Media exposure for this year's World Book Night U.S. campaign almost tripled over last year, according to WBN U.S. Cision Media and Google Analytics recorded a total of 373 million media impressions in April 2014, compared to 137 million for April 2013. Additionally, WBN's Klout score hit 75 on April 23 and 79 two days later--just one point lower than the Boston Marathon's Klout score the week before.

WBN U.S. executive director Carl Lennertz said: "As a measure of our engagement with our givers and resonance with local and national media, the 373 million media impression figure shows us that our message is getting through across the country and over a long period of time. The number is also above our initial projections, due to scoring New Yorker, O Magazine and New York Times mentions, as well as a very high social media reach figure. Blogs, local TV and radio, and online news site were also all up significantly. This figure also represents a major public service campaign, in effect, promoting reading, giving and community. And, our Klout score beat the New York Yankees score of 66! Take that, Derek & Co.!"

WBN's year-round campaign continues. After starting last summer with a giver book vote and free BEA BookBuzz, it moved on to last fall's book announcements and this winter's book-a-day FB campaign. Now, a giver survey and essay contest is underway. In addition, Audiobooks.com has reported a 52% open rate on an recent e-mail to all of this year's givers with a free audiobook download offer. A complete report on the number of audiobook downloads, as well as downloads of the free WBN e-book, will be announced June 1.

David North has been appointed the managing director of Quercus, which is in the process of becoming a division of Hachette U.K. alongside Hodder & Stoughton and Headline, under the management of Jamie Hodder-Williams, the Bookseller reported. North joined Quercus in 2008 and most recently was the executive director responsible for publishing.

"We have already started working together and I am looking forward to working with him and his colleagues as we develop our plans to build on Quercus's reputation as an outstanding publisher," Hodder-Williams said.

Mark Smith, former CEO of Quercus, left the publisher when it was sold last month.

Liz Perl has been promoted to executive v-p, marketing, at Simon & Schuster. She joined the company in 2008 as senior v-p, marketing for adult publishing, and has been responsible for corporate marketing since 2009.

S&S president and CEO Carolyn Reidy said that Perl is "always energetic and never hesitant to take on big complex projects" and "has made the corporate marketing department a linchpin of our efforts and a valued and reliable partner to our publishing, sales and digital teams, while taking on an ever-increasing workload with great skill, superb judgment and boundless enthusiasm."

Melinda Powers has joined Bookshop Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, Calif., as the head adult book buyer. She is the former co-owner of and buyer at Capitola Book Café, Capitola, Calif., where she joined the bookselling community in 1999. She can be reached at melinda@bookshopsantacruz.com.

"I think that YA has always pulled me because a lot of the time, YA writers, we're kind of emotionally located in a certain place," said Catherine Linka. Linka is the children's and YA book buyer at Flintridge Bookstore and Coffeehouse in La Canada, Calif., and her debut book, a YA novel titled A Girl Called Fearless, was published by St. Martin's Press yesterday. "We're all 15-year-olds at heart, or we don't want to grow up," Linka continued. "I'm not interested in writing about divorces or dashed hopes or regrets. I want to write about adventures."

A Girl Called Fearless is the story of Avie Reveare, a teenage girl living in an alternate version of present-day Los Angeles. Ten years before the story begins, a synthetic hormone in beef killed 50 million American women, making teenage girls "the most valuable and restricted commodity in the country." Avie, who dreams of attending college, comes home from high school one day to find that her father, the owner of an ailing bio-tech company, has contracted her into an arranged marriage with a multi-millionaire businessman running for governor of California. The businessman to whom Avie is contracted is running on the Paternalist ticket--a political party begun to "protect" young women by controlling their lives.

"The choice she faces is to stay and get married or to flee to Canada, where asylum is granted to anyone fleeing contracted marriages," Linka said. Despite the novel's alternate history and sci-fi trappings, the story is meant to be realistic. "I wanted to write a book that when you read it, you put it down and go 'damn, I could see that happening.' And people are saying that it's creepy--the good kind of creepy."

Although A Girl Called Fearless is her first book, Linka has been writing for most of her life. Roughly 10 years ago, after a career in marketing and advertising, she decided to "get serious" about writing, and enrolled in an MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, Vt. About a year after earning that degree, she heard about Flintridge Bookstore's opening.

"When they opened this bookstore in my town, I went over and applied for a job," Linka recounted. Despite having no experience in bookselling, she was hired almost immediately as the store's kids and YA buyer. She was one of the store's first employees, and has been there for about seven years. "I dunno, they were crazy enough to say, come in on Monday."

As a lifelong, voracious reader, Linka said that it was hard not to be influenced by everything she's read, but she pointed to Lois Lowry's The Giver as one of her all-time favorites.

"Even though it looks so simple from the outside, it's really got all these layers of depth," Linka said. "It's told in this almost perfect prose. And it's a kind of story that resonates with you."

A Girl Called Fearless has also been nominated for the Amelia Bloomer Project, an annual list of "the best feminist books for young readers" as chosen by the Feminist Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table of the ALA, and has made it onto Indiebound's summer 2014 Kids' Next list. On May 17, Linka will be appearing at the Ontario Teen Book Festival in Ontario, Calif. Later in the summer, she'll attend the American Library Association's annual conference in Las Vegas, where she'll part of the kid's author speed dating pool. In addition to those two appearances, she also has plans to visit several libraries and schools in the Los Angeles area.

And she'll launch the book next Saturday, at a party in her backyard. She considered having the party at Flintridge Bookstore, but "it's California and it's May and it's a fabulous time to be outside." --Alex Mutter

Friends and colleagues are invited to a public memorial celebration honoring Charlotte Zolotow (1915-2013), author, poet, editor and publisher of books for children. The service will be held on Tuesday, May 27, 12-1:30 p.m., at the Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, in New York City. RSVP to Candida Gazoli at didaink@yahoo.com.

Iranian-born writer Marsha Mehran, author of the international bestselling novel Pomegranate Soup, died last Wednesday. She was 36. Mehran also wrote a sequel, Rosewater and Soda Bread, and NPR reported that "a third book in the series, Pistachio Rain, as well as a free-standing novel called The Margaret Thatcher School of Beauty, are due out this year."

On her way to a nearby event, author Gabrielle Zevin stopped by Horizon Books, Traverse City, Michigan, where the majority of the staff has read and loved her book The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, and are big fans. Here, owner Amy Reynolds, CFO Gary Wolf and events coordinator Jill Beauchamp surround Zevin.

Rizzoli Bookstore, which had to close its 57th Street location in New York City last month, paid tribute to its staff with a "farewell photo essay" on the store's blog: "Any great team is only as good as the sum of all its members' strengths, and Rizzoli Bookstore was fortunate to have some of the best booksellers in the city. It was only through their passion; diversity; dedication; knowledge and well-cultivated tastes that Rizzoli maintained its reputation as one of the most culturally relevant and vibrant destinations in New York City.... We raise a glass to the staff of Rizzoli 57th Street. We salute and bid them adieu. Buona fortuna, to all who have worked in this great palace of books wherever they may go."

photo: lit.newcity.com

Chicago NPR station WBEZ interviewed Nina Barrett and Jeff Garrett about Bookends & Beginnings, the bookstore they're opening in Evanston, Ill., in June. The store will feature new and used books, antiques, toys, stationery, gifts with Evanston and Chicago themes, artisanal artworks and jewelry. But it will not have wi-fi or a café--there's already one across the street, and a Starbucks is down the block. Shelf Awareness's John Mutter provided some national perspective.

Mockingbird Books

"Bookaholics abound" in the Seattle region, a trend that "has resulted in a superb selection of independent bookstores," Red Tricycle noted in highlighting "8 Great Indie Bookstores for Pint-Sized Bookworms."

Featured booksellers included Mockingbird Books ("warm and cozy spot... serves up the best in kids' books to a community that has been supporting them since 2008"), Secret Garden Books ("knowledgeable booksellers are committed to getting the right book into the right little hands"), Alphabet Soup ("just what the book doctor ordered when your little ones need a literary pick me up"), Queen Anne Book Company ("perfect place for kidlets and their parents to find something to quench their book-lust"), Third Place Books ("with two kid-friendly locations to meet all your book-lovin' needs"), University Bookstore ("flagship location's kids section is half a floor of fun for your kiddos"), Elliott Bay Book Company ("houses a great kids' section, complete with a custom castle for your favorite fairy bookworm"), and Island Books ("their kids' section--you have to see it to believe it").

Murder on the Hoof (Minotaur Books) by Kathryn O'Sullivan, the second mystery featuring Fire Chief Colleen McCabe, set on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

This morning on the Today Show: Luke Russert, co-author of Big Russ & Me: Father & Son: Lessons of Life (Weinstein Books, $15.99, 9781602862623).

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Today on Fresh Air: Colson Whitehead, author of The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death (Doubleday, $24.95, 9780385537056).

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Tomorrow morning on Morning Joe: Farnoosh Torabi, author of When She Makes More: 10 Rules for Breadwinning Women (Hudson Street, $25.95, 9781594632167). He will also appear on Bethenny and MSNBC's the Cycle.

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Tomorrow on Dr. Oz: Diane Keaton, author of Let's Just Say It Wasn't Pretty (Random House, $26, 9780812994261).

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Tomorrow on CBS's the Talk: Gabriele Corcos and Debi Mazar, authors of Extra Virgin: Recipes & Love from Our Tuscan Kitchen (Clarkson Potter, $32.50, 9780385346054).

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Tomorrow on NPR's Diane Rehm Show: Rana Dasgupta, author of Capital: The Eruption of Delhi (Penguin Press, $28.95, 9781594204470).

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Tomorrow on KCRW's Bookworm: Jeff Jackson, author of Mira Corpora (Two Dollar Radio, $16, 9781937512132). As the show put it: "For Jeff Jackson, starting a novel is an invocation but you don't know what will be invoked. There's an idea that telling our stories is cathartic, but sometimes what you've really done is turn up the volume. His first novel, Mira Corpora, is a dark meditation on childhood: events are heightened into a new (slightly creepy) key signature. A young author's influences are often palpable: here, an influence is Dennis Cooper. A true disciple, Jackson says, doesn't look anything like the master."

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Tomorrow on Last Call with Carson Daly: Sophia Amoruso, author of #GIRLBOSS (Portfolio, $26.95, 9780399169274).

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Tomorrow night on Conan: Marc Maron, author of Attempting Normal (Spiegel & Grau, $16, 9780812982787).

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Tomorrow night on Late Night with Seth Meyers: Misty Copeland, author of Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina (Touchstone, $24.99, 9781476737980).

John Markesano will adapt the book A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II by Adam Makos for Oscar-winner Tom Stoppard (Empire of the Sun, Shakespeare in Love) and Solipsist Films. Deadline.com reported that neophyte screenwriter Marksano, "a recent USC grad and full time commercial airline pilot, was tapped to adapt Higher Call after developing another project, Black Flag, with Solipsist."

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Britt Robertson (The Secret Circle, Under the Dome, and Life Unexpected) will play the lead role in The Longest Ride, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks. She joins Scott Eastwood in the cast for the film directed by George Tillman Jr. from a script by Craig Bolotin (Black Rain, That Night).

Robert Antoni won the One Caribbean Media (OCM) Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for his book As Flies to Whatless Boys. The Trinidad Express reported that the author "will share the $10,000 prize money with the other finalists," who included Lorna Goodison in the poetry category for Oracabessa and Kei Miller for his nonfiction work Writing Down the Vision: Essays and Prophecies.

Antoni commented: "Lorna said yesterday that you can't compare oranges and mangoes and this prize, it's wonderful, it's necessary, it's up to us in the Caribbean to decide who we are, to take a place on the world stage. But my dear friend Lorna is a winner, my new friend Kei is a winner and so whatever the money prize is, I would like to divide it into three between the three of us."

The $4,500 Hollick Arvon Caribbean writers prize, which recognizes emerging Caribbean writers and offers the opportunity for training and for their final work to be published, was presented to Diana McCaulay of Jamaica for her book Loving Jamaica.

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Longlists have been announced for the 2014 PEN Literary Awards. Shortlists will be released June 17 and winners named July 30.

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This year's longlist has been unveiled for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, the Bookseller reported. The winner receives a £3,000 (US$5,060) cash prize, as well as a handmade, engraved beer barrel provided by Theakstons Old Peculier. The six shortlisted titles will be announced on June 30 and the winner named July 17.

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:

Hardcovers
The Collector of Dying Breaths: A Novel of Suspense by M.J. Rose (Atria, $25, 9781451621532). "This latest offering from Rose marks the return of Jac L'Etoile, the heroine first introduced in The Book of Lost Fragrances. Jac is quickly engulfed in a quest to create an elixir that will bring souls back to life using a person's last, dying breath. Her patrons are the mysterious Greek heiress Melinoe and her stepbrother, Serge, whose sibling relationship raises many questions for Jac. As Jac's former lover, Griffin, assists her in the pursuit to recreate the elixir based on notes left behind by René le Florentine, the two are drawn into the past life of René, his lover Isabeau, and the dynamic, manipulative Catherine de Médici. Rose captivates us with a story about relationships past and present, and the most basic of human emotions: love, greed, and betrayal." --Stacey Harris, Books & Books, Coral Gables, Fla.

Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor (HarperOne, $24.99, 9780062024350). "Why are we so quick to light the night, to focus only on the positive, and to dismiss discomfort? When is the last time you noticed darkness within you, took a moment to figure out its source, and then let it be? Taylor set out to do just that in her new memoir. She wanted to learn how our culture has lost its balance by demonizing darkness and how she might regain equilibrium. Taylor watched the moon rise, explored a cave, and delved into the writings of those who had already embraced the shadows to remind us that even in the dark, we can find strength." --Hannah Johnson-Breimeier, Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, Wis.

Paperback
Flora: A Novel by Gail Godwin (Bloomsbury, $16, 9781620401224). "In the last months of America's war with Japan, 10-year-old Helen is left in the care of a relative from Alabama one summer while her father leaves to work on a secret government project. A polio scare soon quarantines the two women at home, unable to escape each other. Finn, a former mental patient who delivers food to the house, soon becomes the object of attention for both women. The trouble, as Helen sees it, is that she is the most mature female in the house, and feels she is the one in control, until tragedy strikes on a deserted road one evening and she discovers the truth. Anyone curious as to why Gail Godwin has been honored with so many awards only needs to read this book to learn why. A clever, heart-felt, and often funny tale of learning to accept the ups and downs that life throws our way. Highly recommended." --Hunter Coleman, the Alabama Booksmith, Birmingham, Ala.

For Ages 4 to 8
Two Speckled Eggs by Jennifer K. Mann (Candlewick, $14.99, 9780763661687). "When Ginger's mom insists that she invite all the girls in her class--or none--to her birthday party, Ginger is disappointed that she has to include Lyla, who is a bit, well, different from the others. But when things don't go quite as planned at the party, Ginger finds a new friend when she least expects it. A wonderful story of friendship with a great message about acceptance and kindness!" --Kaley DeGoursey, R.J. Julia Booksellers, Madison, Conn.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

Philip Hoare is the author of seven works of nonfiction, including Oscar Wilde's Last Stand, Spike Island and biographies of Stephen Tennant and Noël Coward. The Whale won the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for 2009. The Sea Inside (Melville House, April 29, 2014) is a yearlong adventure through the world's oceans. Hoare is associate professor in creative writing at the University of Southampton, England, and curator of the Moby-Dick Big Read--a free online version of Herman Melville's book featuring Tilda Swinton, Stephen Fry, Benedict Cumberbatch, John Waters, Mary Oliver, Tony Kushner, Nathaniel Philbrick, Dennis Minsky, Witi Ihimaera, David Attenborough and many others. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian and swims, every day, in the sea.

On your nightstand now:

David Thomson's The People of the Sea: Celtic Tales of the Seal-Folk, Derek Jarman's Modern Nature and James Boyce's Van Diemen's Land. I read at least three books at once. I can barely walk in my bedroom for the towering piles. Haven't people been killed by falling books? What a glorious/ignominious way to go, depending on which book brained you. Now there's an idea for a new category.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth, because I desperately wanted to be a Roman centurion (I think it was the red skirts that got me); and C.S. Lewis's Narnia stories, because I sought transformation out of my southern English suburb.

Your top five authors:

Emily Brontë, W.G. Sebald, William Shakespeare, Denton Welch, Herman Melville.

Book you've faked reading:

Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. Tried to read it three times. Only when I discovered how wickedly subversive, pornographically funny and deeply demented it is, did I realise it was my book for life. Until then, I just lied about it. The gorgeous Barry Moser-illustrated Arion Press edition swung it for me. I found it in Tim's Bookstore in Provincetown, Mass. The power of reading it in New England and seeing whales in the wild for the first time turned me into a whalehead--or "whale stalker," as John Waters accused me. He also took one look at my whale photos and said, "That's just whale porn."

Book you're an evangelist for:

Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. As above. I virtually hit people over the head with it. Not many people really know it in the U.K. It's not read in school there, for instance, as it is (or used to be) in the U.S. It makes me laugh that the Harry Potter novels get banned for their pagan propaganda when America's greatest novel is full of circle-jerks and men getting married to each other.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Denton Welch's A Voice from a Cloud. I found it in what we English used to call a "jumble sale" when I was a teenager. A powerful perversion for a young boy. Welch's acute, obsessive eye sees the strangest things in the British Home Counties; he is a perfervid figure from the fin de siècle, relocated to suburbia. A great, if minor artist, his drawings decorated his own books.

Book that changed your life:

W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn. I was trying to write my book Spike Island when a director friend, Adam Low, gave me Sebald's book. I suddenly felt liberated. I could write in an entirely different way. One day a postcard arrived saying how much the sender had enjoyed the book. It was signed "Max." It took me awhile to realise who had written it. [Ed. note: Max was Sebald's nickname.]

Favorite line from a book:

It has to be those three short words which are an entire narrative in themselves: "Call me Ishmael." So, is that his name? That uncertainly pervades the rest of the book. You have this suicidal misanthrope who finds himself caught up in the madness of a ship of fools, observing nature in the most metaphysical manner, and who--spoiler alert--survives as an orphan of the sea. (It's amazing how many people think Ahab kills Moby Dick; in fact, the whale wins.) All that sense of prophecy, it seems to me, is caught up that opening line, and the closing one, which might yet be an epitaph for us all: "Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago."

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. It's a book to curl up on a sofa with, with a mug of tea and at least six ginger biscuits. My father came from Yorkshire, and on holiday visits to relatives we often went to Haworth and the Brontës' vicarage on the moors. Even now it seems to me a deeply haunted place with its soot-blackened buildings and cobbled streets. Emily Brontë's imagination is beyond extreme, as her book is sui generis. It's the English equivalent of Moby-Dick, full of madness and passion. And if the whale was a phallic symbolic to Melville, then to Brontë the moor was a sexual organ. The Australian writer Cassandra Pybus even hypothesises that Heathcliff was a black slave, "rescued" from Liverpool's docks.

Character in literature you'd most like to be:

Cedric in Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford. I love the scene in which he is attacked by a gruff military-type for buying a copy of Vogue on a railway platform. "It was well worth it though," says Cedric, "lovely Spring modes."

Gene Luen Yang's latest tour de force begins in 1911, soon after the events of his mesmerizing National Book Award finalist, Boxers & Saints. The Ch'ing Dynasty has just collapsed, imperial rule has ended and China is in chaos.

Artist Sonny Liew (Malinky Robot) connects the historical and mystical realms on the first page, through the adorned red scroll of the chapter header and the matching red backdrop to a panel depicting the council meeting of the dragon, phoenix, tiger and tortoise spirits. Three of them quarrel about the best way to support China, while the tortoise boards a boat for the West, and "[takes] up residence" in the body of a drunken man--the narrator's father.

Yang and Liew imagine an origin story for the Green Turtle, created by Chu Hing during Golden Age of American comics in the 1940s. Yang credits Hing as being among the first Asian Americans working in the U.S. comic book industry.

Liew's washed-out panels mirror the narrator's mother's mood when she arrives in the U.S. She'd been expecting "a land of color and astonishment"; instead, she discovers rude people and streets smelling of "old butter." She becomes betrothed to a "modestly successful grocer," and they have one child, Hank. Hank and his father work together in the grocery; his mother serves as a housekeeper and sometime chauffeur for the Olsons, a wealthy family. When a robber hijacks the Olsons' car as Hank's mother idles at the wheel, she is saved by a superhero ("the Anchor of Justice"), and decides Hank should become one, too. Humor abounds as she tries different approaches (she makes him a costume, pushes him into a chemical spill and arranges for his martial arts lessons). At the same time, Yang exposes the corrupt underbelly of Chinatown's business world.

Yang threads together the plot lines when Hank (as a superhero) attempts to save a woman from some shady characters and, in a comic twist, she winds up saving Hank. Her connection to the underworld brings the Green Turtle face to face with the head of the Chinese mafia. Yang and Liew bring the story back full circle: Hank relies on his natural strength and wits to survive the duel, and the spirits meet again. Through this very human hero and his green turtle alter ego, Yang and Liew debate cowardice versus bravery, vulnerability versus strength, disdain versus compassion. Yang's smart, funny afterword lays out the facts and speculations, and uses Hing's original comics to explain a few of the subtler shadings of the "origin" story (bullet-dodging, ultra-pink skin tones and the shadow itself). The audience will extend beyond comics fans, to those who enjoy noir and good old-fashioned storytelling anchored by historical events. --Jennifer M. Brown

Shelf Talker: The creator of Boxers & Saints imagines an "origin story" for the Green Tortoise, created during the Golden Age of American comics by one of the first Asian-American comics artists.

The following were the most popular book club books during April based on votes from more than 100,000 book club readers from more than 39,000 book clubs registered at Bookmovement.com:

1. The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam)
2. Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline (Morrow)
3. The Goldfinch: A Novel by Donna Tartt (Little, Brown)
4. The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd (Viking)
5. And the Mountains Echoed: A Novel by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead)
6. The Light Between Oceans: A Novel by M.L. Stedman (Scribner)
7. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Knopf)
8. Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple (Back Bay)
9. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (Back Bay)
10. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (Broadway)

Rising Stars:

We Are Water by Wally Lamb (Harper)
Orange Is the New Black by Piper Kerman (Spiegel & Grau)

[Many thanks to Bookmovement.com!]