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....
Pleasant Hills author Leckenby publishes Thanksgiving children’s book
For Pleasant Hills mother-daughter duo Nicole Leckenby and Mary Dunn, there is something new to be thankful for this holiday season. As of Nov. 1, Leckenby has been celebrating the Thanksgiving season with the release of her and Dunn’s newest book, “It’s Turkey Lurkey Time.” Here, Leckenby has continued to...
Monroeville native’s debut book tops Amazon charts
When Monroeville native Kelley McNeil was driving along a rural road with her daughter in the car, she had an idea pop into her head. “I thought what if we got into an accident and when we woke up, (my daughter) had disappeared,” she said. McNeil would explore that idea...
Jonathan Karl’s ‘Betrayal’ unearths new details about Trump’s attack on democracyVideo
The bountiful genre of Donald Trump books now has another entry, courtesy of Jonathan Karl. As the chief Washington correspondent for ABC News, he’s covered Trump since the start of his presidential campaign. Now he assesses the wreckage of the presidency in ” Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump...
11 books to add to your reading list this month
While the frenzy of hot books fall has begun to subside, there are still a great many books to look forward to in November, the true start of cozy season. Most anticipated publications this coming month include an iconic Chinese artist’s political memoir; provocative thoughts on feminism from an art...
Paul Newman memoir left unpublished to come out next year
NEW YORK — A memoir Paul Newman left unpublished in his lifetime will come out next fall. Publisher Alfred A. Knopf announced Wednesday that the book, currently untitled, will include Newman’s thoughts on “acting, directing, boyhood, family, fame, Hollywood, Broadway, love, his first marriage, his 50-year marriage to Joanne Woodward,...
Brad Raffensperger book details Trump’s pressure to alter Georgia electionVideo
ATLANTA — Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, was sitting at his kitchen table with his wife when President Donald Trump called with an urgent demand: Change the election results. Details of that famous call in January are the centerpiece of Raffensperger’s book published Tuesday, “Integrity Counts.” Raffensperger refused Trump...
U.S. files antitrust suit to stop major book publisher merger
The Justice Department is suing to block a $2.2 billion book publishing deal that would have reshaped the industry, saying consolidation would hurt authors and, ultimately, readers. German media giant Bertelsmann’s Penguin Random House, already the largest American publisher, wants to buy New York-based Simon & Schuster, whose authors include...
Isaly’s chipped ham, Klondikes celebrated in new historical book
Is there a Western Pennsylvanian who hasn’t eaten Isaly’s chipped chopped ham or sung along to the advertising jingle, “What would you do for a Klondike bar?” Now they can learn how Isaly’s grew from horse-drawn milk wagons to become the world’s largest dairy storechain in the Senator John Heinz...
Lower Burrell writer’s book spotlights 30 Alle-Kiski communities past and present
From Aluminum City Terrace to Yellow Dog Village, there’s a story behind every little town in the Alle-Kiski Valley. Writer George Guido of Lower Burrell has collected many of them in his new book, “Neighborhoods of the Alle-Kiski Valley: 30 Communities Full of Unique History.” He’ll be selling copies from...
Fiona Hill, a nobody to Trump and Putin, saw into them both
Vladimir Putin paid scant attention to Fiona Hill, a preeminent U.S. expert on Russia, when she was seated next to him at dinners. Putin’s people placed her there by design, choosing a “nondescript woman,” as she put it, so the Russian president would have no competition for attention. Fluent in...
Tanzanian Abdulrazak Gurnah awarded Nobel literature prize
STOCKHOLM — U.K.-based Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose experience of crossing continents and cultures has fed his novels about the impact of migration on individuals and societies, won the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday. The Swedish Academy said the award was in recognition of Gurnah’s “uncompromising and compassionate penetration...
Dave Grohl’s ‘Storyteller’ book reveals long list of famous friends
It’s hard to think of a current musician so universally accepted into the rock ‘n’ roll fraternity as Dave Grohl. The Foo Fighters frontman dines regularly with Paul McCartney. He wrote and recorded a pandemic-era song with Mick Jagger. Joan Jett read bedtime stories to his daughters. He formed a...
