetry program.

This morning on the Today Show:

• Jerry Stiller and Allen Salkin, authors of Festivus: The Holiday for the Rest of Us (Warner, $14.95, 0446696749).
• Frank McCourt, whose Teacher Man: A Memoir (Scribner, $26, 0743243773) goes on sale today.

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Today on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show:

• New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, whose memoir is Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life (Putnam, $25.95, 0399153241).
• Mary Gaitskill, who talks about her new novel, Veronica (Pantheon, $23, 0375421459), which is a National Book Award nominee (fate to be decided tomorrow evening).

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WAMU's Diane Rehm Show seeks answers from Maureen Dowd, author of Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide (Putnam, $25.95, 0399153322).

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Tonight on Larry King Live, honestly, Nicole Richie, whose novel is The Truth About Diamonds (Regan, $23.95, 0060820489).

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Yesterday Talk of the Nation surrendered to military historian Victor Davis Hanson, author of A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War (Random House, $29.95, 1400060958), in which he argues that despite technological advancements, the nature of war has remained the same over the centuries.

Last but not least, the movie version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, volume four of the Harry Potter series (Scholastic, $8.99, 0439139600), will be released this coming Friday, November 18. Directed by Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) with a screenplay by Steven Kloves, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his friends return to Hogwarts for new and significantly deadlier challenges.