In A Suitable Boy, the central character is the young and rebellious Lata whose mother attempts to find her a husband.

The family saga is played out in post-independence India, and examines the traditions and political and religious upheavals of the time.

In A Suitable Girl, Lata is 75-80 years old and looking for a wife for her grandson, "whether he is thinking about it or not," Seth said.

"That allows me in a sense to bring a whole lot of post-independence history to bear on the novel. It allows me to live in the present.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts issued her written ruling in Manhattan after considering arguments in a lawsuit brought by the 90-year-old reclusive author against the publishers of "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye." Batts said Swedish author Fredrik Colting had "taken well more from 'Catcher,' in both substance and style, than is necessary for the alleged transformative purpose of criticizing Salinger and his attitudes and behaviour."

She said Colting's claim that he also wrote the book to critically examine Salinger's most famous character, Holden Caulfield, was "problematic and lacking in credibility." She also rejected arguments that the depiction of a character in Colting's book to represent Caulfield 60 years later was a parody. She said in a footnote that Colting and his publishers made no indication before the lawsuit was filed that the book was meant as a parody or critique of Salinger's work.

"Quite to the contrary, the original jacket of '60 Years' states that it is '... a marvelous sequel to one of our most beloved classics,"' the judge said. "It is simply not credible for defendant Colting to assert now that this primary purpose was to critique Salinger and his persona."

A man who was one of former Senator John Edwards's closest aides has a deal to write a book claiming that Mr. Edwards said he "would be taken care of for life" in return for falsely claiming he was the father of the baby carried by Mr. Edwards's mistress, Rielle Hunter.

The aide, Andrew Young, sold his book proposal to St. Martin’s Press for an undisclosed price late last week. In his proposal, Mr. Young quotes Mr. Edwards, a Democrat who was his party's vice-presidential nominee in 2004 and ran for president last year, as begging him to confess to fathering Ms. Hunter’s baby.

*****

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether any of Mr. Edwards's campaign money was improperly used with regard to his affair or efforts to keep it from becoming public. Mr. Young wrote that he had been questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and had been subpoenaed to speak before a grand jury.

*****

Mr. Edwards denied being the father after admitting the affair last summer, and there is yet to be DNA testing. A spokeswoman for Mr. Edwards's legal team, Joyce Fitzpatrick, said Mr. Edwards had not seen the book proposal, and she would not comment on it. A lawyer for Ms. Hunter, Robert J. Gordon, said he no longer represented her.

Mr. Young's proposal states that he was writing the book because he had become disillusioned with Mr. Edwards’s behavior and recklessness, which he said included participating in the production of a sex tape with Ms. Hunter that Mr. Young later discovered.

July 16 will find her book, Slumdog Dreaming, simulatenously released in the U.S. and U.K. Publisher Transworld, says, besides recounting Oscar night, Ali will tell her story of "playing marbles with her friends beside the sewers of Garib Nagar in Mumbai, to dancing along to the Bollywood films she and her family watch on their old television set.

"Rubina brings alive a world of wastelands and rat-infested shanty dwellings, and shows us her home, a wooden shack with a tarpaulin roof, where she grew up with her beloved father and siblings," says the statement.

Maureen "Moe" Girkins, CEO of Zondervan, said the company, a division of News Corp.'s HarperCollins publishing company, was going to "work with Kate to reassess the schedule for her next book."

"We are saddened by this news from the Gosselins and will continue to lift both Jon and Kate and their children up in prayer. We respect their need for time to focus on their family during this difficult time."

The Gosselins announced a separation Monday (June 22) during an episode of their popular TLC network show. They later issued a statement saying divorce papers had been filed. The show is on hiatus until Aug. 8

Bog Child, the story of a teenage boy who finds the body of a child in an Irish bog, was finished by Dowd in May 2007. She died of cancer that August at the age of 47, having only turned to writing in 2003. In just four short years, she penned four children's books: her first, A Swift Pure Cry, was also shortlisted for the Carnegie.

"It's infuriating that she didn't start writing earlier, that she couldn't go on. We've lost one of our great new voices, and they don't come along that often, not at Siobhan's standards," said her publisher and editor, David Fickling, who accepted the Carnegie medal on her behalf this lunchtime. "Bog Child was written with great intensity, when Siobhan was at the height of her powers, all the while being very ill ... You get to the end and are uplifted, and that's what she was like in person, too. She buoyed you up."

The book is "an absolutely astonishing piece of writing", said the librarian Joy Court, chair of the judging panel (the Carnegie medal winner is selected by 13 librarians from around the UK). "To be able to write like that when she was going through what she was going through is just astonishing – the sheer beauty of the language, the descriptions of the environment; she has such an amazing sense of place."

Bog Child intertwines two stories: that of the 16-year-old Fergus, who discovers the child in the bog in 1981 and thinks she has been murdered by the IRA, and that of the bog child, Mel, who turns out to have lived 2,000 years ago during the iron age. Fergus smuggles packages across the Northern Ireland border each day, believing them to contain semtex, while his brother goes on hunger strike in prison in an attempt to free Northern Ireland from "the misery of it. The mourning and the weeping. The vale of tears." Dowd's command of language is "extraordinary", said Fickling, as in her description of Mel's death: "Silver light fizzed and shot apart. Love fell in particles, like snow."

A spokesman for Simon & Schuster said Cheney would write his book about his service in four presidential administrations for the publisher's Threshold Editions, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

His memoir has a publication date in the spring of 2011.

Cheney has been shopping for a publisher for about two months, the Times reported. The deal was negotiated by Robert Barnett, a Washington lawyer who also represents former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and U.S. President Barack Obama.

They write: "Should $9.99 become the universal price pint, publishers would ultimately be compelled to lower their list prices over time, which would significantly lower their margins. We think Amazon's strategy, however, is to raise electronic book prices over time, while simultaneously influencing the book publishers to accommodate at least a partly electronic book model." A suggested new price point that could "dramatically" increase margins for publishers and Amazon: $12.50.

Published in early May by HarperCollins with an announced first printing of 150,000, "A-Rod" has sold just 16,000 copies so far, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 75 per cent of industry sales. The book sold 11,000 in its first week, then quickly faded.

At the Rizzoli Bookstore in midtown Manhattan, "A-Rod" has sold two copies. Twenty-seven copies have sold at Posman Books, based in Grand Central Terminal, but none in the past two weeks.

"I don't think he's ever been embraced by serious fans," Logan Fox, a manager at Posman, said Wednesday. "He's still considered an outsider."

In The Day I Shot Cupid (to hit stores March 2010), the Ghost Whisperer star, 30, "reveals a surprisingly wicked sense of humor as she explores the new landscape of modern dating and offers up a wide range of practical tips, from text-flirting and IM-ing to what men and women really want, and how to start over after a breakup," according to a release.

See Jennifer Love Hewitt's weight ups and downs.

Says Ellen Archer, president and publisher of Hyperion and VOICE, the company releasing the novel: "We were instantly sold on Hewitt's sassy and irreverent take on modern love and felt that her own confidence would be inspirational to women of all ages."

Taschen is printing 1,969 copies of the book to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. Numbers 1 through 1,957 will be priced at $1,000, while the final 12 copies (numbered 1,958 through 1,969) will come with a certified fragment of moon meteorite. Taschen has not yet priced the 12 "Lunar Rock" editions, but will base the price according to the meteorite size. Those volumes will come with cases designed by Australian designer Marc Newson, who recently designed aluminum champagne coolers for Dom Pérignon. Public relations manager Creed Poulson said the meteorite editions "will be the most expensive books we have ever done." Publisher Benedikt Taschen told PW, "We are confident that the 1,969 copies will sell out very quickly."

Poulson said Taschen stores will carry the book, as will the publisher's Web site, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon and other retailers nationally and internationally. A B&N spokesperson said customers can special order the title in its stores; it will also be available at bn.com.

George is the youngest of the senior Obama's seven children and was born six months before his father died. Little is known about George Obama. The book, tentatively titled "Homeland" and to be written with author-journalist Damien Lewis, will tell of George Obama's fall into crime and poverty as a teenager and his eventual embrace of community organizing — a passion shared by the president — and of advocacy for the poor, an identification so strong that he chooses to live among them.

"Even had George Obama not been our President's half brother, his story is moving and inspirational," David Rosenthal, Simon & Schuster publisher and executive vice president, said in a statement Sunday. "It is an object lesson in survival, selflessness and courage." Financial terms were not disclosed, but an official with knowledge of the negotiations said the deal was worth six figures. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the contract, spoke on condition of anonymity.

The complaint, which according to the American Library Association also demands $120,000 (£72,000) in compensatory damages for being exposed to the book in a display at West Bend Community Memorial Library, was lodged by four men from the Christian Civil Liberties Union. Their suit says that "the plaintiffs, all of whom are elderly, claim their mental and emotional well-being was damaged by this book at the library," and that it contains derogatory language that could "put one's life in possible jeopardy, adults and children alike."

"The word 'faggot' is very derogatory and slanderous to all males," the suit continues. "Using the word 'N****r' is dangerously offensive, disrespectful to all people. These words can permeate violence." The suit also claims that the book "constitutes a hate crime, and that it degrades the community".

"They've filed a claim against the city of West Bend and the city has to decide if it is valid," said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, acting director of the ALA's office for intellectual freedom. "Their insurance company is evaluating the claim, but I would be very surprised if they found any merit in it ... Should they find any merit in this claim, we would certainly support the library in fighting it."

The Simon & Schuster titles sold on the Scribd site can be read on a computer and saved as Adobe Acrobat files but can't be printed. The company says those Acrobat files can be read on Sony Corp.'s e-book Reader, but not on Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle e-book reader, which uses a different format. Scribd plans to soon release software that will enable the Scribd-purchased books to be read on Apple Inc.'s iPhone.

The publisher will set each book's retail price, a key factor at a time when many in the book industry are concerned about Amazon's practice of pricing its Kindle-formatted best-sellers at only $9.99. Simon & Schuster typically prices its e-books at parity with latest print list price. It will offer Scribd customers a discount of 20%.

"It means new revenue on the sales side and lets us experiment with various pricing models," said Ellie Hirschhorn, chief digital officer at Simon & Schuster. "They [Scribd] have a large audience, which is important to us, and they've made an effort to install anti-piracy measures."

Several thousand Simon & Schuster titles that haven't yet been published as e-books will be available for preview on Scribd via a search-and-browse option.

A British private buyer purchased the book, signed by the author, at one of the world's largest antiquarian book fairs in London this week– an annual event at which prints, photographs, manuscripts and books are sold for up to £500,000.

"This copy of Ulysses is exceptional because it is in such pristine condition," vendor Pom Harrington, who made the deal, told Reuters.

"The book was smuggled into New York during the ban in the 1920s and has been in the same family since," Harrington added.