Jasper Fforde
Three separate interviews in which Jasper Fforde discusses the Thursday Next series, his Nursery Crime novels and Shades of Grey, the first in a trilogy set in a future world recognizable as our own - but only just.
Abraham Verghese
An interview with Abraham Verghese about his life and writing and in particular about his extraordinary 2009 novel Cutting for Stone, set in 1960s and '70s Ethiopia and 1980s New York.
Martha A Sandweiss
An interview with Martha Sandweiss in which she discusses her book Passing Strange, a biography of Clarence King who lived a double life—as the celebrated white explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a black Pullman porter named James Todd, married to Ada with whom he had five children.
Amy Greene
Amy Greene talks about her first novel, Bloodroot, which brings her native Appalachia—and the faith and fury of its people—to rich and vivid life.
In Author Unknown, Don Foster reveals a startling fact: since no two people use language in precisely the same way, our identities are encoded in our own language, a kind of literary DNA. Combining traditional scholarship with modern technology, Foster has discovered how to unlock that code and, in the process, has invented an entire field of investigation -- literary forensics -- by which it becomes possible to catch anonymous authors as they betray their identities with their own words.
Foster's unexpected career as a literary sleuth began when he solved a puzzle in Shakespeare's Sonnets that had stumped scholars for centuries, and then stumbled onto another literary mystery, a funeral poem written for a 1612 murder victim. After definitively connecting the "W.S." who wrote the poem with William Shakespeare, Foster found himself on the front page of The New York Times. Just days later, he was invited to try to crack the case that at the time was a national obsession: who was the anonymous author of Primary Colors? In less than a week, Foster unmasked Joe Klein.
Foster's methodology was immediately understood by prosecutors and other investigators to be a perfect tool for identifying the authors of critical documents in criminal cases. Soon, he was enlisted in the infamous Unabomber case, and in a fascinating chapter he takes us inside the tangled mind of Ted Kaczynski, the former professor who gave new meaning to the academic motto "Publish or perish." Then it's back to Washington, for the capital's hottest new guessing game: who wrote the Lewinsky-Tripp "Talking Points"?
Returning to the literary, Foster investigates the case of "Wanda Tinasky," the oddball California bag lady who many believed to be Thomas Pynchon. And in the final chapter, Foster makes a surprising -- and heartening -- discovery about a beloved holiday icon.
As entertaining as it is eye-opening, Author Unknown shows us how Don Foster uses his unusual methods to search out the hidden identities behind anonymous documents of all kinds. Anyone who reads this remarkable book will find it impossible to read -- or write -- in the same way as before.
Book Reviews
Publisher's Weekly
.... His accounts of his high-profile roles in transatlantic Shakespearean squabbles and journalistic whodunits are both personable and page-turning...... While lexiphiles will enjoy such minutiae, any book lover can savor the irony of how an Elizabethan elegy eventually put a literary scholar on the trail of a serial murderer. (Nov. 7)
Library Journal
Literary forensics? That's Vassar English professor Foster's specialty. Here he shows how he proved a long-lost poem was Shakespeare's, identified Joe Klein as Anonymous, and more.
Named for a flower whose blood-red sap possesses the power both to heal and poison, Bloodroot is a stunning fiction debut about the legacies—of magic and madness, faith and secrets, passion and loss—that haunt one family across the generations, from the Great Depression to today.
Samara Taylor used to believe in miracles. But her mother is in rehab, and her father seems more interested in his congregation than his family. And when a young girl in her small town is kidnapped, her already-worn thread of faith begins to unravel.
When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, quirky, tart-tongued archaeologist Ruth Galloway lives happily alone in Norfolk. But when a child's bones are found on a desolate beach nearby, and Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson calls Galloway for help, Ruth finds herself in...
Few works of literature are as universally beloved as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole –and the grown woman whose story is no less...
The Coral Thief, as riveting and beautifully rendered as Ghostwalk, Rebecca Stott’s first novel, is a provocative and tantalizing mix of history, philosophy, and suspense. It conjures up vividly both the feats of Napoleon and the accomplishments of those working without fame or...
I rarely read anything before this. Years ago I picked this one up and couldn't put it down. It changed me into a book nut. It was a wonderful ...
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I can't believe I waited so long to read this book. Shame on me. This book was wonderful, lyrical, entertaining - all the makings of a wonderful ...
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The book held so much for the reader but in the end I felt robbed. The evolution of Trudy was disturbing and somewhat insulting. She came across as ...
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Justice Department still has issues with Google Settlement(Feb 05 2010) The Department of Justice dealt a serious blow Thursday evening to the chances that the Google Book Search settlement will gain court approval later this...
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Hachette formally adopts 'agency model'(Feb 05 2010) Hachette Book Group USA became the second major U.S. publisher to officially announce its intention to move to an agency model for the sale of e-books....
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Author Unknown
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