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

George R.R. Martin signs five-year, eight-figure deal for more HBO projects

Mar 29 2021: After the huge success of HBO’s adaptations of his Game of Thrones books, George RR Martin has signed a deal to develop several television series for the network and its streaming arm, HBO Max.

Hollywood Reporter has revealed that the author, who won four Emmys for ...

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Houghton Mifflin sells HMH Books & Media to HarperCollins

Mar 29 2021: Learning technology company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced Monday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to divest HMH Books & Media, its consumer publishing business, to HarperCollins Publishers, a division of News Corp. (NWSA), for a cash purchase price...

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Swiss billionaire joins the bidding for Tribune Publishing

Mar 29 2021: An octogenarian Swiss billionaire who makes his home in Wyoming and has donated hundreds of millions to environmental causes is a surprise new player in the bidding for Tribune Publishing, the major newspaper chain that until recently seemed destined to end up in the ...

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How women invented book clubs, revolutionizing reading and their own lives

Mar 27 2021: The women met wherever they could get their hands on a few books and some quiet: in empty classrooms, backrooms of bookstores, at friend’s homes, even while working in mills.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the first American reading circles — a precursor ...

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Beverly Cleary, beloved children’s book author, dies at 104

Mar 26 2021: Children's author Beverly Cleary died Thursday in Carmel, Calif. She was 104 years old. Cleary was the creator of some of the most authentic characters in children's literature — Henry Huggins, Ralph S. Mouse and the irascible Ramona Quimby.

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Larry McMurtry, novelist of the American West, dies at 84

Mar 26 2021: Larry McMurtry, a prolific novelist and screenwriter who demythologized the American West with his unromantic depictions of life on the 19th-century frontier and in contemporary small-town Texas, died on Thursday. He was 84.

Over more than five decades, Mr. McMurtry ...

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National Book Critics Circle awards announced

Mar 26 2021: The winners of the National Book Critics Circle awards have been announced:

• Fiction: Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. 
• Nonfiction: Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire by Tom Zoellner
• Biography: Stranger...

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JRR Tolkien's own illustrations appear in Lord of the Rings for the first time

Mar 25 2021: A series of 30 illustrations, maps and sketches created by JRR Tolkien while he was writing The Lord of the Ring are to be included in the epic fantasy novel for the first time since its publication in 1954.

Tolkien was always modest about his abilities as an artist:...

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