Books

Following her best-selling Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins published a prequel novel called The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.The book was set 64 years before the events of the original novel and its follow-up has been announced today.Sunrise on the Reaping will revisit the world of Panem 40 years later (24 years before The Hunger Games).The fifth book in the series will begin on the morning of the 50th Hunger Games reaping, also known as the Second Quarter Quell.Sunrise on the Reaping will be published on March 18, 2025 in print, digital and audio formats.Scholastic said: “Suzanne Collins has done it again, bringing us back to the world of Panem in order to ask us important questions about our own world.“Sunrise on the Reaping is a remarkable book, bringing new complexity, persp...

Before her sudden death at just 54 last year, Lisa Marie Presley had been working on her memoir with her eldest daughter Riley Keough.The highly-anticipated work will delve into the late star’s childhood with her father Elvis Presley, who died when she was just nine to her four failed marriages including to Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage.No doubt her story will have plenty of highs too amid the difficulties of fame and the tragedy of her son Benjamin’s death at just 27.Today the cover has been unveiled as a photograph of her as a little girl on the King’s lap.Meanwhile, the posthumous autobiography is called Here to the Great Unknown.Presumably, this is a reference to Lisa Marie’s life (here) to that undiscovered country that is death. But it’s also a reference to a song.A few years a...

Book fans are over the moon as an iconic children's author - who was a huge part of many childhoods - is making a comeback.Fans say it is "the best news ever" after Jacqueline Wilson confirmed she will be bringing out a new book. The author is best known for the creation of iconic character Tracy Beaker in the book The Story of Tracy Beaker - which later turned into the beloved TV show.Some of her other popular books include Double Act, Girls in Love, Vicky Angel, and Lola Rose. The impressive 78-year-old old author has written over 100 books and remains a household name.Taking to Instagram, one fan said her books "defined my preteen years" and "some of the books I credit for my love of reading", said another. Now Jacqueline says an adult sequel to the Girls series, Think Again, is comi...

Ruth Ware has raised the alarm about AI 'authors' (Image: Mike Whorley Photography)Bestselling thriller writer Ruth Ware fears artificial intelligence is being used to churn out legions of poor novels that will make it harder for human authors to survive. With most already struggling to make a living, and many having to supplement their income with other jobs, the writer of the critically acclaimed The It Girl and Zero Days, believes AI tools, such as ChatGPT, will only make things harder.Ware, programming chair of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate this July, says: “Discoverability is already the biggest problem for writers and AI is only going to make that worse because there’s going to be an inordinate amount of ChatGPT-written novels, which are, to be hon...

We have 50 copies of Richard Madeley’s brilliant new thriller, Father’s Day, to give away courtesy of publisher Simon & Schuster. For your chance to win, complete the form HERETerms and conditions: Entries close at 11.59pm on Sunday, June 9, 2024. Entrants must be 18 or over. The 50 winners will be selected at random. Winners will be notified within 14 days from the competition closing. Prize will be posted to the winner via the address provided on the entry form. The winner's contact details will only be used to ensure that prize can be received.ARTICLE: We must ban smartphones for under-16s, says Richard Madeley

This past week marks five years since HBO’s Game of Thrones TV show ended.For the final couple of seasons, the showrunners were forced to rely on A Song of Ice and Fire author George RR Martin’s planned plot points for his final two novels in the series that he is yet to write: The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring.In fact, the last time he published a novel in the fantasy series was in 2011, the year Game of Thrones began.As fans continue to lose patience, the 75-year-old has spoken out on The Winds of Winter in his latest blog post that addresses the upcoming spin-off TV show The Hedge Knight, based on the first of Martin’s Dunk and Egg novellas.Set 90 years before A Song of Ice and Fire, these follow the adventures of Sir Duncan the Tall (Dunk), the future Lord Commander of the K...

Back in the mid-1990s JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was rejected by no less than 12 publishers before being accepted by Bloomsbury.The book, which became the fourth best-selling novel of all time, had its original cover art painted by 23-year-old Thomas Taylor, who was fresh out of art school.And now his original watercolour work of Harry standing in front of the Hogwarts Express is going up for auction.According to Sotheby’s New York, the piece is expected to sell for between $400,000-$600,000 (£319,000-£479,000)This is the highest pre-sale estimate ever placed on Harry Potter-related work.The artwork was originally auctioned at Sotheby’s London for $107,000 (£85,500). The current record for the most expensive Harry Potter item ever sold is an unsigned first edi...

Iconic author Paul Auster, famed for his work on the New York Trilogy, has passed away at 77 due to complications from lung cancer.The literary world is mourning the loss of Auster, who died on Tuesday, as confirmed by his close friend and fellow writer Jacki Lyden.Renowned for his seminal work, The New York Trilogy, Auster was a prolific writer with 34 books to his name, including his most recent publication, Baumgartner, which came out last year.Among his other notable works was Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane.Joyce Caroll Oates once described Auster's unique style in 2010 as producing "highly stylised, quirkily riddlesome postmodernist fiction in which narrators are rarely other than unreliable and the bedrock of plot is continually shifting".Read more: Shardlake auth...

Harry Potter fans will no doubt be familiar with the audiobooks read by Stephen Fry in the UK and Jim Dale in the US.Now all seven novels are to be retold with an ensemble cast, Dolby Atmos sound, an original score and real-world sound capture.Exclusive to Audible, the seven Harry Potter adventures will be released sequentially for a global audience in the English-language from late 2025.Neil Blair, Chairman of Pottermore Publishing called the upcoming new Harry Potter audiobooks “sophisticated, immersive audio experience”.He added: “We are delighted to be collaborating with Audible on what will be a ground-breaking audio edition of the beloved Harry Potter stories.“J.K. Rowling’s storytelling lends itself perfectly to the application of new audiobook technologies, and we’re certain thi...

Black American GIs and a British vicar join voices at a hymn service for US soldiers in England,1942 (Image: Haywood Magee/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)On a bright moonlit night nearly 80 years ago, an African American soldier knocked at a small house in the honey-coloured village of Combe Down, just outside Bath in Somerset. An attractive woman poked her head out of the upstairs window and the stranger shouted up for directions to the city, explaining he needed to catch a train back to his base in Bristol.The 34-year-old mother-of-two came downstairs to give them to him and the pair left for the village common – without a backward glance. According to their subsequent accounts, within a few minutes they had climbed over a wall and the soldier was laying down his smart wooll...