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The Fun of Making It Up: PW Talks With Mohammed Hanif
In A Case of Exploding Mangoes, his sardonic, satirical debut novel, a BBC World Service journalist fabricates several solutions—some plausible, some not—to the real-life mystery of who assassinated Pakistani dictator Mohammad Zia ul-Haq in 1988.
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Keeping Your Enemies Closer: PW Talks With Bill Emmott
In Rivals, the former editor-in-chief of the Economist takes on Asia’s giants and examines the historical roots and global implications of China, India and Japan competing for resources and influence.
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Lists, Wishes and a Little Help from a Reader
Recently I had the great pleasure of reading an advance copy of Twenty Wishes by Debbie Macomber. She agreed to join me for a chat about her work, her life and her own wishes. I wondered how a magnolia writer from the Lowcountry of South Carolina would find common ground with a Seattle-based coffee-bean author.
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Karen Thomas
When Karen Thomas, executive editor at Grand Central Publishing, started in the book industry 16 years ago as an editorial assistant at Berkley, publishing was very different. “Editors had a lot more time to sit and edit, work with authors, shape and formulate ideas,” she admits. “When you used to see an editor with a door closed, it meant they were editing.
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Odd Job
In the United Kingdom, Sebastian Faulks is a household name. His novel Birdsong, a WWI saga of combat and love, has sold more than two million copies in the U.K. and Commonwealth alone, and in Great Britain it's the kind of must read most writers would kill for.
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Q&A with Philip Pullman
Children's Bookshelf spoke with Philip Pullman about his new novel, Once Upon a Time in the North (Knopf).
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Positively Fortune Street
Like London’s streets, there are no straight lines in Livesey’s latest novel, The House on Fortune Street (reviewed Jan. 7). How did you come up with the book’s fractured form, where Dara MacLeod comes into focus from others’ limited perspectives? Hers was a story I wanted to tell, but no one character was in a position to tell it.
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Not Writing What You Know
Elizabeth George, who stunned followers of her Thomas Lynley series by killing off the Scotland Yard inspector’s wife in With No One as Witness (2005), shows Lynley struggling to carry on in Careless in Red (Reviews, Mar. 10). Why did you choose to give Lynley an aristocratic background? This was entirely for my own amusement.
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Q&A with R.L. Stine
R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series debuted in 1992 and went on to sell more than 350 million copies in 32 languages. Stine returns to this chilling landscape in Goosebumps HorrorLand, a 12-book series launching with Revenge of the Living Dummy and Creep from the Deep, due from Scholastic with a 100,000-copy first printing each.
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Leap of Faith
Carlos Acosta has traveled from poverty in Cuba to international stardom as a dancer. In No Way Home, he tells how he did it.
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A Clergyman's Daughter
The decor of the restaurant Honor Moore has selected for our meeting near her apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side is tasteful, understated, warm—adjectives that readily apply to the author herself. “By nature I'm a discreet person,” says Moore, but in her new book, The Bishop's Daughter (Norton), a memoir of her father, the late Episcopal bishop Paul Moore, she explores a highly personal topic—her father's hidden homosexual life—and the often painful impact on her and others close to him that resulted from his bisexuality.
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A Weird Social Ecosystem
Chris Knopf’s third novel set in the Hamptons, Head Wounds, continues the adventures of his hard-drinking, existentialist hero, Sam Acquillo.
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Leap of Faith
Carlos Acosta has traveled from poverty in Cuba to international stardom as a dancer. In No Way Home (Reviews, Feb. 18), he tells how he did it. How did your father motivate your dance career? He wanted me to have a better future, so he enrolled me in ballet school. I was into street activities and wasting time with my mates.
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The Last McCourt: A PW St. Patrick's Day Web Exclusive Q&A with Alphie McCourt
Come November, Alphie McCourt, brother of Frank and Malachy, will have his own memoir, A Long Stone’s Throw [published by Sterling and Ross]
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Q&A with Mary E. Pearson
Mary E. Pearson spokeabout her forthcoming novel, The Adoration of Jenna Fox (Henry Holt), a thriller that explores the limits of medical technology and the depths of a parent's love for a child.
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PW Talks with Heather King: A Web-Exclusive Q&A
King vanquished demon rum in her first book, Parched, and now tries for spiritual redemption in Redeemed, which is the story behind her conversion to Catholicism.
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Re-evaluating Reagan
In The Age of Reagan (Reviews, Feb. 25), Bancroft Prize—winner Sean Wilentz considers Ronald Reagan’s political legacy up to the present day. Did writing this book change your overall assessment of Reagan? It’s probably more positive because I began to appreciate what a world historic event the ending of the Cold War was.
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On Wine and Commerce
In Reflections of a Wine Merchant (Reviews, Jan. 28), Rosenthal offers readers a fascinating glimpse into the wine trade. What led you into the wine trade? My daughter's birth was a turning point. I wasn't happy about practicing law and actually wanted to write, but couldn't make a living. My parents owned a pharmacy.
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Q&A with 'Hotlanta' Authors
Children's Bookshelf spoke with Denene Millner and Mitzi Miller, co-authors of
Hotlanta (Scholastic/Point, Apr.), first in a three-book series about two affluent African-American teens, and the mystery they get embroiled in. -
A Man of Change: PW Talks with Mark Sarvas: A Web-Exclusive Q&A
Mark Sarvas’s debut, Harry, Revised, tells the sordid, comedic tale of Harry Rent, a recent widower who seeks to remake himself as a modern day hero in the image of the Count of Monte Cristo as he courts a comely, young diner waitress. Sarvas is also the founder of the popular litblog, The Elegant Variation, and his literary criticism has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the ThreePenny Review and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
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