The book Packing for Mars demystifies space science
03 Aug 2010 21:37:52
Mary Roach has made a career writing books that answer questions most people would never think to ask. Having already given readers more than they ever wanted to know about the science of cadavers ("Stiff"), souls ("Spook") and sex ("Bonk"), she turns her inquisitive mind to the cosmos.
"Packing for Mars" is a book even the most casual space geek will enjoy. From the race to the moon in the '60s to the current goal of a manned mission to Mars by 2030, the book features chapters exploring everyt... Read Full Story
The fans of `Fragile' will not be disappointed
03 Aug 2010 00:14:38
Set in an insular New York town where everyone knows everyone, this unexpectedly introspective story from thriller-writer Unger starts in a seemingly peaceful place. Yet in a town where generation after generation grows up and stays, it's difficult to have any sense of privacy, and harder still to leave the security of a close-knit community.
Unger takes a microscope to the town and uncovers secrets, examining missed opportunities and the hope of finding something better somewhere else when a t... Read Full Story
Journalist digs for truth in Gruley's new mystery
03 Aug 2010 00:13:51
Gracie McBride, a 16-year-old girl with a fondness for alcohol and casual sex, started the tradition. After rolling naked in the grass with a high school football player from a neighboring town, she tied one of her hightops to one of his cleats, climbed into the tree and hung them from a bough.
Not long after that, she left town and didn't return for 20 years. Why she left, where she went, or why she has come back, no one knows. But six months after her return, she is found dead, hanging by her... Read Full Story
Comic book Batman No. 1 again
03 Aug 2010 00:13:01
A longtime Alaska comic book buff is selling one of the gems in his vast collection, a rare copy of Batman No. 1 published 70 years ago.
Mike Wheat of Fairbanks has put the 1940 comic book on the auction block through Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries, where it's expected to fetch more than $40,000. Online bids already have climbed to $35,000 for the book, believed to be one of fewer than 300 still in existence.
Online bids will compete with a live auction set for Thursday.
The second a... Read Full Story
Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson has beaten Stephenie Meyer and James Patterson to become the first author to sell more than one million ebooks on Amazon
31 Jul 2010 09:59:41
The online retailer said yesterday that Larsson, author of the Millennium trilogy, had become the first member of its new "Kindle Million Club", for authors whose work has sold over a million copies in Amazon's Kindle store in the US. The crime novelist is likely to be joined by thriller writer Patterson – Amazon said last week that it had sold over 860,000 of his ebooks – while Twilight scribe Meyer, Sookie Stackhouse creator Charlaine Harris and queen of romantic suspense Nora Roberts have e... Read Full Story
The biography of Angelina Jolie's writen by Andrew Morton
30 Jul 2010 18:53:29
Put Angelina Jolie's face on a magazine cover and sales will surely rise. Get her to write a memoir and it would be worth millions. But write a book about her, without her cooperation, and you're taking a chance.
Coming a week after the release of her latest film, "Salt," a biography has been published. "Angelina," by Andrew Morton, is out with an announced first printing of 150,000 copies and the promise of a "spellbinding" adventure. Openly billed as "Unauthorized," the book includes intimate... Read Full Story
The author Salman Rushdie is one of several leading British writers criticised by the academic Gabriel Josipovici
30 Jul 2010 18:54:26
The author Salman Rushdie is one of several leading British writers criticised by the academic Gabriel Josipovici.
Their mantelpieces might creak under the collective weight of literary gongs but, according to one leading academic, leading contemporary British authors such as Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Julian Barnesare unworthy of the accolades they receive.
In an outspoken attack, Gabriel Josipovici, the former Weidenfeld professor of comparative literature at Oxford University, cond... Read Full Story
