Do you ever wonder what life would be like without punctuation? Days would run into nights into months into years into centuries into millennia. It would be like having streets and avenues with no traffic lights. Summer clothes would be worn in winter and vice versa.

Faye Kellerman is the bestselling author of 26 novels, 22 of which feature the husband and wife team of Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus. Murder 101 is the twenty-second Decker-Lazarus novel.

When my mother was four years old, she met a black person for the first time. After shaking the woman's hand, she looked at her own to see if any of the 'black' had rubbed off. She shared this story with me when I was growing up to illustrate what a white world she was raised in.

Those most deadly to us are those we cannot easily identity as masterminds. Normal people can become evil, and evil people can look normal.

Our new world of direct access to readers requires authors to spend more time and effort to get the word out about their books, but with that investment there is great reward.

The impact of media tie-ins on best-selling ebooks makes its presence felt even more strongly this week.

As a gay mother I've had to be discerning because many children's books include a mother and father, and have often thought about writing some of my own to reflect his upbringing.

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"Linda, Lyidia, Lindon, Lyda..." The acclaimed American short story writer Lydia Davis reads an ongoing piece of writing -- 'a false autobiography' -- of mistakes made about her name and profession. It's funny!

Today's digital natives have grown up online and consequently consider the online world to be primary while the physical world is secondary, the exact opposite of their parents' priorities.

Bailey pillaged the Hollywood vaults of history, starting with the frontier days of silent film through the psychedelic 1970s to dig up the true and often surprising stories of 70 actors, directors and screenwriters. The book is completed by Hemingway's stylized portraits.

Charles Martin. Mark that name down in your head as it is one you are going to hear more and more about in the literary world. Martin is the author of ten novels including his latest A Life Intercepted and with each book his talent is more pronounced.

The storyline has long been that Hart challenged the press to follow him around and, in the post-Watergate spirit of enterprising investigative journalism, the press did just that, fearlessly uncovering, well, er, what?

While it's a great thing to step back and consider the significant progress made in the last few decades towards social and economic equality for women, the fact is you never have to wait very long before encountering a stark reminder of just how much work is left to do - even up here in oh-so-liberal Vermont.

In this clip I asked Gail Sheehy, who interviewed Hillary Clinton many times over the decades, if she thinks the country is now ready for a woman president.

Sure there are people who have an endlessly positive and productive worldview. But sometimes this kind of behavior is known as denial.

Punctuating pieces of writing with French phrases is a charming affectation that was more prevalent in previous ages. The idea of course is the English or American writer can evince a certain level of cultivation and/or sophistication through his knowledge of French.

When couples experience marital discord, we accept it as a normal cost of being an adult; we even admire them for their willingness to stick it out. But when a singles express wistfulness with their unattached state, they risk being branded "pathetic." As opposed to, say, human.