John Grisham's stunning first novel comes to the stage in this world premiere adaptation by Tony Award winner Rupert Holmes. After an unspeakable crime is committed against his daughter, Carl Lee Hailey takes the law into his own hands. Now on trial for murder, Carl Lee's only hope lies with two young, idealistic lawyers who are outmatched by a formidable district attorney and under attack from both sides of a racially divided city. A Time to Kill asks audiences to consider the true meaning of justice.

Clea Raymond is a talented young photojournalist who has spent her entire life in the spotlight as the daughter of a Washington politician and a renowned surgeon. Haunted by the strange appearance of a mysterious young man in her photographs, Clea travels the globe with her best friends, Rayna and Ben, in a race against time to unravel a centuries-old mystery that could unlock the key to her soulmate's true identity and the secret of her father's disappearance--and ultimately save all their lives.

She told us: "Well, the second two times I went into rehab, to be honest with you, I had to go because it was a court thing. It was an obligation. I had to do it to stay out of getting any jail time. And I took responsibility for that. And it was like a vacation."

"I love meeting new people and seeing what they've been experiencing. That's what I go through in different characters. And I met some great people.

"It was a nice time to shut everyone off for a while because there was so much noise. There were some things I had done... I had put myself in situations which I probably should have thought through."

Peter Parker, official photographer of the mayor by day and New York City crime fighter by night, is going to face new challenges, including unemployment. "He's going to struggle with unemployment and trying to save the city while he can barely afford to keep a roof over his head," said Steve Wacker, Marvel Comics senior editor.

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In the near future, Parker will have to juggle paying bills and buying "web-fluid" and other materials to fix his superhero costume in addition to keeping his dual identities under wraps.

The Lafayette County coroner told The A.P. that Mr. Hannah died Monday afternoon of "natural causes," but declined to elaborate until he had provided details to the author's wife, Susan. The coroner said the death was not under investigation.

Mr. Hannah's first novel, Geronimo Rex, the unsparing coming-of-age story of the high schooler Harry Munroe, was nominated for a National Book Award and won the William Faulkner prize after its publication in 1972. His 1996 short story collection, High Lonesome, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and his work is to be among the subjects of the coming Oxford Conference on the Book, which begins on Thursday.

The author Richard Ford, a friend, told The A.P.: "Barry could somehow make the English sentence generous and unpredictable, yet still make wonderful sense, which for readers is thrilling. You never knew the source of the next word. But he seemed to command the short story form and the novel form and make those forms up newly for himself."

Net income dropped to $80.4 million, or $1.40 a share, in the quarter ended Jan. 30 from $81.2 million, or $1.43, a year earlier, the New York-based company said today in a statement. The fourth-quarter loss will be 85 cents to $1.15 a share, the company said. Five analysts estimated a loss of 61 cents, on average, in a Bloomberg survey.

Gross margin, the percentage of sales left after the cost of goods sold, narrowed 370 basis points to 28.3 percent in the quarter. The Barnes & Noble College bookstores bought in September accounted for 270 basis points of the drop because textbooks are less profitable, Chief Financial Officer Joseph Lombardi said on a conference call. A higher percentage of online sales, including digital books and the Nook e-reading device, also ate into margins, he said.

"The main negative was their guidance for the fourth quarter and the gross margin overhang for Barnes & Noble College as well as the Nook," said Michael Souers, an equity analyst with Standard & Poor's in New York. "There's a longer-term impact there that investors are worrying about."

Reader's Digest, which filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors in August, comes out of bankruptcy with $525 million in exit financing and a new board of directors that includes Fredric Reynolds, former chief financial officer of CBS Corp (CBS.N).

The company, best known for its namesake magazine, had been laboring under almost $2.3 billion in debt before filing for bankruptcy. But under its reorganization, the company was able to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in debt and restructure other loans to save money.

Holders of Reader's Digest pre-petition senior secured debt will receive almost all of the new common stock. Private equity firm Ripplewood, which bought the company in 2007 for $1.6 billion, has no ownership stake going forward.

Over time, Reader's Digest has moved away from being known solely for its cornerstone magazine, expanding into some 78 branded websites, and selling as many as 40 million books, music and video products around the world each year. It also publishes food and lifestyle magazine Every Day with Rachael Ray.

"Comics could reach a much larger audience than they do right now," says Patterson, who often works with co-authors and whose thrillers are frequently at or near the top of USA Today's Best-Selling Books list. "With all of the quality work and talent that's out there, this industry could be so much bigger."

First up for release will be a five-part comic series based on the writer's best-selling young-adult novel Witch & Wizard. The new series, subtitled Shadowland, will be written by Dara Naraghi, with Patterson heavily involved in the story direction. (He is not involved with the artwork.) The Wizard series launch will be followed in June by a four-issue comic adaptation of Patterson's 2009 book The Murder of King Tut. Alexander Irvine will do the heavy lifting in terms of writing duties.

Patterson says he is excited at the prospect of translating King Tut -- a "non-fiction thriller" that investigates the mysterious death of the Egyptian pharaoh -- into a comic-book format. "We saw the potential there and worked with IDW to expand on it. It's going to be a very interesting series." Under the agreement, Patterson will also write original comic-book stories. "We're doing an all-new series called Beer Belly and the Fat Boy. I can't get into the details, but it's a lot of fun."

Spelling, whose acting credits include TV show Beverly Hills 90210, has already written an autobiography sTORI Telling and follow-up book Mommywood about being a Hollywood mother of young children. Her third adult book, tentatively titled Uncharted terriTORI, is due to go on sale in June.

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"I love reading to my kids. It's our special time together. That and my passion for story telling inspired me to write a children's book of my own to read to them and children everywhere," said Spelling, 36, in a statement.