Starbucks Selects Cooper's "Sugar Beach"

By Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 8/8/2008 7:36:00 AM

Starbucks, which is closing stores as part of a wide-ranging cost cutting program, is continuing with its book program. The company announced that its next book selection is Helene Cooper's memoir The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood. The Simon & Schuster title will start appearing in more than 6,500 branches of the coffee chain upon its release day, September 3. The house has announced a first printing of 125,000.

In the book, Cooper, a current New York Times and former WSJ journalist, chronicles her coming of age in Liberia during the 1980s. Following the country's fall into civil war and her family's exile to America, Cooper also recounts her return to Liberia, decades after she fled, to find the foster sister who was left behind.

Speaking to the selection, Nikkole Denson, Starbucks director of content development, called House at Sugar Beach a “a perfect fit" for the Starbucks becuase its customer wante "enjoy engaging, personal stories that offer them the opportunity to discover something about the broader world and about themselves.”