Best-Selling Mystery Writer You’ve Never Heard Of ?

Japanese mystery writer Miyuki Miyabe is “prolific [46 novels], popular and prize-winning” in her own country but largely unknown in the U.S. and other English-speaking countries. She is finally seeing some of her work published for the English-language market, including her fifth novel, The Devil’s Whisper, which just came out. Brief interview at Reuters.

Benazir Bhutto’s Book Out Soon

“Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated last week at a rally in Pakistan. Harper Collins announced that her new book, originally scheduled for Spring, was completed only about a week before her death. The book, called Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West, will be rushed into print as soon as possible, according to […]

LibraryThing Goes All Secret Santa (And You Can, Too!)

From LT website:
SantaThing: Secret Santa for Book Lovers
The idea is simple. Pay $25. You play Santa to a random LibraryThing member, and buy them up $20 worth of books, based on their library or a short description. Someone else does the same to you. LibraryThing orders the books and pays the shipping, so no addresses […]

RIP Elizabeth Hardwick, 27 July 1916 - 2 Dec. 2007

The NYT reports that Elizabeth Hardwick, “the critic, essayist, fiction writer and co-founder of The New York Review of Books, who went from being a studious Southern Belle to a glittering member of the New York City intellectual elite, died Sunday night [2 Dec.] in Manhattan. She was 91.” Lengthy obituary.

Street Lit in Library Journal

Per a Library Journal press release, LJ will expand its coverage of street lit beginning in January 2008: “A street lit reviews column will be a regular fixture of our soon-to-be-launched monthly book review newsletter.”