• Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey (Faber and Faber)
• Room by Emma Donoghue (Pan MacMillan - Picador)
• The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore (Penguin - Fig Tree)
• In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)
• The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson (Bloomsbury)
• The Long Song by Andrea Levy (Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review)
• C by Tom McCarthy (Random House - Jonathan Cape)
• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)
• February by Lisa Moore (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
• Skippy Dies by Paul Murray (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)
• Trespass by Rose Tremain (Random House - Chatto & Windus)
• The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)
• The Stars in the Bright Sky by Alan Warner (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

• The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson
• The Passage by Justin Cronin
• The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
• Strip by Thomas Perry
• Storm Prey by John Sandford
• Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd

• First Place Winner ($1,500 Prize): American Idle: A Journey Through Our Sedentary Culture by Mary Collins (Capital Books)
• Second Place Winner ($750 Prize): Phlogs: Journey into the Heart of the Human Predicament by George Stranahan and Nicole Beinstein Strait (People's Press)
• Third Place Winner ($500 Prize): Ophelia's Oracle: Discovering the Healthy, Happy, Self-Aware and Confident Girl in the Mirror by Donna DeNomme and Tina Proctor (Inlightened Source Publishing)

• First Place Winner ($1,500 Prize): The Hiding Place of Thunder by Keith Remer (Enlighten Press)
• Second Place Winner ($750 Prize): Shaken Allegiances by Michel Bruneau (CePages Press)
• Third Place Winner ($500 Prize): The Bum Magnet by K.L. Brady (LadyLit Press)

• A prize of $250 was awarded for Best Design to Utherworlds by Philip Straub (Ballistic Publishing).

• The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison (Alma Books)
• The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (Faber and Faber)
• Black Water Rising by Attica Locke (Serpent's Tail)
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate)
• A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (Faber and Faber)
• The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey (Simon and Schuster)

Michael Barnathan, Chris Columbus and Mark Radcliffe of 1492 Pictures will produce, along with Taylor and his producing partner, Brunson Green, of Harbinger Pictures.

A book-club favorite published by Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam last year, "The Help" explores the complicated relationships between the matrons of the South in 1962 and the maids and housekeepers who take care of their kids and homes.

• The Lost Symbol: A Novel by Dan Brown (Doubleday)
• The Associate: A Novel by John Grisham (Doubleday)
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam/Amy Einhorn)
• I, Alex Cross by James Patterson (Little, Brown)
• Ford County by John Grisham (Doubleday)

• Going Rogue: An American Life by Sarah Palin (Harper)
• Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment by Steve Harvey (Harper)
• Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government by Glenn Beck (Threshold)
• Liberty & Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto by Mark R. Levin
• True Compass: A Memoir by Edward M. Kennedy (Twelve)

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.

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."

The new book, Sweet Valley Confidential, takes place 12 years after the high school series, when the twins and their friends are in their late 20s and early 30s. It will, according to publisher St Martin's Press, see "the real world intrude after a perfect childhood". "I've had thousand of queries from fans over the years wondering what Jessica and Elizabeth would be like as adults. Well, Sweet Valley Confidential should give them all the answers," said Pascal, who was originally inspired to write the series by the experiences of her three daughters. "And I can guarantee they will be very surprised. Actually, more like shocked."

*****

St Martin's Press, which will publish the novel in early 2011, gave away little about the plot but fans are already speculating about which direction Pascal will take her characters. "Most everyone hopes Elizabeth and Todd are married, but we all have an idea Liz is having an affair if that's the case," said one reader, who has written about the entire series on her blog, Shannon's Sweet Valley High blog. "We figure Jessica has probably gone to Hollywood to be a star, but some of us are kind of hoping she's failed. Because seriously, that girl has had it too easy. And of course we all want to see the return of Lila, Bruce and the other side characters. It just wouldn't be Sweet Valley without them. A few of my readers are hoping Lila and Bruce are married, but I'd rather see Lila and Jessica trolling for guys together like they always have."

"I think that if fans take anything away from the book, [they should realize] there's a back side to every story," she told MTV News while on her book tour. "And when you're reading tabloids and seeing these people's lives exposed, it does affect them and it is hard to go through as a young girl."

Conrad, who left "The Hills" last year, revealed that when it comes to dealing with the pressures of fame she and Jane both realize "you live and learn," adding, "I think we deal with it the same."

"Cornish is a truly remarkable place. This beautiful spot afforded my husband a place of awayness from the world. The people of this town protected him and his right to his privacy for many years. I hope, and believe, they will do the same for me," Colleen Salinger, also known locally as Colleen O'Neill, wrote in an e-mail yesterday to the Valley News.

For more than five decades, the author's neighbors and friends hid his whereabouts from what Cornish resident Peter Burling called "the annual parade of English majors." It was, "one of the most enjoyable municipal conspiracies ever, how to keep everyone guessing where Jerry Salinger lived," said Burling, who for 44 years has lived several doors from Salinger's Lang Road home.

"You very quickly got kind of wrapped up in the joke of it all. They were all so desperate to see if they could talk to the great man," he said. Few of them -- from away -- actually did. A favorite pastime at Cornish General Store, in Cornish Flat, was sending people searching for Salinger out into the weeds.

"I never told where he lived," Mike Ackerman, a 42-year-old Cornish native who's run the store for two years, said yesterday. The directions given to Salinger-seekers varied, he said. "It really depended on the attitude of the person coming in how much fun we would have with that person," said Ackerman, who met Salinger when he was working for UPS and delivered packages to the author's house.

The author died Wednesday of natural causes at his home in New Hampshire, according to a family statement that his literary agent, Phyllis Westberg, provided Thursday. "Despite having broken his hip in May, his health had been excellent until a rather sudden decline after the new year," the statement said. "He was not in any pain before or at the time of his death."

Salinger has long been known for his reclusiveness, and "in keeping with his life long, uncompromising desire to protect and defend his privacy there will be no service," the statement said. "The family asks that people's respect for him, his work, and his privacy be extended to them, individually and collectively, during this time." Though he wrote more than 30 short stories and a handful of novellas -- many published in The New Yorker and collected in works such as "Nine Stories" and "Seymour: An Introduction" -- Salinger's fame rests on "Catcher," his only novel.

The book is narrated by a teenage boy, Holden Caulfield, who is expelled from a private school, Pencey Prep, in Pennsylvania, and spends the next three days wandering around New York. Caulfield is mistrustful of authority, railing against corrupt adults and "phonies," and plans to decamp for the west.

Le Guin's petition asks Judge Denny Chin to exempt the United States from the revised legal settlement reached between Google and US authors and publishers over the Internet giant's vast digital book-scanning project. Chin is scheduled to hold a hearing on the revised agreement on February 18.

*****

In her petition, which is available on her website, ursulakleguin.com, Le Guin said the settlement was negotiated by the Authors Guild "without consultation with any other group of authors or American authors as a whole." "The Guild cannot and does not speak for all American writers," she said. "Its settlement cannot be seen as reflecting the will or interest of any group but the Guild." She said the National Writers Union, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America were among those opposed to the settlement.

"We ask that the United States also be exempted from the settlement," she said. "We ask that the principle of copyright, which is directly threatened by the settlement, be honored and upheld in the United States." "We urge our government and our courts to allow no corporation to circumvent copyright law or dictate the terms of that control," Le Guin said.

Brian Murray, the chief executive of HarperCollins, said in December that e-books enhanced with video, author interviews and social-networking applications could command higher retail prices for publishers than current e-books. Many of the country's largest publishing houses are worried about the sale of new bestsellers for only $9.99 in the e-book format. New releases of enhanced e-books could sell for $14.99 to $19.99, a person familiar with the situation said. HarperCollins is a unit of News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal.

The HarperCollins negotiations with Apple represent a direct challenge to Amazon, which dominates the fast-growing e-book market but which could face significant competition from an Apple tablet.

HarperCollins is one of several major publishing houses that are holding back e-book versions of some new hardcover best sellers. The HarperCollins account of the 2008 presidential election, "Game Change," by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, was released in hardcover Jan. 11 but the e-book edition doesn't go on sale until Feb. 23. Enhanced e-books likely would be available for sale simultaneously with the hardcovers.

It is working with iPhone app creation platform Mobile Roadie, using an author-focused variation of Mobile Roadie's app creator that currently supports apps by musicians including Brad Paisley and Alice in Chains. Releasing today are apps for authors Steve Berry, Sophie Kinsella, and Karen Marie Moning.

The apps will let fans preview books, access bonus content, interact with other fans, check upcoming author appearances, listen to audiobook clips, and watch author videos and book trailers.

The PubTrack survey of book buyers found that 34% of Americans have reduced the number of books they are buying, while 19% of consumers are either buying more used books or swapping books with others. Other ways consumers are looking to save money when buying books include buying fewer hardcovers and more paperbacks, and only buying books that are being sold at steep discounts or that are on sale. And in a direct contrast to the hope that consumers might buy books as an inexpensive form of entertainment, only 2% of consumers said they are buying more books as an alternative to more expensive kinds of entertainment.

Although it is unclear when the last issue of Kirkus Reviews will be published, the staff for the prepub book review will be gone by the end of the year, a spokesperson for parent company Nielsen Business Media said. On Thursday morning, Nielsen announced that Kirkus, along with Editor & Publisher, will cease operations while the company sells its core business-to-business magazines to the newly formed investment group e5 Global Media Holdings. There are no plans to run online Kirkus reviews or a strategy to try to keep the Kirkus brand alive. It is also uncertain what Nielsen will do with the Kirkus review archive. A total of 18 people worked at Kirkus and E&P.

The film-makers are piggybacking off the success of the Twilight saga, which has sparked a renewed enthusiasm among financiers for gothic romance; the Brontes in particular. Wuthering Heights is one of Twilight heroine Bella Swan's favourite books, frequently referenced in the third episode Eclipse, whose storyline is inspired by Emily Bronte's only novel.

The producers of the latest Bronte projects are targeting the Twilight audience with younger casts than previous versions and scripts that emphasise the sensational gothic elements alongside a contemporary psychological realism.

Wuthering Heights, directed by Peter Webber, will star 22-year-old Ed Westwick, a British actor best known from the American teen TV series Gossip Girl, as an unusually youthful Heathcliff. Gemma Arterton, 23, will play Cathy.

Jane Eyre, meanwhile, will be directed by Cary Fukunaga who, in the pursuit of authenticity on his last film Sin Nombre, got arrested for riding illegally on the roof of a cargo train. Jane Eyre stars the 20-year-old Mia Wasikowska, soon to be seen in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, opposite Michael Fassbender as Mr Rochester (who was at one point lined up for Heathcliff in the other film).

Camus's son, Jean, says interring his father's remains at the Pantheon, the Paris monument to some of the great men and women of France, would be contrary to his father's wishes and does not want to have his legacy put to work in the service of the state, Le Monde quoted an unidentified intimate of Mr. Camus's as saying. Jean Camus's sister, Catherine Camus, who manages her father's estate, is prepared to give her approval and has spoken with Mr. Sarkozy on the subject, Le Monde said.

Mr. Sarkozy has said little publicly on the subject, but he noted last week that he had "been in touch with the family members," adding: "I need their agreement." "No decision has been made on the Pantheonization," a spokeswoman for the Elysee Palace said, declining to comment further.

The proposal has become a political issue in France, with the left accusing Mr. Sarkozy of trying to lift his fortunes by association with one of the secular saints of modern France. The president is limping along with a 60 percent disapproval rating, according to a Nov. 9 Ipsos poll for the newsmagazine Le Point.

• Fiction: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (Random House)
• Nonfiction: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T. J. Stiles (Alfred A. Knopf)
• Poetry: Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy by Keith Waldrop (University of California Press)
• Young People's Literature: Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Waterstone's has launched a standalone Marketplace site in conjunction with Alibris, the giant online bookshop that sells used and rare books via a network of independent bookellers. In addition, individual book searches on the Waterstone's site now show secondhand copies, which are available to buy via a marketplace link.

Waterstone's said the development meant it could offer "access to tens of millions of items stocked by independent sellers from 45 countries around the world". Featured shops on the marketplace site include, Bailey Hill Book Shop, Castle Cary, Somerset; Literary Cat Books and Prints, Wales; Cromer Books; and Spinetinglers, Ballygowan.

Academic bookseller Blackwell signed a similar deal with Alibris in February last year. Borders made the same deal in September thus year. Waterstone's will also be competing with Amazon and Play.com, which both offer secondhand books.

"While my past works have piqued interest in biblical prophecy on a global level, The End series includes many prophecies that were not covered in Left Behind," LaHaye said in a statement. Parshall is the author of the Chamber of Justice legal thrillers series. The Left Behind series, published by Tyndale House, has sold more 65 million units.

Shortly before Labor Day rumors surfaced that Weinstein Books was being shut down, but publisher Judy Hottensen, while acknowledging that its staff had been cut from five to four and was looking to control expenses, said Weinstein Books was continuing to acquire titles. Hottensen, along with the Weinstein Books team, will remain in its current offices and "will participate in the development of the longer-term plan for the JV," the press release said.

First new books to come from the venture, which will still be called Weinstein Books, will be titles that had been in the Weinstein Books pipeline including All Things at Once by Mika Brezinski, a Raquel Welch beauty guide and The Overnight Socialite by Bridie Clark.

The German book industry is a stranger to this new digital world. According to the estimates of Goldmedia, 10,000 readers have already been sold in Germany. But, according to the GfK Group, a leading market-research company, in the first six months of 2009, only 65,000 e-books were sold, excluding specialist works.

Unlike in America, the cost of downloading an e-book in Germany is also frighteningly high. The Kindle's main competitor, the Sony Reader, has been available in German bookshops for a while now for about E250. But the Sony device cannot directly download e-books from the Web. And since e-books are just as expensive as their cheapest printed versions in Germany, they are still fairly expensive when compared to the price of the required hardware.

In fact, the price of an e-book can only go down once the paperback edition has hit the market, which usually takes about two years. Ironically, even Schatzing's "Limit" -- a science fiction novel that celebrates the technology of the future -- has not been able to get past these policies of blockade.

• And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
• His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
• TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
• Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
• Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
• Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
• Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
• The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
• Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper

On picking up the 50,000 [pound] award at tonight's (6th October) ceremony at London's Guildhall, the author said she was "happily flying through the air". The win will come as no surprise to the bookies, who had Mantel leading the pack since the shortlist was announced a month ago.

This morning The Bookseller reported that Mantel had become the first ever odds-on favourite in the race to win the Man Booker prize: Ladbroke's was offering odds of 8/13, while at William Hill she was placed at 10/11. The last time the favourite won was 2002, when Yann Martell's Life of Pi (Canongate) took home the prize.

One of the plaintiffs was a high school student who claimed that, along with the copy of "1984," all of his annotations done for coursework had also been wiped out when Amazon deleted the book from his Kindle. Amazon stated at the time that it remotely deleted the e-books because a third-party distributor had not been properly authorized to sell them.

The company previously offered to replace the deleted e-book on purchasers' Kindles, or provide a $30 gift certificate. The $150,000 settlement will be paid to plaintiffs' lawyers, but are earmarked to be donated to "a charitable organization that promotes children's issues, secondary or post-secondary education, health or job placement."

Doubleday announced Tuesday that hardcover, audio and e-book sales for The Lost Symbol topped 2 million copies for its first week of release in the United States, Britain and Canada. The total is "well over" 2 million for English-language editions worldwide, according to Doubleday spokeswoman Suzanne Herz, who declined to offer a specific number.

Doubleday announced Tuesday that hardcover, audio and e-book sales for The Lost Symbol topped 2 million copies for its first week of release in the United States, Britain and Canada. The total is "well over" 2 million for English-language editions worldwide, according to Doubleday spokeswoman Suzanne Herz, who declined to offer a specific number.

Herz did say that around 5%, or 100,000 copies, of The Lost Symbol were sold as e-books. Doubleday released the digital edition at the same time as the hardcover despite industry worries that e-sales might take away business from the more expensive paper text.

Amazon.com reported last week that first-day sales for The Lost Symbol were higher on its Kindle e-reader than in hard cover. E-books, a fast-growing portion of an otherwise slow market, have been estimated at anywhere between 1% to 5% of total sales.

Uwem Akpan, who runs a parish in Lagos, told Entertainment Weekly that he was "very, very humbled" to be chosen by Oprah. He said he was not currently working on another book as his parish had been so busy but the church supports his writing with no conflict of interest between writing and being a priest.

"I have permission to write, but I do not need an imprimatur from the church -- that is more for people who are writing about theology and philosophy. They see that I am writing fiction and assume it is made up," he said. "Don't forget that Jesus was a priest and a poet."

Oprah's book club is the biggest in the world with almost two million online members and books chosen for Oprah's book club invariably skyrocket to the top of the U.S. bestseller lists. Akpan studied philosophy and English at Creighton and Gonzaga universities then studied theology for three years at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa. He was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 2003 and received his master's degree in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006.

Suzanne Herz of Knopf Doubleday says that this kind of fervent response was absolutely what the publisher expected. "There is no comparison," she said, between The Lost Symbol's success and the early sales of Brown's other novels. Anticipating massive demand, the publisher had to go back to press immediately prior to release in order to print an additional 600,000 copies (bringing the total number to 5.6 million). According to Carolyn Brown, spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble, the book exploded past previous first-day records. "No other adult fiction title even comes close."

Brown's sequel to his massively successful 2003 hit, The Da Vinci Code, a cultural symbol in its own right, finds his popular protagonist Robert Langdon back in the United States, returned from his two-book European vacation, and faced with another series of cryptic clues and shadowy goings-on. Fans are clearly excited at the prospect of another go-round with their favorite (likely by default) Harvard symbologist. Like one of Brown's beloved ambigrams, whether read backwards or forwards, this spells major success for the author.

Fry, who has more than 750,000 followers, tweeted yesterday that "You will not read a more dazzling book this year than David Eagleman's 'Sum'. If you read it and aren't enchanted I will eat 40 hats." The collection, which considers different versions of the afterlife, from a microbe-sized God unaware of humanity's existence to an afterlife where the dead are split into all their different ages, subsequently shot to number two in Amazon's bestseller charts.

Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives is not the first title to benefit from a plug on Twitter: in May, Jonathan Ross sent Jon Ronson's The Men Who Stare at Goats racing up the book charts after he selected it for a Twitter book club. Publisher Canongate is now rushing through a major reprint of the Eagleman collection to meet demand. "It's lovely when things come out of the blue," said publisher Jamie Byng. "I knew Stephen was a huge fan of the book [but] the impact of his tweet is just amazing. It's the ultimate word of mouth recommendation from someone [his followers] really trust, and from a publisher's point of view it's magical."

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday heard arguments that a preliminary injunction barring U.S. publication of Swedish author Fredrik Colting's 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye should be vacated. Despite a negative review of Colting's book by one of the judges, Guido Calabresi, who called the effort a "dismal piece of work," the judges' questions suggested that the court was leaning toward giving Colting a second look in court.

"This case is about banning a book," Ned Rosenthal, lead counsel for Colting, told the court, noting that such an extreme action should only happen after vigorous consideration of all the issues. In addition, Rosenthal argued, no evidence of any actual harm had been introduced in the preliminary hearing.

Salinger's attorney, Marcia Paul, faced a much more serious grilling than at the preliminary hearing, where Judge Deborah Batts, based on her readings of both Colting's and Salinger's books, seemed unconvinced that Colting's work could be perceived as commentary or parody. This time, the court seemed to doubt whether sufficient evidence had been considered and asked Paul to explain why money damages would not sufficiently compensate Salinger, should the book be published and later found at trial to be infringement. Paul conceded that Salinger's sole interest in the case is blocking the use of his characters and work, and that therefore Salinger's grievance could not be addressed by money damages. "You can't put the genie back in the bottle," Paul said.

Germany has complained that Google had scanned books from U.S. libraries for a database without asking the owners, and there are also fears the service will be expensive for libraries as it is unclear what Google may charge them. "We hope that the court will not give its approval to the accord, or at least that it will remove German authors and publishers ... so they are unaffected," said German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries in a ministry statement.

If that happens, Germans could decide for themselves whether to make their works available to Google. German officials will take part in a fairness hearing on Oct. 7, said the ministry. Last week, the European Union's media commissioner said she backed the Google deal.

Academic bookseller Blackwell signed a similar deal with Alibris in February last year. Borders will also be competing with Amazon and Play.com, which both offer secondhand books. Borders UK head of e-commerce Julie Howkins said that the retailer had decided to set up the new offer on its website to "make sure we're offering our customers the greatest range of books possible". Howkins added that "cash-strapped parents and students have now got another alternative" for back to school titles.

Individual product pages now offer second hand books where available along side other variations, such as hardback or e-book. Howkins said that this would insure that customers had the "widest selection possible". The section launched at the beginning of August, however Howkins said she expects sales to increase with the back to school season.

As many as 10,000 retail stores will close nationwide this year, led by clothing stores, electronics and food-and-beverage stores, and department stores, in that order, a study released Tuesday shows.

If the forecast holds, the store closings this year will be nearly double that of last year, when store closings stood at 5,100, said Sandra Reese, a principal at Grant Thornton LLP's offices in Chicago. Last year, the biggest store closings occurred in electronics, followed by home improvement-furnishings stores and in third place, apparel stores.

"It's been amazing to me how, in conversations, everyone from the low-end to the high-end shopper is cutting back on spending and not spending on lavish purchases," Reese said.

*****

Though bookstores represented only a fraction of the total, their closings are forecast to jump 500 percent from last year, to 400 stores.

This week, the Urban Libraries Council (ULC), a member organization of medium and large public libraries called for changes in the settlement plan, as did New York State librarian Bernard Margolis, in a separate open letter to leaders in the library community.

"This is a pivotal moment in the history of access to recorded information, not unlike the introduction of moveable type or the birth of the Internet," wrote Susan Benton, the Urban Libraries Council's (ULC) new president and CEO, in a letter to the federal court overseeing approval of the settlement. "It is important, therefore, that the needs of the public at large shape the thinking of those responsible for guiding this extraordinary advance."

"Love the Twilight books? Then you'll adore Wuthering Heights, one of the greatest love stories ever told," gushes the book chain's synopsis of Emily Brontë's novel. "Cathy and Heathcliff, childhood friends, are cruelly separated by class, fate and the actions of others. But uniting them is something even stronger: an all-consuming passion that sweeps away everything that comes between them. Even death!"

Meyer's human heroine Bella and her vampire hero Edward cite the 1847 novel as their favourite book; Bella even quotes Cathy speaking about Heathcliff, saying of Edward that "if all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger".

Just as Cathy is torn between Edgar and Heathcliff, so is Bella the centre of a love triangle between Edward and Jacob the werewolf.

"Wuthering Heights is of course a steady seller, but it's usually Pride and Prejudice, or whichever classic has recently been adapted for film or TV that is at the top. I don't think a vampire's recommendation has ever sent a book to number one before," said Waterstone's classics buyer Simon Robertson.

The latest objection, filed with the Manhattan court today, comes from a Washington-based lawyer and writer who specialises in class-action law and monopolies. In his 47-page complaint, Scott Gant argues that potentially millions of authors in America and around the world are being coerced into accepting the deal without being fully informed about its implications.

"Anyone taking part in this project should be doing so as a conscious choice to participate knowing fully what they are doing. In fact, people are being forced to hand over to Google some of their intellectual property often with no understanding of what that means," Gant said.

Under US class-action law, authors and publishers who do not specifically opt out of the settlement are deemed to have signed up to it. But Gant points out that as an author himself — he wrote a book on the digital information revolution called We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age — he has never received any legal notice about the case.

*****

Other opponents of the deal include the National Writers Union and the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Eighteen professors within the University of California system have also written to the court objecting that the settlement fails to protect the interests of academic authors and puts profit before the public's right to information.

The new novel, as yet untitled, was snapped up for a reported $3m (1.8m pounds) in the US following a heated auction, with Canongate landing UK rights last week. Like Life of Pi, it will be an allegory involving animals – this time tackling the Holocaust via the medium of a donkey and a howling monkey. Jamie Byng, who will publish the book at Canongate in 2010, said it was "one of the most ingenious, heart-breaking and strangely beautiful books" he had read in years. "The absorbing pair of relationships that lie at the book's heart, one between a donkey and a howling monkey and the other between a writer and an elderly taxidermist, also make this one of the most original books I have ever read," Byng added.

The book will also, Byng said, deal with the very issue Martel himself is facing: the challenge of how to write another book when you've had a success "as unexpected and huge" as Life of Pi. Martel told the New York Times that he decided to tackle the Holocaust in this new novel because he felt that there was a paucity of metaphorical, or imaginative, works produced about it. "I've noticed over the years of reading books on the Holocaust and seeing movies that it's always represented in the same way, which is historical or social realism. I was thinking that it was interesting that you don't have many imaginative takes on it like George Orwell's Animal Farm and its take on Stalinism," he said. "My novel is an attempt to get a distillation on it, and see if there is a way of talking about the Holocaust without talking about it literally."

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.

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.

"The National Book Festival has become a true American institution," said James Billington, the librarian of Congress. "It is a joyous and very popular celebration of books and reading in the Washington, D.C., area."

The Library of Congress organizes and sponsors the event, which is free and open to the public.

An estimated 120,000 people have attended each of the past two festivals, a library spokeswoman said.

With publishers cutting back new releases in response to declining sales, an estimated 275,000 traditional books were released in the United States last year, a drop of about 9,000 from 2007, according to Bowker, a New Providence, N.J.-based company that compiles industry statistics. Categories with the biggest reductions included travel, religion and biography, Bowker said Tuesday.

It's not elegant and it's not sexy – it looks like a large photocopier – but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell's Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.

Signalling the end, says Blackwell, to the frustration of being told by a bookseller that a title is out of print, or not in stock, the Espresso offers access to almost half a million books, from a facsimile of Lewis Carroll's original manuscript for Alice in Wonderland to Mrs Beeton's Book of Needlework. Blackwell hopes to increase this to over a million titles by the end of the summer – the equivalent of 23.6 miles of shelf space, or over 50 bookshops rolled into one. The majority of these books are currently out-of-copyright works, but Blackwell is working with publishers throughout the UK to increase access to in-copyright writings, and says the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

• Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman
• The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey
• The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt
• Molly Fox's Birthday by Deirdre Madden
• Home by Marilynne Robinson
• Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie

The Internet Archive has sent a letter to Judge Dennis Chin, the judge overseeing the Google/Authors Guild, AAP case seeking permission to file a motion that would ask the court to alter the proposed settlement to give other companies that have scanned printed books the same copyright protection of orphan works that would be granted to Google in the settlement. In the letter, the Archive notes that it is one of a number of parties interesting in opposing the settlement, "because it effectively limits the liability for the identified uses of orphan works of one party alone, Google...all other persons, including Internet content providers such as the Archive, would not be able to use orphan works broadly without being exposed to claims of infringement."

Kirschbaum said she and Stefan McGrath, the managing director of Penguin Classics, sealed the deal after a three-day stay at Dimitri Nabakov's home in Montreaux, Switzerland. It was brokered by Andrew Wylie, the New York-based literary agent known as 'The Jackal'.

Kirschbaum said: "It was important that we meet because it was a big acquisition, and it was quite emotional for Dimitri because it was a big decision to publish, which took him decades."

The Original of Laura returns to territory that Nabokov explored in his previous novels Mary, Lolita and Ada – the yearning to recapture young love.

It is narrated by a man who fell obsessively in love with a girl when young, but is now unhappily married to a promiscuous wife.

Kirschbaum, who described the book as both dark and comic, said: "In this novel he is also very interested in psychology and in what it means to hate yourself and want to disappear."

Mancher, whose publishing PR firm One Potata Productions, Inc. will promote SPBE, said, "Self-publishing is one of the fasting growing segments of the publishing industry, and the time is ripe to have a place where these authors can interact with the public, mingle with their peers, meet representatives of the media who are otherwise unfamiliar with their work, and expose their books to a much broader audience."

Mancher is working with Mender, a former v-p, associate publisher and marketing director at Atria Books, Dell/Delacorte and HarperCollins, to produce and develop the Expo. Mender said SPBE will include panel discussions and lectures on the challenges of self-publishing, and an "Open House" for would-be authors, which will be open to the public and hosted by representatives of self-publishing companies.

The letter cites two objections to the agreement: a so-called "most favored nation" clause and the mechanism to deal with orphan works. The group maintains that because the settlement was negotiated between Google and the AAP/authors, there was no one representing the public interest in what Consumer Watchdog calls an agreement that will transform publishing.

According to Consumer Watchdog, because the settlement guarantees that Google would be offered the same terms from the Book Rights Registry that any competitor might receive, competitors would be discouraged from establishing a competing service. The most favored clause should be eliminated to remove barriers to entry, the letter states, adding that "it is inappropriate for the resolution of a class action lawsuit to effectively create an anti-compete clause."

In dealing with orphan works, Consumer Watchdog wants the protections granted to Google about potential exposure to rightsholders who may file claims to works that appear in a database extended to any company that wants to compete with Google under the same terms given to Google.

The first, Pirate Latitudes, will be published on November 24, 2009; the second, as yet untitled, will be published in Fall 2010.

Pirate Latitudes is an adventure story about piracy in the New World. Set in 1665, when Jamaica was a British colony holding out against Spanish dominance, the story centers on a plan hatched by the island's governor and a notorious pirate called Hunter to raid a Spanish treasure galleon. Fast-moving and suspenseful, Pirate Latitudes is a historical classic from one of America's best-loved authors. The novel was discovered amongst Crichton's files and was written contemporaneously with Next, published in 2006.

Jonathan Burnham, Senior Vice President and Publisher of Harper, says, Pirate Latitudes is a fantastically enjoyable and light-hearted adventure yarn about pirates and profiteers in 17th century Jamaica. It is deeply researched and full of lively historical detail, and it shows Crichton going back to the territory he explored in novels such as The Great Train Robbery - old-fashioned entertainment, with a twist."

In Fall 2010, Harper will publish his latest techno thriller which explores the outer edges of new science and technology in the way that only Michael Crichton knew how. The new novel will be based on the development of Crichton's narrative on notes and files. "It is some consolation to the millions of Crichton fans out there that two or possibly more works are in the offing, and that the amazing legacy he has left behind him will be reinvigorated by these new novels" adds Burnham.

Michael Crichton was born in 1942 and died in November 2008. His bestselling novels include State of Fear, Prey, The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park and Timeline. He was also the creator of ER.

The cast also includes Aaron Eckhart, Amber Heard, Richard Jenkins, Giovanni Ribisi and Michael Rispoli. Nolasco plays Segurra, the son of the biggest cement-plant owner on the island. "Diary" is the debut film of Infinitum Nihil, the production company headed by Depp and Christi Dembrowski.

With BookExpo America about two months away, show director Lance Fensterman acknowledged that the number of exhibitors will be down in 2009 from previous years. "We're trending behind last year," Fensterman said. "The show will be smaller and tighter, and there will be fewer exhibitors."

One of the largest publishers to decide not to exhibit at BEA in 2009 is Kensington Publishers. President Steve Zacharius said that given the state of the economy, "we decided it makes more sense to spend our marketing dollars where it will have more of an impact on sales." Kensington has taken space in the BEA Rights Center and will have staff walking the exhibit floor, Zacharius said, adding that the publisher will also host some cocktail parties.

• Peter Carey (Australia)
• Evan S. Connell (USA)
• Mahasweta Devi (India)
• E.L. Doctorow (USA)
• James Kelman (UK)
• Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
• Arnost Lustig (Czechoslovakia)
• Alice Munro (Canada)
• V.S. Naipaul (Trinidad/India)
• Joyce Carol Oates (USA)
• Antonio Tabucchi (Italy)
• Ngugi Wa Thiong'O (Kenya)
• Dubravka Ugresic (Croatia)
• Ludmila Ulitskaya (Russia)

The latter correspondence with friends and contemporaries includes exchanges with his cherished angling companion, the late Ted Hughes – and an almighty squelch from his English teacher at Dulwich college in the 1960s, who marked a reference to TS Eliot in an essay by the aspiring author as "terribly snooty".

Swift described the experience of watching his life being driven away from the door of his London home, packed into 75 file boxes in the back of a white van, as "curiously akin to donating your body to medical science while still alive".

"There was also an element of feeling I was selling the family silver. Then I thought, well, I'm still alive, and healthy, and working – so suddenly it all felt like a tremendous relief, not having to worry about them any longer, not having to think what would happen to all those papers in the loft if there were a fire or a flood."

The archive includes letters, often on literary subjects, with friends such as the poet laureate Andrew Motion, and many fellow Booker-winning novelists including Kazuo Ishiguro, Pat Barker and Michael Ondaatje. The Ted Hughes correspondence barely mentions literature. The two men, both passionate anglers, were fishing friends on the river Torridge in Devon – a river in which, Swift recalled wistfully, it was possible to catch trout, salmon, or, on a really five-star day, sea-trout. "We rarely spoke even briefly of what we were working on," Swift says. "For both of us fishing was an escape from all that. I miss him very much."

Fictionwise, which operates the Fictionwise.com and eReader.com Web sites, was founded in 2000 by Steve and Scott Pendergast, who will continue to head the company B&N said it will operate as a separate business unit based in New Jersey. B&N added, however, that Fictionwise is part of its overall digital strategy, which includes launching an e-bookstore later this year. Last month, PW reported that B&N had plans to open an e-bookstore sometime in March; the company had no comment at the time.