Skip navigation

Memoir about Liberia is new Starbucks pick

Cooper's 'The House at Sugar Beach' will be sold starting early September

Image: The House on Sugar Beach
Simon & Schuster
Cooper is “absolutely thrilled” that 'The House at Sugar Beach' is a Starbucks selection.
Special feature
Image: Toni Morrison
The lit list: Nobel Prize winners
From American author Toni Morrison to French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, meet the writers who have won the highest literary honor.
Special feature
Image: Mary-Louise Parker
Life-changing lit: Celebs' fave books
From Mary-Louise Parker to LL Cool J, stars share the books that have influenced them most.
  Did suspected gunman shout ‘Allahu akbar’?
Nov. 6: TODAY’s Matt Lauer talks to Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the commanding officer at Fort Hood, about the tragic shooting rampage that killed 13 people and wounded 30 others at the Texas military base.

updated 4:04 p.m. ET Aug. 7, 2008

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.

Story continues below ↓
advertisement | your ad here

“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.”

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Sponsored links

Resource guide