Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

All right, this will be my last fraud-related post of the week. Probably. On Media Assassin, Harry Allen has video of Margaret Seltzer, aka Margaret B. Jones (Love and Consequences, 2008), explaining what her upbringing was like:
“We used to say, growing up, ‘I’m not from America, I’m from South Central L.A.’”

Ouch!
(Via.)

A great detective story, starring journalist and author Robert Fisk. From The Independent (”The curious case of the forged biography,” by Robert Fisk):
Needless to say, I noticed one or two problems with this book. It took a very lenient view of the brutality of Saddam, it didn’t seem to care much about the gassed civilians [...]

A long but interesting piece on author anonymity–and pseudonymity–in the Guardian (”The great unknown“). The proudly bylined John Mullan examines the reasons that writers, from Sir Walter Scott to Joe Klein, have chosen to hide in plain sight. His conclusion? That writers don’t do it because they’re afraid:
Indeed, in these cases as in many others, [...]

Luke Harding had an interesting piece (”Move over Tolstoy“) in the Guardian yesterday about Boris Akunin (aka Grigory Chkhartishvili) author of the Erast Fandorin novels (The Winter Queen, 2003; The Turkish Gambit, 2005; The Death of Achilles, 2006; Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog, 2007). Described as “the country’s most successful contemporary author and in those terms the [...]

The Turcotte family has settled their lawsuit against Augusten Burroughs and St. Martin’s, reports the Boston Globe (”Family settles with ‘Running with Scissors’ author, publisher,” by Rodrique Ngowi):
Burroughs and his publisher, St. Martin’s Press, agree to call the work a “book” instead of “memoirs,” in the author’s note and to change the acknowledgments page in future [...]

Ghosttown, the third novel in Mercedes Lambert’s trilogy featuring L.A. attorney Whitney Logan, comes out from Five Star this month. Lambert was the pen name of Douglas Anne Munson, who died of cancer in 2003. The first two Logan books, Dogtown and Soultown, will be reissued by Stark House next spring. All three were written [...]

Another blog book (I’ll never type “blook,” no blook references here so look elsewhere if you like the look, sound and mouthfeel of blook) made headlines over the weekend, as the New York Times outed the Forbes technology writer behind the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs blog after following the trail of breadcrumbs contained in [...]

Yet another why-don’t-publishers-recognize-good-writing story (”The author and the Austen plot that exposed publishers’ pride and prejudice,” by Steven Morris, The Guardian). I’m shocked, shocked that contemporary publishers don’t want to publish something that seems as if it was written 200 years ago. Even if they didn’t recognize that it was Jane Austen, they may have [...]

Galleycat had an interesting take on the Laura Albert/JT Leroy verdict last week (”But What If “JT Leroy” Wasn’t a Fraud?“):
Even if one maintains reservations on the appropriateness of the lengths Albert went to in order to ensure “JT” was the public face of her work - and acknowledging the point that signing a contract [...]

Okay, I’ve completely missed the latest development in this nearly two-century-old controversy. Fortunately for me, Dan Kraus trolls for book news in the unlikeliest places. To be fair, I’m sure it was a saved keyword search that alerted him. Or maybe he found it on Salon first.
Long story short: there’s long been suspicion that Mary [...]