Times Online has a story on what happens as the adventures of popular characters come to an end. It concludes:

So when, eventually, Rebus collects his P60, and Harry Potter confronts his final fate, we should not be surprised if there is widespread mourning across the land, and a clamour for them to return. Enormous pressure will be put on both authors for just one more sequel, one final opportunity to share the grime of St Leonard’s police station, or the mystery of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft. They must resist it. A character who returns is never quite the same as the one who left. A clean break is better for all concerned.

You’ll notice the article’s author dropped “and Wizardry” from Hogwarts for some reason. Hmm.

The full story, at a little over a thousand words, is available on TimesOnline.co.uk and is worth a read.

This, folks, is why keeping your house clean can never hurt:

An 89-year-old Dutch novelist has stumbled on a pot-boiler she wrote that had been lost for decades, and plans to publish it later this year.

Hella Haasse’s “Sterrenjacht” (”Hunt for the Stars”) was published as a serial in a newspaper in 1950, but the manuscript was lost.

However, she saved clippings of each installment and recently found them among an “incredible pile of paper.”

Full story on Reuters.

Publisher Scholastic Corp. said on Wednesday it would release a record-breaking 12 million copies for the first U.S. printing of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” which hits stores on July 21.

Reuters has the full story. To compare, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince had a first printing of 10.8 million copies.

From BBC News:

An unpublished novel by renowned author Jeanette Winterson has been found at an Underground station in south London.

The Stone Gods, by the writer of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, is not due to be published until September.

Martha Oster, 27, said she was “amazed” when she found the 134-page manuscript lying on a bench at Balham station on Wednesday night.

View the full story on BBC.co.uk - and yes, they do explain of how it came to be there. For those interested, Jeanette Winterson’s official site can be found here.

With four months to go until the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, independent bookshops have started the fight back against the massive discounting of the book by the bookselling chains. At the vanguard of the battle for the boy wizard’s fans is Dulwich Books, an independent in south London which is hoping to win customers with a Harry Potter loyalty scheme. Every purchase of children’s books worth £10 or more before June will win earn a point and when the card is full with 10 points, customers will be entitled to a free copy of the new Harry Potter.

Small stores have a choice between selling the book at the full expected £17.99 and risk driving away customers, or discounting it and losing money.  Alternate marketing strategies like this one could help encourage readers to buy indie.
Link to the Guardian article

“7: The Mickey Mantle Novel,” Peter Golenbock’s occasionally racy account of the life of Mickey Mantle, which was canceled last month by its publisher, HarperCollins, was revived yesterday by Lyons Press.

Read the story on NYTimes.com. For some reason, it’s filed under the Sports section - Baseball, to be specific - rather than Books.

Scotsman.com has an exclusive excerpt of Alexander McCall Smith’s new novel, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive:

It is useful, people generally agree, for a wife to wake up before her husband. Mma Ramotswe always rose from her bed an hour or so before Mr JLB Matekoni - a good thing for a wife to do because it affords time to accomplish at least some of the day’s tasks.

Click here to read the full excerpt (around 3,600 words).

AP reports:

It’s months away from being on bookshelves, but fans can’t get enough of the seventh - and final - Harry Potter book, no matter the cost.

Not only is “Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows” topping the charts of Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com, a deluxe edition, priced at $65, is No. 2, outselling the “You” diet book, Sen. Barack Obama and an Oprah Winfrey-endorsed memoir by Sidney Poitier.

Full article can be found here.