Memoir about Liberia is new Starbucks pick

SEATTLE - 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 and to go on sale at thousands of Starbucks in early September, is 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 Thursday by Starbucks. "I was thrilled... [read full story]