Memoir about Liberia is new Starbucks pick (AP)

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 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."