Meghan Daum has made a career of mining her life with candor to explore larger points about our culture in essays, books and opinion columns for the Los Angeles Times. "My Misspent Youth" describes how she racked up $80,000 in debt in her 20s. In "Life Would Be Perfect if I Lived in That House," she peered at her personal history through the windows of the many abodes where real estate lust had landed her.

After two decades of opening the curtains on her inner sanctum, Daum knows what's bound to attract gawkers — including her admission that having children "felt unnecessary" to her. Although her goal in "The Unspeakable" isn't specifically to ruffle feathers, it's certainly her expectation. In fact, in these 10 personal essays — written expressly for this book — she's drawn to uncomfortable, often unflattering revelations, what she calls "the unspeakable thoughts many of us harbor." Her aim, she says, is "to examine the tension between primal reactions and public decorum … the spin we...

Hachette and Amazon have reached a deal over e-books and print sales, the two companies announced Thursday. They have been locked in an unusually public dispute over pricing since May.

While the new e-book terms will not take effect until early 2015, the settlement was reached in time for Hachette books to return to Amazon's digital shelves in time for the Christmas shopping season.

"Amazon and Hachette will immediately resume normal trading, and Hachette books will be prominently featured in promotions," they said in a joint statement.

Representatives from both sides weighed in. Amazon's vice president for Kindle, David Naggar, said, "We are pleased with this new agreement as it includes specific financial incentives for Hachette to deliver lower prices, which we believe will be a great win for readers and authors alike."

Hachette Book Group CEO Michael Pietsch said: "This is great news for writers. The new agreement will benefit Hachette authors for years to come. It gives Hachette...

Thomas Eric Duncan was the first victim of Ebola to die in America. Feeling unwell, the Liberian immigrant went to a Dallas hospital that at first sent him away with antibiotics. After Duncan returned, he was diagnosed with Ebola but did not survive.

His fiancee, Louise Troh, has signed a deal with Weinstein Books to tell the couple's story.

"The love of my life and the father of my son came to America to marry me," she said in a release. "It was supposed to be the first happy day of a new life of joy for us all. But before we could make our new family, he died a terrible death in a quarantined room. I am writing this book to tell people about Eric, about our love story, about our family and about my faith that has been tested but not broken."

Duncan's family recently reached a settlement with Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, but Troh was not part of that settlement. She and Duncan have a 19-year-old son who had not seen his father since he left Liberia as a child.

More than 5,000...

Buddhists speak of the "third half of life," and at age 70, Karen Armstrong is well into what might be called the third half of her career. First was a time as a member of a Catholic religious order — a nun — in England and as a student at Oxford. Next was a period when she served as the host of documentaries about religion on British television and the author of their tie-in books. And then came the impressive run of work she began with "A History of God" in 1993: big, clear, learned, opinionated books about religion, in which she at once cherishes the religious outlook and laments the abuses of religion, whether by churches, states or individual fanatics.

Such a book is "Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence" (Alfred A. Knopf: 512 pp., $30). Since 9/11 the conventional wisdom has insisted that religion and violence are inextricably intertwined. But Armstrong, who has never failed to call out religion for its failings, proposes that "modern society has made a scapegoat...

The PEN Center USA literary awards, as always, honored excellent writing and celebrated heroes of free speech on Tuesday. And host Aisha Tyler exercised it with a high-energy, highly profane commentary that kicked the event's energy up a notch.

That gave winners like Lena Dunham and Judd Apatow -- who took the teleplay award for the "Together" episode of "Girls" -- a colorful starting point for their speeches. "I realized we beat out the last episode of 'Breaking Bad.' They've made a terrible mistake," Apatow joked.

Sharing the podium and trading punch lines at the Beverly Hills event, Apatow and Dunham quickly turned their attention from their own work to a man seated near the stage: Norman Lear.

Lear, creator of groundbreaking television programs "All in the Family," "Sanford and Son," "Maude," "Good Times," "The Jeffersons," "One Day at a Time," "Diff'rent Strokes," "The Facts of Life," "Silver Spoons" and more, was there to accept the Lifetime Achievement Award at the end of the...

It had to happen sooner or later: A writer in Seattle has started “The James Franco Review.” But wait — the journal is not devoted to the study of James Franco, or to publishing his so-called literary work. The idea, instead, is to create a space for writers to be bold, to operate “as if our work was already worthy of an editor’s attention” — to channel their inner James Franco, in other words.

“Years ago,” writes founding editor Corinne Manning, “my friend Erin and I joked that we should submit some fiction under a boy’s name. Aaron and Carl. A younger professor told us, solemnly, that wasn’t such a bad idea. Neither of us had the guts to do it. But when we started seeing James Franco’s name in magazines, and then saw his book of poetry from Graywolf, we joked again: Let’s submit some fiction under James Franco’s name and see what happens.”

There is, to be sure, a bit of the tongue-in-cheek to Manning’s comments, although “The James Franco Review” is not meant as a joke. Rather, the...