Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, announced today that Paulette Jiles’Stormy Weather (William Morrow) will be the fourth selection in the Barnes & Noble Recommends program. The book can be purchased at any Barnes & Noble store or online at Barnes & Noble.com (www.bn.com/recommends).

“Paulette Jiles’ Stormy Weather is an unforgettable story of hardship, sacrifice, and strength,” said Steve Riggio, chief executive officer of Barnes & Noble, Inc. “In this beautifully written tale, animated with striking language, Jiles vibrantly portrays faith in overcoming life’s challenges and belief in the dream of a better day.”

Elizabeth Stoddard and her three daughters are the heroines of the family whose heartbreaks and hopes are vividly chronicled in this absorbing novel of life in Texas oil country in the depths of the Depression. Charting the women’s progress through many storms and struggles, Jiles rivets our attention to the Stoddards’ hardscrabble world of droughts, tractors, horses, oil fields, and small-town life. Stormy Weather tells a story that balances the bleakness of hard times with the humor and resilience of people who can – through persistence, luck, and love – outlast them.

As one of Barnes & Noble’s booksellers said, “Jiles’ beautiful prose renders an almost cinematic scope of the Texas Dust Bowl in the ’30s. Some lines literally stopped me in my tracks. It was a joy to read.”

The Barnes & Noble Recommends program includes:

• Discussions of Stormy Weather, which will be held in Barnes & Noble stores across the country.
• Author appearances. Meet Paulette Jiles at Barnes & Noble. Visit www.bn.com/recommends for information on Jiles’ in-store events.
• An online book club. Discuss Stormy Weather with the author and other readers. Log on to www.bn.com/bookclubs throughout June.
• A free guide. Ask any Barnes & Noble bookseller for a copy of our free guide to starting your own reading group. The guide can also be found online at www.bn.com/recommends.

Selections for Barnes & Noble Recommends are chosen by a group of the company’s booksellers from across the country. Each selection is a book that Barnes & Noble recommends unconditionally, believes is “unputdownable” and especially appropriate for book discussion groups.

The first Barnes & Noble Recommends selection was Diane Setterfield’s debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale (Atria Books), a suspenseful tale of a bookseller’s daughter hired to write the true story of a famous author with a mysterious past. The second selection was Chris Bohjalian’s The Double Bind (Shaye Areheart Books), a novel combining the compelling pace of a thriller with the emotional depths of the most intimate drama as it follows the insidious trail of mental illness. The third Recommends selection was Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Harcourt), a spellbinding monologue that dramatizes the turmoil and terror of today’s world in a singular, thought-provoking voice. Each of these novels, including Stormy Weather, qualify as riveting reads; books of exceptional quality worthy of stimulating discussion.

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 793 bookstores in 50 states. For the fifth year in a row, the company is the nation’s top retail brand for quality, according to the EquiTrend® Brand Study by Harris Interactive®. Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through Barnes & Noble.com (www.bn.com), one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites and the number one online bookseller for quality among e-commerce companies, according to the latest EquiTrend survey.

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