Dr. Deborah Birx, covid adviser under Trump, has a book deal
NEW YORK — Dr. Deborah Birx has a memoir coming out this spring that will focus on her contentious time as White House coronavirus task force coordinator in the administration of President Donald Trump. Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, announced Monday that Birx’s “Silent Invasion: The Untold Story of...
Well-Read Black Girl to help launch new literary series
NEW YORK — The world of Well-Read Black Girl, and founder Glory Edim, keeps growing. What began in 2015 as an Instagram book club and a phrase on a T-shirt given to Edim by her boyfriend is now a newsletter, literary festival, podcast and the basis for two published anthologies....
Review: Journey to the origins of the Earth
“Otherlands: Journeys in Earth’s Extinct Ecosystems,” by Thomas Halliday (Random House) If there is one uncertainty that has persisted since the beginning of time, it’s our planet’s impermanence. Thomas Halliday ventures into the vastness of this predicament in his book “Otherlands: Journeys in Earth’s Extinct Ecosystems,” a compendium on Earth’s...
Review: Unique narrator propels ‘What the Fireflies Knew’
“What the Fireflies Knew” by Kai Harris (Tiny Reparations Books) One of the joys of reviewing books is reading things you otherwise never would. So let me disclose up front that I chose this book because the title sounded cool. I didn’t know what it was about, didn’t know it...
‘Maus’ ban makes Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust graphic novel an Amazon bestseller
Two editions of Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel “Maus,” about his parents’ experiences during the Holocaust, have become bestsellers after being banned by a Tennessee school board recently. “The Complete Maus” (1996) and “Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History” (1986) broke onto Amazon’s top 20 list over the...
Book about Holocaust banned in Tennessee school districtVideo
ATHENS, Tenn. — A Tennessee school district has voted to ban a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust due to “inappropriate language” and an illustration of a nude woman, according to minutes from a board meeting. The McMinn County School Board decided Jan. 10 to remove “Maus” from its...
Kellyanne Conway memoir ‘Here’s the Deal’ coming out in May
Former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway has a memoir out May 24: “Here’s the Deal” is billed by her publisher as a look beyond the headlines of the Trump administration and her family life, including her husband and prominent Trump detractor, George Conway. “Not just the story of the White...
Review: Schaffhausen sets standard for serial killer novels
“Last Seen Alive” by Joanna Schaffhausen (Minotaur) When Joanna Schaffhausen first introduced FBI Special Agent Reed Markham and Boston police officer Ellery Hathaway, the author put serial killer Francis Coben at the center of their origin story. And yet, for four straight novels, the monster remained off stage. Instead, he...
New Mo Willems ‘Pigeon’ book to be released in September
NEW YORK — An imprint launched last week by Barnes & Noble has signed up one of the country’s top children’s author-illustrators, Mo Willems, best known for his “Pigeon” picture books. Willems has a five-book deal with Union Square Kids, including for “The Pigeon Will Ride the Roller Coaster!”, scheduled...
Former AG William Barr’s memoir to be published March 8
NEW YORK — Former Attorney General William P. Barr has a memoir coming out March 8 titled “One Damn Thing After Another,” and billed by his publisher as a “vivid and forthright book” of his time serving two “drastically different” presidents, Donald Trump and George H.W. Bush. “Barr takes readers...
Book review: An imperialist repents in ‘Gangsters of Capitalism’
“Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire” by Jonathan M. Katz (St. Martin’s Press) Plenty of U.S. veterans of the country’s 21-century “forever wars” — men and women who lost buddies and limbs to roadside bombs and suffer psychic scars — struggle...
Review: ’30 Things I Love About Myself’ a fulfilling journey
“30 Things I Love About Myself” by Radhika Sanghani (Berkley Trade Paperback) Nina Mistry has turned 30 and her life is not where she wants it to be. She recently broke up with her fiancé (much to the dismay of her mother, Rupa), is unfulfilled in her journalism career, where...
Of love and war: 7 novels featuring romance after war-torn trauma
“All’s fair in love and war,” says a proverb so well known that its origin is blurry and has long since passed. When you break it down, however, love isn’t fair at all, and in many circumstances, one does not get what one deserves. As for war? There’s nothing even...
Trail book great resource for Great Allegheny Passage hiking, biking
If your New Year’s resolution is to get into shape and lose weight — a perpetual wish for many Americans — by hiking, biking or jogging along parts of the 150-mile trail that connects Pittsburgh with Cumberland, Md., there’s a new book that will enhance your time doing it. In...
‘Da Vinci Code’ author settles lawsuit alleging secret life
BOSTON — “The Da Vinci Code” author Dan Brown and his ex-wife have agreed to settle a lawsuit in which she alleged he led a secret life during their marriage that included several affairs. The couple agreed to voluntary dismiss the lawsuit and “any and all claims and counterclaims in...
Greensburg resident publishes children’s book ‘We Are Different but a Lot Alike’
Linda Guest-Peters was driving home from her job in Youngwood one day when a thought kept popping into her head. “An assortment of flowers makes a better flower garden. May all your friendships blossom like a flower garden,” served as inspiration for her new children’s book, “We Are Different but...
Up, up and they pay: $2.6M winning bid for Superman #1 comic
NEW YORK — A rare copy of a Superman #1 comic book that sold on newsstands for a dime in 1939 was purchased for $2.6 million in an auction. The comic showing Superman leaping over tall buildings on the cover was sold Thursday night to a buyer who wishes to...
Former WTAE-TV reporter Kelly Brennan releases book about daughter’s medical conditionVideo
This is the story of a little girl in a yellow polka dot dress. Her name is Caroline. Through the powerful words and colorful pictures on the 33 pages of “Caroline’s Infusion Day,” the reader is taken through a day at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh Infusion Center in Lawrenceville....
bell hooks, groundbreaking feminist thinker, dies at 69
NEW YORK — bell hooks, the groundbreaking author, educator and activist whose explorations of how race, gender, economics and politics intertwined helped shape academic and popular debates over the past 40 years, has died. She was 69. In a statement issued through William Morrow Publishers, hooks’ family announced that she...
Anne Rice, author of gothic novels, dead at 80
Anne Rice, the gothic novelist widely known for her bestselling novel “Interview With the Vampire,” died late Saturday at the age of 80. Rice died due to complications from a stroke, her son Christopher Rice announced on her Facebook page and his Twitter page. “In her final hours, I sat...
2021 in Books: ‘Everything feels very magnified’
A 22-year-old poet became a literary star. The enthusiasms of young people on TikTok helped revive Colleen Hoover’s “It Ends With Us,” and other novels released years earlier. Conservatives pushed to restrict the books permitted in classrooms at a time when activists were working to expand them. And the government...
Former Tribune-Review reporter Robin Acton publishes first novel
Robin Acton spent more than three decades as a newspaper journalist. The job took her from crime scenes and courtrooms in Western Pennsylvania to the mountains of Idaho, the Arizona desert, the sunny Caribbean, the streets of New York City and the marbled halls of Congress in Washington, D.C. She...
Nearing 100, Betty White’s life is a page-turner in new book
A photo of Betty White, with dimpled smile and guileless gaze, fills the cover of a coffee table book arriving the month before her 100th birthday. The image evokes the genuine White, according to the book’s author, Ray Richmond. After digging into her life and career, he concluded that she’s...
New book chronicles pioneering amusement park family that operated West View Park
The amusement park that operated for 71 years in West View was already long gone and replaced with a shopping center by the time Mike Funyak was born in 1992. But his life-long love and fascination for amusement parks left him longing to learn all that he could about the...
Q&A: With a new book out, Mel Brooks is still riffing at 95
NEW YORK — Leave it to Mel Brooks to blurb his own memoir. There, along with laudatory quotes from Billy Crystal, Norman Lear, Conan O’Brien and others is one from “M. Brooks,” who hails “All About Me!” as: “Not since the Bible have I read anything so powerful and poignant....
