Mary Daniels Brown

My mother always insisted that, as soon as I was old enough to sit up, she’d find me in my crib after my nap babbling away, with a Little Golden Book on my lap. I’ve had my nose in a book ever since. I grew up in a small town, with the tiny town library literally in my backyard. As an only child in an unhappy home, I found comfort and companionship in books. As an adult I wanted to be Harry Potter, although I admit I’m more Hermione. My life has been a series of research projects. Reading has taught me that human lives are deliciously messy and that “it’s complicated” isn’t a punchline.

Mystery Writers’ Awards

Bouchercon by the Bay PW Daily reports on awards given out at Bouchercon, the annual mystery writers’ convention: In addition to Tower’s win for Best Novel, Macavity Awards—voted on by members of Mystery Readers International—were also given to Rebecca Cantrell’s A Trace of Smoke (Sue Feder Historical Mystery Award); Hank Phillippi Ryan’s ‘On the House’

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Belva Plain, Novelist, Dies at 95

Belva Plain, Novelist, Dies at 95 – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com: Belva Plain, who became a best-selling author at age 59 and whose multigenerational family sagas of Jewish-American life won a loyal readership in the millions, died on Tuesday at her home in Short Hills, N.J. She was 95. OK, so her fiction wasn’t the

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Top Ten Discussion Books

ReadingGroupGuides.com – 10th Anniversary Contest Results: In honor of its tenth anniversary, ReadingGroupGuides.com ran a contest asking book groups to submit a list of their favorite books. The results are now in, and here is the Top Ten list. There are also links here to results broken down into categories (e.g., classics, biographies/memoirs). How many

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Most Sought-After Out-of-Print Books, 2010

BookFinder.com Report Fall 2010 @ BookFinder.com: Every year BookFinder.com tracks the most sought-after out-of-print titles in America. In this, the eighth edition, several books garnered enough attention for publishers to re-print them in the near future. We also find some out-of-print mainstays which are unlikely to see a printer again despite their popularity. But above

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Vargas Llosa Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

Vargas Llosa Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature – NYTimes.com: The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, whose deeply political work vividly examines the perils of power and corruption in Latin America, won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday. Announcing the award in Stockholm, the Swedish Academy praised Mr. Vargas Llosa ‘for his cartography

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Twitter: Banned Books’ New Best Friend

Twitter: Banned Books’ New Best Friend – NYTimes.com: Perhaps you’ve heard: It’s Banned Books Week, and across the country, libraries, bookstores, teachers and countless readers are celebrating ‘the freedom to read.’ For an event like this, it never hurts to have a cause célèbre, and this year, organizers needn’t have gone very far in search

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