Book News

To some, "stage magic" means a man in a sequined vest doing a series of cheap tricks one after another, to the accompaniment of fast and repetitive music.

For the six-week period ending December 14, 2003, based on sales at hundreds of independent bookstores across the U.S.

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

"A Wealth of Wisdom: Legendary African American Elders Speak is like having your grandmother in the room with you," said Renee Poussaint, executive director and co-founder of the National Visionary Leadership Project (NVLP) and co-editor of the collection of oral histories that tell the first-person stories of African-American elders, both the nationally notable and

The full January/February Book Sense 76 with booksellers' quotes is now online at news.bookweb.org/read/2060, and it's an auspicious harbinger for the quality and scope of published titles in 2004. Fliers will be mailed to stores the first week of January.

As the 2003 Book Sense White Box mailing year draws to a close, Santa himself couldn't come up with a more wonderful selection of items than those provided by our Publisher Partners. No lumps of coal here! Just some of the highlights:

Galleys, ARCs, and finished books:

From the moment a farmer's hoe digging turf unexpectedly reveals the perfectly preserved severed head of a beautiful young red-haired woman, Erin Hart's debut novel, Haunted Ground (Scribner), captivates the reader with its parallel tales of two women -- one recently mysteriously missing and the other executed during the 17th century.

Here is the Top Ten of the upcoming 2004 January/February Book Sense 76. Watch for next week's issue of Bookselling This Week for the full 76. And, again, very many thanks to all the independent booksellers who once again made this list possible.

1. The Lady and the Unicorn, by Tracy Chevalier (Dutton, $23.95, 0525947671)

2. The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters: A Novel, by Elisabeth Robinson (Little Brown, $23.95, 0316735027)

Based on sales for the four week period ended November 30, 2003 as reported by hundreds of independent booksellers across the U.S.

For reprint information, send an e-mail to Kristen Gilligan at [email protected] .

Robert Kaplow has recently returned from Carnegie Hall. And no, he didn't get there by practicing -- well, an instrument, anyway. For the last 20 years, however, Kaplow has been writing and performing for NPR, teaching high school English, and authoring six books.

Homer Hickam, author of the November/December Book Sense 76 Top Ten novel The Keeper's Son (Thomas Dunne), said he knows what people are most interested in reading about: "Other people."

It was his own interest in other people -- specifically, his father -- that turned Hickam into a keen reader and a budding writer at a precocious age.

On Tuesday, November 18, author Carl Hiaasen recommended The Known World by Edward P. Jones (Amistad Press) as the next selection to be read by NBC News' Today Show Today Book Club.

Based on four weeks of sales ended November 16, 2003, from hundreds of independent bookstores across the country.

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

The full Winter 2003/2004 Children's Book Sense 76, with bookseller quotes, is now online at http://news.bookweb.org/read/1983. Stores should begin receiving copies of the list during the last week of November.

Vittula, as Mikael Niemi explains in his first adult novel, is short for Vittulajanka, a district located in the Swedish village of Pajala. It's a place where the winters are long, cold, and dark. But it's also a place where the joys of being a teenager burn vividly.