'Cult' Writer JG Ballard Dead at 78

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»

Superlatives hardly lacking in wake of writer's death at 76

(NEWSER) - John Updike, who died today at 76, was many things: Bob Ryan, in the Boston Globe, calls him the author of the “most spellbinding essay ever written about baseball.” For Carolyn Kellogg, in the Los Angeles Times, the first line of his story A&P displays a “durability that authors can only hope for.” The bottom line: “He looked deeply and clearly into the swamps of human experience,” Lev Grossman writes in Time, “and reported back to us what he saw with a matchless precision.” 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 After studying 1,100 pages of Austen’s handwritten, unpublished manuscripts, an Oxford professor concluded that “the polished punctuation and epigrammatic style … is simply not there,” she tells the BBC .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»

Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom' lands coveted book club slot

(NEWSER) - Nine years after Oprah Winfrey chose Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections for her book club, and the "uncomfortable" novelist talked his way out of appearing on her show, he's getting another chance, reports the New York Post . The media magnate's people won't confirm the Oprah's Book Club selection—likely the last, because her show is ending —but multiple booksellers tell the AP the highly touted Freedom will get the nod tomorrow. More»

(NEWSER) - Author E. Lynn Harris, who offered a glimpse into the secret lives of closeted gay black men, died last night at 54, the AP reports. His publicist says the cause is unknown, and that Harris suddenly took ill just days ago. An autopsy will be performed next week. Harris was the author of 11 books, 10 of which landed on the New York Times bestseller list. More»