Book Sense

Susanne Kufahl was working as a computer systems manager at the Wisconsin Department of Justice when her daughter, Rachael Krueger, suggested she buy their local bookstore, Buffalo Books & Café, in Montello. Kufahl let the idea percolate until, at another local used bookstore, she was suddenly inspired to buy not, say, a used copy of The Da Vinci Code or Reading Lolita in Tehran, but an entire bookstore. She contacted the realtor for Buffalo Books and was running the bookstore within six weeks.

Book Sense bookstores can help their customers win a crime spree -- well, actually, a crime-writing spree -- when they direct customers to A&E Network's Cold Case Files Sweepstakes.

A&E's Cold Case Files, a series that examines the art of forensics, has partnered with Book Sense and Penguin to create a sweepstakes designed specifically for Book Sense stores and their customers. The grand prize is a 7-Day/6-Night trip for two to the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England.

On Thursday, July 29, on NBC's Today Show author Nicholas Sparks chose Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore (Perennial) as the next title to be read by the Today Book Club.

The first Southern California Independent Bestseller List, published in a cooperative effort between Book Sense and the Southern California Booksellers Association, debuted last week. The SCBA list includes bestsellers in the categories of Hardcover Fiction and Nonfiction, Trade Paperback Fiction and Nonfiction, Mass Market, and Children's (Fiction and Illustrated) books.

For the four-week period ending July 25, 2004, and based on reporting from hundreds of independent bookstores across the U.S.

Past Category Bestseller lists are available at www.bookweb.org/read/5677.

Attention Media: Please contact Kristen Gilligan at [email protected] for reprint guidelines for your newspaper or magazine.

Raelynn Hillhouse will soon break into print with Rift Zone (Forge), an end-of-the-Cold War thriller bearing enthusiastic blurbs from half a dozen masters of her chosen genre. And this debut author's first novel has been chosen as an August Book Sense Pick.

Artemis Records, a New York-based independent record label and home to artists such as Steve Earle and the late Warren Zevon, is expanding its selection of spoken word CDs to include authors Allen Ginsberg and Al Franken, among others. The literary CDs are, of course, a natural fit for independent booksellers, but so is music from Artemis, a Book Sense Publisher Partner.

In this month's White Box you'll find a set of shelf-talkers for the 25 titles chosen as "The Best of the First Five Years of Book Sense" as well as copies of consumer take-aways for both the adult and children's titles that served as the ballots for your choices of the Best Books.

First, looking ahead, booksellers wishing to send in nominations for future Book Sense Picks lists have two upcoming deadlines:

The downloadable PDF flier of August "We Also Recommend" titles, which includes bibliographic information, jacket images, and booksellers' quotations, is now available (click here).

Titles on the August Book Sense Picks fliers, which were sent to stores with Book Sense in the July Red Box, can be reviewed at news.bookweb.org/read/2687.