Mystery Writer Tony Hillerman Dead at 83

Stephen King, Christopher Hitchens make the cut

(NEWSER) - If you need a book recommendation for holiday reading, look no further than the New York Times ' list of the 10 best books of the year. Five are fiction and five non-fiction:

• 11/22/63 by Stephen King: A time portal sends an English teacher back to 1958 to try and stop Lee Harvey Oswald. King reflects "on questions of memory, fate, and free will as he richly evokes midcentury America."
• Swamplandia! By Karen Russell: "Exuberantly inventive language" marks this story of "a heroine who is wise beyond her years" as she tries to preserve her family's way of life. Also, an alligator theme park is involved.

'News of a Kidnapping' selling out after Mousavi comment

(NEWSER) - Want to know what it’s like to be an Iranian opposition leader under house arrest? Read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s News of a Kidnapping. Ever since Mir Hossein Mousavi told his daughters the Colombian novel describes “my situation in captivity,” it’s been flying off the shelves in Iran, reports the Guardian . Mousavi’s comment to his daughters became an online sensation among Iran’s wired opposition; now, people are “queuing up to buy the book as if they were queuing up to buy a new Harry Potter,” said a Tehran journalist. More»

But much uncertainty remains on whether novel will see the light of day

(NEWSER) - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo kicked off a trilogy of international bestsellers—and though author Stieg Larsson died in 2004, rumors of another novel’s existence are gaining traction. Plot details have emerged, but the book’s fate remains murky as Larsson’s family and his former girlfriend battle over his estate, the Los Angeles Times reports. The unpublished novel tells the story of heroine Lisbeth Salander’s estranged twin, Camilla, who appeared only briefly in The Girl Who Played With Fire, said Larsson’s friend Kurdo Baksi. More»

Lead character based on man who later killed his mother

(NEWSER) - A Florida man confessed to killing his mother in the same fashion as a recently published novel describes: by beating her, cutting her open, and removing her inner organs. And the author of the novel admits that he based his main character partially on his friend, Beau Bruneau, 29—the man now accused of murdering his mother on Oct. 30. "It was too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence," Patrick Quéré tells the Miami Herald . "It took me a while to really believe it." More»

An editor was likely the one to polish her prose, says professor

(NEWSER) - Jane Austen is known as a “perfect stylist,” but those perfectly crafted sentences may not actually be hers. After studying 1,100 pages of Austen’s handwritten, unpublished manuscripts, an Oxford professor concluded that “the polished punctuation and epigrammatic style … is simply not there,” she tells the BBC . In its place is a more free-flowing, somewhat untidy style, featuring limited punctuation. More»