JK Rowling to unleash three new ‘Harry Potter’ related books

George R.R. Martin posts excerpt from new ‘Game of Thrones’ book

Author George R.R. Martin has released a chapter from a yet-unpublished book in the “Game of Thrones” series — the basis of the hit HBO TV show — but says he’s not done writing. “You want to know what the Sand Snakes, Prince Doran, Areo Hotah, Ellaria Sand, Darkstar and the rest will be up to in ‘Winds of Winter’? Quite a lot, actually,” Martin wrote in a blog post late Tuesday.

 

Supermodel Gisele Bündchen to release mass-market edition of her $700 coffee table book

Supermodel Gisele Bündchen is set to release a more affordable, mass-market edition of her Taschen photography book on May 10, reports Women’s Wear Daily. The new edition of the fashion-focused coffee table book, which includes more than 300 photographs from Bündchen’s modeling days will retail for $69.99, compared to the original’s $700 price tag. It was limited to a total of 1,000 numbered copies signed by Gisele Bündchen, in addition to an Art Edition of 100 copies, with the latter including a print signed by Juergen Teller.

 

Miramax to adapt latest novel from “The Silver Linings Playbook” author

Miramax has won the bid to option the motion picture rights to the latest novel from “The Silver Linings Playbook” author Matthew Quick.

 

JK Rowling’s first screenplay set for publication

J.K. Rowling’s first-ever screenplay has been picked up for publication by Scholastic, the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books. The published screenplay, which will retail for US$24.99 and CDN$29.99, will be a hardcover with an e-book edition of the screenplay also to be released by Pottermore, the global digital publisher of J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World and priced at US$12.99.

 

The Stooges’ Iggy Pop to release tell-all book

A book revealing the life adventures of The Stooges frontman Iggy Pop is set for release later this year, according to The Guardian. The 300-page book penned by Jeff Gold and contributor Johan Kugelberg recounts Pop’s stories in his own words and was put together from material sourced by the two writers during an interview with the singer which spanned two days. Dubbed “Total Chaos: The Story of The Stooges,” the tome will be published by Third Man Books and is also expected to include previously unreleased photos, in addition to contributions from Jack White, Johnny Marr and Joan Jett among others.

 

Chile honors poet Neruda before reburying body

Chile paid homage to Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda as it prepared to rebury him Tuesday after examining his body to determine whether he was assassinated by the country’s former dictatorship. A court in February ordered that Neruda’s remains be returned to his tomb after they were examined by specialists who are expected to release their findings in May. It was due to be returned on Tuesday to the Isla Negra, a coastal area in central Chile where Neruda was previously buried according to his will, facing the Pacific Ocean.

 

New publishing app Juggernaut launches in India

The mobile publishing app Juggernaut was launched Friday,April 22, with hopes of tapping into the Indian e-book market.

 

Millennium sequel to be written in American detective fiction style

Swedish author David Lagercrantz, who took over the Millennium crime series from the late Stieg Larsson, said the fifth book will be written in a straight-talking style popularised by Raymond Chandler. While the book will be a continuation of Larsson’s crime fiction Nordic noir trilogy, the style will be closer to the terse, blunt prose used by Chandler, whose detective novels featured a solitary anti-hero solving crimes in the seamy and corrupt underbelly of Los Angeles in the 1940s.

 

British FGM survivor hopes her memoir will help end ‘this barbaric abuse’
By Emma Batha LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Hibo Wardere’s childhood ended abruptly at six years old when she was led to a hut outside her Mogadishu home, pinned to the floor and subjected to the most brutal form of female genital mutilation (FGM). Like all girls in Somalia who undergo FGM, Wardere was told never to speak about what had happened. This week sees the publication of her memoir “Cut”, the first book about FGM in Britain where Wardere has lived since fleeing civil war in Somalia as a teenager.

Fear and fright as horror tales come alive at ‘Goosebumps’ show
By Marie-Louise Gumuchian LONDON (Reuters) – With disorientating corridors, dark enclosed spaces and freaky horror scenes, the hugely popular “Goosebumps” book series comes to life in a new immersive theater show taking audiences through hair-raising stories. Based on the 1990s children’s horror books by R.L Stine, “Goosebumps Alive” leads viewers from one scary tale to another as they make their way around the dark tunnels of The Vaults venue at London’s Waterloo. “We wanted to do a show for adults for the main reason that there’s this wealth of material of ‘Goosebumps’ stories that we thought that an audience might be nostalgic for,” director Tom Salamon told Reuters.

High hopes for Indonesian author vying for Man Booker glory

Already compared to literary heavyweights Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Haruki Murakami, great expectations weigh on Eka Kurniawan, the first Indonesian ever nominated for a Man Booker International Prize. The 40-year-old is up against revered writers like Orhan Pamuk and Kenzaburo Oe, both past recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature, but there is a growing buzz about the works of this little known author. Despite this, Kurniawan says his inclusion on the longlist for the prestigious award, for “Man Tiger” — the story of a young man who gnaws his elderly neighbour to death — came as a “surprise”.

 

Pasternak’s ‘Zhivago’ notes sells for $77,500 in New York

The papers included a poem written to his lover, the poet Olga Ivinskaya, who served as his inspiration for the novel’s main character Lara. Parts of the poem appear in the book, which is set against the backdrop of the Russian revolutions in the early 20th century.

 

Beach Boy Brian Wilson announces memoir

Brian Wilson has announced that he will release his memoirs this October reports Pitchfork.

 

‘Mr Nice’ Howard Marks dies aged 70

Howard Marks, a major British drugs smuggler turned cannabis legalisation campaigner and bestselling author, has died of bowel cancer aged 70, British media reported on Monday. Marks graduated from Oxford University in the 1960s before embarking on an international criminal career spanning two decades that he described in his bestselling 1996 autobiography “Mr Nice”. In his book he also described doing business with the Trafficante crime family in the United States and using connections with Irish Republican Army paramilitaries in Ireland.

 

Celebrity British drug dealer and author ‘Mr Nice’ dies at 70
LONDON (Reuters) – Former British drug smuggler Howard Marks who wrote about his exploits in an autobiography “Mr Nice” has died at the age of 70 after suffering from bowel cancer. Marks, who learned of his condition last year, died in the early hours of Sunday at his home near Bridgend in Wales, according to a statement from his publisher Harvill Secker. Marks turned to cannabis trafficking in the 1970s after graduating from Oxford University with a degree in physics. …

‘Harry Potter’ author’s chair sells for $394,000 in NY

The chair on which British author J.K. Rowling sat to write the first two volumes of her best-selling “Harry Potter” series sold at auction in New York on Wednesday for $394,000. The modest, 1930s-era oak chair was part of a mismatched set of four that Rowling was given for free when she was a single mother living in subsidized housing in the Scottish city of Edinburgh. Heritage Auctions said it sold for $394,000, including taxes — nearly 14 times the price that it last fetched at auction in 2009.

 

American children’s author wins Astrid Lindgren prize

American children’s author Meg Rosoff on Tuesday won the 2016 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for young people’s literature, the organisation announced. “Meg Rosoff’s young adult novels speak to the emotions as well as the intellect. Rosoff was born in Boston in 1956, attended Harvard University and later published her first book “How I Live Now” in 2004.

 

Chair used by ‘Harry Potter’ author J.K. Rowling up for auction

A wooden dining chair used by author J.K. Rowling while she wrote the first two “Harry Potter” books is up for grabs at auction in New York and is expected to fetch tens of thousands of dollars. Hand painted and signed by the novelist, the oak chair comes with a letter marked as having been sent by “Owl Post”, in which Rowling described the chair’s history. “It was given to her with a group of chairs and this was the most comfortable,” James Gannon, director of rare books at Heritage Auctions, told Reuters.

 

Chair J.K. Rowling used to write Harry Potter books to sell at auction

A chair J.K. Rowling used to write the first two volumes of her best-selling Harry Potter series is set to sell at auction in New York on Wednesday. Pre-auction bidding via the Internet had reached $65,000 on Monday for the modest 1930s-era oak chair on which Rowling, 50, sat while writing “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” published in Britain in 1997, and “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” (1998), the first two of seven volumes. “This was the comfiest one, which is why it ended up stationed permanently in front of my typewriter, supporting me while I typed,” Rowling wrote in a letter accompanying the chair, the auction house conducting the sale, Heritage Auctions, wrote on its website.

 

Virginia governor vetoes bill to label books ‘sexually explicit’ in schools

By Gary Robertson RICHMOND, Va. (Reuters) – Virginia’s governor vetoed a bill on Monday that would have made the state the first in the country to require that parents be notified if students were assigned readings labeled “sexually explicit.” A mother’s objection to Toni Morrison’s novel “Beloved” being taught in her son’s classroom helped spur the legislation that would have given parents more control over classroom materials. “This requirement lacks flexibility and would require the label of ‘sexually explicit’ to apply to an artistic work based on a single scene, without further context,” Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, said in a statement. The measure would have made Virginia the first U.S. state to mandate that schools notify parents if teachers planned to use the labeled materials, according to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.

 

Hungarian Nobel Literature Prize winner Imre Kertesz dies

Hungarian author Nobel Literature Prize winner Imre Kertesz has died aged 86 early Thursday in Budapest after a long illness, his publisher said. The Holocaust survivor, who won the Nobel in 2002, passed away at his home, the director of Magveto Publishing, Krisztian Nyary, told AFP. In an interview in 2013, Kertesz revealed that he had Parkinson’s disease.

 

Jim Harrison, novelist of the wild, dies at age 78

Jim Harrison, the American novelist and poet who explored the natural world in such works as “Legends of the Fall,” has died, his publisher confirmed Sunday. A heavy drinker, smoker and self-described manic depressive, Harrison’s fictions were extensions of his love of wild places, and his passions as a hunter, fisherman and cook.

 

JK Rowling posts publisher rejection letters to inspire authors

“Harry Potter” author JK Rowling has publicly aired two rejection letters she received for her first novel using the pseudonym “Robert Galbraith” in a bid to encourage young writers to persevere against the odds.

 

Book signed by Anne Frank up for auction in New York

A book of fairy tales owned and signed by German-born Jewish diarist Anne Frank before she perished in the Holocaust will go on sale in New York valued at $20,000 to $30,000, an auction house said Wednesday. The well-worn edition of Grimm’s fairy tales in German, which includes favorites Snow White and Hansel and Gretel, belonged to Frank and her sister Margot before they went into hiding in 1942 to escape the Nazis. Frank wrote her name and that of her sister on the fly leaf, said Swann Auction Galleries, which will conduct the sale on May 5.

 

Surviving Shakespeare script urges empathy for foreigners

The only surviving play script including William Shakespeare’s handwriting, and containing a passionate speech against xenophobia, is being put online to mark the 400th anniversary of the bard’s death, the British Library announced Tuesday. The script is a section from a controversial play that revolves around how statesman Sir Thomas More quelled a 1517 anti-foreigner uprising in London by asking the rioters to imagine themselves being banished to live abroad. The 164-line scene has been attributed to Shakespeare, one of several writers brought in to rework “The Book Of Sir Thomas More”.

 

Prize-winning novelist Anita Brookner dies aged 87

Anita Brookner, the author and art historian who won the 1984 Booker Prize for fiction, has died at the age of 87, it was announced Tuesday. The novelist, who won the Booker for her novel “Hotel du Lac”, died peacefully in her sleep on Thursday, according to a notice of her death in The Times newspaper. The only child of secular Polish Jews who settled in London, Brookner was born in 1928.

 

Los Angeles Times reveals Annual Festival of Books line up

Over 500 authors, actors, experts and luminaries including Buzz Aldrin, Carrie Brownstein, Arianna Huffington and James Patterson are scheduled to appear at this year’s two-day event, taking place from April 9

 

Pat Conroy, author of ‘Prince of Tides’, dies at 70
Pat Conroy, who turned tales of his painfully dysfunctional family into best-selling novels such as “The Great Santini” and “The Prince of Tides,” died on Friday at the age of 70, his publishing company said. Conroy, who had announced in a Feb. 15 Facebook post that he had pancreatic cancer, died at his home in Beaufort, South Carolina, surrounded by family and loved ones, said Todd Doughty, a spokesman for Doubleday. “The water is wide and he has now passed over,” said his wife, novelist Cassandra King Conroy.

Latest Hillary Clinton bio for kids highlights successes and failures

As Hillary Clinton sets her sights on becoming the first female president of the United States, the Democratic front-runner has found herself in another role – the subject of children’s books.     In “Hillary Rodham Clinton: Do All the Good You Can,” author Cynthia Levinson charts her rise from her youth in Park Ridge, Illinois, to her work as a U.S. senator and secretary of state. Levinson brought Clinton’s story this week to fourth graders at Cold Spring Elementary School in suburban Washington, whom she found were paying close attention to the presidential race.     “I hope kids enjoy the book, and I hope that it’s thought-provoking for them,” said Levinson, who went to Wellesley College with Clinton and interviewed mutual acquaintances and the former first lady for the book.

 

Pope answers kids’ tough questions in first book for children

By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis, who has penned weighty encyclicals and decrees, has taken a stab at the simpler side of his job with a book for children to answer such questions as “What did God do before the world was made?” That question was put to him by 8-year-old Ryan K., from Canada. The book, called “Dear Pope Francis,” was a brainchild of Father Antonio Spadaro, a priest and editor of the Italian Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica who was the first person to interview Francis after his election in 2013. Spadaro brought the pope the 31 drawings and questions by children from around the world and Francis dictated his responses in simple language.

 

Harper Lee’s second novel tops 2015 US bestseller list

Harper Lee’s second novel “Go Set a Watchman” topped the US bestseller list in 2015, selling 1.6 million copies more than half a century after her Pulitzer-winning first book was published. The figures were based on US print unit sales reported to Nielsen since the novel was published in July, snapped up by avid fans who for decades thought the reclusive author of “To Kill a Mockingbird” would never publish another word. Pre-orders turned it into an instant bestseller at many retailers the moment its release was announced by publishers HarperCollins last February.

 

Missing Hong Kong publisher returned to China ‘voluntarily’: wife
By James Pomfret and Rain Liang HONG KONG (Reuters) – A publisher of books critical of China’s leaders who went missing in Hong Kong last week has traveled to China voluntarily, his wife said on Tuesday, as Britain reminded its former colony of its commitment to press freedom. Four other associates of the publisher that specializes in selling and publishing gossipy political books on China’s Communist Party leaders have been unaccounted for since late last year. The disappearances and China’s continued silence have stoked fears of mainland Chinese authorities using shadowy tactics that erode the “one country, two systems” formula under which Hong Kong has been governed since its return to China in 1997.

Monkey cannot own copyright to ‘selfie,’ U.S. judge says

By Andrew Chung NEW YORK (Reuters) – A rare crested macaque that took a now internationally famous “selfie” cannot own the copyright to the photograph because he is not human, a U.S. judge ruled in a suit brought by animal rights group PETA on behalf of the monkey. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals brought the case in September on behalf of the seven-year-old monkey Naruto against British photographer David Slater, who self-published the photo in a wildlife book. Naruto, who resides on a reserve in Indonesia, took the image and several others in 2011 using a camera left unattended by Slater, the suit said.

 

Shunned by establishment, Israeli novel on taboo love flourishes

A love story between an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian Muslim has become an unlikely bestseller, after Israel’s education ministry refused to allow the book in the high school curriculum. Dorit Rabinyan’s “Gader Haya,” which means “Borderlife” in English, was left off courses last week in a bid to avoid encouraging relationships between Jews and Arabs, sparking a ferocious backlash by Israeli cultural figures and a buying frenzy. The country’s main fiction chart announced on Friday that the book had shot to the top as a bestseller in book stores and online.

 

Emma Watson’s Feminist Book Club Is Officially Open for Business

Emma Watson’s feminist book club is now open for fans and feminists to join. After announcing plans to start a book club on Twitter Wednesday, Watson made good on her promise by launching a group on Goodreads.com named “Our Shared Shelf,” a suggestion made to the actress by a fan on Twitter.

 

In new book, Pope Francis explains vision of compassionate Church

By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis calls in a new book for Roman Catholic leaders to be compassionate shepherds to a “wounded humanity”, not lofty scholars quick to condemn and exclude people who don’t obey Church teachings. The book, “The Name of God is Mercy,” breaks no new ground but is a compelling restatement of the themes of Francis’ papacy told in simple, breezy language in a freewheeling conversation with veteran Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli. In the 150-page book, Francis also repeats his often-quoted “Who am I to judge?” statement about homosexuals, saying that “people should not be defined only by their sexual identities.” The question-and-answer book, to be released on Tuesday, coincides with the Jubilee Year of Mercy, during which the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics are called on to seek forgiveness and forgive.

 

Hit novel series ‘The Guardians’ looks for TV, film deal

Young adult adventure series “The Guardians” is being prepared for conversion to a movie or TV format. Haitian-born US author Lola StVil has written 10 volumes in the paranormal romantic fantasy series “The Guardians,” including two two-parters and a pair of short story collections.

 

‘The Innocent Killer’ to get UK and Commonwealth release

The hit documentary might be available to all Netflix subscribers around the world, but until now, the book that inspired “Making a Murderer” was only available in the US.

 

French author Michel Tournier dies at 91

Michel Tournier, a major French literary figure in the latter half of the 20th century, died Monday at the age of 91 in his home near Paris, his family and the local mayor told AFP. “He died at 7:00 pm (1800 GMT),” surrounded by his loved ones, said his godson Laurent Feliculis, whom the author considered his adopted son. Tournier’s death was confirmed by the mayor of Choisel, a village of some 550 residents southwest of Paris where Tournier, a devout Catholic, had lived for the past 50 years.

 

Links between slavery, environmental damage are cause for hope, author argues
By Ellen Wulfhorst NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Human slavery and environmental destruction go hand in hand, a complex but encouraging combination that could make efforts to eradicate the global woes easier to focus and succeed, a leading expert argues in a new book. Enforcing and funding existing anti-slavery laws, which are universal, will lead naturally to protection of the environment, writes Kevin Bales, author of “Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Ecocide and the Secret to Saving the World.” “These two problems, this ancient and terrible problem of slavery and this newer concern that we have about climate change, are actually so tightly linked together that the solutions are fitting both of them,” Bales told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview this week.

McKay seeks to keep financial misdeeds topical in ‘The Big Short’

By Marie-Louise Gumuchian LONDON (Reuters) – As turmoil in world markets revives memories of the 2007-2009 financial crisis, “The Big Short” director Adam McKay says he wanted to tackle the misdeeds of Wall Street in an entertaining but hard-hitting way, to ensure they are not forgotten. The movie, which has earned five Oscar nominations including best film and best director, is based on the best-selling book by Michael Lewis “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine”. It stars Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt as outsiders who foresaw the credit and housing crisis that led to massive job losses and recession.

 

Pope Francis answers children’s questions in new book

Pope Francis has written his first book for children, replying to 30 probing letters from children around the world and due for release by a US publishing house in March. Chicago-based Loyola Press, a Jesuit imprint, came up with the idea and got the go-ahead from the pontiff. “Dear Pope Francis” will be published on March 1 in English.

 

Ben Stiller to make directorial TV debut with romcom on Showtime

According to Variety, Stiller will bring the story to Showtime, which tells the story of a book work who falls in love with a young, materialistic Korean-American against the backdrop of a tech-obsessed society, grappling with a financial crisis and the erosion of American values.

 

First children’s book in 14 years wins UK’s Costa prize

Britain’s Frances Hardinge became the first children’s author since Philip Pullman 14 years ago to win the prestigious Costa Book of the Year award in London Tuesday. Hardinge’s “The Lie Tree” is a 19th century detective novel in which teenager Faith tries to uncover the truth about her father’s mysterious death. The last children’s novel to do so was Pullman’s “The Amber Spyglass” in 2001.