BOOKS

SMORGASBORD: 'Herbivoracious' ... Molecular Magic ... Best of the Season

There are many different paths to culinary stardom. Some chefs take the culinary school route. Others work their way up through the dishwashing ranks. But it’s a rare food writer whose book flap includes a stint programming Tyrannosaurus rex for Steven Spielberg.

By Herald Staff Report , May 23, 2012

Marvel Comics plans wedding for gay hero, Northstar

Wedding bells will ring this summer for Marvel Comics' first openly gay hero, super speedster Northstar, and his longtime boyfriend.

By Matt Moore , May 22, 2012

BOOK NOTES: 'It's Not About You' ... 'Harvest the Wind' ... 'Taco USA'

Grand Forks and East Grand Forks library book notes

By Herald Staff Report , May 13, 2012

Best-selling series 'Fifty Shades of Grey' banned from some libraries

Public libraries in several states are pulling the racy romance trilogy "Fifty Shades of Grey" from shelves or deciding not to order the best-seller at all, saying it's too steamy or too poorly written.

By Tamara Lush , May 09, 2012

Gregg Allman bares and shares in new memoir

It’s fitting that Gregg Allman had to alter some dates on his book signing tour because of a health scare. After experiencing arrhythmia, he was cleared last week by the Mayo Clinic to embark on the book outing and a summer Allman Brothers tour.In the just-released “My Cross to Bear” (William Morrow/HarperCollins, Allman’s autobiography written with music journalist Alan Light, Allman digs back to his earliest days in Daytona, Fla., when racism was prevalent and he and brother Duane learned their first guitar licks, to the recent years with a new liver and, last fall, playing at the Country Music Association Awards with the Zac Brown Band.

By Melissa Ruggieri , May 09, 2012

'Where Wild Things Are' author Maurice Sendak dies

Maurice Sendak didn't think of himself as a children's author, but as an author who told the truth about childhood. Sendak, who died early Tuesday in Danbury, Conn., at age 83, four days after suffering a stroke, revolutionized children's books and how we think about childhood simply by leaving in what so many writers before had excluded.

By Hillel Italie , May 08, 2012

B&N, Microsoft team up on Nook, college businesses

An infusion of money from Microsoft Corp. sent Barnes & Noble Inc.'s stock zooming Monday, as the software giant established a way to get back into the e-books business.

By Peter Svensson , April 30, 2012

Author Jesmyn Ward has lived all over but keeps returning to DeLisle, Miss

Jesmyn Ward was struggling. Despite two master’s degrees and five years of work experience, her job situation was difficult: She commuted an hour each way to a low-paying college teaching job. In her writing career, things were even worse. She sent out stories and got back rejection letters. Her agent tried and failed, and tried again, to sell her book. On Nov. 16, 2011, the not-quite nursing student’s “Salvage the Bones,” a novel about a poor African-American family whose rural Mississippi home stands in the path of Hurricane Katrina, won the National Book Award for fiction. Because of the award’s prominence, her publisher Bloomsbury ordered an additional 50,000 copies the very next day, tripling its print run.

By Carolyn Kellogg , April 29, 2012

BOOK NOTES: 'Jack Kennedy' ... 'Threaded Together' ... Avril Lavigne'

“Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero,” Christopher Mathews. Based on personal interviews and oral histories from those closest to JFK, documents from Kennedy’s years at Choate, and notes from Jacqueline Kennedy’s first interview after Dallas.

By Herald Staff Report , April 29, 2012

‘Bad Religion’: When faith transcended differences

Ross Douthat, a Catholic conservative and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times, has written a book about contemporary U.S. Christianity that is quite good. But the religion he describes is comically bad.

By Mark Oppenheimer , April 22, 2012

BOOK NOTES: 'The Devil in the White City' ... 'The Trail of Tears' ... 'Of Uncommon Birth'

“The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America,” Erik Larson. The true tale of the 1893 World’s Fair and the serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their deaths.

By Herald Staff Report , April 22, 2012

And now, read about the No. 1 girls’ detective agency

For all the fans of Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s No. 1 lady detective — and there are legions — and for all the kids who think it would be fun to solve mysteries, “The Great Cake Mystery” delivers a sweet, fun story about how Precious got her start detecting.

By Lisa McLendon , April 22, 2012

Mysteries around America

Minnesotan William Kent Krueger, author of “Northwest Angle” and other Cork O’Connor mysteries, and three other Atria Books authors are embarking on the Great Mystery Bus Tour that will arrive Monday in Minnesota.

By Paulette Tobin , April 19, 2012

Montana author with Minnesota ties sued over 'Three Cups of Tea'

Regardless of whether claims are true that author Greg Mortenson of Bozeman, Mont., fabricated portions of "Three Cups of Tea," neither he nor his publisher can be held liable because the First Amendment protects exaggerations or lies in memoirs, his publisher's attorney said Wednesday. Mortenson, who was born in St. Cloud, Minn., to Lutheran missionaries and attended Concordia College in Moorhead on a football scholarship from 1977-1979, has raised millions for his charity work in Afghanistan and nearby countries.

By Matt Volz , April 18, 2012

BOOK NOTES: 'Wilt, 1962' ... 'The Scent of Scandal' ... 'The Filter Bubble'

By Herald Staff Report , April 15, 2012