Cover Stories: Big Read; Persephone; Tom Maschler; Stanfords

With a day to go before The Big Read's climactic moment, the war of the words has been hotting up. It now seems a racing certainty that the nation's favourite read will come down to a straight fight between Pride and Prejudice, championed by Meera Syal, and The Lord of the Rings. The assumption is that Frodo and friends will triumph, if only because Tolkien fans will jam the lines with votes. But the Campaign for Jane run by Penguin has resulted in stickers everywhere, and actors dressed as Darcy and Elizabeth. Novelist Elizabeth Buchan has written for the Penguin website, while "Jane Austen" has e-mailed all staff. In the Strand office canteen, there was even a Jane Austen-themed lunch.

Anyone tired of the sameness of so many new books should check out Persephone, the press run by Nicola Beauman, sister of novelist Sally Beauman. It revives worthwhile books which have gone out of print. The publisher works like a book club, and the coolly elegant titles cost £10 each, or £27 for three, available at sales@persephonebooks.co.uk and from their shop at 59 Lambs Conduit Street, London WC1. There is also a quarterly magazine for anyone who joins the mailing list.

A couple of months ago, Virago founder Carmen Callil announced that she had signed with HarperCollins for the memoirs she swore she'd never write. Now comes news that another retired (but no so retiring) publisher is also hard at work. Tom Maschler, who presided over Cape for many a year when it was proudly independent, will be published by Picador. Now 70, he lives mostly in the Lubéron region of France.

Visitors to Stanfords, the celebrated travel bookshop on London's Long Acre, have been frustrated by the dust and detritus of its 150th-birthday refit. Now the last scaffolding has gone and Stanfords is promising a whole new world at our feet. There'll be more of everything, a reflection of our increasing wanderlust. And there's also a book on Stanfords' history: The Mapmakers (Compendium) by Peter Whitfield traces the company's heritage. Among nuggets it reveals is that the premises took a direct hit during the Blitz. For years, Ordnance Survey maps were sold with charred edges. Edward Fraser Stanford, grandson of the founder, was involved in secret planning of the D-Day landings. Kenneth Williams trained there as a draughtsman, before his stage career.