Rich Inner Life of Horses Revealed in Heart of the Horse Published by Barnes & Noble.

NEW YORK -- Juliet Van Otteren, Extraordinary Fine Arts Photographer, and Alan Lightman, Best-Selling Novelist and Essayist, Combine Talents to Create a Very Different Book about Horses

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world's largest bookseller, announced today that Heart of the Horse ($30.00, Barnes & Noble Books) by Juliet van Otteren and Alan Lightman is now available in bookstores across the country.

In Heart of the Horse, Juliet van Otteren, an avid horsewoman and photographer whose pictures appear in major museums worldwide, freezes on film for the first time the full scope of equine thoughts and feelings in 77 stunning images. Regaliz, a magnificent black stallion, clearly enjoys having his picture taken. Uther, an Andalusian - a breed of choice for some of history's greatest medieval warriors - adopts a pensive air. Senta and Manrico, siblings, play together joyfully. As Jane Goodall, the world-renowned animal rights activist and scientist, said in her eloquent foreword, "I can see the very souls in the eyes."

Alan Lightman wrote the book's thought-provoking text. Noted novelist, essayist, physicist, and educator who has taught at Harvard and MIT, he was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award in fiction (The Diagnosis). In Heart of the Horse, Lightman contemplates the special bond humans and horses share. Although no human beings are in the book's photos, Lightman's deeply personal and eloquent insights into human relationships with animals enable the reader to feel part of the indefinable but certain link between all living creatures.

Heart of the Horse is divided into four main sections. In the first section, "Portraits of Feelings," one image after another captures the moods and emotions of individual horses. In the second, "Connections," the profoundly moving relationship between and among horses is explored. In the third, "Motion," Van Otteren captures the horses in dynamic movement. In the final section, "Sight Beyond Sight," more abstract images break the horse down into the sum of its beautiful parts: the curve of the belly, a sloping neck, a shimmering black eye.

Joyce Carol Oates, the award-winning writer, described Heart of the Horse as "A beautiful book! Vivid - dreamlike - 'mystical' - visceral." Michael Korda, editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster and a horseman, calls it a "lovely book." And Rhonda Poe Hart, editor of The Gaited Horse, said of Heart of the Horse: "Nothing is posed or staged. Some of the images are heart-warming, some incredibly delicate - some are troubling. All are striking.... This is not your average horses-in-pretty-poses book."

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.