Apparently, the Heene family has cribbed a page from Edgar Allan Poe. Though the family recently created a media circus with the false claim that their son had floated away in a helium balloon, the idea of a balloon hoax is not original. According to The Guardian, the April 13, 1844 issue of the New York Sun reported an exclusive account of the balloon “Victoria” crossing the Atlantic Ocean in just 75 hours. The newspaper published excerpts from the diary of the balloon’s navigators, and the story culminated with their “sighting” near the South Carolina coast. But, the entire account was revealed as a hoax a couple days later, with Edgar Allan Poe named as the perpetrator. (A real balloon would not make the transatlantic trip until 1919, when the British dirigible R-34 arrived in New York after a 108 hour voyage.) Always the master storyteller, Poe loved a good hoax, and the balloon story was just one of five hoaxes that he contrived through out his life. Like the Heenes, he was thrilled at all the public attention surrounding his fabrication: “. . . I never witnessed more intense excitement to get possession of a newspaper.” Poe beat the Heenes to the punch by 165 years, though it seems unlikely that the family knew about the original hoax. At least no one has cause to call child protective services on Poe.
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Retail giants Walmart, Amazon and Target have come under fire recently for starting a price war on new hardcover titles, and pricing mom & pop bookstores out of the market. Walmart fired the first shot earlier in the month by offering online customers the chance to pre-order 10 of the holiday season’s hottest new books, including titles from Stephen King, John Grisham and Sarah Palin, for only $10. Amazon and Target then entered the fray and the pre-order price was whittled down to just $8.98. In the aftermath, The American Booksellers Association, which represents independent bookstores, wrote a letter to the Justice Department calling for an investigation of this “predatory pricing”. The ABA’s letter accused the mammoth retailers of selling the books at a loss in order to “win control of the market for hardcover best sellers.” Target, Amazon and Walmart are able to offset these losses, but independent booksellers operate on much slimmer profit margins and do not have this luxury. These price wars could not have come at a worse time for small bookstores, since the weakened economy and the rise in e-book popularity have steadily eaten away at their profits.
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By Patricia Cornwell
Putnam Adult | 512pgs
Release Date: October 20, 2009
A series of dark and dangerous events ensnare Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta in The Scarpetta Factor, Cornwell’s seventeenth novel in the series. Now working as CNN’s senior forensic analyst, she is grilled on air about Hannah Starr, a young woman missing and presumed dead. When previously undisclosed information comes to light, and a mysterious package arrives at Scarpetta’s home, she realizes this case reaches much farther than Starr’s disappearance. As the investigation becomes more sensationalized and Scarpetta’s viewership rises, her producer pushes her to launch her own show called The Scarpetta Factor. But she fears becoming a media cliché, and that her newfound fame will attract unwanted, or even deadly, attention.
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Barnes & Noble debuted Nook on Tuesday evening, and announced the new eBook reader will be shipping in November. Nook offers several advantages over Amazon’s Kindle 2, most notably the 3.5″ color touch screen at the bottom of the E-ink display. The touch screen utilizes technology similar to the iPhone, and can be used to navigate content, purchase eBooks, or browse downloaded tiles by book cover. Nook can connect through AT&T’s 3G network, or through free Wi-Fi at all Barnes & Noble retail stores. While in store, users can browse any complete book for free, just as they would a real book. This feature is another key advantage over the Kindle 2, since Amazon has no brick and mortar storefronts and is unable to provide content in this way. One of the drawbacks of eBook readers has been that titles cannot be shared or loaned for free. Barnes & Noble has addressed this issue by allowing certain titles to be lent to friends for free for up to two weeks. eBook borrowers will not need a Nook to read titles, they can be viewed using an iPhone, Blackberry, Mac or PC. This borrowing option is up to the publisher, so Barnes & Noble is currently working with the major publishing houses to enable this feature on more titles.
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By Rosina Lippi
G.P Putnam’s Sons ©2008 | Hardback 351pgs
Two guarded souls come together in the beginning pages of The Pajama Girls of Lambert Square. When John Dodge first meets Julia Darrow, he is immediately intrigued by her choice of wardrobe. Julia, owner of Lambert Square’s upscale bedding boutique, Cocoon, requires all employees (herself included) to wear pajamas to work. Dodge soon learns that these pajama-wearing ladies are just a few of the Southern eccentrics that people the shopping area of Lambert Square, and the town of Lamb’s Corner in general.
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By William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
William Morrow | 288pgs
Release Date: September 29, 2009
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope is an inspiring true story that follows the struggle of a young Malawian boy to build a windmill and pull his family out of famine and poverty. William Kamkwamba was just fourteen years old when a nationwide drought left his family impoverished and forced him to leave school. Though he could no longer pursue his dream of education, he threw his heart and soul into the improbable plan of building a functional windmill. His lofty goal was to bring the luxuries of electricity and running water to his starving family. With the help of his school librarian and an ingenious amalgamation of bicycle parts, scrap metal and various other junk yard cast-offs, this incredibly bright young man was able to find all the information and materials he needed to succeed. Proving the village naysayers wrong, he built a fully operational windmill to power four lights in his home, and then later a second windmill that turned a water pump.
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"Dark Carnival" by Ray Bradbury ©1948
Literary icon Ray Bradbury will unveil a different kind of artistry next week, with his first public showing of a new giclée print at the Santa Monica gallery Every Picture Tells a Story. The author best known for the acclaimed books The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 has been painting since the 1930′s, and often depicts subject matter inspired by his writing. Such is the case with his new print, made from a darkly ominous oil painting completed in 1948, un-offically titled Dark Carnival after his collection of short stories with the same name. In an interview with “Hero Complex” columnist Geoff Boucher, Bradbury explains the inspiration for this piece: “I didn’t like the original cover that was on the book when it came out so I designed my own. I made this painting and hoped that someone would use it as the cover in the future.” Several decades later, Bradbury’s hope became reality when Gauntlet Press printed a Dark Carnival special edition in 2001, which featured his painting on the cover.
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David Garrick as Richard III (detail) by William Hogarth
Did history and literature give Richard III a bad rap? Shakespeare immortalized the English king as a Machiavellian tyrant, and history has branded him as a hunched-backed villain, rumored to have murdered two princes in order to secure his ascension to the thrown. But according to author Philippa Gregory, Richard III may have just been misunderstood. In a recent interview with the LA Times, she discusses her new historical novel The White Queen (Touchstone, 432pgs), and her surprising take on this controversial figure. “It’s an act of historical recovery,” she says, “…history, of course, gets told by the victors. That’s what Shakespeare tapped into in his play about Richard — that and a medieval belief that a malformed mind led to a malformed body.” Gregory argues that there is historical evidence that supports a case for Richard’s innocence and for the guilt of the Tudor family, who eventually took Richard’s life and his thrown during the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.
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by Jeff Kinney
Amulet Books | 224pgs
Release Date: October 12, 2009
Tweens and adults will delight in the fourth installment of Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Middle Schooler Greg Heffley has planned the perfect summer vacation: playing video games all day long, with the curtains closed. What could be better? Unfortunately, his mom has other ideas. Will her plans of outdoor activities (gasp!) and family bonding ruin Greg’s ultimate vacation? Readers will have to pick up the new book to find who wins this battle of the wills.
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Concept cover (left) and final cover (right). ©2009 Scribner
Almost everyone judges a book by its cover. A compelling cover design helps cut through the media clutter; even book covers for today’s best selling authors have become more creative and elaborate. When designing the cover art for Jeannette Walls’ latest novel Half Broke Horses (Scribner, 270pgs), designers at Scribner explored several different cover concepts before finding the right fit. Walls’ family memoir The Glass Castle topped the best sellers list in 2005, and Half Broke Horses is a follow up of sorts. The “true-life novel” recounts the experiences of her larger-than-life grandmother, Lily Casey Smith.
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