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Tasha Tudor's children scrap for $2M Vt. estate

'Harry Potter' author hit with plagiarism lawsuit

Spelling Lesson: Tori writes for children

Poet wins UK's Costa Book of the Year prize

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02/23/2010

Superman's debut comic book sells in NYC for $1M
NEW YORK (AP) – A rare copy of the first comic book featuring Superman sold Monday for $1 million, smashing the previous record price for a comic book.

02/21/2010

Book review: 'A Dead Hand' by Paul Theroux
This is not the Bollywood India of colorful costumes, where everyone breaks into song and dance at the end. There is no slumdog millionaire here.

Book reviews: 'Where Armadillos Go to Die' by James Hime, 'From Birdwomen to Skygirls' by Fred Erisman, 'Texas Tornado' by Jan Reid, 'The Glory Guys' by Mona D. Sizer

Book review: 'The Routes of Man' by Ted Conover
In a state like Texas, crisscrossed by freeways, highways and avenues covering vast distances, it is no wonder that road conditions, including speed limits, are a big deal. Author Ted Conover is aware of such common concerns.

Book review: 'Monsieur Pain' by Roberto Bolaño
1938: the Peruvian poet César Vallejo is hiccuping to death in a Paris hospital bed. His organs are fine, and his doctor is baffled, and there is nothing established medicine can do.

Local and national best-sellers
This week's list of local best-sellers is from Borders, 5500 Greenville Ave. National best-sellers are from The New York Times. Parentheses indicate book's position last week; indicates first week on list.

Book review: 'The Bell Ringers' by Henry Porter
Every step you take / I'll be watching you ... The refrain from the stalker's love song, "Every Breath You Take," by the Police, might serve as the epigram for this gripping new British thriller.

Dallas-area book and author tours
Noam Zion will discuss A Night to Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices at 11 a.m. today at Legacy Books, 7300 Dallas Parkway, Plano.

Book review: 'The Bread of Angels' by Stephanie Saldaña
Stephanie Saldaña's The Bread of Angels is an imperfect but poignant memoir about hitting rock bottom in love and faith. It's also a traditional love story with obstacles that will keep readers guessing at the outcome.

02/16/2010

Book review: 'The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted,' by Gerald Imber
In this biography, New York physician and writer Gerald Imber resurrects William Stewart Halsted, the father of modern surgery. In the late 19th century, Halsted introduced the idea of having surgeons wear sterile rubber gloves to prevent postoperative infections, and he pioneered surgeries for breast cancer and hernias.

02/15/2010

Books: An odd trip in 'Chronic City' by Jonathan Lethem
AUSTIN – Novelist Jonathan Lethem hails from Brooklyn, as does much of his fiction. In Motherless Brooklyn , about a detective with Toilette's syndrome, and The Fortress of Solitude , the story of an interracial friendship, his home borough is as much a character as a locale.

02/14/2010

Book review: 'The Yellow House' by Patricia Falvey
Patricia Falvey, who was born in Northern Ireland and now splits her time between there and Dallas, makes a strong fiction debut with The Yellow House , a stirring romantic drama set during the nascent period of "the troubles" that tore Ireland apart throughout the 20th century.

Book review: 'Union Atlantic' by Adam Haslett
Straddling the headline worlds of war and economic meltdown, Adam Haslett's debut novel, Union Atlantic , depicts the inner workings of a Boston-area banking institution and how its pathological employees squandered billions.

Mary Karr, Mark Bowden among speakers planned for Mayborn conference
Memoirist Mary Karr, Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden and Sports Illustrated writer Gary Smith will be the keynote speakers at this year's Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference.

Book review: 'The Lost Books of the Odyssey' by Zachary Mason
"I have never been at a loss for a tale, lie, or synonym," says the hero of Zachary Mason's The Lost Books of the Odyssey , who shares this much at least with Homer's Odysseus.

Book review: 'The Great American University' by Jonathan R. Cole
As a former provost of Columbia University, Jonathan Cole's observations about America's research universities carry weight. After noting that there are about 4,500 institutions of higher learning in the U.S., responsible for about 1.5 million baccalaureate degrees each year (plus about 90,000 professional degrees and 50,000 doctoral degrees), he offers a prescription and a warning.

Book review: 'You Are Not a Gadget' by Jaron Lanier
It's just another day in Digital City. Millions of Web denizens flit about the online world, sampling video satire on YouTube, updating their Facebook status, hopping over to Wikipedia for some quick research, dumping photos into Flickr accounts, checking out book and music recommendations on Amazon, and firing off tart zingers (and worse) in response to bloviators who spark their ire.

Book review: 'The Brightest Star in the Sky' by Marian Keyes
The narrator of Marian Keyes' The Brightest Star in the Sky floats ethereally inside a Dublin apartment building, closely watching its quirky residents.

Local and national best-sellers
This week's list of local best-sellers is from Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 2201 Preston Road, Plano. National best-sellers are from The New York Times. Parentheses indicate book's position last week; indicates first week on list.

Book and author tours in the Dallas area
John D. Bledsoe will discuss and sign The Gospel of Roth: The Good News About Roth IRA Conversions 7 p.m. Tuesday at Legacy Books, 7300 Dallas Parkway, Plano.

02/11/2010

Books: 9/11, end of Cold War changed perspectives for Alex Berenson
Business is booming again for espionage novelists. Just ask Alex Berenson, whose fourth spy novel, The Midnight House , just hit bookstores.

02/10/2010

Vampire author Anne Rice set to release video book

Associated Press

Anne Rice

Anne Rice is giving the video book a try. The author of "Interview With a Vampire," "The Vampire Lestat" and many other favorites has agreed to terms with the video book company Vook on a multimedia edition of "The Master of Rampling Gate."
Quoted: What they're saying about Anne Rice
Link: What is a vook?

02/09/2010

Kate Gosselin to release personal new book
Kate Gosselin has a new book, "I Just Want You to Know," scheduled for release in April.

02/08/2010

Book review: 'Wild Child' by T.C. Boyle
T.C. Boyle has published 20 books in 30 years, beginning in 1979 with the story collection Descent of Man . He's proved, over the course of his career, to be not only a prolific writer but also an ingenious sociologist. He delights in critiquing our culture: His 2009 novel The Women , for instance, excavated the blustery love life of the American icon Frank Lloyd Wright. With Wild Child , his ninth story collection, Boyle continues his critique one bizarre situation at a time.

02/07/2010

Book review: 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' by Rebecca Skloot
It's 1951 in the city of Baltimore. In the colored section of Johns Hopkins charity hospital, a doctor begins treatment on a young mother of five named Henrietta Lacks.

Book review: 'Point Omega' by Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo's Point Omega is an experimental novel presented as conceptual art. Only 117 pages, the work is overloaded with heavy ideas about war, poetics and consciousness. Though DeLillo's writing displays his patented sharpness, the novel is a shaky proposition.

Book review: Two volumnes on death row, by lawyers
Like all lawyers who represent clients who might be executed by the state, Andrea D. Lyon lives with job-related anxiety every day. Losing means more than a ruined life for a client; it might mean death.

Local and national best-sellers
This week's list of local best-sellers is from Jokae's African-American Books, 3223 Camp Wisdom Road. National best-sellers are from The New York Times. Parentheses indicate book's position last week; indicates first week on list.

Book review: 'The Midnight House' by Alex Berenson
In his fourth novel featuring CIA superstar John Wells, Alex Berenson has reduced the amount of shoot-'em-up action and instead has built his plot around a disturbingly detailed description of how the United States might have employed torture during the past decade.

Author Tours: Yehuda Berg, Elizabeth Somer and more
Yehuda Berg will discuss and sign Kabbalah: The Power to Change Everything at 7 p.m. Monday at Unity Church, 6525 Forest Lane.

01/31/2010

Appreciation: J.D. Salinger shunned public, but caught its imagination
Few writers have affected as many Americans as J.D. Salinger. Here's a collection of thoughts about the life and works of the reclusive author, who died Wednesday at the age of 91, starting with David L. Ulin of the Los Angeles Times.

Darwin's descendant discusses his book and the movie about the naturalist's struggles
Randal Keynes, 62, is the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. He is also the author of the book Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution , inspiration for the new film Creation , starring husband-and-wife Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly.

Book review: 'The Swan Thieves' by Elizabeth Kostova
In a reading environment when it seems that every book jacket and promotion screams "relentless page-turner!" or "you'll stay up all night reading!," it's remarkably refreshing to come across an author who takes her own sweet time drawing you into the story.

Book review: 'Stones Into Schools' by Greg Mortenson
Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson's popular first book, told the story of the American mountaineer's 10-year effort to build a school for the remote Himalayan village that took him in after his failed attempt to climb K2, the world's second highest peak.

Book review: 'Small Wars' by Sadie Jones
Even small wars have horrendous consequences in the lives of those who fight them. The military "emergency" in Cyprus in the late 1950s finds Hal Treherne, his wife, Clara, and their small twins stationed there. The country is hostile and unfamiliar to them. Hal's job is to help defend the British colony with Clara's support.

Book review: 'Settled in the Wild' by Susan Hand Shetterly
"The idea that we were going back to the land made me laugh. It was the word back . With our son, who was less than a year old, my husband and I moved into an unfinished cabin on a sixty-acre woodlot in downeast Maine with no electricity, no plumbing, no phone. It was June 1971.

Book review: 'The Last Train From Hiroshima' by Charles Pellegrino
The illustrations of origami cranes that open The Last Train From Hiroshima are the only pleasant thing the book offers.

Book review: 'Shocking True Story' by Henry E. Scott
While reading the novel L.A. Confidential 13 years ago, businessman Henry E. Scott became fascinated by a reference to the real-life, but defunct, Confidential magazine. Published from 1953 to 1958 to highlight Hollywood sex scandals, the magazine spawned imitators and fueled the rise of a celebrity gossip culture.

Local and national best-sellers
This week's list of local best-sellers is from Barnes and Noble Booksellers, 7700 W. Northwest Highway. National best-sellers are from The New York Times. Parentheses indicate book's position last week; indicates first week on list.

Author Tours
Gordon Hutner , author of What America Read: Taste, Class, and the Novel 1920-1960 , will discuss "Contemporary American Realism and the Fiction of Prestige" Thursday at Southern Methodist University's DeGolyer Library. 6 p.m. reception, 6:30 p.m. lecture.

01/29/2010

Howard Zinn: Gave America an alternative history in 'A People's History of the United States'

Reclusive 'Catcher in the Rye' author Salinger dies at 91
J.D. Salinger, who created a lasting symbol of adolescent discontent in his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye , has died. He was 91.

01/28/2010

'Catcher in the Rye' author J.D. Salinger dies at 91
NEW YORK (AP) – J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth hero and fugitive from fame whose "The Catcher in the Rye" shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, has died. He was 91.

'People's History' author Howard Zinn dies at 87
Howard Zinn, an author, teacher and political activist whose leftist "A People's History of the United States" became a million-selling alternative to mainstream texts and a favorite of such celebrities as Bruce Springsteen and Ben Affleck, died Wednesday. He was 87.

Poet Mary Oliver inspires reverence among preachers
Mary Oliver rose to fame on her nature poems. Yet some of her most ardent fans are preachers who spend even the loveliest Sunday mornings inside, wearing starchy clothes.