Graphic Bod Novel Jars Germany

He confesses to eating flesh of one of two teen victims

(NEWSER) - A German identified only as "Jan O.," who admitted eating the flesh of one of his two teenage victims, has been sentenced to life in prison. The killer, 26, confessed to licking blood from the wound of a 14-year-old girl he murdered and eating her flesh. He had lured her to the woods intending to rape her, reports the AP, but cut her throat instead, the court was told. Five days later he sexually assaulted and killed a 13-year-old boy. " I don't know what came over me ," the killer told the victims' families in court. The judge said the murders showed an "almost unimaginable dimension of criminality." More»

German family minister calls Alice Schwarzer's comments 'absurd'

(NEWSER) - A female clash of the titans has erupted in Germany over one of the nation's top feminist's declaration that heterosexual sex is, well, sexist. "Heterosexual sex is hardly possible without the subjugation of women," leading women's rights advocate Alice Schwarzer, 67, says in her classic feminist tome. Now a German minister has blasted the comments as "absurd" and attacked several feminist strategies for improving women's standing in society. "It's absurd that something fundamental for humanity and its survival should be defined as submission," Minister for Families Kristina Schröder, 33, tells Der Speigel . 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 After studying 1,100 pages of Austen’s handwritten, unpublished manuscripts, an Oxford professor concluded that “the polished punctuation and epigrammatic style … is simply not there,” she tells the BBC .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»

Author claims assistant stole $2.7M

(NEWSER) - A long-time assistant has pleaded guilty to embezzling $400,000 from best-selling romance queen Danielle Steel. Kristy Watts admitted depositing checks for Steel into her own bank account and using the author's credit card points to obtain gifts and airline tickets. Steel, who has written 76 best-selling novels, claims Watts defrauded her of $2.7 million and has filed a civil suit against her. More»

(NEWSER) - British author JG Ballard died this morning "with great sadness" after many years of poor health, his agent said today. The 78-year-old novelist and short story writer was most famous for his semi-autobiographical book Empire of the Sun, later made into a film by Steven Spielberg, and his controversial novel Crash, adapted for the screen by David Cronenberg. More»