Barnes & Noble Discovers Punk; Joe Meno's Hairstyles of the Damned; All Holiday 2004 Discover Great New Writers Selections Discounted 20%.

NEW YORK -- Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world's largest bookseller, has selected Joe Meno's Hairstyles of the Damned as one of the seasonal choices for the Holiday 2004 "Discover Great New Writers" program. Currently, Hairstyles of the Damned is the second bestselling fiction selection among Holiday Discover titles, behind the New York Times bestseller, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

In Hairstyles of the Damned, punk and rock bands like the Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat, the Misfits, Slayer and the Smiths provide the music for this mix tape of one teenager's adolescence. Brian, a conflicted Catholic high school burnout, is obsessed with hard rock and his best friend, a belligerent pink-haired punk named Gretchen. He frets over his attraction to her, and like most teenagers, Brian struggles with his identity. A bit of an outcast, he uses this condition to assess the social options available to him at his parochial school. The quiet, introspective Brian identifies best with the punks, if he doesn't quite join their ranks. But his emotional honesty allows him to see behind their arrogant posturing a very real anger and a true love of music: "When everything else was wrong, (the music) made it right."

"Hairstyles of the Damned is a richly detailed, deeply evocative account of those painfully remembered teenage years - a time of roller-coaster emotions, when nearly every insignificant slight feels like a body slam," said Jill Lamar, manager and editor of the Discover Great New Writers program.

Discover Titles Discounted 20%

Gift-givers may rest assured that a book chosen from the Discover Great New Writers display is a gift that will not only surprise, but is sure to appeal to the most finicky reader on their shopping list.

The Discover holiday season includes an engaging history of the National Geographic Society (Explorers House), an emotionally haunting spiritual memoir (Fumbling), an instant bestseller inspired by sources as varied as Dickens and Tolkien (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell), and eight other winsome works of fiction, three enthralling memoirs (Shanghai Diary, Devil in the Details, and Toast), the chilling tale of an historic blizzard (The Children's Blizzard), and a mesmerizing new Teen Discover selection (The Boy from the Basement). The Holiday Discover titles, each discounted 20 percent, will be prominently displayed in more than 600 Barnes & Noble bookstores across the country through January 2005. (See attached table for authors and titles.)

The Discover Great New Writers program, entering its 15th year, is the leader in uncovering debuting and unheralded 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 140 authors for the holiday program. Over the years, Discover has prominently featured and promoted such writers as Yann Martel, Alice Sebold, James Frey, Michel Faber, Sebastian Junger, Frank McCourt, Jeffrey Eugenidies, Laura Hillenbrand, Hampton Sides and Tracy Chevalier, among dozens of authors who've gone on to become household names and the winners of prestigious literary awards.

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world's largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 839 bookstores in 50 states. For the third year in a row, the company is the nation's top retail brand for quality, according to the EquiTrend(R) Brand Study by Harris Interactive(R). 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 brand among e-commerce companies, according to the latest EquiTrend survey. In addition to its retail operations, Barnes & Noble is one of the largest book publishers in the world. Its subsidiary, Sterling Publishing, publishes over 1,300 new titles a year and has an active list of over 6,000 titles.

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.

HOLIDAY 2004 DISCOVER GREAT NEW WRITERS SELECTIONS


       Title             Author           Genre          Publisher
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The Boy from the                                     Dutton Children's
 Basement           Susan Shaw       Teen             Books
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The Children's
 Blizzard           David Laskin     Nature          HarperCollins
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Devil in the
 Details            Jennifer Traig   Biography       Little, Brown
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Eating Mammals      John Barlow      Fiction         HarperPerennial
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Explorers House     Robert M. Poole  Current Affairs Penguin Press
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Fruit               Brian Francis    Fiction         MacAdam/Cage
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Fumbling            Kerry Egan       Religion        Doubleday
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Hairstyles of the
 Damned             Joe Meno         Fiction         Akashic Books
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The In-Between
 World of Vikram
 Lall               M.G. Vassanji    Fiction         Knopf
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Jonathan Strange &
 Mr. Norrell        Susanna Clarke   Fiction         Bloomsbury USA
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The Last Song of    Siddharth D.
 Dusk                Shanghvi        Fiction         Arcade Books
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Maximum City        Suketu Mehta     History         Knopf
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Outwitting History  Aaron Lansky     Reference       Algonquin Books
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Shanghai Diary      Ursula Bacon     Biography       M Press
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The Stowaway        Robert Hough     Fiction         Arcade Books
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Toast               Nigel Slater     Biography       Gotham Books
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The Unthinkable
 Thoughts of Jacob
 Green              Joshua Braff     Fiction         Algonquin Books
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