Breaking news on authors, publishers, and book-related topics

Rowling goes to court

Mar 05 2008: Library Journal reports that J.K. Rowling will be in court March 13 in an attempt to block the publication of The Harry Potter Lexicon, written by librarian Steve Vander Ark. The book is based on Vander Ark's Harry Potter Lexicon website which, apparently, Rowling has ...

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Another fake memoir

Mar 04 2008: The New York Times reports that Margaret B. Jones, author of Love and Consequences, a memoir of growing up half-white, half-Native American in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child and joining the gang world, is not Margaret Jones but Margaret Seltzer - who grew ...

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Homeless men find shelter in a book club

Mar 04 2008: The Christian Science Monitor reports that at a time when book-reading is declining (1 in 4 people polled admitted to having read no books in 2006) and is especially low among poorer people, many of the homeless men at 2100 Lakeside Men's Shelter in Cleveland are ...

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Writer Admits Holocaust Book Is Not True

Mar 03 2008: Misha Defonseca, author of the bestselling Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, published in 1997, has admitted that her book "was an elaborate fantasy she kept repeating, even as the book was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France....

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Shortlist for Oddest Book Title of the Year announced

Mar 02 2008: The Bookseller magazine has announced the shortlist for the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year:

• I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen
• How to Write a How to Write Book
• Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues
• Cheese Problems Solved
• If You ...

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Conservative writer William Buckley dead at 82

Feb 28 2008: Reuters reports on the death of writer and commentator William F. Buckley who is credited with founding the modern conservative movement in US politics. According to Jack Fowler, publisher of National Review, the magazine Buckley founded in 1955, Buckley had suffered ...

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Free download of 'Beautiful Children' by Charles Bock

Feb 27 2008: Random House is offering the entire text of Beautiful Children, Charles Bock's debut novel, for free online until midnight on Friday 29 February. Readers can share, e-mail or print the text, which is available as a PDF download at beautifulchildren.net/read.

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Publishers Weekly up for sale and Quills Awards 'suspended'

Feb 26 2008: Reed Elsevier, parent company of Reed Business Information which includes Library Journal, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Variety, and other top trade journals, recently announced that the magazines were up for sale. In the wake of this it has also been ...

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