Novelist and Teacher Frank Conroy Dies at 69
As the leader of the prestigious Iowa Writer's Workshop for 18 years, Frank Conroy shaped and encouraged many of today's novelists; as a writer he touched millions more. Conroy acheived literary fame with his first book, the memoir Stop-Time and wrote just four more novels in his lifetime. It would be eighteen years before his second book, Midair, was published, with good reason. "People thought I knew what I was doing when I wrote 'Stop-Time,' but I didn't," Mr. Conroy said last year. "I knew I was a very good writer, but it had all been an act of faith." While honing his formidable craft, Conroy worked as a magazine writer, a scallop fisherman, and a jazz pianist. Read more

Saul Bellow Dies at 89
Nobel laureate and Pulitzer-prize winning novelist Saul Bellow died yesterday at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts.
The author of The Adventures of Augie March, Humboldt's Gift and Seize the Day was considered one of America's most important post-war novelists. "He dealt with ideas, where most American authors are afraid of ideas," said author Cynthia Ozick. His last book, Ravelstein, was published in 2000. Read more.

Pulitzer Prize (Book)Winners Announced

The 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction was awarded to Iowan Marilynne Robinson for Gilead, her story of a preacher's life; the poetry prize went to retired insurance executive Ted Kooser for his collection Delights and Shadows; the prize for drama went to John Patrick Shanley for his Broadway hit Doubt, about a nun who suspects a priest of impropriety; the prize for biography was awarded to Mark Stevens and Analyn Swan for de Kooning: An American Master; the prize for history went to David Hackett Fischer for Washington's Crossing; the prize for general non-fiction went to Steve Coll for Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.

Pope John Paul II in His Own Words
We join the world in expressing our deepest condolences on the passing of the Holy Father, John Paul II this past Saturday. His was an evangelical papacy during which he brought the office and the institution out from musty shrouded back corridors of the Vatican, screaming into the high-tech 21st century. While his unbending adherence to conservative doctrine alienated many Catholics (including this one), his deep spirituality and commitment to human rights, his practice of reaching out to other faiths, to honoring the faithful on every continent, and courageously calling political leaders to task elicits nothing but admiration. Who was he? John Paul II published more work for public consumption than any other Pope in history. Take a look.

Ya-Ya Author Enjoys the Success While Dealing With Illness
Rebecca Wells became a household word with the sucess of her Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, about the lives and friendship of four Louisianna women. It's follow-up "Little Altars Everywhere" cemented her success. As the third book about the life-long friends is released, "Ya-Yas in Bloom" Wells talks for the first time about an illness she has been battling for seven years, as her books began climbing the bestseller lists. After mysterious bouts of dizzyness, hypersensitivity to sound and respiratory infections, Wells was finally diagnosed with Lyme disease and babesiosis, both spread by tick bites. Wells' treatment includes antibiotics and antimalarial drugs, but the climb back to normalcy is slow, she says. The most she can write is four or five hour a day, half her normal time. At her worst she could only work for twenty minutes. She finds strength through her friendship with author Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club) who also suffers from the disease.

Great Scot! Highland Flings are all the Rage
What could be sexier than say, Russell Crowe and George Clooney wanting to fulfill your every desire? Russell Crowe and George Clooney in kilts sporting mucho attitude. With tongue firmly planted in (get your mind out of the gutter!) cheek, The Scotsman reports on the recent American craze for romance novels set in Scotland featuring hunks in kilts. Huh? "Books with covers showing brooding, muscular, kilted heroes gazing out over the hills and glens are topping the best-seller lists," they report. The craze started after the release of Braveheart, Mel Gibson's Scottish historical epic, which sparked an interest in Scottish history and more to the point, Scots in kilts. "This year’s publishing sensation is the racy plaid-ripper, where the men are smouldering Scots, the countryside is wild and rugged and the women are all a-quiver." As one online fan of the Scottish romances says, "Just the thought of trying to tame one makes me feel weak at the knees." Clearly, plaid-clad lads are rad. Who knew?

Horror Authors to Play Poker for Charity
A poker tournament featuring twenty prominient horror authors will raise money for charity at the 2005 World Horror Convention in April. Horrormeisters including F. Paul Wilson, Jack Ketchum, John Skipp, Tom Monteleone, Michael Arnzen, David Morrell, Christopher Golden, Carlton Mellick III, Monica O'Rourke will ante up using Texas Hold 'em rules at the Park Central Hotel in New York. The winner's take will be donated to charity. The game will be followed by a book signing and a launch party for writer Michael Arnzen's latest book, Play Dead. Get more info.

Anarchist Book Fair Bigger than Ever
From a small group of left wing radicals talking politics, this festival has grown to a weekend of cultural events, reports AP (via the Monterey Herald). The current political climate has caused a boom in anarchis literature and ideas, say participants.
"The Bush era," says Joey Cain, 50, a longtime organizer, "has been good for anarchist consumerism." Check it out online.

New Literary Board Game hits Shelves
Booktastic! is about more than literary trivia. The game came about through creator Laine Keneller's love of books and collecting. "The object of Booktastic! is to amass the most valuable collection of books and cash by buying and selling books at bookstores, swap meets and book exchanges," reports the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Players make their way through several bookstores buying or trading the ten books on the game card for noteworthy books of a specific year. In order to earn money to play the game, players must answer questions about collecting, authors and writers or specific books. The game is in it's second edition and planning a third, with foreign versions in the works.

Perfume Film to Star Dustin Hoffman
The Book Standard's weekly Hollywood column reports that Dustin Hoffman will join the cast of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, the film version of Patrick Suskind's international bestseller. Also, Sean Lennon will co-produce and star in the film of Coin Locker Babies, the novel by Japanese writer Ryu Murakami, and Paramount has purchased the rights to the boarding school memoir Prep. Get more details.

Japanese Dial up Novels
Reading on the go has reached a fever pitch in Japan, where downloads of novels to cell phones is at an all-time high. While China boasts the first novel written exclusively for cell phones (it is now being turned into a cell phone film), Japanese readers are the most avid consumers of text via phone, reports AP. A Tokyo wireless service provider, Bunko Yomihodai" or "All You Can Read Paperbacks" has 50,000 subscribers and counting. Most readers use the service to catch up on classics they never finished in school. "Users can search by author, title and genre, and readers can write reviews, send fan mail to authors and request what they want to read, all from their phones." U.S. readers should stay tuned: Random House is in a deal to provide cell-phone access to some language study programs.

For Arab Writers, New Lines in the Sand washingtonpost.com
In spite of censorship, writers in Saudi Arabia are tackling tougher issues than ever before in books published there and abroad. But government approval doesn't mean smooth sailing. "Two months ago, a group of men entered a bookstore on one of the capital's broad avenues, lined with designer boutiques and glass-and-steel shopping malls. They seized copies of The Bottle, which includes an unflattering portrayal of an Islamic militant, after it had sold 500 copies in just three days, a feverish pace in the kingdom. Although the government had approved the book for sale, the men warned the shop not to carry it again."

Novelists Begin to Deal With Sept. 11
A number of books released this spring use the 9/11 terrorist attack in various ways, reports The Lakeland (FL) Ledger. Either the horror is recreated and characters are directly affected and must deal with it, or in less immediate ways, the attack is dealt with in literature. Ian McEwan's Saturday, in which the reality of the characters is forever affected by those attacks, and family members examine attitudes about the war and the issues involved. One French bestseller soon coming to U.S. shelves, takes us inside the towers on the day of the attack. "I've had people say it is really obscene and disgusting to do that. But that is the idea of writing fiction about history. It is always shocking. We should not be afraid of writing about what is important," said Beigbeder, the author of the upcoming Windows on the World.

Go Ahead, Judge
Some of the worst book covers ever are collected on the hilarious online gallery of Bad Book Covers. The offending "art" ranges from the completely nuts , to the hilarious (a cover for Pet Sematary), to bad concepts like a beachy vampire scene(?!), to the disturbing (you'll know it when you see it), to dated work like the covers of Trixie Belden mysteries (so much cooler than the anal-retentive Nancy Drew). You'll marvel that people got paid to think these up. Good fun. You can click on the images for a bigger view and some snarky remarks from the site owner.

Robinson's Gilead May Sweep Awards
Iowa Writer's Workshop instructor Marilynne Robinson's latest book, Gilead is a New York Times Notable Book, has just been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner award is also nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award, and is a front-runner for the Pulitzer Prize and is among the nominees for the UK's Orange Prize. Whew. Gilead is about a 76 year-old man examines his life and communicates with his young son. The Des Moines Register examines Robinson's chances.

Peter Pan Sequel Set
British children's book author Geraldine McCaughrean will write a sequel to the classic Peter Pan, reports Reuters.The sequel will raise money for The Great Ormond Children's Hospital in London which owns the rights to the book.

Books-to-Film
What books are being adapted to what size screen? Who's starring? Who's directing? Who's writing the screenplay? Find out here from The Book Standard.

The Myths are Coming
In a unique feat of publishing, new stories based on ancient myths written by authors from around the world will be in stores in 35 countries simultaneously this October. The Myths, a project spearheaded by Scots publisher Cannongate, told authors to pick a myth from any country and re-tell it in 30,000 words. Margaret Atwood, Donna Tart, Viktor Pelevin, Jeanette Winterston and David Grossman have already signed on and more authors are in the wings, says the timesonline.

Asian Literary Festival Struggles to Define Itself
The Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival is the first book fair in Asia, but it seems bent on introducing British writing to Asians rather than celebrating Asian literature (or recognizing it at all). The Weekend Standard (China) reports.

Censored Biography by American is Bestseller in China
Two biographies of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin have been published but only one is availible in stores in mainlaind China. Political Struggles in China's Reform Era, by Yang Jisheng, a journalist for China Daily, paints Zemin's struggles against Communist hardliners and his opposition to the Tiananmen Square Massacre. It has been banned by the Chinese government. The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin," by Robert Lawrence Kuhn, an investment banker, is seen largely as a pro-business fawning hagiography which has been embraced and heavily promoted by the Chinese government, even though they censored parts of it before publication. The Washington Post reports.

Russia is Guest of Honor at Paris Book Fair
As guest of honor at the Paris Book Fair (March 18-23)this year, Russia will mount an exposition at the Paris Expo Center featuring film, photography and art exhibitions, readings and panel discussions, reports russian news agency Novostia.

Canadian Howard Engel Honored
After 11 Benny Cooperman detective novels, Toronto native Howard Engel was awarded the Matt Cohen award by the Writer's Trust of Canada for lifetime achievement. The prize is all the sweeter because just four years ago, Engel suffered a stroke that left him unable to read. He was still able to write, however, and had no plans to stop. While completing his latest Cooperman novel, Memory Book">Memory Book, Engel has taught himself to read again and has acheived a 3rd grade reading level. The Globe and Mail reports.

Got Dead? Read This
Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral , is a seriously humorous look at catering Southern bereavement. The Mississippi Clarion-Ledger reports on Mississippi residents Gayden Metcalf and Charlotte Hayes, both writers accomplished mourners who they decided that they had to record the mixture of food and humor particular to Southern funeral rites. "One day I said, 'There's something wrong with this picture.' We get six months or more to plan a wedding. And by the time it's over, everyone is mad at one another. But the funeral ... that's your last big party. The last time you can ever do something for that certain someone," Metcalf said. The result is a respectful and howlingly funny collection of anecdotes and recipies that illustrate Southern funeral etiquette and food. "Nobody eats better than a bereaved Southerner," said Metcalf.

Ian Rankin Up Close
On tour in the U.S. to Promote his lates Rebus novel, Fleshmarket Alley, Ian Rankin talks about crime writing "I was not a fan of the genre. I became a crime writer by accident, while trying to write the 'great Scottish novel'," and what the future may hold for his beloved and flawed detective, John Rebus.

Literary Auction to Fund New Dictionary
When Scottish Language Dictionaries of Edinburgh asked Scotland's writers to donate items to raise money for a new Scots dictionary, they received some very prestigious items indeed. Scotsman.com reports that Harry Potter powerhouse J.K. Rowling donated "The Ballad of Nearly Headless Nick," a poem she cut out of one her books. Ian Rankin, author of the Rebus novels, arguably the most famous detective novels set in Edinburgh, donated a handwritten draft of "a possible opening to the final Rebus novel", sets out a scene where Rebus arranges to meet his arch enemy, the gangster "Big Ger" McCafferty. Alexander McCall Smith, creator of Mma. Ramotswe, donated of a series of pieces and the Scottish poet Edwin Morgan contributed a signed short story. The collection is being displayed at the Scottish Poetry Library until Thursday. The auction will be held on March 24 by Edinburgh auction house Lyon and Turnbull.

Iranian Dissident Wins Award for Persecuted Writers
Human Rights Watch announced that the Iranian writer Taqi Rahmani is the recipient of its annual Hellman/Hammett Award, which recognizes writers who are targeted by their governments. Rahmani has been in and out of prison for 17 years for criticizing the religious politics of the country, and for pointing out how fundamentalism has impeded democracy there. His writings for various reformist newspapers have resulted in his imprisonment and in the closing of the papers. Rahmani, the author of 26 books, has spent the last 22 months in prison without being charged. The Hellman/Hammett awards were inaugurated in 1990 and designed to bring attention to the struggles of writers throughout the world to engage in free expression. More than 400 writers in 88 countries have received these grants.

Police Find "Inconsistencies" in Hunter Thompson's Death
New York Post's Page Six reports that Colorado police are investigating whether Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalist and author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, did in fact, shoot himself.
Citing police reports obtained by the Rocky Mountain News, Page Six reports that Thompson's widow, Anita, has made conflicting statements about what she heard and that his son Juan was allowed to "enter the kitchen alone and drape a scarf over the body."
The Post does not note that that other reports, including this one, state Thompson was found dead at his desk in his home office and later that he was in the kitchen. Hmmm.
At the scene an officer noted "the semi-automatic Smith & Wesson 645 found next to Thompson's body was in an unusual condition. There was a spent shell casing, but although there were six bullets left in the gun's clip, there was no bullet in the firing chamber, as there should have been under normal circumstances." Stay tuned.

Sleeping with the Enemy
This on-point rant on the Guerilla News Network takes liberal writers to task for publishing their books through media conglomerates instead of through independent (and like-minded) publishers.

There is a great deal of talk from progressive leaders these days about how this country needs media reform as part of a multifaceted approach to saving democracy, and winning back the White House and Congress. A woeful lament is sung by our progressive leaders about how the media companies are now concentrated into homogenous conglomerates which, at best, worry only about bottom-line profits, while at their most sinister, are dedicated to furthering the radical right-wing agenda. We agree! What we don’t understand is why these same progressive writers and activists don’t walk the walk, and offer like-minded independent book publishers a seat at the table when strategies for media reform are being bandied about.

Read more here.

Authors Team Up for Tsunami Book
Just published in the UK: New Beginnings, an anthology of work by 16 authors that will aid Tsunami Relief. Priced at £ 5 ($9.60) the book contains first chapters of forthcoming books by writers like Stephen King, Tracy Chevalier, Ian McEwan, Margaret Atwood, Vikram Seth and Scott Turow. "To glimpse the opening chapter of your favourite author's new work before it is published will be an unprecedented experience for their fans," said Jonny Geller, who directed the project for publisher Bloomsbury. You can order a copy here.

World Book Day Not Observed in U.S.
Today is World Book Day. Don't feel bad if you never heard of it, America doesn't celebrate it (I could go off about this but I won't, it's too pathetic). The festival was started by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading and to promote reading among children. UNESCO encourages participants to recommend a book to a friend or a child, because most books are read through word-of-mouth. World Book Day was celebrated in 30 countries last year, but not here.
Never fear, Bookblog is here to take up the slack. First, read this piece from the Timesonline in London about books that have had an impact. Then visit the festival website to learn about what you can do to celebrate. And you can attend World Book Day 2004 and 2003 by visiting the Online Reading Festival, which offers film, transcripts of webchats, articles and links from writers who participated.

Location, Location, Location
Homes in crime novels have a special importance mainly because they are often the scene of the crime. How do writers dream them up? Paula L. Woods, a mystery writer herself, talks to several California-based crime writers, including Faye and Jonathan Kellerman, Nina Revoyr, Naomi Hirahara, and John Morgan Wilson, about how they evoke a sense of place in their novels and where the homes and rooms in them have come from.
"But sometimes homes we know just won't do, which sends writers like newcomer Patricia Smiley, author of the recent "False Profits," to the L.A. Times' real estate section and to open houses. "But I always hold my breath, waiting for the real estate agent to point his finger at me and shout, 'Fraud! Looky-loo! Writer!' " Read the article.

Hurston Novel Took Years to Adapt to Film
The film version of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching Goddebuts on ABC-TV this Sunday. Produced by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Films, the film took nine years and four writers to adapt for the screen, reports the Boston Globe. The writer who finally found a way to bring the emotional story of love and independence to the screen was the playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for Topdog/Underdog.

China's Literary Bad Girl Settles Down
Shanghai author Mian-Mian reached cult status with her first novel, Candy", a modern tale of youthful desperation chock-full of drugs, booze and sex. When the Chinese government banned the book, it became a bestseller and Mian-Mian reached international fame. Now 34, Mian-Mian is a clean and sober divorced single mom who doesn't go out clubbing anymore (much). Her second novel, Panda Sex (they only have sex twice a year), is about to be published in China. The book is a much quieter look at relationships and the difficulty of finding and sustaining love. "[People] will need time, time to understand what this book is because they are going to be expecting lots of sex, lust, drugs, and my complaints -- such as men are horrible, they treat me like dirt, suicide. But I don't have this inside me anymore," she says. Read the full interview at ChinaDaily.com.

Finalists for Kiriyama Prize Announced
The Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, awarded to books that "contribute to greater understanding and cooperation among the peoples and nations of the Pacific Rim and South Asia" has announced it's nominees for 2005. Topping the list of fiction finalists is 1999 National Book Award winner Ha Jin, for War Trash, a story of a Chinese prisoner during the Korean War. Also nominated for fiction are Rupa Bajwa for The Sari Shop (India) Perumal Murugan for Seasons of the Palm (India) Kelly Ana Morey for Grace is Gone (New Zealand) and Nadeem Aslam for Maps for Lost Lovers (UK). The Nominees for non-fiction are Luis Alberto Urrea for The Devil's Highway: A True Story (U.S.), Charles Wohlforth for The Wale and the Supercomputer(U.S.), Philip Short for Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare a biography of the Cambodian dictator (UK), Masayo Duus for The Life of Isamu Noguchi,
and Suketu Mehta for Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (India). The winners in both categories will be announced March 29 and will receive $15,000.

Fiction
The Appeal of Impropriety
Too Beautiful for You: Tales of Improper Behavior by Ron Liddle (Doubleday $19.95)
These delightfully evil stories will have you snickering, gasping, gagging, shaking your head and laughing. Guaranteed to appall and fascinate, these 11 deliciously distasteful tales will make you want to wipe your hands after putting it down.
Liddle's tribute to "improper behavior" is as fresh a concept for a collection of stories as I've ever heard, but even better, he has the literary talent to exploit it in full. more
Liddle gives us an uncomfortably close view of unpleasantness in many forms, while satirizing everyday hypocrises. Full of visceral images, cutting wit and beatiful language, these stories are surprising on many levels.
In "The Window" a man seeking to fake a suicide attempt gets more than he bargains for when he crosses paths with an irate office worker; "What the Thunder Said" offers a hot and sweaty look at a man having an affair with his mother-in-law, whom he dislikes intensely; in the screamingly funny "The Long, Long Road to Uttoxeter" is maimed in an accident but his lost limb is the last thing on his mind. The thoroughly appalling "Headhunter Gothic" starts with a man picking up a nurse while his wife is giving birth elsewhere in the hospital, and goes downhill from there; "Fucking Radu" offers up a cornucopia of monstrous people who seem all-too familiar; in the unexpectedly hilarious "Ring, Ring, goes the Bell" a high school principal and a homicidal student have a little talk.
Liddle, an associate editor of The Spectator in the UK, has served up a perfectly horrid little collection. And I mean that in the best possible way.
Buy this book!

Non-fiction
Not Your Average Schoolteacher
Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who Ushered in the McCarthy Era by Lauren Kessler (Perennial $14.95)
Elizabeth Bentley was descended from Puritans. Her mother's family, the Turrills, practically founded the town of New Milford Connecticut, where she was born. She attended Vassar on scholarship and went on to become a teacher at Foxcroft, an elite boarding school. Somewhere, Bentley's life took an unexpected detour: By the 1940s she had become the handler of one of the largest Russian spy networks in America, using sources at the highest levels of the U.S. government. When she turned on the Russians in 1945 and told her story to the FBI, she became infamous as "The Red Spy Queen" and the hearings resulting from her revelations kick-started the McCarthy Era. more
This fascinating biography recounts Bentley's life and describes her conversion to communism during the depression when she lived in New York City. Bentley's membership in the party morphed into espionage when she volunteered to spy on an employer (the Italian Embassy), and then when she was recruited and trained in more serious espionage by a Russian higher-up who would become her lover.
Born in New Milford Connecticut to a school-teacher and a businessman from Massachusetts, Bentley spent her early childhood in Connecticut. When she was seven, her parents left behind a large extended family and deep roots to follow her father Charles to various towns and various jobs (it is unclear why he left the newspaper job after only a year). Elizabeth remained a good student, but was always a loner, the fate of the new kid in town. Elizabeth Bentley would remain a loner, graduating from Vassar without making a single friend. Both her parents died before she started teaching at Foxcroft. In spite of the large family she and her parents had left behind in Connecticut, it appears neither Bentley nor her parents ever had contact with them again after they moved away. Why? The author makes much of Bentley's feelings of loneliness and isolation when she arrives back in New York from her Italian sojourn. Bentley is unemployed and barely able to scrape by at that point, and it would be natural for her to reconnect with her relatives (granparents, aunts, uncles, cousins) during those tough times, but Bentley considers herself adrift and alone, and the author never addresses or explains the absent family connection. This is a major hole in Bentley's story, because the author contends that Bentley's feelings of loneliness and isolation led her to join the communist party. The politically radicalized young Elizabeth wasn't destined to become a suburban housewife, but surrounded by family she probably would have exercised her beliefs very differently.
Nevertheless, this well researched and compelling tale succeeds as both biography and history -- full of sex, politics and intrigue, it recounts the private and political life of a woman who commits extraordinary crimes against her country, and also provides an intimate look at the rise of communism in America during and after the Depression, and the circumstances that lead to the McCarthy era.
Buy this book!

Non-fiction
Dispelling Dark Forces
The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us
by Martha Stout, ph.d. (Broadway Books $24.95)
This enlightening and disturbing book examines the unsettling statistic that four percent of Americans are sociopaths. If that doesn't sound like much, consider this: "There are more sociopaths among us than people who suffer from the much-publicized disorder of anorexia, four times as many sociopaths as schizophrenics, and one hundred times as many sociopaths as people diagnosed with a known scourge such as colon cancer," writes Stout. more
For most of us, the word sociopath conjurs up images of serial killers like Ted Bundy or Hannibal Lecter, but this is not always accurate. Sociopaths are not always murderers, explains Stout, but they always wreak emotional havoc in the lives of others because they feel no guilt, shame or remorse or empathy. Sociopaths have no conscience.
As a psychologist at Harvard Medical School who specializes in treating victims of emotional trauma, Stout says that many of her patients are victims of sociopaths in their families, whose emotional lives are shattered. "In helping my patients and their families cope with the harm done to their lives, and in studying their case histories, I have learned that the damage caused by the sociopaths among us is deep and lasting, often tragically lethal, and startlingly common," she writes. Helping people identify and avoid sociopaths and their destructive behavior is her motivation for writing this book.
After explaining just how a lack of conscience works, Stout offers checklist on how to recognize sociopaths (which you'll be applying to all the difficult people in your life, just to see) and offers case histories of sociopaths and their victims she has treated. From the destructive and self-involved CEO to the fake psychologist to the mean old lady to the killer whose daughter is Stout's patient, the case histories are the most compelling part of a truly compelling narrative. While the exposition at the end is a bit redundant, this is a riveting and necessary book.
Buy this book!

The Good Life
The Accidental Hunter by Nelson George (Touchstone $13.00)
When a hot R&B singer is abducted from his car, security consultant D. Hunter is hired to deliver the ransom. That's just the beginning of this stylish mystery set in New York's music scene. Hunter owns a security firm that serves the sports and music worlds, and you'll be wondering who is who in this authentic portrayal of the famous at play and in danger.While on the trail of a mysterious biker gang, D. is asked to guard a singer while she works on her transition from pop tart to hip-hop hottie, and an unexpected attraction ensues. When he does act on the attraction between them, it is very troubling that D. doesn't share his HIV-positive status with the singer, but it is probably more true-to-life that anybody cares to admit. Kudos to the author for making D.'s health just a fact. It has affected his health and routine in small but important ways, but has no bearing on anything else. As maneuvers through the A-list maze of agents, lawyers hangouts and hangers-on, it's hard to tell friends from enemies, but D. does just fine.
Buy this book!

Love, Death & Politics
The Virgin's Lover by Philippa Gregory (Touchstone Books $24.95)
Historian and author Philipa Gregory again delivers a gripping story surrounding the relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and the love of her life Sir Robert Dudley. more
Sir Robert and the Queen were childhood friends who met at the court of her father, King Henry VIII. In the turmoil that followed Henry's death, Elizabeth and Dudley were both imprisoned in the Tower of London by Queen Mary, Elizabeth's half-sister, and feared execution. So they had much in common and became even closer after Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1558. In appointing Dudley Master of the Horse and to the Privy Council, she assured him a prominent place at court and near her. Although Sir Robert was married to Amy Robsart, a woman in Norfolk, his relationship with Elizabeth was well known, as was the fact that they had discussed marriage. Gregory cleverly weaves what is known and what is unknown to offer a scenario to explain a mysterious death that has remained unsolved for centuries.
From the intimate perspective of four main players in the drama, builds an emotionally intimate page-turner filled with suspense. For Queen, Dudley, Robsart and Sir William Cecil, Elizabeth's closest advisor, a dangerous political situation and a painful emotional situation come to a head, resulting in a sudden death of Amy Robsart. The convenience of Lady Dudley's death immediately casts suspicions on Sir Robert and the Queen as well. Although an inquest ruled the death an accident, what really happened? Let Gregory tell you.
Buy this book!

Females with Bad Intentions
Dangerous Women Otto Penzler, ed. ($24.95 Mysterious Press)
This short-story collection celebrating very, very bad girls was edited by the venerable Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, and godfather of the city's mystery scene.
The 17 contributors are a Who's Who of crime and suspense fiction, each of whom weaves a disquieting tale of a dame up to no good. The powerfully written tales stay with you long after the lights are out. more

The opening story "Improvisation" by Ed McBain starts with the proverbial guy walking into a bar. Two women later he's dead; The collection has two standouts: Joyce Carol Oates' "Give Me Your Heart" a stunning tale of a woman scorned, so infused with paranoia it will give you goosebumps, and Jeffrey Deaver's "Born Bad" a tale of an alienated mother and daughter with a jaw-dropping twist.
Nelson DeMille's "Rendezvous" is a tense and blood-soaked tale of an encounter with a beautiful but deadly adversary during the Vietnam War. Walter Moseley's "Karma" is searing and violent in the traditon of Hammet. Ian Rankin's "Soft Spot," is a delightfuly improper and S.J. Rozan's "The Last Kiss" takes the idea of a woman on a mission to new heights.
All in all, a deliciously unpleasant compilation about the "fairer" sex.
Buy this book!

Non-fiction
Second-Chance Love
My Boyfriend's Back by Donna Hanover (Hudson Street Press $23.95)
You may have already seen Hanover, former First Lady of New York City, in one of her many television appearances promoting this book. As the appealingly cornball title suggests, it's about re-connecting with old loves, as she very happily did.
She recounts meeting her highschool sweetheart, Ed Oster more than thirty years after they broke up. They were married shortly afterwards.
As Hanover and Oster told their story of rekindled love to friends and acquaintances they discovered that they were part of a growing trend. more
Internet use has lead many couples to find each other again after years apart. After recounting the story of her reunion with Oster, Hanover tells the similar stories of a variety of couples who have found love in the same way.
Among the lovers is the actress Carol Channing, who reconnected with her highschool sweetheart and married him. They are both in their eighties.
Hanover describes the appeal of rekindled love as being the familiarity and trust which has already been established, thus making these relationships safer (most of the time) than starting over with someone completely new.
The stories of what broke the couples apart the first time around are as compelling as the reunions. Wars, families, bad timing, and in one case, stolen letters are all cited as having caused break-ups. This one is only for the seriously romantic.
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Bookblog Interview: Linda Fairstein
Linda Fairstein is a former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney in the Sex Crimes Unit and a New York Times best-selling author of seven crime novels featuring prosecutor Alexandra Cooper and NYPD Detective Mike Chapman. Fairstein's books are each centered around a city landmark or neighborhood and include alot of New York history along with the mystery. Her latest, Entombed, centers around a town house in Greenwich Village where Edgar Allan Poe once lived. In a recent interview, Fairstein talks about her new book, her research, food, what's coming up in her next book, and comments about the killer in most notorious case she prosecuted, the "Preppy Murder Case." more

There is so much historical content in your books - it's apparent you know the city and you love it. How much research do you do?
Tons of research. I first had a lot of access to parts of the city through the job (as prosecutor) I just love taking parts of New York that all of us think we know from the externals, and unlayering them, getting behind the scenes. So I really began in earnest in the second book, Likely to Die , because I set in a hospital that looks a lot like Bellevue and it was a where in fact there was a doctor was murdered during the night one night working in her office. So I love the idea of getting inside or behind what we think of as the most benign places in the city, that are populated by thousands of people every day, the hospital, that are bigger than the population of most towns in America. And from there I went to art museums and art galleries in Cold Hit and The Dead House was just a building that fascinated me on Roosevelt Island. With Entombed, both the physical places and then just the volumes of research about his life -- it caused me to re-read all of his works. I knew many of the short stories and most of the poems but I didn't know about the the other ten volumes of literary criticism and essays he'd written. So I got immersed again in Poe which was a great delight and then read biographies of Poe. Some really contemporaneous to his life and time, which were very different perspective from those written now, about 150 years later.

How did you decide to write about Poe for this book?
I read Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle as what were I considered by first real adult books at the age of 11 or 12. And I've always loved Poe not only the short stories but the poetry. And about four years ago I read newspaper stories that NYU was buying the little tenement that he lived in on Third Street to tear it down and build a law school. There was a lot of involvement by Mystery Writers of America and other groups who did not want the house torn down. It was of no architectural significance, it wasn't a landmark building for any other reason, but Poe lived there briefly before moving up to the Bronx. And I became fascinated. In many Poe stories he liked to entomb people, he liked to bury them alive. And he often said in his books that that was the most primal fear we all have, that we are going to be buried alive and that we are going to die a horrible death scratching our way out of something. So for weeks I would have this what if. What if they tear down this house that Poe lived in and find a skeleton? So it started with this very silly "what if" but I couldn't get it out of my head. The lawsuit went on and the writers' groups lost it and in fact the building was demolished. And I bought one of the bricks. The Mystery Writers of America bought a lot of the original 18th-century bricks and they put little brass plaques on them and for $40 they were selling them. So I bought a couple and put them on my writing desk for inspiration and it started me re-reading Poe stories. During which my husband said - my husband is from the Bronx - that he grew up near Poe Park-- I didn't know that. So we went up to the Bronx one day together and there is indeed, a little city park, and in it is a little white clapboard farm house [Poe Cottage] where he lived. And he used to walk every day in the botanical gardens. So I began to spend a lot of time researching there about places Poe had been, and that took me deeper into it. So that was great for Alex and Mike and it was great to be able to work so much of Poe's life into the book and it was great for the reader to learn there was that much of a connection with New York.

What are your favorite Poe Poems and stories?
My two favorite poems are The Raven and Annabel Lee. I love the sweetness of Annabel Lee. My favorite stories are The Cask of Amontillado and The Tell-tale Heart.

I love the way you write about food!
That's one of the things that's fun. I mean [Alex] has to eat somewhere, and why create fictional places when there are all these great places in New York? Alex shares with me the trait or the problem that she doesn't cook and then of course professional lifestyle - I rarely got out of that office before 7:30 or 8:30 at night. And so it is normal to be eating out three or four nights a week to be eating out somewhere and the rest of the eating taking out - deliveries, that great luxury of New York. And so [I write a lot about] Promola, my favorite Italian restaurant in the city, its consistently good food, it's wonderfully comfortable - I walk in - they used to see me walk in with detectives or my husband and they'd always find a corner for me. The humorous side is that now, since I've put them in every book, they have - my husband calls it my shrine to myself - they've got all my book jackets framed on the wall next to my favorite table. So it's fun to go in. When I'm writing I can create the scene and the mood depending on the day and the date or who she's with so that's a lot of fun.

There's always a point where Alex has to handle a false accusation from some teenager. How true to life are those scenes?
Dead-on accurate. These scenes come almost directly from cases. I mean, I never wrote the dialogue down, but I can recreate it in my head in a flash. In my non-fiction book and in many of my speeches it's something I refer to often. False reporting, or a real incident but lying about some aspect of it, is a very serious problem in sexual assault cases. It's a minority, its fewer than ten percent of the reports that come in, but it happens. That's what makes it so ugly for real victims because somebody encounters one person who lied and tends not to want to believe the next one. And so I enjoy putting these scenes in, for their realism and for the fact that this actually occurs. Here's Alex working on somebody's death or somebody's serial rape and in the middle of it, there's a person who's sucking the energy out of the police department and Alex and her colleagues with a false report. It shows how dangerous they are. And so I do try and put one in every book. One of the things that I dislike about crime fiction in books, in television and movies, is that the characters get the "real case" the skeleton in the basement, and all else stands still for them, there's no other new cases, that's what they work on day and night 'til they solve it. And that's just not real life, not in any police department not for Alex or any other prosecutor. The reality is you have the big case but you still have your datebook full of appointments from the week before, that you haven't seen yet, witnesses in an on-going case you haven't talked to, and by the way your beeper is still going off, the phone continues to ring, cases continue to happen and I mean nobody [has just one major case]. And so I just like showing that all this is going on. And Michael Connolly said when he wrote to me - because he spends a lot of time researching with police - he was so gracious to say that he really likes that in my books. And I like that too because it's real and its so rare that you see it in fiction.

What is happening in the future with Alex and Mike romantically?
I get more mail from fans and readers about that question than about anything else. [laughing]. And I'm very concerned about it because readers sense that she is beginning to understand - she hasn't said it out loud yet - that her feelings for [detective] Mike Chapman go deeper than this pal-around friendship they have. And I think she's keenly aware or probably going to express it soon that she's very worried about what becomes of their professional relationship, which they've had for ten years. Which certainly she can't work with him anymore, because the first time she would put him on the witness stand there would be the defense attorney who says, where'd you spend the night last night or are you doing this because alex cooper asked you to do it and were you in bed with here or are you doing this just so you could win the case. So it raises just enormous problems in the professional context. Since she doesn't age real time, since in each of these seven books there are just three months between books for her unlike the rest of us, I'm hoping readers will be patient while she tries to figure this out.

Are you working on your next book?
I'm well on the way [with the next book]. The next one takes Alex and Mike into the theater world in New York. Broadway - I'm doing the same thing - unlayering stories about broadway theaters, the Metropolitan Opera House, where, in fact, there was a murder in 1980 while there were 4,000 people sitting in the audience. It fascinates me that somebody, with a completely full audience and 400 employees backstage, disappears between acts and never comes back, and the orchestra played on and nobody even missed her. It takes me into the Metropolitan Opera House, the City Center and then a lot of theaters like the Belasco, which are supposed to have ghosts. The research just fascinating history of who lived in them and what terrible things have happened.

Robert Chambers, the killer in the most notorious case you prosecuted, was released last year and re-arrested days later on drug charges. Any thoughts?
Many times before he was released many people asked me if I thought he would kill again. His killing again wasn't [going to be] the problem. He's been addicted to drugs since he was 13. We proved that during the trial with records - He was kicked out of school at 13 for stealing a teacher's wallet and sent to his first attempt at rehab. And in jail, in 15 years of state prison when he had chances to be in detox programs, and there are good ones in prison, he chose not to, and was charged more than 15 times in fifteen years with drug infractions, of people smuggling drugs into him, that caused him to do most of his jail time in solitary. So if that wasn't a wake-up call to him - if killing a friend wasn't a wake-up call to him, nothing is. I don't meant this answer to sound like I have a crystal ball, but all of us who knew him, the detectives, the Levins [the victim's parents], the people who worked on the case, we all knew he'd be back [in prison] and the problem would be drugs. It's not brilliant of me, and it's not a crystal ball, it's just a sad fact about him.

Goodbye Geisha Girl
Out by Natsuo Kirino (Vintage Books $12.95)
Natsuo Kirino is the grande dame of Japanese Crime fiction and has written over 40 books, but this is her first title translated into English. What took so long?
This is really two novels: an outstanding suspense thriller and a scathing indictment of inequities of Japanese society. Kirino serves up a dark, violent and sophisticated thriller on par with the best of Val McDermid and Ruth Rendell, with some Pulp Fiction moments thrown in. more

Kirino portrays a side of Japanese society outsiders rarely see in this Tokyo noir. Four friends, working-class women who work the night-shift at a box lunch factory, become embroiled in a murder when one of them kills her abusive husband. The situation escalates when Masako, the most level-headed of the four, says she will help the terrified and hapless murderer Yayoi, dispose of the body. She soon realizes that effective disposal will mean...dismemberment. That's when the other two get involved. Why whould anyone in their right mind participate in something like this? Money. Through this horrible act the four women can find a way out of circumstances they each find unbearable, which they withstand in quiet despair or desperation. For each of them, the dead man is their last chance of escape, each from a different hell.
When a police investigation starts, the pressure fractures the friendship between the women, and when a gangster is accused of the crime, things get really ugly. Not to be missed.
Read an interview with Natsuo Kirino here.
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The Tell-tale Bones
Entombed by Linda Fairstein (Scribner, $26.00)
Fairstein once again mixes her potent cocktail of crime and history, this time following the trail of Edgar Allan Poe in New York City. Faistein should really be given the key to the city. As a prosecutor, her exceptional work in trying cases was often the stuff of headlines. As a writer, she has carved out a franchise in the over-crowded mystery genre combining the city's oft-ignored history in each of her procedurals. more
Infused with the authenticity of her experience as a prosecutor, Fairstein's books offer a unique and infatuating perspective on the city.
New York prosecutor Alexandra Cooper is in the midst of investigating a brutal rape when a human skeleton is discovered walled in the basement of a brownstone owned by the NYU School of Law.The investigation into the skeleton's identity and the circumstances of the death start from an unlikely source: 19th century writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe, who lived in the house being demolished by the law school, and had a definite uh, thing about being buried alive. Both investigations move forward at a breakneck pace as Cooper and her partners in law and order Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace follow the Poe trail from the brownstone where he lived up to the Bronx where he moved to what is now Poe Cottage and the Bronx Botanical Gardens, where he lived and wandered while his young wife wasted away from an illness, and where an unknown group called The Raven Society keeps its documents. As the skeleton's identity is confirmed, Poeian themes of revenge and retribution from permeate the death, although the victim was no scholar. Interveaving suspense with her trademark historical background, fans of Poe will find this Cooper adventure to be a tour de force, full of the same themes in Poe's stories.Meanwhile, as they zero in on the identity of the rapist, who is determined to be a serial attacker from the past, Cooper and Chapman pull off the screamingly fantastic apprehension of the suspect just in the nick of time.
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Stocks, Bonds and Confusion
For Love and Money: A Novel of Stocks and Robbers by Leslie Glass (Ballantine Books $23.95)
A funny thing happened on the way through the plot here. It seems to have evaporated out from under the narrative. One major plot point is left dangling and unresolved, and since it involves murder, it's pretty hard to ignore. Another fades away and is never pursued. Another is resolved in a ludicrous and unbelievable fashion. This is neither mystery nor romance nor chick-lit, but an unsatisfying amalgam of all three forms, each half-developed. more

The flaws are a shame because Annie Custer, the protagonist of the story, is easy to like and sympathize with. She is a harried stockbroker with a deadbeat husband and two daughters running amok (actually just one runs amok, the other one almost never leaves her room). Then her maid quits. Then her best friend asks a favor. Carol, the best friend, asks Annie to handle her parent's opening of a brokerage account with a pile of stashed stocks and bonds they've had hidden in the house for years. Carol's mother is ill and she wants the funds put away and accounted for before something happens. She asks Annie to go to their house and remove the stock certificates, bonds, whatever else and open an account for them. Although it's illegal for her to remove anything from anywhere, Annie reluctantly agrees after she's assured that the parents' accountant will also be present. Of course the unthinkable occurs. By the time the certificates are being inventoried at Annie's firm later that day, a quarter of a million dollars in bonds is missing. Intriguing questions arise all through the story but are never answered, which makes this an exercise in frustration. The money belonged to Mrs. Teath (Carol's mom); why did Mr. Teath have it hidden away for years without telling anyone where it was? Where did Mrs. Teath get the money? It is mentioned that the money may have come from her father, who was either a mobster or a bootlegger or both -- and we will never know because the matter is never mentioned again. Where did the jewelry come from? Why didn't Carol confront her father about taking her mother's inherited (from whom? when?)jewelry after her death? Why is Mr. Teath saying his wife has cancer when she does not? Why is he never questioned by anyone when she dies of what seems to be starvation? Why doesn't Carol care that her mother was murdered? Why are the missing bonds more important than a murder? Why does Annie decide to stay with her husband and move to Florida? Why bother reading this?
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The Glory Days of Australia's Pulp Fiction
Once upon a time these mass-produced books featuring lurid covers and lots of sex and violence were produced by an endless supply of writers, who were often burned out by the relentless deadline of one book a month. The Sydney Morning Herald takes a look back at the heyday of it's pulp fiction industry, and interviews the only woman who wrote the often banned books at the time, K.T. McCall.

"Gonzo" Writer Hunter S. Thompson Commits Suicide
The author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the infamous drug and alcohol-fueled trip to cover an anti-drug conference is a classic. Thompson was one of the founders of the egocentric "gonzo" journalism style, in which writers put themselves in the center of the story.

Russian Authorities Seize Pushkin Poems; Labels them Pornography
In an attack of literary schizophrenia, Russian police in Ivanovo, outside Moscow, have seized copies of literary giant Alexander Pushkin's early poetry, reports The Scotsman newspaper. Prosecutors and literary experts are "studying" the volumes of poetry to decide whether they constitute pornography, which is banned in Russia, or erotic literature which is allowed. If the volumes are found to be pornographic, booksellers could face jail time.
Pushkin (1799-1837) is to Russian literature what Shakespeare is to English literature. Not only are students required to study his works and learn quotations, but "allusions and quotes are sprinkled throughout everyday speech."

Lucien Carr Dies; Introduced Beat Writers
Journalist and editor Lucien Carr, who first brought together the Beat Poets succumbed to cancer Friday at his home in Washington, D.C. he was 79, reports AP. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he befriended and introduced the three poets and writers who ignited the beat poetry movement in America in the 1950s: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg and William S. Burroughs.
Carr served two years in prison after stabbing a friend to death in 1944 while fending off "an unwanted homosexual advance." After he had dumped the body in the Hudson River, Kerouac and Ginsburg persuaded Carr to turn himself in. Carr went on to work as an editor for UPI.
He is survived by three sons, including Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist.

Found in Translation
Forget Condi, the translation of Alaa Al Aswany's The Yacoubian Building into English is the latest attempt to ease relations between the U.S. and the Arab world, reports China's Weekend Standard. Since the events of September 11, there has been a move toward increasing cultural awareness and understanding on both sides.

Biographers Suffer Privacy Decision
James Campbell writes a fascinating piece about the impact of a court decision in New York regarding writer Richard Wright's correspondence which ruled that a writer's letters are property of the writer (not the recipient) and are considered private because they were never meant for publication. In the aftermath of this decision, biographers of writers in particular are suffering.
In some cases, authors come to an agreement with the author's relative or estate, but Campbell was unable to reach an agreement with James Baldwin's sister and she refused permission to reprint any of his letters. Unfortunately his manuscript was written and quoted extensively from Baldwin's letters. "I was forced to extract the quotations from the text and liquefy them, so that they blended with my own prose. Baldwin's aphoristic sayings, his frantic and often funny accounts of his quarrels and complexes, his money worries and lovelorn complaints, all had to be told in my words, not his.

Bernard Stone, Founder of London's fabled Turret Bookshop, Dies
The Turret Bookshop opened in the 1960's, was the kind of place where the owner would offer you a glass of wine as you walked in. Bernard Stone, bibliophile made it the kind of safe haven/comfort zone where poets and writers and readers could spend hours talking about books, and sipping the ubiquitous cocktail, reports the UK's timesonline. Through the years he became friend, mentor and publisher to many established poets and writers, sometimes lending them money until the advance check arrived. Stone died on February 4 at 84.

New Booker International Prize Nominees Announced
The Man Group, plc. which sponors the UK's most prestigious literary award, The Man Booker Prize, this year inaugurates a new international literary lifetime achievement award (of sorts), the Man Booker International Prize. The £ 60,000 prize will be awarded once every two years. "This new prize goes a step further in highlighting one writer's continued creativity, development and overall contribution to world fiction," states the Booker International Prize website. The writers can be from anywhere in the world, but their works must be available in English. The eighteen contenders include four Nobel laureates: Gabriel García Marquez (Colombia), Nagib Mahfouz (Egypt), Günter Grass (Germany), and Saul Bellow (Canada), as well as the Muriel Spark (Scotland), Tomás Eloy Martinez (Argentina), Margaret Atwood (Canada), Stanislaw Lem (Poland), John Updike (U.S.) and others. Get the complete list with bios and works here. The winner will be announced in London in June.

First Lady Gets Peek at First Book
During their European visit, First Lady Barbara Bush and the President stopped in Mainz, Germany, home of Johannes Gutenberg, the man who developed the first printing press and printed the first book, known as the Gutenberg Bibles. Mrs. Bush requested a peek at the centuries old bible which is one of only six in the world. It was opened to her favorite passage in the bible, Psalm 91, reports the Dallas Morning News. But you don't have to fly to Germany to see the Gutenberg Bible, just click here.

Is PublishAmerica for Real?
PublishAmerica defines itself by what it is not. It is not, states co-founder Larry Clopper, a vanity publisher. Because the company offers editing and marketing services and does not charge writers a fee, it considers itself a traditional publisher with, shall we say, democratic view. However, their books are rarely found in bookstores and sales are made through publish-on-demand technology. The Author's Guild, among others, says the company is not a real publisher and is doing writers a disservice. One writer who used PublishAmerica said her manuscript received no editing and only minimal marketing support. She said she had to sell copies of her book herself. She has started a petition, signed by 100 of the company's current and former authors demanding "honest disclosure about the services" PublishAmerica provides.

Andrea Levy Wins Whitbread Prize
For the first time, a British writer has won two prestigious awards for the same novel. Andrea Levy's Small Island won the Orange Prize for fiction, worth £ 30,000, and last night won the Whitbred Prize, worth another £ 30,000. Small Island tells the story of two couples building lives in postwar England: one, Jamaican immigrants (like Levy's parents) one native English.

Do MacArthur Grants Misfire for Authors?
Crain's Chicago Business magazine analyzes the effectiveness of the prestigious MacArthur Grants for writers. Called "genius grants," the $500,000 prizes are awarded yearly to authors as well as scientists, architects, artists, and those in other fields with no strings attached. Crain's contends that MacArthur's board tends to recognize writers far past their peak, who have already written their best work and have received numerous other awards. The goal of the grants, writes Mark Scheffler, should be to recognize up and coming writers and help them reach their peak. The average age writers who have received the MacArthur is 48.

Dylan's Memoir is Finalist for National Book Critics' Circle Award
Bob Dylan's Chronicles, Vol. 1, a hit with readers and critics, is a finalist for the biography award of the National Book Critics' Circle. The winners will be announced March 18.

Lord of the Rings Director to film The Lovely Bones
The film director Peter Jackson, who won an Oscar for the final film in his Lord of the Rings trilogy has purchased the rights to The Lovely Bones, reports The BBC. The 2002 international bestseller by Alice Sebold is narrated by a girl who has been raped and murdered. The film is scheduled for release in 2007 and Jackson says he will produce it independently. "You have an experience when you read the book that is unlike any other. I don't want the tone or the mood to be different or lost in the film," said Jackson.

Writer Petitions to Have Hollywood Street Named After F. Scott Fitzgerald
The image of jazz-age writer F. Scott Fitzgerald that endures is very much entwined with New York City, where he wrote and published his first book and enjoyed his first success. The image of he and his wife Zelda jumping into the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel during a night of partying is, after all, based on fact. But Fitzgerald spent the last, quieter (post-Zelda) part of his life living and working in Hollywood working on screenplays and stories and on his last unfinished novel, The Last Tycoon. To honor Fitzgerald and his years in Hollywood, Rodger Jacobs is petitioning the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to name a street after him on the 65th anniversary of his death. Read the petition here.

From Abuse and Addiction to Writing and Celebrity
J.T. LeRoy was born to a 14-year-old drug addicted prostitute who worked truck stops. He was so beautiful and delicate that he resembled a girl, which is how he started turning tricks as a child alongside his mother. Heroin addiction soon followed, but somehow LeRoy took a detour from the highway to self-destruction. Clean and sober at 24, LeRoy is now a literary celebrity with a bright future. With his third book, Harold's End about to hit the shelves, he is named by celebreties as their favorite writer, and "has been embraced by established writers including Tobias Wolff, Michael Chabon and Mary Gaitskill, and by a cadre of celebrities with, as it happens, their own troubled pasts: Courtney Love, Winona Rider, Tatum O'Neal and Billy Corgan," reports the Eugene Register-Guard. LeRoy, whose fiction is based on his childhood experiences, is in no danger of becoming a flavor of the month. "The thing about attention is it's like drinking. One drink is too many, and a million isn't enough,'' he says. Meanwhile, the film adaptation of LeRoy's second book, The Heart is Deceitful Above all Things, starring Peter Fonda, Wynona Ryder and Marilyn Manson, is making the rounds at various international film festivals, reports Filmstew.com

UK Writers in Free-speech Furor
A proposed anti-crime bill in England which includes a sanction against "inciting religious hatred" has caused members of the English PEN, the writer's organization, to seek a meeting with the Home Secretary before the Bill goes up for discussion in the House, reports the UK Guardian. Two hundred writers, including Salman Rushdie, Monica Ali, Antonia Fraser, signed an open letter to Home Secretary Charles Clarke, arguing the new law would end freedom of expression, stating that "to gag criticism is to encourage abuse of power within religious communities." The controversy comes in the wake of recent violent demonstrations in Birmingham against the play Bezhti. After a riot by Sikh protesters the play was closed. Under the new law, the playwright could be prosecuted for "inciting religious hatred." In their letter to Mr. Clark, the writers state: "Here a violent mob, on the grounds that a play offended their religion, successfully prevented its performance, acted as censors, and threatened the life of its author...the new legislation encourages rather than combats intolerance. We do not need it. What we need is a signal from government that it wishes to defend true democracy and its many virtues, including those of dissent and the freedom of expression." Read full text.

Da Vinci Code Author Denies New Plagiarism claim
Dan Brown was in court in New York yesterday denying claims he plagerized material from yet another author in his blockbuster bestseller. Lewis Perdue claims that Dan Brown plagerized from two of his books -- The Da Vinci Legacy and Daughter of God. Brown is also fighting charges of plagerism from authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh who wrote Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the 1980's which put forth theories about Jesus, Mary Magdalene and the Priory of Scion that are incorporated in The Da Vinci Code. Brown in fact lists Baigent and Leigh as sources for his book and named one of the lead charachters Leigh Teabing, a combination and anagram of both authors' surnames. That suit is still pending.
Meanwhile in Scotland, Rosslyn Chapel, scene of the book's denoument and reputed resting place of the Holy Grail, is feeling "the Da Vinci effect" with a 56 percent increase in tourism. The chapel will open now only for hourly guided tours, a move to preserve the 600 year-old structure from damage to its delicate carvings. A 3 million pound renovation of the chapel is planned to start later this year, reports the UK Herald.

Book-of-the-Month Club Tries to Get With the Program
Beaten into irrelevance by the likes of Oprah, Amazon.com and the ubiquitous Borders and Barnes and Noble stores all over the country, The Book-of-the-Month-Club is seeking ways to serve customers more individually and cut costs. Step one: Get rid of the literary panel which cholse it's main selections every year. Step two: Give readers a choice of what kind of book will be sent to them every month. Step three: free shipping on orders over $25. But some things never change; new members still get five books for a buck with a promise to buy four more. The New York Times, reports.

Jon Stewart's America Banned in Mississippi
Just when you think this country can't get any more stupid, we've reached a new low: Jackson County Regional Library System has voted to ban America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inactionby Jon Stewart, the nation's bestselling book. Ostensibly, the reason is the nude photos with heads of the Supreme Court Justices pasted on them (yeah, right). The people of Jackson County are irate about the decision, but are powerless. The SunHerald reports.

First-time Novelist at 57 is Teary-eyed
Chances are you've seen Ron McClarty. As a character actor, he was a cop on Spenser: For Hire, is a judge on Law and Order, and was a sex therapist on Sex and the City. He's done stage work and commercials. For decades, after a hard day emoting, McClarty would descend to his small basement office -- dubbed "the pit of despair" by his kids -- and write books. Ten of them. None of them were ever published, or even acknowledged by publishers. Then, McClarty, who also records books on tape, gave a copy of his latest manuscript The Memory Running, to his producer. She loved it and got it recorded. Then Stephen King gave it a rave in his column in Entertainment Weekly and the fun really started. $2 million later, the book has been published by Viking/Penguin and there's a possible movie deal in the works. "It's like a guy dying in the desert coming across the Ritz-Carlton," he says.

Whitbred Prize Winners Announced
London's prestigious Whitbred Prizes have been announced in five categories, reports Reuters: First Novel: Eve Green by Susan Fletcher; Best Novel: Small Island by Andrea Levy (also winner of the Orange Prize); Biography: My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary, Queen of Scots by John Guy; Children's Book: Not the End of the World by Geraldine McCaughrean; Poetry: Corpus by Michael Symmons Roberts. Each winner receives £ 5,000 and is included in the competitition for Whitbred Book of the Year, to be announced on January 26.

Two Chicago Writers, Chinese take-out and Talk
Studs Terkel at 92 is an institution. His legendary interviewing prowess is still evident every week on his radio program. His books about all facets of American life, Hard Times, on the Depression (1970); Working (1974), on people and their jobs; The Good War (1984), on World War II, which won a Pulitzer Prize; Race(1992), on relations between blacks and whites in America, and Hope Dies Last (2003), on how people cope with difficult times have raised the oral history to an art form. Recovering from a fall, Terkel has by no means slowed down. The International Herald Tribune reports as he sits down with friend and fellow writer Alex Kotlowitz, a reporter and some take out to talk and reminisce.

California Museum Exhibit Honors Wallace Stegner
During his long and prolific career Wallace Stegner won the Pulitzer Prize for Ficition and the National Book Award. As a writing professor at Stanford University his he taughtLarry McMurtry, Scott Turow and Edward Abbey. Consistently named one of the best writers of the American West, and mentioned as a writer who should have won the Nobel Prize, Stegner's legacy is little appreciated today. The Los Altos History Museum in California has debuted a new exhibit, Wallace Stegner: Throwing a Long Shadow, to honor the man and his work.

Writer Contemplates Quitting--Kind of.
The prolificMadison Smartt Bell is a native of Tennesee who landed in Baltimore via Princeton and New York City. For twenty years he has been a novelist and professor, for ten years his primary subject has been his Haitian Trilogy, historical novels revolving around the former slave Toussaint L'Ouverture and the rebellion he led in Haiti in 1801. The first book of the series was a finalist for the National Book Award. The last volume of the history, The Stone That the Builder Refused out in November, Bell, who has also written contemporary novels, says, "Actually, I might quit." Although no one is taking him seriously -- "Whenever I say this everybody laughs," Bell says he doesn't feel the desire to write anymore although he does have a few ideas floating around.