Lynn Neary

Hilary Mantel's popular novels breathed new life into Thomas Cromwell's legacy. Now, between a play and a miniseries, there seems to be no limit to the blacksmith's son's potential for reinvention.

In her first novel, Hausfrau, poet Jill Alexander Essbaum has created a heroine who is not without precedent. Her name is Anna and she is, as we learn in the first sentence, "a good wife, mostly." That phrase, written with a poet's precision, contains a kernel of truth and a ...

Writer Philip Pullman says it's all part of the oral tradition: "Long before writing, people were telling each other stories," he says. Audiobook technology has come a long way since the early days.

Albert Maysles, a documentary filmmaker behind the films "Gimme Shelter" and "Grey Gardens" died Thursday at the age of 88. He was one of the fathers of what was called "direct cinema."

News that a second novel by Harper Lee will be published next July has thrilled fans of her first novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, but it has also been met with some skepticism and concern. Lee has been involved in several legal skirmishes and controversies in recent years, raising ...

The publisher Harper is releasing a new book by Harper in July — Harper Lee that is. It's a follow-up to To Kill A Mockingbird, though it was actually written first.

The American Library Association awarded its top medals to Dan Santat's tale of an imaginary friend on a mission and Kwame Alexander's story of basketball-playing twins.

Australian writer Colleen McCullough died Thursday; she was 77 years old. McCullough was best known for her novel The Thorn Birds, a huge hugely popular romance which has sold 30 million copies around the world, and has never gone out of print.

By her own account, McCullough had a lousy ...

Sesame Workshop's games are designed to help kids learn words and have fun. One New York City educator says it's never too soon to teach tykes that technology can be more than just entertainment.

This isn't your typical story time; public libraries are designing new programs to help parents and caregivers interact with toddlers in ways that will encourage future reading.

For kids to be exposed to reading, families have to have books to read to them, which isn't a given — especially in low-income areas. First Book works to get quality literature into those communities.

A version of this story was originally published on Dec. 23, 2011.

If you happen to spend Christmas Eve in Canada — especially Quebec — you might be lucky enough to be invited to a festive dinner after midnight Mass. The feast is an old tradition from France called reveillon, ...

Known as the "Joan Anderson Letter," the 18-page, single-spaced, stream of consciousness note from Neal Cassady to Jack Kerouac was found amid the dusty papers of a now-closed publishing house.

The agreement in the months-long dispute was announced today and the two former adversaries will resume normal business "immediately," according to a press release.

Tom Magliozzi bantered weekly with his brother on the public radio show. They joked and sometimes even gave good advice to listeners with car troubles. Tom Magliozzi was 77 years old.

Amazon has received a fair amount of bad press lately over its long-running dispute with the Hachette publishing house. So Monday's announcement of a deal with Simon & Schuster took some industry watchers by surprise.

French novelist Patrick Modiano is this year's winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Swedish Academy lauded Modiano "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation."

The Nobel Prize for literature is announced Thursday. This year, as the usual speculation about who might win heated up, a Nobel judge, known for his outspokenness, stirred up a little controversy.

Marilynne Robinson's fourth novel is a prequel to 2004's Gilead: That book told the Rev. John Ames' family story and this book tells the story of his wife.