Indie Bookseller Recommendations Featured on NBC's Today Show

On Thursday morning, February 28, NBC's Today Show once again featured a segment highlighting the reading recommendations of independent booksellers. Returning to the show were Marva Allen of Hue-Man Bookstore & Cafe in New York City, Jamil Zaidi of Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, and Roberta Rubin of The Book Stall at Chestnut Court in Winnetka, Illinois. The trio, along with Roxanne Coady of R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Connecticut, first appeared on the Today Show in December to present their picks for holiday gifts.

For the morning's "Cover to Cover" segment, the booksellers were asked to focus on books for readers on the go, titles to share with friends, and great bedtime reading. In addition to title recommendations, the Today Show website also features brief bios of the booksellers and video of the segment.

For readers on the go, Allen recommended:

• Song Yet Sung by James McBride (Riverhead)
• The Darkness: A Vampire Huntress Legend (Vampire Huntress Legends) by L.A. Banks (St. Martin's)
• The Duppy by Anthony C. Winkler (Akashic)
• Take the Risk by Ben Carson (Zondervan) (on the website only)

To share with friends, Zaidi recommended:

• Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish (Bantam)
• Night Train to Lisbon: A Novel by Pascal Mercier (Grove Press)
• The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss (Houghton Mifflin)
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, and Steven L. Hopp (HarperCollins) (on the website only)

For by the bed, Rubin's picks were:

• Loving Frank: A Novel by Nancy Horan (Ballantine)
• Gambit by Karna Small Bodman (Forge)
• The Poets' Corner: The One-and-Only Poetry Book for the Whole Family compiled by John Lithgow (Grand Central)
• An Uncommon Reader: A Novella by Alan Bennett (FSG) (on the website only)

For more on books featured on TV, the radio, and in print, check out BTW's Media Guide.