Independent vendors sponsor book crawl

Kansas City, Mo. — Readings, live music and refreshments will greet participants in the Midtown Book Crawl.

The event is scheduled for 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday.

The crawl invites people to browse Midtown’s three major used bookstores: Prospero’s Books, 1800 W. 39th St., (816) 513-9673; Spivey’s Books, 825 Westport Road, (816) 753-0520; and Bloomsday Books, 301 E. 55th St., (816) 523-6712.

Participating nearby restaurants will offer specials in conjunction with the event. A portion of the proceeds will go to Literacy Kansas City.

Book event to celebrate desegregation of military

Topeka — Gail Buckley, author and daughter of entertainer Lena Horne, will share stories from her book “American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm” at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library on the corner of S.W. 10th Street and S.W. Washburn.

Buckley’s book chronicles the role of black men and women in America’s armed forces and includes such names as Henry Ossian Flipper, West Point’s first black graduate; Benjamin O. Davis, the nation’s first black general; and Charity Adams, the first black officer in the women’s Army Corps.

The event, sponsored by the Brown v. Board 50th Anniversary Coalition, celebrates the desegregation of the armed forces and takes place in the library’s James C. Marvin auditorium.

The documentary “The Invisible Soldiers: Unheard Voices” will be shown, and Buckley will sign copies of her book.

The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call (785) 234-1030.

New Clancy book due out in August

Tom Clancy, whose fat techno-thrillers satisfy many men like a ballgame and a beer, won’t keep his fans waiting for a refill.

Publisher G.P. Putnam’s Sons revealed that his next hardcover novel, “The Teeth of the Tiger,” will be out in August — a year sooner than expected.

Clancy, whose “Red Rabbit” came out last summer, used to deliver his popular stories every other year and spend time in between on military nonfiction and other projects.

In the new novel, though Clancy hero Jack Ryan is still president, the action focuses on son Jack Jr. and two cousins, who join a shadowy counter-terrorist outfit and battle an evil group led by a Muslim and a Colombian.

New push for ‘Prey’

When best-selling novelist Michael Crichton left his longtime publisher Knopf for HarperCollins, the big event was said to include one of the richest deals in publishing — $40 million for two books.

Six months after HarperCollins released its first Crichton thriller, “Prey,” in a printing of 1.5 million, a new promotion suggests the publisher is trying to spur sales of many unsold copies to head off costly returns.

A “special price promotion,” advertised in the E-mail newsletter PW Daily for Booksellers, is designed to get retailers and wholesalers to share with HarperCollins the cost of a 30 percent discount on the $26.95 title.

That’s a markdown many retailers routinely apply to New York Times best-sellers. “Prey” spent 15 weeks on the Times best-seller list until it fell off in late March.

A 30 percent markdown of “Prey” is available at www.Amazon.com.

The book sold some 625,000 by early January, according to Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks up to 75 percent of the market.

Total sales to date exceed 1 million.