Little, Brown & Company has pulled a mystery novel from the shelves after passages in the book were found to have been plagiarized from “a variety of classic and contemporary spy novels,” like James Bond novels and books by Robert Ludlum and Charles McCarry.
Plagiarizing James Bond
The Mojo Spot
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Brand New Books in Your Ear
Hey book podcast lovers, Between the Covers has a new episode out featuring author Thalia Field on her fascinating-sounding novel Experimental Animals. For more literary listens, see our round-up of 10 more shows to check out.
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Pick and Choose
Tim Waterstone (of the giant UK chain Waterstones) will soon launch a new platform that publishes shorter works. (Like several other companies, it’s been dubbed “the Spotify of books.”)
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Serialized Storytelling
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Teen Angst
In Meg Wolitzer’s new YA novel Belzhar, a group of teenagers packed off to an idyllic boarding school learn that they have the ability to undo their most serious traumas. Their discovery is sparked by a writing assignment in a class on Sylvia Plath. At Slate, Jennifer Ray Morell connects Wolitzer’s novel to Plath’s classic The Bell Jar. Related: our own Hannah Gersen’s interview with biographer Elizabeth Winder.
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Send In the Clowns
Coulrophobes take heed! You’re not scared of clowns because they’re inherently dark, or even because you caught a few minutes of Stephen King’s IT on television. In fact, you probably owe your fear of clowns to a fellow named Joseph Grimaldi, the “Homo erectus of clown evolution.” When this progenitor died in 1837, a young Charles Dickens “was charged with editing his memoirs.” The resulting portrait, relays Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, was what ultimately “water[ed] the seeds in popular imagination of the scary clown.”