Annalisa Quinn

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• The organization WaterisLife is developing a "Drinkable Book" that not only teaches water safety but can actually be used to treat drinking water. Each page, coated in bacteria-killing silver nanoparticles, can be torn out and used as ...

The writer Christopher Isherwood met teenage Don Bachardy on a beach in Southern California when Isherwood was in his late 40s. For the next 30 years, until Isherwood's death in 1986, they were partners, collaborators and creators of a tender storybook world entirely their own.

Their collected love letters, edited ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Misha Defonseca, the author of a fabricated Holocaust memoir that describes her hunt for her missing parents, her adoption by wolves, and her killing of a Nazi soldier, has been ordered to pay back $22.5 million ...

A referendum on independence from Ukraine shows strong support for secession, according to separatist leaders in the districts where Sunday's vote was held. Kiev and Western governments say the vote is illegitimate.

Russia, which has been accused of orchestrating the unrest in eastern Ukraine, says it "respects the expression of ...

After a few weeks of guest Quizmasters, I'm back with one of my own special blends. I'd call this a top-40 mix or, as some might say, some pretty low-hanging fruit in the world of drum fills and intros. I'm expecting a lot of 5 out of 5 scores, so ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• The New York Public Library has abandoned a controversial plan to renovate its 42^nd Street flagship building. The Central Library Plan, as it was called, would have turned the research institution into a circulating library, moving the ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law this week that requires books containing obscenities to come in sealed packages with warning labels and that bans cursing in movies and the performing arts. The law is set to ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Philadelphia bookstore Giovanni's Room, thought to be the oldest gay bookstore in the country, will close on May 17, the Philadelphia Gay News reported last week. In the time since the announcement, Victoria A. Brownworth wrote ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Iranian-born novelist Marsha Mehran, author of the bestselling Pomegranate Soup, was found dead Wednesday at her home in Lecanvey, Ireland. She was 36. In Pomegranate Soup and its sequel, Rosewater and Soda Bread, Marjan Aminpour and her ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Meg Cabot says she is releasing two new books — one for younger readers and one for adults — starring the gloriously frizzy-haired, flat-chested Princess Mia Thermopolis of the Princess Diaries series. The Wall Street Journal ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Two recently discovered stories by the great Octavia Butler will be published as an e-book this June by Open Road Integrated Media. Butler, who died in 2006, wrote genre-breaking science fiction at a time when it was ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Tess Gerritsen, author of the astronaut novel Gravity, is suing Warner Bros., claiming the studio's failed to credit her as an inspiration for last year's film starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Warner Bros. bought the film ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Harper Lee has agreed to release To Kill a Mockingbird, her only published book, as an e-book. "I'm still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries," the reclusive 88-year-old author said in a statement, adding, "I ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• A team of scholars and technicians in Spain are using radar to search for the burial place of Miguel de Cervantes, Spain's most celebrated writer. The author of Don Quixote died in 1616 and was buried at ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Polish poet and playwright Tadeusz Różewicz, who was a member of the resistance during Germany's occupation of Poland in World War II, has died, according to reports in the Polish press. He was 92. Writing in ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Going to the library gives people the same kick as getting a raise does — a £1,359 ($ 2,282) raise, to be exact — according to a study commissioned by the U.K.'s Department for Culture, Media ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Gabriel García Márquez left behind an unpublished manuscript when he died last week at age 87, Cristobal Pera, editorial director of Penguin Random House Mexico, told The Associated Press. Pera added that García Marquez's family has ...

You may have heard that dollar bills harbor trace amounts of drugs.

But those greenbacks in your wallet are hiding far more than cocaine and the flu. They're teeming with life.

Each dollar bill carries about 3,000 types of bacteria on its surface, scientists have found. Most are harmless. But ...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• In a book out Tuesday, retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens proposes six amendments to the U.S. Constitution, including measures aimed at preventing gerrymandering (that is, redrawing district lines for political advantage), abolishing the death penalty ...