Books/Publishing News

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. publisher Beaufort Books has bought a novel about the Prophet Mohammad's child bride a month after Random House canceled its release, citing fears it could "incite acts of violence."

NEW YORK - Another beloved children's series will soon be over.

NEW YORK - The publisher that took on O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It" after it was dropped in the face of public outrage has signed up another rejected project: Sherry Jones' "The Jewel of Medina," a novel about a wife of the prophet Muhammad that Random House canceled out of concern that it would anger Muslims.

LONDON - It may not be a best-seller, but "Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers" has won a literary accolade: oddest book title of the past 30 years.

WASHINGTON - Troubled by the Bear Stearns debacle, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is advocating a new way of dealing with government bailouts of companies whose sudden collapse could wreak havoc on the country's economic and financial stability.

1. "Devil Bones" by Kathy Reichs (Scribner)

1. "Breaking Dawn" by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown)

LONDON - Pop star Cliff Richard has written about his relationship with a former Roman Catholic priest in an autobiography excerpted in a British newspaper on Thursday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Robert Giroux, who rose to become a partner in U.S. publishing house Farrar, Straus & Giroux, has died at the age of 94, the New York Times reported on Friday.

CANBERRA, Australia (Reuters) - Stephenie Meyer, author of the best-selling young adult "Twilight" books, has put the fifth and final installment in the series on hold in protest after a partial draft was posted on the Internet.

NEW YORK - Three fiction writers, a poet and two essayists have been named recipients of the 14th annual Rona Jaffe Foundation's awards, grants of $25,000 each for "women writers of talent and promise in the early stages of their writing careers."

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Last September, Nikki Sixx's harrowing memoir of addiction, "The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star," debuted at No. 7 on the New York Times Book Review nonfiction best-seller list.

NEW YORK - Former U.S. poet laureate Louise Glueck has been awarded the Wallace Stevens Award, a $100,000 prize for "outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry," the Academy of American Poets announced Tuesday.

NEW YORK - Dr. Francis Collins, arguably the nation's leading geneticist and author of the best-selling "The Language of God," is working on a book that promises "stunning new revelations about why we get sick; what it means to be healthy; how we can prevent disease" and medical treatment.

NEW YORK - On Sept. 9, the U.S. publisher of "Harry Potter" will premiere a highly ambitious series with a mystery ending for readers and a couple of puzzlers for the industry: How big is the market for a multimedia story — and can a phenomenon be conceived by a publisher rather than created by the public?

ANKARA (Reuters) - Nobel Prize-winning Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk published a new book in Turkey on Friday, his first since obtaining the award.

NEW YORK - Election years are supposedly off years for books, when we're all too busy following the news. Author-filmmaker-activist Michael Moore thinks we should even take a break from reading any of the fall releases, including his own, and get out there and work for our favorite (progressive) candidates.

WOBURN, Mass. - An author who fabricated a best-selling memoir about surviving the Holocaust by living with wolves asked a judge Thursday to affirm a $32.4 million jury award in her favor.

"Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba" (Viking, 365 pages, $27.95), by Tom Gjelten: Bacardi is the world's top-selling rum with annual sales of 20 million cases in more than 150 countries. But it does not sell a drop in Cuba, where founder Facundo Bacardi first opened a tin-roofed, dirt-floored distillery on Matadero Street in the eastern city of Santiago in 1862.

"Everything Under the Sky" (HarperCollins Publisher, 387 pages, $25.95), by Matilde Asensi: It's a good thing that the gambling, opium-addicted, prostitute-loving husband of Elvira De Poulain died. She would otherwise be stripped of an adventure that is so engrossing it could compel the reader to skip meals and ignore chores in a mad dash to read the book's ending.

EDINBURGH (Reuters) - If you are looking for kiss-and-tell stories about the Bond girls or movie town gossip, Sean Connery's memoirs are not for you.

EDINBURGH (Reuters) - She was a teenager from Dublin looking to make her name as a journalist when American author Ernest Hemingway entered her life in 1959.

PORTLAND, Ore. - Borders Group Inc. shares soared more than 25 percent Wednesday after it posted better-than-expected earnings for the second quarter. But analysts remained leery, saying that tough competition and a weak economy continue to pose big challenges for the bookseller.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Borders Group Inc , the second-largest U.S. bookseller, posted a narrower-than-expected quarterly loss on Tuesday, helped by tighter inventory and lower costs, sending its shares up nearly 14 percent.

"Fine Just the Way It Is" (Scribner. 221 pages. $25), by Annie Proulx: It was Annie Proulx's award-winning "Brokeback Mountain" — a tale of love between two Wyoming cowboys — that became an Academy Award-winning film.

"In the Land of Invisible Women" (Sourcebooks Inc. 464 pages, $24.95) by Qanta A. Ahmed: Most job contracts don't include mentions of the death penalty, but when Dr. Qanta A. Ahmed agreed to a new job in a Saudi Arabian hospital she became subject to the laws of that country which, as she writes in her memoir, can include decapitation.

PORTLAND, Ore. - Bookseller Borders Group Inc. said Tuesday that it narrowed its losses and slashed its debt during the second quarter, but continued to see sales slow as consumers limited their discretionary spending.

NEW ORLEANS - Marsha Williams had always hesitated when mail arrived from the government. After Hurricane Katrina, she began to fear the letters.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Borders Group Inc on Tuesday posted a narrower quarterly loss, as the second-largest U.S. bookseller was helped by lower inventory levels.