Reps for JKR have now confirmed to TLC that there will indeed be an extract of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows contained in this new book, along with two new illustrations of the story from author and artist Quentin Blake. Along with the contribution from Jo, others such as Philip Pullman and Jacqueline Wilson are contributing to the birthday book for The Prince of Wales, with new material due from Philip Ardagh and Anthony Horowitz. In addition to the new illustrations from Quentin Blake, other artists contributing are Axel Scheffler, Posy Simmonds and Emily Gravett. The Birthday Book will be published on November 6, with all proceeds to benefit The Prince's Foundation for Children and the Arts, a charity which”provides schoolchildren with opportunities to visit theatres, orchestras, museums and galleries."

The project, "The Matarese Circle," revolves around two secret agents -- an American and a Russian -- who must work together to fight a mysterious group of killers known as the Matarese. The twist: The agents, Bradley Scofield and Vasili Taleniekov, have been nemeses for years, with each responsible for killing someone close to the other. According to those familiar with the pitch, Washington would play Scofield.

Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, the scribes behind Lionsgate's "3:10 to Yuma" and upcoming Universal tentpole "Wanted," are attached as writers. Veteran producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Nick Wechsler are on board as producers. Nearly all the major studios have heard at least a version of the pitch, with several thought to be keenly interested; however, no deal had been struck.

After decades during which the late Ludlum's novels failed to gain big screen traction, the thriller novelist is now hot in Hollywood. Universal's "Bourne" series, based on his globehopping Cold War novels and with Damon as the title character, has earned more than $900 million worldwide.

At least since Dante's Paolo and Francesca fell in love over tales of Lancelot, literary taste has been a good shorthand for gauging compatibility. These days, thanks to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, listing your favorite books and authors is a crucial, if risky, part of self-branding. When it comes to online dating, even casual references can turn into deal breakers. Sussing out a date's taste in books is "actually a pretty good way -- as a sort of first pass -- of getting a sense of someone," said Anna Fels, a Manhattan psychiatrist and the author of Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women's Changing Lives. "It's a bit of a Rorschach test." To Fels (who happens to be married to the literary publisher and writer James Atlas), reading habits can be a rough indicator of other qualities. "It tells something about ... their level of intellectual curiosity, what their style is," Fels said. "It speaks to class, educational level."

Naming a favorite book or author can be fraught. Go too low, and you risk looking dumb. Go too high, and you risk looking like a bore -- or a phony. "Manhattan dating is a highly competitive, ruthlessly selective sport," Augusten Burroughs, the author of Running With Scissors and other vivid memoirs, said. "Generally, if a guy had read a book in the last year, or ever, that was good enough." The author recalled a date with one Michael, a "robust blond from Germany." As he walked to meet him outside Dean & DeLuca, "I saw, to my horror, an artfully worn, older-than-me copy of Proust by Samuel Beckett." That, Burroughs claims, was a deal breaker. "If there existed a more hackneyed, achingly obvious method of telegraphing one's education, literary standards and general intelligence, I couldn't imagine it."

• The Accidental Vampire by Lynsay Sands (Avon), the funny, sexy story of a woman who never intended to wind up being the only vampire in a small town.
  
  
• The Alpine Traitor by Mary Daheim (Ballantine), the charming new Emma Lord mystery.
  
  
• What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman (HarperCollins), the gripping crime novel that won the Quill Award.
  
  
• Manuscript Makeover: Revision Techniques No Fiction Writer Can Afford to Ignore by Elizabeth Lyon (Penguin).
  
  

Shareholders of Audible.com are making noise about the company's proposed $300 million sale to Amazon.com. Red Oak Partners, a New York City hedge fund that owns 1.4 percent of Audible shares, denounced the proposed $11.50 per share sale in a letter dated March 6 to the chief executive of Audible, calling the terms "inadequate" and "below fair value."

The critique from portfolio manager David Sandberg follows the filing of a class-action lawsuit February 20 in the Superior Court of New Jersey that charged six of Audible's directors with breaching their fiduciary duties with the aid of Amazon. In trading Friday afternoon, shares of Amazon.com gained $.18, or .3 percent, to $62.92, while Audible edged up $.01, or .1 percent, to $11.47.

In the letter addressed to Audible Chief Executive Donald Katz, Mr. Sandberg called a valuation analysis by investment bank Allen & Company "flawed." From March through July 2007, Allen & Company offered Audible to a dozen potential suitors for $12.50 per share. In a later analysis, however, Allen trimmed its assessment of Audible's worth to $11.50. Amazon, which last year introduced its Kindle digital book reader, announced the Audible acquisition in January.

Mr. Sandberg said Allen & Company trimmed Audible's valuation "despite a year in which Audible grew its revenues by 34 percent and added $0.50 per share in cash to its balance sheet. The Red Oak letter also questioned the $2.62 million fee charged by Allen & Company.

Whitney died last Friday in a Charlottesville hospital, not far from her home in Nelson County, her son-in-law, Ed Pearson, said Thursday.

Whitney wrote more than 75 books, including three textbooks, and had about a hundred short stories published since the 1940s.

"I've slowed down in that I only write one book a year," she said in a 1989 interview with The Associated Press, when she was 85. "A writer is what I am."

Whitney's last novel, "Amethyst Dreams," was published in 1997. She began working on her autobiography at 102.

• Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (Henry Holt and Company)
• Priest by Ken Bruen (St. Martin's Minotaur)
• The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)
• Soul Patch by Reed Farrel Coleman (Bleak House Books)
• Down River by John Hart (St. Martin's Minotaur)

• Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell (HarperCollins - William Morrow)
• In the Woods by Tana French (Penguin Group - Viking)
• Snitch Jacket by Christopher Goffard (The Rookery Press)
• Head Games by Craig McDonald (Bleak House Books)
• Pyres by Derek Nikitas (St. Martin's Minotaur)

• Queenpin by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster)
• Blood of Paradise by David Corbett (Random House - Mortalis)
• Cruel Poetry by Vicki Hendricks (Serpent's Tail)
• Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill (Hard Case Crime)
• Who is Conrad Hirst? by Kevin Wignall (Simon & Schuster)

• The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction by Patrick Anderson (Random House)
• A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Gothic, Sensational by Maurizio Ascari (Palgrave Macmillan)
• Deviance in Contemporary Crime Fiction by Christiana Gregoriou (Palgrave Macmillan)
• Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley (The Penguin Press)
• Chester Gould: A Daughter's Biography of the Creator of Dick Tracy by Jean Gould O'Connell (McFarland & Company)

Fierro, whose last day was Monday, worked on some of the nation's most notorious crimes, including the Virginia Tech massacre and Richmond's Southside Strangler killings. And though she would never admit it, many would argue she was the catalyst for the explosion of forensic-science TV shows, movies and books.

In 1984, Cornwell, then an aspiring writer, got an appointment with Fierro to ask questions about what a medical examiner does. Fierro became the inspiration for Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the heroine of what would prove to be a string of best-selling thrillers for Cornwell. "I would not be where I am today in my life were it not for Dr. Fierro," Cornwell says.

Kay Scarpetta is chief medical examiner of Virginia, at least in Cornwell's earlier novels. But aside from their jobs and penchant for Italian food, Fierro sees little resemblance between her and the fictional doctor. "Kay is blond, blue-eyed and 115 pounds," she says dryly. "I've never been blond, I have brown eyes, and I haven't weighed 115 pounds since I was 12."

Cornwell sees a stronger connection. "What she does have in common with Marcella is this amazing database between her ears, a tremendous compassion for the victims, and she will fight to the death for them," Cornwell says. "She has always been a tremendous advocate for those who can no longer speak for themselves."

*****

Fierro, who has been married to her college sweetheart for 41 years, favors romantic comedies, thinks the CBS series "Numb3rs" is "the cat's meow," and devours thrillers. She is indifferent toward the "CSI" series. And she can't tolerate violent movies or TV shows. "I cannot find a shooting or a stabbing entertaining. I simply can't," she says. "My frame of reference — absolutely wrong for gore."

The survey focused on 69 U.S. cities with populations of 250,000 or above. Jack Miller of Central Connecticut State University chose six key indicators to rank literacy. These included newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment and Internet resources. Overall, the top 10 most literate (and wired) cities included:

1—Minneapolis, Minn.
2—Seattle, Wash.
3—St. Paul, Minn.
4—Denver, Colo.
5—Washington, D.C.
6—St. Louis, Mo.
7—San Francisco, Calif.
8—Atlanta, Ga.
9—Pittsburgh, Pa.
10—Boston, Mass.

*****

Some cities that didn't make it to the overall top 10, however, did strut their stuff in one of the six key literacy indicators. For instance, while Newark, N.J., was the 49th most literate city overall, it shared the top spot for newspaper circulation with Washington, D.C.

Plano, Texas, ranking 51st on the overall most-literate-city list, came in second for educational attainment. The education ranking included two factors: the percentage of the city's adult population with a high school diploma or higher and those with a bachelor's degree or higher.

Follett's depiction of the precarious balance of power between monarchy and religion in the Middle Ages, and of the effects of social upheavals and the forces of nature (storms, famines) on political events; his ability to convey the fine points of architecture so that the cathedral becomes clearly visualized in the reader's mind; and above all, his portrayals of the enduring human emotions of ambition, greed, bravery, dedication, revenge and love, result in a highly engrossing narrative. Manipulating a complex plot in which the characters interact against a broad canvas of medieval life, Follett has written a novel that entertains, instructs and satisfies on a grand scale.

A new strategy at Borders will reinforce the message that its stores are not just about books: the company has been installing 37-inch flat-screen televisions to show original programming, advertisements, news and weather. George L. Jones, the chief executive of the Borders Group, said each store would have two screens. The broadcast service, called Borders TV, has arrived in nearly 60 stores and is scheduled to reach an additional 250 stores by the end of February. The screens are "not designed to be intrusive," Mr. Jones said. Rather, he said, they are "part of a master plan to create content that will do several things for us," like directing traffic to the Borders Web site and paving the way to more cross-promotional deals with large media companies.

Will literary-minded customers bristle at the intrusion, or will the screens be welcomed as fun? Mr. Jones has a firm opinion: at Borders, "you browse, buy a latte, read a magazine. It's entertaining." The televisions are “another way that we can bring knowledge and entertainment," he said.

Nora Roberts' Angels Fall (Putnam) was named Book of the Year by readers (as well as winner in the Romance category) at the 2007 Quill Book Awards, held October 22 in New York City at the spectacular Jazz at Lincoln Center theater. Quills were awarded in 19 categories, plus Book of the Year and Variety’s Blockbuster Book to Film Award, which went to the Bourne Trilogy by Robert Ludlum. The Quills also honored David Halberstam posthumously with a Platinum Quill.

Kicking off the awards ceremony, The Colbert Report's Stephen Colbert lamented the loss of the oral tradition, took a swing at the National Book Awards, and wondered why the Quills were "being televised instead of novelized." Presenters included Joan Allen, a star of the Bourne films and a supporter of First Book, which gives books to children from low-income families, footballer Tiki Barber, actress Brooke Shields, and novelist Mary Higgins Clark. Also on hand was Bourne Ultimatum screenwriter Tony Gilroy, who directed the recently acclaimed film Michael Clayton. With winners named in advance, many more authors were on hand, including Amy Sedaris, who took the Humor category for I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence (Warner), and Laura Lippman, whose What the Dead Know (Morrow) received the Mystery/Suspense/Thriller prize.

Don't wait for September. Start reading celebrating your freedom to read now! Read one or all the top 10 most frequently challenged books of 2006. Number one on this list, challenged for promoting homosexuality, is Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell's award-winning And Tango Makes Three, about two male penguins parenting an egg from a mixed-sex penguin couple. Also on the list are The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler; two books by Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye and Beloved; Athletic Shorts, by Chris Crutcher; and The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier.

Display your support for the freedom to read with ALA's Banned Books Week materials.

Take the time to reflect that the First Amendment, intellectual freedom, and the freedom to read should not be taken for granted.

Join the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum, and the Newberry Library in Pioneer Plaza, at Michigan Ave. and the Chicago River, on Saturday, September 29, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., for the Banned Books Week Read-Out! Local Chicago celebrities join several acclaimed authors to read passages from their favorite banned and "challenged" books. Authors scheduled to appear include Chris Crutcher, Robie Harris, Carolyn Mackler, Peter Parnell, and Justin Richardson.

Organize your own Banned Books Read-Out! at your school, public library, or favorite bookstore.

Mount these Web badges on your blogs and home pages to help spread the word about BBW.

Join IFAN, the Intellectual Freedom Action Network, a grassroots, ad hoc group of volunteers who have identified themselves as willing to come forward in support of the freedom to read in censorship controversies in their communities.

Dedicate one day's programming on your National Public Radio (NPR) station to Banned Books Week. For example, "Today's programming on [the name of the radio station] is made possible in part by [your name], who is celebrating this Banned Books Week by re-reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings [or another favorite banned or challenged book] or by accomplishing some other activity related to the week.

Reread one of your favorite books. Chances are, it's on the list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000.

Write or call your representatives and let them know you want them to protect your freedom to read and your privacy.

Join or support an intellectual freedom advocate, such as the Freedom to Read Foundation, the LeRoy C. Merritt Humanitarian Fund, or the Intellectual Freedom Round Table.

BBW is a celebration of our freedom to read, to seek, hold, receive, and disseminate ideas, even if they are unorthodox or unpopular. Help spread the word! Encourage your friends and colleagues to celebrate their freedom to read. It's one of our most important democratic freedoms!

One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and older people were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices. The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole, can hardly be called ravenous. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year - half read more and half read fewer. Excluding those who hadn't read any, the usual number read was seven.

"I just get sleepy when I read," said Richard Bustos of Dallas, a habit with which millions of Americans can doubtless identify. Bustos, a 34-year-old project manager for a telecommunications company, said he had not read any books in the last year and would rather spend time in his backyard pool. That choice by Bustos and others is reflected in book sales, which have been flat in recent years and are expected to stay that way indefinitely. Analysts attribute the listlessness to competition from the Internet and other media, the unsteady economy and a well-established industry with limited opportunities for expansion. When the Gallup Poll asked in 2005 how many books people had at least started - a similar but not directly comparable question - the typical answer was five. That was down from 10 in 1999, but close to the 1990 response of six.

In 2004, a National Endowment for the Arts report titled "Reading at Risk" found only 57 percent of American adults had read a book in 2002, a four percentage point drop in a decade. The study faulted television, movies and the Internet. Who are the 27 percent of people the AP-Ipsos poll found hadn't read a single book this year? Nearly a third of men and a quarter of women fit that category. They tend to be older, less educated, lower income, minorities, from rural areas and less religious.

At the same time, book enthusiasts abound. Many in the survey reported reading dozens of books and said they couldn't do without them. "I go into another world when I read," said Charlotte Fuller, 64, a retired nurse from Seminole, Fla., who said she read 70 books in the last year. "I read so many sometimes I get the stories mixed up." Among those who said they had read books, the median figure - with half reading more, half fewer - was nine books for women and five for men. The figures also indicated that those with college degrees read the most, and people aged 50 and up read more than those who are younger.

• Autographed copy of The Silver Moon Elm by MaryJanice Davidson and Anthony Alongi (Berkley Jam), the exciting new adventure in the New York Times bestselling Jennifer Scales urban fantasy adventure series. Jennifer is a normal teen with abnormal problems: she's half-weredragon, half-beaststalker.
  
  
• Inspired Creative Writing: Pokes and Prods for Scribblers of All Stripes by Alexander Gordon Smith (Perigee), the offbeat and accessible guide to help aspiring authors get their imaginations flowing.
  
  
• Unaccompanied Women: Late-Life Adventures in Love, Sex and Real Estate by Jane Juska (Villard), the funny, sexy and frank story of a woman who refuses to give up dating, fun and adventures just because she's passed the big 60.
  
  
• Dead Ex by Harley Jane Kozak (Doubleday), the fabulously fun mystery set in the fascinating world of soap operas.
  
  

The book, Devil May Care, will be published next May and is set in 1967, when, Faulks said yesterday, "Bond is damaged, ageing and in a sense it is the return of the gunfighter for one last heroic mission". His own interpretation of the spy, he hinted, would show all the caddishness of Bond's previous incarnations, tempered with just a shade of new-mannish sensitivity.

"He has been widowed and been through a lot of bad things ... He is slightly more vulnerable than any previous Bond but at the same time he is both gallant and highly sexed, if you can be both. Although he is a great seducer, he really does appreciate the girls he seduces and he doesn't actually use them badly."

Faulks is not the first author to have been commissioned by Fleming's estate to resurrect Bond. Kingsley Amis accepted the challenge in 1968 with Colonel Sun, by general consent a failure. He was followed by John Pearson, Fleming's former assistant on the Sunday Times, the novelist John Gardner and the Texan writer Raymond Benson, who wrote the last Bond book, The Man with the Red Tattoo, in 2002.

*****

As for his method of writing, Faulks said he had adopted a suitably devil-may-care attitude. "In his house in Jamaica, Ian Fleming used to write a thousand words in the morning, then go snorkelling, have a cocktail, lunch on the terrace, more diving, another thousand words in late afternoon, then more Martinis and glamorous women. In my house in London, I followed this routine exactly, apart from the cocktails, the lunch and the snorkelling."

Sadly, however, it was never filmed and exists today in a few recently unearthed sketches and photographs. Warhead never made it in front of the cameras, let alone on to the big screen, falling victim not to SPECTRE, but to a bitter and complicated legal battle.

Not only would Connery have starred, but he co-wrote the script with top thriller writer Len Deighton and personally chose and scouted the international locations. Bond aficionados have always vaguely known about "the great lost Bond movie". But only now has it become apparent just how close it came to being filmed in 1977. And the full extent of Connery's involvement - not just as the star, but also as producer and in the unfamiliar role of scriptwriter - is only now clear.

*****

The information came out when Robert Sellers, author and Bond fan, announced he was writing a book on the maverick Irish producer Kevin McClory, who figured in a string of legal cases over Bond rights from the 1960s to the 2000s and who died last year. McClory worked with Ian Fleming on a screenplay for Thunderball in the late 1950s, even before it was published as a novel. Sellers was contacted by a former friend of McClory, who insisted on remaining anonymous but agreed to a meeting in a Hampstead café. Sellers was surprised when the mystery man turned up with a copy of the script for Warhead, bearing the names of Connery, Deighton and McClory as co-writers.

He was amazed when his source then handed over never-before-seen snaps of Connery on a location visit to New York and artwork for key scenes in the film. "I didn't know they even existed," said Sellers, whose book The Battle For Bond is published by the small Tomahawk Press in Sheffield and should be in shops this week. "Bond fans have heard of Warhead," he said. "It's like a mythical sort of beast, almost the Holy Grail, this Bond film that never was. "But if you search the internet or look in Bond books or magazines, there's nothing visual at all about Warhead. So it was quite a revelation to see the pre-production artwork." Sellers added: "He actually had the original script... This wasn't a proposal or a suggestion, this was an actual script, a fully-fledged, finished screenplay."

Sellers could hardly contain his excitement as he leafed through pages telling a dramatic story in which the mysterious disappearance of planes in the Bermuda Triangle is the work of the criminal organisation SPECTRE. They are intent on causing havoc by exploding a nuclear warhead under Wall Street, delivered by a robotic hammerhead shark via the city's sewers. 007 not only has to battle mechanical sharks, but also a massive villain called Bomba. "You had an underwater base that rises out of the sea, you had helicopter attacks on the Statue of Liberty," said Sellers. "It would have been the most extravagant Bond film ever."

The obscenity investigation into "The Da Vinci Code" was dropped a day after it was launched, as the state attorney in the Italian port village of Civitavecchia it is no longer looking into the charges.

It was announced Monday that a criminal investigation had been launched into whether the 2006 film based on the best-selling Dan Brown novel was in violation of Article 528 of Italy's penal code. If found guilty of the charges, Brown, director Ron Howard and eight other defendants could have been subject to unlimited fines and jail time.

The investigation was reportedly based on complaints from clergy in the area, who alleged that the film was "obscene" from a religious perspective. But on Tuesday, the process was dropped.

While the local media speculated that the change of course may have been sparked by all the negative publicity for the town 40 miles north of Rome -- the story was widely reported in the international media -- an official answering the phone at the state attorney's office said the decision was made based on the merits of the case. "There are no grounds for this investigation," the official said.

The author of such million-selling classics as "The Firm" and "The Client" is setting his next book in Italy. "Playing for Pizza," the story of an American quarterback trying his luck in Italy, will come out in September, the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group announced Thursday. "One of the many joys of working with John is the element of surprise," Doubleday publisher Stephen Rubin said in a statement.

"Who would have thought that the master of the legal thriller would write a novel about cotton farming (A Painted House) or a novel about the excesses of Christmas? (Skipping Christmas) Now, John pulls another rabbit out of his endless supply of hats with Playing for Pizza, a romp about a fish out of water that had me laughing out loud."

"I was pleasantly surprised to find real American football in Italy," Grisham said in a statement issued by Doubleday, "and as I dug deeper, a novel came together. The research was tough - food, wine, opera, football, Italian culture - but someone had to do it."

According to Doubleday, Grisham came up with the idea of the book while researching The Broker, which took place in Bologna, Italy. Another legal thriller, currently untitled, is scheduled for Spring 2008.

• Insufficient Mating Material (LoveSpell), the racy, wildly entertaining futuristic romance by bestselling author Rowena Cherry.
  
  
• Autographed set of Murder on Nob Hill, The Russian Hill Murders and an ARC of The Cliff House Strangler (all from St. Martin's Press), the three books in the delightful and bestselling mystery series by Shirley Tallman. Set in 1880's San Francisco, the series stars a feisty female attorney who solves mysteries: it's Legally Blond for the 19th century!
  
  
• Autographed copy of Jeff Herman's 2007 Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents (Three Dog Press). It's the must-have guide for all aspiring authors.
  
  
• Floor Sample by Julia Cameron (Tarcher Penguin), the inspring new memoir from the bestselling author of The Artist's Way. Nothing is off limits in her life story: from her career writing for Rolling Stone, her marriage to Martin Scorcese to life in Hollywood, Julia tells it like it is, with her trademark humor and wisdom.
  
  

Michael Crichton's bestselling novel "The Andromeda Strain" will be coming to the small screen, as brothers Tony and Ridley Scott have signed on to produce a four-hour mini-series based on the book. The series is expected to begin production this summer. Mikael Soloman is set to direct the A and E series. Robert Schenkkan adapted the story. The series is expected to begin production this summer. "The Andromeda Strain" is just one of many original series the A and E network plans to introduce. The network is expected to announce its plans to invest about $600 million in new projects this year, Variety said.

The Rebus creator has just completed a novella, provisionally entitled Doors Open, about a heist in Edinburgh. The standalone story features a cast of original characters and will be published in 14 parts in the magazine section of the newspaper each Sunday from this March or April.

Rankin follows a growing number of writers tackling the revived serial genre, such as Alexander McCall Smith with the "44 Scotland Street" series in the Scotsman, and Ronan Bennett in the Observer with Zugzwang. Orion has no immediate plans to publish the Rankin novella, but deputy CEO and publisher Malcolm Edwards said that it will appear in book form "at some time."

Previous fiction serializations in the New York Times include Patricia Cornwell's At Risk, Michael Connelly's The Overlook and, most recently, Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road.

Attorneys for Philip Anschutz allege that author Clive Cussler duped the Denver industrialist into paying $10 million for film rights to the adventure novel "Sahara" by flagrantly inflating his book sales to more than 100 million copies. "Cussler and his agent had gotten away with these numbers for years," said Alan Rader, Anschutz's lawyer. "It was a lie and it doomed the movie." The claim is "ridiculous," Cussler said Thursday outside a courtroom at Los Angeles County Superior Court. "They wanted the book. They solicited us."

The allegations surfaced at the start of a civil trial that seeks to settle a dispute over who is responsible for Anschutz's company losing $105 million on "Sahara," the 2005 movie starring Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz. The trial, which includes claims of sabotage, fraud, profligate spending and racism, is expected to provide a rare behind-the-scenes look at the world of moviemaking. Lawyers selected a jury Thursday and are scheduled to make opening arguments today.

Among those on the witness list are Anschutz, the secretive 67-year-old multibillionaire; former Paramount Pictures Chairwoman Sherry Lansing; director Breck Eisner, the son of the former Walt Disney Co. chairman; McConaughey, who also served as executive producer; and Cussler, the 75-year-old author. Cussler initially sued Anschutz's Crusader Entertainment in 2004, charging that producers reneged on a contract that gave the author extraordinary approval rights over the screenplay. Anschutz countersued, alleging that Cussler deliberately torpedoed the film through his repeated attempts to write his own scripts, all of which were rejected by the producers. Both sides are seeking millions of dollars in damages.

In court papers, Anschutz's attorneys claim that Cussler "perpetrated a massive fraud" to secure an "unprecedented" contractual agreement in 2000. "The essence of Cussler's fraud was simple: He lied about how many books he had sold to induce Crusader to enter the agreement," the papers state. In addition to their effect on the trial, the allegations may raise broader questions about the authenticity of publishing-industry sales figures. Although they declined to comment on the specifics of the Cussler case, New York publishing experts said Thursday that the industry had a long history of inflating book sales and hyping an author's success. But these practices have declined, they added, with the emergence of Nielsen BookScan in 2001.

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled yesterday that John Grisham must face a jury for his actions in a real-life whodunit. Grisham, author of "The Pelican Brief," "The Firm" and "The Runaway Jury," among other bestsellers, lives outside Charlottesville. His son attended the private St. Anne's-Belfield School, where he played baseball for Alan Swanson, the head coach. Grisham and Swanson became friends, according to court papers, and Grisham is on the school's board of trustees.

In 1996, Swanson's wife, Donna Swanson, began receiving harassing anonymous letters, which included allegations that her husband was cheating on her, according to the ruling. Grisham also received an anonymous letter. In 1998, according to a lawsuit, "Grisham was intrigued by the idea of trying to 'get to the bottom' of who was writing them, and he decided to play amateur detective." Grisham and the Swansons targeted another St. Anne's parent, Katharine Almy of Charlottesville, who has three children.

Grisham and the Swansons took the letters to a handwriting expert, who told them that he needed more samples. Both sides agree that Grisham and Alan Swanson then obtained enrollment and medical release forms from the school filled out by Almy and stamped "strictly confidential." They provided the forms to the handwriting expert, who issued a report saying the letters "possibly" were written by Almy, the lawsuit states. Grisham provided the expert's report and the letters to the Albemarle County police, and a detective visited Almy. The lawsuit states that she was horrified that she was being investigated and repeatedly denied writing the letters. The detective reportedly told her to stop writing the letters. The lawsuit says that Almy provided handwriting samples to another examiner, who cleared her, and that she passed a polygraph test.

"I've always seen the trilogy not as three books, but as a very long novel with an international setting. The action of The Dark River will take place in New York, London, Berlin and in a variety of other unusual locations. My goal is to show familiar places in a way that may surprise some people." --John Twelve Hawks

He has also revealed that the Irish Harlequin, Mother Blessing, will be a crucial part of the conflict between the Tabula and the Harlequins and that some of the characters won't survive the whole trilogy.

The Kennedy clan is on the warpath over Eve Pollard's new HarperCollins novel, "Jack's Widow," a fictional tale of Jackie Kennedy's life after JFK's assassination, in which she spies for the CIA and gets brutally raped. Her stepbrother, Hugh Auchincloss III, told Globe, "It should simply not be allowed . . . It is terrible to toy with a historical figure's memory in such a cavalier manner. None of these things are true, and [they] paint an awful picture, presumably just to make money from Jackie's name." Pollard and her book will be feted tonight at Peter Brown's Central Park aerie.

In a last-minute addition to its holiday-season list, Delacorte Press, an imprint of the Bantam Dell Publishing Group, is expected to announce today that it will publish Hannibal Rising on Dec. 5. The 356-page novel chronicles the early life of Dr. Lecter.

Mr. Harris just handed in the manuscript for Hannibal Rising last month, and Bantam is rushing to publish the book in time for the crucial holiday sales season. It also hopes to capitalize on the February 2007 release of the movie version of the new novel, for which Mr. Harris also wrote the screenplay. The movie, which is produced by the Dino De Laurentis Company and marketed by the Weinstein Company, stars Gaspard Ulliel, the French co-star of the 2004 film A Very Long Engagement, as the young Dr. Lecter.

Irwyn Applebaum, publisher of Bantam, said the timing was fortuitous. "Usually even the best-selling books have an eight-week excitement cycle," he said. "But for this book, the movie excitement will hopefully be at its height just as the book goes through that cycle, so it's a very good opportunity for this book to have an extended hardcover life."

Close readers of Mr. Harris’s previous novels, which also include “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Red Dragon,” may recall that Dr. Lecter saw his entire family killed during World War II in Eastern Europe. The new novel, which covers the young Hannibal from age 6 through 20, will shed more light on the circumstances of those deaths, with a focus on Dr. Lecter’s memories of his younger sister, Mischa.

Stephen King hooked me about three decades ago with that sharply faceted, blood-stained jewel, The Shining. Through the years he's bumped my gooses with kiddie vampires, tingled my spine with beloved pets gone rabid, justified my personal fear of clowns and made me think twice about my cell phone. I've always considered The Stand--a long-time favorite--a towering tour de force, and have owed its author a debt as this was the first novel I could convince my older son to read from cover to cover. But with Lisey's Story, King has accomplished one more feat. He broke my heart.

Lisey's Story is, at its core, a love story--heart-wrenching, passionate, terrifying and tender. It is the multi-layered and expertly crafted tale of a twenty-five year marriage, and a widow's journey through grief, through discovery and--this is King, after all--through a nightmare scape of the ordinary and extraordinary. Through Lisey's mind and heart, the reader is pulled into the intimacies of her marriage to bestselling novelist Scott Landon, and through her we come to know this complicated, troubled and heroic man.

Two years after his death, Lisey sorts through her husband's papers and her own shrouded memories. Following the clues Scott left her and her own instincts, she embarks on a journey that risks both her life and her sanity. She will face Scott's demons as well as her own, traveling into the past and into Boo'ya Moon, the seductive and terrifying world he'd shown her. There lives the power to heal, and the power to destroy.

Lisey Landon is a richly wrought character of charm and complexity, of realized inner strength and redoubtable humor. As the central figure she drives the story, and the story is so vividly textured, the reader will draw in the perfumed air of Boo'ya Moon, will see the sunlight flood through the windows of the Scott's studio--or the night press against them. Her voice will be clear in your ear as you experience the fear and the wonder. If your heart doesn't hitch at the demons she faces in this world and the other, if it doesn't thrill at her courage and endurance, you're going to need to check with a cardiologist, first chance.

Lisey's Story is bright and brilliant. It's dark and desperate. While I'll always consider The Shining, my first ride on King's wild Tilt-A-Whirl, a gorgeous, bloody jewel, I found, on this latest ride, a treasure box heaped with dazzling gems.

A few of them have sharp, hungry teeth.

Forget the nuclear program, wiping Israel off the map or going off to fight alongside Hezbollah. What Iranians really want is "The Da Vinci Code." According to Al-Jazeera, Iranians are desperately scooping up whatever copies they can find of the tale of a married Jewish couple who had a child, after a government ban clamped down on sales.

"I rushed to buy the book when I heard about the ban," said Reza Mortazavi, a 32-year-old teacher, quoted in the Al-Jazeera report. "Now, I am more eager to know what was written in it."

On Wednesday, Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance announced it was banning further printing and distribution of the book, which has already gone through 8 printings in Farsi, after Christian clerics protested against it. Mansour Jamshir, a bookstore owner, said: "I had several calls for purchase of the book in a bulk amount and in higher prices."

Earlier this month, Iranian Christian bishops condemned the book, saying it insulted their religion, and asked the Islamic government to ban publishers from printing it. Less than 0.2 percent of Iran's nearly 69 million people are Christian.

"Since I know so much about the Amish I decided to write mysteries about them," says Gaus. "To illuminate as much of their practices and beliefs as I could."

His first mystery, "Blood of the Prodigal," dealt with repentance and forgiveness within the Amish community. His second, "Broken English," addressed pacifism and revenge.

Greed and avarice were examined in "Clouds without Rain," and his fourth book, "Cast a Blue Shadow," exposed child abuse in closed Amish society.

Gaus's newest mystery, "A Prayer for the Night," captures the tensions of an Amish tradition called "Rumspringa," a rite of passage when 16-year-olds are set free from church rules and allowed to experiment with technology, sex, drugs, and alcohol. Large Amish communities like the one in Holmes County are anonymous enough to support a youth subculture where Rumspringa may spawn adolescent gangs, some more rebellious than others.

• Once Upon Stilettos by Shanna Swendson (Ballantine Books), the hilarious and enchanting new urban fairy tale that combines chick-lit, magic and romance.
  
  
• Body Intelligence: Lose Weight, Keep It Off, and Feel Great About Your Body Without Dieting by Edward Abramson, Ph.D. (McGraw Hill), the revolutionary book that will help you lose those unwanted pounds permanently.
  
  
• The Alpine Recluse by Mary Daheim (Ballantine), the fascinating new Emma Lord mystery in which amateur sleuth Emma faces murder and arson in the tiny town of Alpine, Washington.
  
  
• The Jury Master by Robert Dugoni (Warner Books), the exciting new legal thriller about a brilliant trial attorney that is thrust into a whirlwind of danger and adventure.

The new book is here, and the question devotees of A Simple Plan will want answered is whether or not this book generates anything like Plan's harrowing suspense. The answer is yes. The Ruins is going to be America's literary shock-show this summer, doing for vacations in Mexico what Jaws did for beach weekends on Long Island. Is it as successful and fulfilling as a novel? The answer is not quite, but I can live with that, because it's riskier. There will be reviews of this book by critics who have little liking or understanding for popular fiction who'll dismiss it as nothing but a short story that has been bloated to novel length (I'm thinking of Michiko Kakutani, for instance, who microwaved Smith's first book). These critics, who steadfastly grant pop fiction no virtue but raw plot, will miss the dazzle of Smith's technique; The Ruins is the equivalent of a triple axel that just misses perfection because something's wrong with the final spin.

It's hard to say much about the book without giving away everything, because the thing is as simple and deadly as a leg-hold trap concealed in a drift of leaves…or, in this case, a mass of vines. You've got four young American tourists--Eric, Jeff, Amy, and Stacy--in Cancun. They make friends with a German named Mathias whose brother has gone off into the jungle with some archeologists. These five, plus a cheerful Greek with no English (but a plentiful supply of tequila), head up a jungle trail to find Mathias's brother…the archaeologists…and the ruins.