Colin Dwyer

What's one to do with a typical Tuesday in June? That is, of course, after you've savored the fine tang of your mutton kidney breakfast, taken your (extended) morning constitutional and stepped out into the glory of another humdrum day. If you'll accept a suggestion: Perhaps you might want to ...

European regulators have launched a formal investigation into Amazon's practices in the e-book market.

In a statement released Thursday, the European Commission announced that its antitrust investigation will focus on Amazon's contracts with publishers — and whether the Internet retailer is abusing its dominant position as the largest e-book distributor ...

Poetry readers, prepare yourselves for a passing of the laurels. The Library of Congress announced in the wee hours Wednesday that the next U.S. poet laureate will be California writer Juan Felipe Herrera. He will be the first Latino poet to be appointed to the position.

"This is a mega-honor ...

For all the Harry Potter die-hards who fail to follow J.K. Rowling on Twitter, we offer both an admonition and an advisory.

The admonition is simple: You probably ought to stop reading this now, fix your mistake and return here when you're ready to continue. She has used the platform ...

What kind of birthday gift do you get a man who has everything? It's a well-worn riddle — and one that gets all the more difficult if the man in question happens to have died a half-century ago.

Luckily for Ian Fleming, today's 107-year-old birthday boy and the creator of ...

There's a label that occasionally gets slapped on works like these. I'm sure you've heard it before: "This book," reads the label's inevitably bold lettering, "is not for the faint of heart."

It's put there sometimes by censors, more often by sensationalizing marketers, and it always aims to warn you ...

As Abraham Lincoln always said, "The trouble with quotes on the Internet is that you never know if they're accurate."

Well, no — barring a weird rift in time, he probably didn't say that. But when it comes to the quotations of other famous figures — and, it seems, ...

Oyster, the subscription e-book service, announced Wednesday that it will be doing something that's a little bit retro: selling e-books the old-fashioned way, just one at a time.

Since its launch in 2013, Oyster has founded its brand — and earned the auspicious nickname "Netflix of books" — on a ...

Just about a full decade since the girl with a dragon tattoo was introduced to readers, she'll be making her grand return to fiction — albeit with another author's name on the cover. Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy of crime novels is set to become something more on Sept. 1, when ...

In a stroke of irony fit for fiction, an effort by two Idaho parents to clean up their daughter's books has dredged up a fairly messy controversy. Clean Reader — an e-reader app designed to ferret out, and block, profanity in novels and nonfiction — drew significant pushback from some ...

If, by some fluke of fate, you managed to dodge your Irish language requirement in high school, fail to visit rural western Ireland or even, heaven forbid, forget the great mass of Gaelic you surely had to have learned as a youngster, you'd be forgiven for not having heard of ...

The Discworld series author had for years struggled with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Pratchett amassed a devoted following over four decades of writing — and dozens of novels.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: There's this guy, a dude in a bathrobe and a tangled mess of a beard who refuses to go outside. His wife left him nearly two years ago for a man with Greek god's jawline and a glamor job. Shortly before that? ...

Don't fuss too much about the woman left dead in the room above the village bar. Poor Prudence may lend her name to the novel's title, but, splayed alone as she is in the summer heat, the opening lines find the young woman with nothing left to say. And, when ...

As second novels go, this one should prove a doozy. More than five decades after Harper Lee published her first — and, so far, only — novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee's publisher has announced that she plans to release a new one. The book, currently titled Go Set a ...

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

When a book makes the leap from print to the big screen, it's not uncommon for filmmakers to take a few liberties with the adaptation. When that book is the Bible, however, those liberties can attract a bit ...

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

Lately, state governments have been waxing poetic. Showing their more aesthetic side, North Carolina has named its new state poet laureate, while both Ohio and Massachusetts are moving forward with plans to establish similar posts at home.

In ...

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

When picking up a book before bed, sleepy readers ought to give some thought not just to what they read but also how they read. It doesn't matter how boring the material may be; if you're plodding through ...

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

Never one to mince words, George R.R. Martin has lately saved some of his strongest language for Sony Pictures. Using his blog as a platform, the Game of Thrones author has let loose a week-long volley of ...

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

In an open letter to authors and illustrators Thursday, Macmillan CEO John Sargent broke the big news: The publisher reached a multiyear pricing agreement with Amazon late last week, covering both print and digital books. The ...