Nancy Pearl, former director of Washington Center for the Book, is a best-selling author, literary critic, speaker, and consultant. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the PNBA Lifetime Achievement Award, Library Journal's Librarian of the Year, ALA's Margaret E. Monroe Adult Services Award, and the Women's National Book Association Award.Sarah Statz Cords has worked in an engineering library and at the reference desk in a public library, is the author of the nonfiction lit blog Citizen Reader, and is currently associate editor of the Readers' Advisor Online blog.

"With many libraries spending less on new books due to budget cuts in 2010, it is time for many of us to rely on the books that we already have to satisfy the public urge to read. With fewer items on new book shelves, librarians and readers are going to have to retrieve more books from the stacks, the last place that many readers are ever seen. So, the timing of Now Read This III by Nancy Pearl and Sarah Statz Cords is perfect. Their book which identifies mainstream fiction published between 2002 and 2009 (with a few exceptions), titles that many of us have in abundance, is a key to getting those books off the shelves and into readers' hands. . . . Many librarians may be reluctant to buy a reference book right now with their dwindling funds, but Now Read This III can be seen as tool to make better use of established collections. Spring for it." - ricklibrarian.blogspot.com