Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Ovens! Cookoff: Recipe Fever in America by Amy Sutherland is Selected for Barnes & Noble's Discover Great New Writers Program

Business Wire, Oct 30, 2003

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 30, 2003

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS), the world's largest bookseller, has selected its first cooking title for the Fall 2003 Discover Great New Writers program: Cookoff: Recipe Fever In America by Amy Sutherland.

With its wit and good recipes, Amy Sutherland's Cookoff invites readers into the "heartbreak, glory, and big money on the competitive cooking circuit." With spatulas blazing, Americans around the country are participating in the National Chicken Cookoff, chili cookoffs, barbecue cookoffs, Dutch oven cookoffs, jambalaya cookoffs, the Pillsbury Bake-Off(R), and hundreds more. Sutherland follows a group of contestants for a year, giving readers a guided tour of this quirky community and their recipes, from award-winning Crunchy Caramel Apple Pie right through Thriller Filler Berry French Toast. Readers are invited to take a glimpse into the lives of contestants, like Kurt Wait, who not only won the first-ever million-dollar prize for his Macadamia Fudge Torte, but was the first man to ever win the Bake-Off(R).

"Cookoff chronicles the triumphs and defeats of the women, and men, who inhabit the wacky world of cookoffs," said Jill Lamar, manager and editor of the Discover Great New Writers program. "Cookoff is as much about the entrants as it is about the food itself. Chock full of wit and a sense of adventure, Sutherland's book, a wholly addictive page-turner, is worthy of a blue ribbon."

The fall Discover selections, each discounted 20 percent, will be on prominent display in more than 600 Barnes & Noble bookstores across the country from October through December 2003.

The Discover Great New Writers program, now in its 14th year, is the leader in uncovering new and undiscovered literary talents, with an unparalleled record of finding tomorrow's literary stars from today's publishing newcomers. A volunteer group of Barnes & Noble booksellers considered the works of more than 100 authors for the fall program. Over the years, Discover has prominently featured and promoted such writers as Yann Martel, James Frey, Michel Faber, Sebastian Junger, Frank McCourt, Jeffrey Eugenidies, Laura Hillenbrand, Hampton Sides and Tracy Chevalier, among dozens of authors who have gone on to become household names and the winners of prestigious literary awards.

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS) is the world's largest bookseller, operating 634 Barnes & Noble bookstores in 49 states. It also operates 234 B. Dalton Bookseller stores, primarily in regional shopping malls. The company offers titles from more than 50,000 publisher imprints, including thousands of small, independent publishers and university presses. It conducts its e-commerce business through Barnes & Noble.com (NASDAQ: BNBN) (http://www.bn.com).

Barnes & Noble also has approximately a 63 percent interest in GameStop (NYSE: GME), the nation's largest video-game and entertainment-software specialty retailer with 1,393 stores.

General financial information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company's corporate Web site: http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/financials.

            FALL 2003 DISCOVER GREAT NEW WRITERS SELECTIONS

                Title            Author       Genre   Publisher
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Cookoff                     Sutherland, Amy  Cooking  Viking
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Boy Meets Boy               Levithan, David  Juvenile Knopf Children's
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Poker Face                  Lederer, Katy    Memoir   Crown
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The Desert Pilgrim          Swander, Mary    Memoir   Viking
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The Language of Blood       Trenka, Jane     Memoir   Borealis Books
                            Jeong
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Brick Lane                  Ali, Monica      Novel    Scribner
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A Sunday at the Pool in
Kigali                      Courtmanche, Gil Novel    Knopf
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A Blade of Grass            DeSoto, Lewis    Novel    HarperCollins
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The Student Conductor       Ford, Robert     Novel    Putnam
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What Was She Thinking?      Heller, Zoe      Novel    Henry Holt
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Parasites Like Us           Johnson, Adam    Novel    Viking
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Out                         Kirino, Natsuo   Novel    Kodansha
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The Time Traveler's Wife    Niffenegger,     Novel    MacAdam/Cage
                            Audrey
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Dakhmeh                     Noori, Naveed    Novel    Toby Press
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Where No Gods Came          O'Connor, Sheila Novel    University of
                                                      Michigan Press
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Timoleon Vieta Come Home    Rhodes, Dan      Novel    Canongate
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An Hour in Paradise         Leegant,  Joan   Stories  W.W. Norton
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How to Breathe Underwater   Orringer, Julie  Stories  Knopf
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Nine Hills to Nambonkaha    Erdman, Sarah    Travel   Henry Holt
                                             Essay
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Code Name Ginger            Kemper, Steve    Business Harvard Business
                                                      School
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Orphans Preferred           Corbett,         History  Broadway Books
                            Christopher