Yesterday in bankruptcy court Borders filed a motion asking for an extension on their exclusive period to file (and receive approval) for a reorganization or sale. The current deadline to file a plan is June 16, but Borders wants another four months (also extending the deadline for approval to December 13). In the motion, Borders acknowledges what the creditors have been underscoring since the original court skirmish over the booksellers’ debtor-in-possession financing plan: “if the Debtors are not granted the requested extension of their Exclusive Periods and exclusivity is terminated, they will be in default under their DIP Credit Agreement.” […]
Mamut Gets Waterstone’s for £53 Million, with Daunt to Run Company
The long, drawn-out process of selling Waterstone’s to minority investor Alexander Mamut is over, with his A&NN Capital Fund Management buying the bookseller for an increased price of £53 million. Parent company HMV didn’t get the £75 million it wanted (and theoretically need to help keep its lenders at bay), but the Russian billionaire paid considerably more than his reported original offer of £35 million. And Tim Waterstone, long speculated by an unimaginative UK press to be Mamut’s partner in the potential deal, will not be involved. Current managing director Dominic Myers won’t be moving with Waterstone’s, and will stay with […]
People, Etc.
Kate Elton will join HarperCollins UK as publisher of Harper Fiction, replacing Lynne Drew, who is giving up the position for personal reasons (though she will continue to edit select authors.) Elton spent the past 15 years at Random House UK, where she was publisher of Cornerstone’s Arrow and Century imprints. Larry Bennett has joined Bookmasters as president of its international sales division, focusing on growing the company’s foreign-language book development and distribution efforts in the US and abroad. Previously he managed Baker & Taylor’s digital print media program. PEN American Center has announced a new award for picture book […]
Buzz Reviews: Running The Rift, by Naomi Benaron
Review by Michael Schaub Over 17 years have passed since the world was shocked by the Rwandan Genocide, the systematic murder of hundreds of thousands of citizens of the east African nation. The massacre had its roots in the longstanding blood feud between the country’s main ethnic groups, the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority. After the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, in 1994, government forces and militias raped and murdered Tutsi citizens (as well as some uncooperative Hutus). These series of atrocities forms the backdrop of Naomi Benaron’s debut novel Running the Rift, the winner of the […]
Buzz Reviews: The Underside of Joy, by Sere Prince Halverson
Review by Sarah Weinman “The most genuine happiness cannot be so pure, so deep, or so blind,” announces Ella Beene near the beginning of Sere Prince Halverson’s emotionally rich debut novel. For Ella, thirty-five and “not a physical beauty – not ugly, but nothing near what I’d look like if I’d had a say in the matter” – this is a hard-won conclusion, arrived at after a painful childhood and first marriage. But she’s spent the past three years in a blissful state, married to grocery store owner Joe Capozzi, stepmother to his two young children Annie and Zach, and […]
Buzz Reviews: The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern
Review by Gwenda Bond The most surprising thing about Erin Morgenstern’s dazzling and rightfully anticipated debut novel, The Night Circus, is that it didn’t exist before now. Set at the turn of a nineteenth century recognizable but for the presence of magic, two shadowy rival magicians choose two contestants who will play out the latest incarnation of their long-running, ill-defined competition. Though Celia Bowen, daughter of Prospero the Enchanter, and Marco, adopted son of Mr. A.H. — also known as the man in the grey suit — are trained in magic throughout their childhoods, neither of them knows the rules […]