Hampton woman’s debut dark-fantasy novel takes readers on journey to magical world
Mayté Losada has always had a dark side yearning to break free from the confines of life in the modern world. Enthralled as a child by the vivid “other” worlds depicted in Greek mythology, the Harry Potter novels and later, Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, the Hampton Township woman...
Obama memoir sells a record 1.7 million copies in first week
Former President Barack Obama’s “A Promised Land” sold more than 1.7 million copies in North America in its first week, roughly equal to the combined first week sales of memoirs by his two immediate predecessors and among the highest ever for a nonfiction book. Crown announced Tuesday that it had...
Pope Francis’ book explores George Floyd, virus skeptics
ROME — Pope Francis is supporting demands for racial justice in the wake of the U.S. police killing of George Floyd and is blasting covid-19 skeptics and the media that spread their conspiracies in a new book penned during the Vatican’s coronavirus lockdown. In “Let Us Dream,” Francis also criticizes...
Yusef Salaam of Central Park Five penning memoir on his wrongful imprisonment
NEW YORK — One of the five teens wrongly imprisoned for the assault on a Central Park jogger has a memoir coming out in the spring. Grand Central Publishing announced Monday that it had acquired Yusef Salaam’s “Better, Not Bitter: Living On Purpose in The Pursuit of Racial Justice.” The...
Barack Obama memoir off to record-setting start in sales
NEW YORK — Former President Barack Obama’s “A Promised Land” sold nearly 890,000 copies in the U.S. and Canada in its first 24 hours, putting it on track to be the best selling presidential memoir in modern history. The first-day sales, a record for Penguin Random House, includes pre-orders, e-books...
North Allegheny girls pen book, create website about personal finance for kids
Most people with questions about a topic they know little or nothing about seek out experts who can give them the answers. But North Allegheny High School juniors Alina Zaidi and Angela Wu decided that it wasn’t enough to simply teach themselves about personal finances. They wanted to make sure...
Kamala Harris books surge in popularity after election
Books by and about Kamala Harris proved to be a popular purchase following the election. The vice president-elect was the subject or author of four books on Amazon’s top 10 Sunday. They included her own children’s book “Superheroes Are Everywhere,” her memoir “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” a...
Chef Marcus Samuelsson celebrates the variety of Black food
If anyone asks chef Marcus Samuelsson what African food taste like, he has a ready answer: Have you ever had barbeque? Rice? Collard greens? Okra? Coffee? “All of that food comes from Africa, has its roots in Africa,” says the Ethiopian Swedish writer and restaurateur. “Everyone has had African American...
Final ‘Miss Peregrine’ novel to be published in February
We’ll soon be saying farewell to peculiars, non-peculiars and ymbrynes: Ransom Riggs has written his final tale of “Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children.” Penguin Young Readers announced Tuesday that “The Desolations of Devil’s Acre” will come out Feb. 23, again featuring young Jacob Portman and the pipe-smoking headmistress Alma LeFay Peregrine....
Time magazine replaces logo on cover for 1st time in nearly 100 years
The cover of Time magazine’s double issue that hits newsstands Friday will bear an important message in lieu of its famed logo — marking its first absence from the cover in nearly 100 years. The giant letters at the top of the cover instead read: “VOTE.” Edward Felsenthal, Time’s editor...
Founded in Wilkinsburg, Scholastic magazine celebrates 100 years of educating children
The first issue of Scholastic was born in Wilkinsburg on Oct. 22, 1920. Maurice R. “Robbie” Robinson started the publication as a four-page magazine about high school sports called The Western Pennsylvania Scholastic. The Wilkinsburg resident had just graduated from Dartmouth College, after spending more than a year in the...
Review: Cary Grant bio a perceptive look at captivating star
Self-trained English actor Archie Leach pulled off the role of a lifetime: becoming Hollywood legend Cary Grant. Why the child of a broken family hid behind the silver screen’s definition of easy charm and handsome masculinity is another story entirely. In “Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise,” the most entertaining and...
Stephen King’s thriller ‘Mr. Mercedes’ gets another chance
NEW YORK — One of Stephen King’s most creepy and tense stories was hiding in plain sight. “Mr. Mercedes” started life in 2017 as a broadcast offering on the AT&T-owned, DirecTV-exclusive Audience Network, only to be left marooned with an uncertain future after the obscure channel was shut down. The...
Freshen up your fall reading list with 6 new paperbacks
The leaves are turning, the air is crisper, the bookstores are open … and you need a new paperback, don’t you? Here are six freshly minted ones for fall reading. “No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History” by Gail Collins (Little, Brown, $18.99). Collins, a...
Review: New thriller ‘Goodnight Beautiful’ tweaks the ‘unreliable female narrator’
Early on in the deliciously twisty “Goodnight Beautiful,” one of the main characters, a charismatic guy who we’re getting the sense is being stalked by a fan, is reading Stephen King’s “Misery.” His wife, meanwhile, is reading “that thriller everyone’s talking about” with an unreliable female narrator. (Think “Gone Girl”...
American poet Louise Glück wins Nobel literature prize
STOCKHOLM — The Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to American poet Louise Glück on Thursday “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” The prize was announced in Stockholm by Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy. New York-born Glück (pronouced “Glick”),...
Wilkinsburg writer Deesha Philyaw a finalist for National Book Awards
A Wilkinsburg woman well known for her writing about race, gender, parenting and culture is now receiving national recognition for her fiction. Deesha Philyaw is among five finalists in the fiction category of the National Book Awards for her story collection “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies,” her first book...
Pleasant Hills councilwoman publishes 2nd children’s book
A Pleasant Hills parent has penned a new children’s book that may be a treat for families this fall. “It’s Halloween,” the story of a boy excited about October and planning costumes with his mother, was independently published and released Sept. 29. It is part of a series of stories...
Latest banned books list topped by works delving into gender identity, LGBTQ issues
Horror master Stephen King, Judy Blume of young readers’ fame and Kurt Vonnegut, he of “Slaughterhouse-Five,” are out. The three renowned authors — whose works were on the American Library Association’s list of 100 most frequently banned and challenged books from 1990 until 2009 — apparently are no longer so...
Bob Woodward’s ‘Rage’ sells 600,000 copies in first week
NEW YORK — Bob Woodward’s “Rage” sold more than 600,000 copies in its first week of publication, continuing a yearlong wave of blockbuster books about President Donald Trump. Simon & Schuster announced Wednesday that Woodward’s book will be going into its fourth printing, with total books in print to be...
Review: 2 love affairs fuel ‘The Book of Two Ways’
Jodi Picoult’s “The Book of Two Ways” follows Dawn Edelstein, a death doula with a physicist husband and a teenage daughter. Dawn’s job is to help terminally ill patients and their loved ones transition from life to death. But before she was a death doula, she was a graduate student...
Lower Burrell author inspired by ‘Hunger Games’ series
A Lower Burrell author read Suzanne Collins’ “Hunger Games,” and its vibe became the inspiration for his first novel. J.D. Kellner, 34, is a Kittanning native who lives in Lower Burrell, has written five books, but this is his first published novel. The book, “The Cranes of Blackwell,” will officially...
Uninvited Pigeon invades author Mo Willems’ TV special
LOS ANGELES — Mo Willems is very serious about the importance of being silly. That’s apparent to the children and adults tickled by “There Is a Bird on Your Head!” or “We Are in a Book!” or any of the author and illustrator’s other much-loved works. But the former “Sesame...
Bob Woodward book: Trump said of coronavirus, ‘I wanted to always play it down’Video
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump talked privately about the severity of the coronavirus threat even as he was telling the nation that the virus was no worse than the seasonal flu and insisting that the U.S. government had it totally under control, according to a new book by journalist Bob...
Michael Cohen’s memoir casts him as ‘star witness’ against Trump
NEW YORK — Michael Cohen’s tell-all memoir makes the case that President Donald Trump is “guilty of the same crimes” that landed his former fixer in federal prison, offering a blow-by-blow account of Trump’s alleged role in a hush money scandal that once overshadowed his presidency. Of all the crises...
