Pulitzer Prize winning biographer Robert K. Massie separates historical rumor from documented fact with his new book Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (Random House, 656pgs). Massie has proven himself to be an enthusiast of all things Russian with his previous books, including the bestselling Nicholas and Alexandra and Peter the Great, and according to a review in USA TODAY, his enthusiasm does not wane with this new subject. Catherine, born into minor German nobility and married off to her second cousin, the heir to the Russian throne, at 16, is affectionately portrayed as intelligent, driven and forthright. Upon her marriage, she begins a rigorous self-education, learning Russian, adopting her new homeland’s Orthodox faith and devouring books on all subjects. Her actions endear her to the Russian people, though the citizenry feel quite the opposite about Peter, her arrogant and cruel husband. Just months into Peter’s reign, the reviled czar is overthrown and 33 year-old Catherine is enthroned, though the book posits that it is unlikely she orchestrated the coup. Read more…

Stephen King has been busy racking up accolades for his new novel 11/22/63 of late, but he has also made time to share some of his good fortune with fellow citizens of his home state of Maine. On Tuesday, the author announced that the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation is working to raise $140,000 to help provide heating fuel to poverty stricken Maine residents. “We’ll match up to $70,000 of the amount raised,” King told Bangor Daily News in a phone interview. “This economy is terrible and Tabitha and I both worry so much about Bangor because it truly is a working-class town and we are always looking for ways to help, and right now this is a great need.” The novelist owns three radio stations in the Bangor area, WKIT 100.3 FM, WZON 620 AM and The Pulse 103.1 FM, and he and his wife will work with the stations to get the word out and help raise funds. Read more…

Turn of Mind (Atlantic Monthly Press, 320pgs), the debut mystery novel by Alice LaPlante was announced today as the winner of the U.K. based Wellcome Trust Book Prize, an award for medical literature. The thriller is told through the perspective of Dr. Jennifer White, a retired surgeon battling the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. When her best friend Amanda is found dead with one hand mutilated with surgical precision, Dr. White becomes the main suspect, though she cannot remember having played any part in the crime. As the story unfolds, details about the long lasting, yet turbulent, friendship between the two women are revealed, leaving Dr. White to question weather her absence of memory is hiding her guilt or protecting her from harm. Read more…

By Stephen King
Scribner | 960pgs
Release Date: November 8, 2011

Stephen King’s new novel, the highly anticipated 11/22/63, arrives in stores today. The opus, which falls just short of the 1,000 page mark, follows English teacher Jake Epping through a time portal in his friend Al’s basement on a quest to prevent the assassination of JFK. Using the name George Amberson, Jake enters the past in the year 1958, and spends the next 5 years working towards changing the outcome of that fateful day, moving to a small town in Texas, falling in love with a sweet librarian and encountering a troubled young man named Lee Harvey Oswald along the way. Will Jake be able to change history? If so, will the future of the world better for this change? Read more…

Yesterday, Amazon began offering a new service to its Prime members with the launch of the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. This new feature allows members to borrow eBook titles free of charge, though the program does have restrictions. The service is only available on Kindle eInk hardware or the soon to be released Kindle Fire tablet, and will not be accessible through any of the Kindle apps on other platforms. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, about 5,000 titles will be available at launch “including more than 100 current and former national bestsellers”, though at present, none of the six largest publishers in the U.S. have agreed to participate in the program. Users are allowed to borrow one title per month, a number that may not impress avid readers. However, unlike most public library eBook lending policies, there is no due date, so users can borrow book for as long as they like. Read more…

Happy Pig Day!, the latest in the hugely popular Elephant and Piggie picture book series by author and illustrator Mo Willems was released last month. The cartoonist recently spoke with Jeff Labrecque at Entertainment Weekly and discussed the genesis of his two quirky main characters. “Elephant and Piggie are the first characters that I created that I intended for multiple books. I really developed them almost in the way that you would develop television. I knew that they were going to have to carry a lot of weight…I knew there were things that I hadn’t imagined that they were still going to have to handle,” Willems explained. Read more…

If any of you are looking for a scary tale to settle down with after all the little candy goblins have slipped dreamily into a sugar coma, try the classic blood-sucking tale Dracula by Bram Stoker. A recent AP article sings the praises of the archetypal vampire, comparing him favorably to the contemporary literary vampires of the angst-y teen heartthrob and tragic Southern gentlemen varieties. “Vampires have become too soft, too lovelorn, too nice. There’s no good side to the original Count Dracula. He’s evil, plain and simple.”

“From the first pages of the 1897 novel, with all those villagers watching solicitor Jonathan Harker make his way to the Count’s castle in Transylvania, the book draws you in…Dracula is surprisingly easy to read, and I highly recommend its company while waiting for trick or treaters.” Read more…

In 1942 Lev Gleason, a small publishing firm, released a new true crime comic called Crime Does Not Pay, co-edited, written and illustrated by Bob Wood and Charles Biro. The stories recounted actual crimes perpetrated by many of the day’s high profile mobsters including “Baby Face” Nelson and Charles “Lucky” Luciano. They were meant to be morality tales, though the criminals’ violent escapades and erotic encounters were thrillingly detailed, often to dramatic effect, and the moral of the story was usually relegated to a brief concluding paragraph. The mixture of sex and violence was an automatic hit with the American public and circulation of the comics quickly rose into the millions. The editors’ enthusiasm for lurid material, put Crime Does Not Pay on the censors’ radar, and was a contributing factor in the passing of the Comics Code in 1954. According to an article in the Star Tribune, these new, tighter restrictions on comic book content quickly put Crime Does Not Pay and all its imitators out of business. Read more…

As beloved children’s book, The Phantom Tollbooth, turns 50 years old, author Norton Juster reflects on the book’s creation in a guest article for NPR. The idea for his debut book, which tells the story of a young, restless boy named Milo who discovers a mysterious toll booth and embarks on adventures in the Lands Beyond, came to Juster in a round about way.

“Like most good things that have happened in my life, The Phantom Tollbooth came about because I was trying to avoid doing something else. It was 1958, and after three years in the Navy I returned to New York City to work as an architect. I had also received a grant to do a book on cities for children. I started with great energy and enthusiasm until I found myself waist-deep in stacks of 3-by-5 note cards, exhausted and dispirited. This is not what I wanted to do.” Read more…

Kindle Fire will be released November 15

Last week, Amazon announced its new eBook file format, Kindle Format 8 (KF8), which is based on HTML5. Though there are already eBook formats based on various versions of HTML, such as EPUB and Kindle’s current file format, which is a version of Mobipocket, none of these existing file types can offer the design flexibility of HTML5. An article on the popular tech blog Ars Technia praises KF8 for “bridging the gap” between the design limiting eBook formats and PDF files, which “offer much richer control over presentation.”

“HTML5 features such as CSS3 formatting, nested tables, SVG graphics, embedded fonts, and borders are all now supported. The new format includes much richer layout options, including fixed layouts—essential for accurate reproduction of many children’s books—and panel-based layouts for comic books.” Read more…