‘Sugar Beach’ to be featured at Starbucks

Helene Cooper’s “The House at Sugar Beach,” a memoir about growing up in Liberia during that country’s civil war, is the latest book selected by Starbucks to be featured at its stores nationwide.

Cooper’s book, published by Simon & Schuster, will go on sale at thousands of Starbucks stores in early September.

It’s the second time the coffee chain has chosen a memoir by a West African. Ishmael Beah’s “Long Way Gone,” about being a boy soldier in Sierra Leone, was picked last year and became a best seller despite questions over how long Beah actually fought.

“I remember going into my local Starbucks on K Street in Washington for my morning coffee on my way to work, and seeing Ishmael Beah’s ‘Long Way Gone’ on the counter,” Cooper, a New York Times reporter, said in a statement released by Starbucks.

“I was thrilled for him as a fellow West African – and so envious myself at the same time! I’m not ashamed to say that I stood in line daydreaming that one day it would be me.

“I’m absolutely thrilled ‘The House at Sugar Beach’ is a Starbucks selection.”

Meyer’s million-seller

Harry Potter is still king, but the final book of Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series did manage a million-selling debut.

“Breaking Dawn,” the fourth of Meyer’s sensational teen vampire series, sold 1.3 million copies in the first 24 hours after its midnight, Aug. 2 release.

Publisher Little, Brown Books for Young Readers said it has gone back for 500,000 more copies, making the total print run 3.7 million.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the seventh and final volume of J.K. Rowling’s fantasy series, sold 8.3 million copies in its first 24 hours in the United States alone.