Books category, Page 13

What do “three men from Greensburg” have to do with a small-time Johnstown gambler whose body was found floating behind the Conemaugh River Dam in Derry Township some six decades ago? The three unidentified men were fingered by an aging Johnstown gangster — “Rip” Slowmason — as the possible murderers...

White Whale Bookstore is expanding in the Bloomfield building where it has operated for nearly five years. “We had been thinking about expanding for a couple years,” said Jill Yeomans, who owns the bookstore with her husband, Adlai. The expansion will be in a second storefront in its current building...

Monroeville author Anthony Todd Carlisle untangles long-hidden family secrets of racism and rage in his debut novel, “The Souls of Clayhatchee,” released in early May. The story follows one man’s pilgrimage to the South to fulfill his mother’s last wish of being buried in her small Alabama hometown. As the...

NEW YORK — Eric Carle, the beloved children’s author and illustrator whose classic “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and other works gave millions of kids some of their earliest and most cherished literary memories, has died at age 91. Carle’s family says he died Sunday at his summer studio in Northampton,...

Two years after the release of his book “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker,” the accolades keep coming for Damon Young. The Pittsburgh author has won the 2020 Thurber Prize for American Humor. The Thurber Prize is a coveted national award named for writer and humorist James Thurber that...

NEW YORK — Pfizer Chairman and CEO Dr. Albert Bourla can now tell the incredible story. Bourla has a deal with Harper Business for what the publisher is calling “an exclusive, first-hand, behind-the-scenes story” of how the drugmaker managed to develop an effective vaccine against covid-19 in a remarkably short...

The Pittsburgh International Literary Festival, known as “LitFest,” hopes to get people talking through reading. Hosted by the City of Asylum @ Alphabet City based on Pittsburgh’s North Side, the virtual event will feature authors from all over the world discussing topics that encompass Black, Indigenous and all people of...

A Sewickley writer’s work recently appeared for the fourth time in a “Chicken Soup for the Soul” book. Judith Burnett Schneider, who left her job as a research scientist several years ago to become a full-time writer, just had her essay “Pivotal Cup” appear in the media company’s latest anthology,...

NEW YORK — Alan Moore has many, many stories still to tell. The celebrated British author known for “V for Vendetta” and “Watchmen” among other works has a deal with Bloomsbury for the story collection “Illuminations” and a five-volume fantasy series, “Long London.” In a statement Monday, Moore said he...

Wilkinsburg author Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies,” continues to rack up awards. On Tuesday, her book was announced as the winner of the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, which honors the best published works of fiction by American permanent residents in a calendar...

NEW YORK — The closing of physical libraries because of the pandemic has slowed but not stopped patrons and others from calling for books to be banned or restricted. On Monday, the American Library Association reported more than 270 challenges to books in 2020, from Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye”...

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s son Hunter says his service on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, which Republicans tried to turn into a negative during the 2020 presidential campaign, wasn’t unethical and didn’t represent a lack of judgment on his part. But the younger Biden wouldn’t do it...

A graphic novel for children from the wildly popular “Captain Underpants” series is being pulled from library and book store shelves after its publisher said it “perpetuates passive racism.” The book under scrutiny is 2010’s “The Adventures of Ook and Gluk” by Dav Pilkey, who has apologized, saying it “contains...

NEW YORK — Beverly Cleary, the celebrated children’s author whose memories of her Oregon childhood were shared with millions through the likes of Ramona and Beezus Quimby and Henry Huggins, has died. She was 104. Cleary’s publisher HarperCollins announced Friday that the author died Thursday in Carmel Valley, California, where...

DALLAS — Larry McMurtry, the prolific and popular author who took readers back to the old American West in his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Lonesome Dove” and returned them to modern-day landscapes in works such as his emotional tale of a mother-daughter relationship in “Terms of Endearment,” has died. He was 84....

The University of Pittsburgh’s Office of Child Development has taken up the cause of social justice and trying to end the cycle of systematic racism through books. The office works with child care providers in the region to improve their programs and since the 2018 massacre at the Tree of...

NEW YORK — Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old poet who captured hearts at the inauguration of President Joe Biden, posted to social media that she was followed home by a security guard who demanded to know where she lived because she “looked suspicious.” “I showed my keys & buzzed myself into...

NEW YORK — Billie Jean King has a memoir coming this summer, and she calls it a journey to her “authentic self.” Alfred A. Knopf announced Thursday that “All In: An Autobiography” will be published Aug. 17. It will cover the highlights of her celebrated and groundbreaking tennis career, including...

BOSTON — Six Dr. Seuss books — including “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” and “If I Ran the Zoo” — will stop being published because of racist and insensitive imagery, the business that preserves and protects the author’s legacy said Tuesday. “These books portray people...

One evening during the pandemic, Vivian O’Hara of Murrysville went to sleep with a lot weighing on her mind. “On the news they’d showed a story about a little boy, seven years old, who rescued his younger sister from a vicious dog attack,” said O’Hara. “He suffered a lot of...

NEW YORK — Stephen King doesn’t think of himself as a horror writer. “My view has always been you can call me whatever you want as long as the checks don’t bounce,” King told The Associated Press during a recent telephone interview. “My idea is to tell a good story,...

ALBANY, N.Y. — A former aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo detailed accusations of sexual harassment against the governor in an essay Wednesday, alleging top female staffers “normalized” behavior that included unwanted kissing and touching. Lindsey Boylan, the former deputy secretary for economic development and special adviser to the governor, said...