Author Candace Bushnell speaks with Mitchell Kaplan from LitHub about her new book Is There Still Sex in the City?… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

Mitchell Kaplan: This brings me to Sex and the City and what you’ve done with all of your books. You’ve been compared to such remarkable writers as Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, Dorothy Parker. They’re all known as keen social observers of life. How do you gather those observations? Do you think its you and your past and the way you were brought up that allows you to be so empathetic in the way that you gather those observations?

Candace Bushnell: That’s really nice to say, because I don’t think that I’m that empathetic in gathering observations. I’m guessing that I’m probably not, but I always loved the social novel, the society novel. I’m fascinated by human beings. It always seems that writing about society people is the best people to write about because they’re insulated by success and money. They’re really an example of human systems and human interactions and how we organize ourselves and status. All kinds of things that I find fascinating. That’s always been my interest. It started as a kid observing other kids.

Mitchell: Where did you go up?

Bushnell: In a town called Glastonbury in Connecticut. It was on the Connecticut River, with lots of farmlands. There were some families there that have been there for three hundred years. The past was like yesterday for me, because I was in this place that people had been there for so long.

Mitchell: Was New York the shining city for you?

Bushnell: Oh yes. As a kid, I always thought that I would go to New York. I was always observing people.

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Mary Roberts Rinehart was the grande dame of American crime fiction, at the height of her powers, when she fell into a murder mystery of her own according to Sarah Weinman from CrimeReads… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

Late in the morning of June 21, 1947, Mary Roberts Rinehart sat in the library, speaking to her butler. She had hired him earlier that summer and hoped he would suit, unlike the other butlers who had come and gone. Eaglesgate was a lot of ground to cover—literally, what with the hilltop manse, the guest houses dotting the carriage roads, and the long way down to Eden Street, one of the main streets of Bar Harbor, Maine. But an able butler could do it.

Rinehart had purchased the sumptuous, seven-acre estate, then known as Farview, ten years before. She’d rented in Bar Harbor for two successive years, falling ever more in love with the island resort town by Frenchman Bay. When Rinehart learned the estate was for sale at an absurdly low price—this was the height of the Great Depression—she pounced. Rinehart was not born rich, but the success of her novels, plays, and stories, beginning with The Circular Staircase (1908), catapulted her several rungs up the economic ladder. She could afford several houses, and to employ several servants.

Her husband, Stanley, had been gone for five years, spurring her to relocate from a gigantic apartment in Washington to one on Park Avenue in New York City, and to give up another home in Wyoming because the mountain air worsened her heart condition, and she could no longer climb stairs as well as before. Her three sons were grown, and the eldest and youngest, Stanley Jr. and Ted, had become her publishers since co-founding Farrar & Rinehart in 1929. A new house could not assuage lingering grief and loneliness, but a new place to entertain guests for elaborate summertime parties could act as balm. And for the next decade, Eaglesgate was that balm.

At nearly seventy-one, Rinehart was closer to death than to her peak, but she was still regarded as the Grande Dame of American mystery fiction, even as the current genre kings & queens gravitated towards the harder-boiled, and to more realistic depictions of life and of people. When she published, her books sold, and sold well, most recently The Yellow Room (1945), a patented concoction of murder, mystery, suspense and romance set in a town distinctly resembling Bar Harbor.

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Jim Carrey takes on romance, acting and celebrity with novel ‘Memories and Misinformation’ according to the Associate Press… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

The actor has written a novel called “Memoirs and Misinformation,” Alfred A. Knopf announced Wednesday. Along with co-author Dana Vachon, Carrey will take on celebrity, acting, romance and some other subjects he’s familiar with. The publisher is calling the book a “fearless and semi-autobiographical deconstruction of persona.”

“Memoirs and Misinformation” is scheduled for publication next May. Carrey, who plans a promotional tour, is offering a semi-disclaimer: “None of this is real and all of it is true.”

Carrey, 57, is known for films such as “Dumb and Dumber” and “Man on the Moon.” He’s not the first actor in recent years to turn to fiction writing. Others include Tom Hanks, Sean Penn and Ethan Hawke.

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The New York Times Book Review has announced a new slate of changes to its bestseller lists, both in print and online according to John Maher from Publishers Weekly… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

After cutting the mass market paperback and graphic novel/manga lists in 2017, the Times’ Best Sellers team will again track mass market paperback sales, as well as debut a combined list for graphic books, which will include fiction, nonfiction, children’s, adults, and manga. Two new monthly children’s lists, middle grade paperback and young adult paperback, will debut as well. (The Times retired its middle grade e-book and young adult e-book lists in 2017.) In addition, the Times will cut its science and sports lists, explaining that “the titles on those lists are frequently represented on current nonfiction lists.” The changes are effective October 2 online and October 20 in print.

The Times has already cut back its print lists on the combined print/e-book and print hardcover lists to 10 titles, from 15, although the online lists will continue to show 15 titles. A representative of the paper said that the change “was made for design reasons, specifically to improve the readability of the lists in print.”

“We are thrilled to bring back to our readers graphic books and mass market best sellers as two monthly best-seller lists,” Pamela Paul, editor of the Book Review, said in a statement. “Our new monthly graphic books list combines the format as it exists across all platforms—hardcover, paperback and digital—in order to represent the range of ways in which publishers create and people of all ages read these books. And readers are passionate about the many genres—from horror to romance—represented on the mass market fiction list.”

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Stanford assault victim Chanel Miller’s new book indicts her attacker — and the system according to Elizabeth Flock from The Washington Post… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

In January of 2015, a 23-year-old woman was sexually assaulted while she lay unconscious behind a dumpster outside a Stanford fraternity party. Throughout the high-profile trial of her attacker, the woman was known only as Emily Doe. Many more details were known about the perpetrator, Brock Turner, a “star swimmer” at Stanford with a high GPA, as some in the media seemed keen to tell us. Turner, who ran from the scene after being caught by two Swedish graduate students, was found guilty of three felonies — including assault with the intent to commit rape. His sentence was six months in county jail, probation and registration as a sex offender. Turner served three months. Many people were incensed at the leniency of Turner’s punishment, setting off a debate over sexual assault, justice and privilege.

A day after the sentencing in June 2016, we heard from Emily Doe, when a 12-page, wrenching letter she had read at the sentencing hearing was made public. “My damage was internal, unseen, I carry it with me,” she wrote . “You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today.” A CNN anchor read the statement aloud on air and a group of Congress members, led by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), read it on the House floor. More than 11 million people read the statement online; thousands wrote to Emily Doe.

Earlier this month, Emily Doe came forward for the first time as herself — Chanel Miller — and gave voice to her statement on “60 Minutes.” She revealed not just her name but also details about her life: that she is half Chinese, grew up in Palo Alto and is a writer and artist who received her BA in literature from the College of Creative Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. She also released a photograph of herself and disclosed that she lives in San Francisco.

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Buy Chanel Miller’s Memoir Here:

Know My Name: A Memoir

Kindle price: $14.99

5.0 stars – 7 reviews

“Know My Name is a blistering, beautifully written account of a courageous young woman’s struggle to hold a sexual predator accountable. Miller has performed an invaluable service for multitudes of survivors. Stand back, folks: This book is going to give a huge blast of momentum to the #MeToo movement.”–Jon Krakauer

The riveting, powerful memoir of the woman whose statement to Brock Turner gave voice to millions of survivors

She was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with a letter. Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was found sexually assaulting her on Stanford’s campus. Her victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it instantly went viral–viewed by eleven million people within four days, it was translated globally and read on the floor of Congress; it inspired changes in California law and the recall of the judge in the case. Thousands wrote to say that she had given them the courage to share their own experiences of assault for the first time.

Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in many ways–there were eyewitnesses, Turner ran away, physical evidence was immediately secured. But her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial reveal the oppression victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life….

Since Reese’s Book Club launched in 2017, it has become an industry phenomenon with the power to catapult titles to the top of the bestseller lists. Constance Grady from Vox looks at how Reese became the new Oprah… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

This summer, author Megan Miranda won the publishing lottery.

Miranda, who writes thrillers and young-adult novels, is the kind of author that publishers usually call midlist. She’s well established, and one of her books has even been a New York Times bestseller, yet outside of her genre, she’s not exceptionally famous.

But in June, Miranda published her 10th novel, The Last House Guest, about a murder in an exclusive Maine vacation town. In August, Reese Witherspoon selected it for her book club.

“My editor called me up,” Miranda said by phone a week after the pick was announced, sounding still slightly dazed. “I had just gotten back from my first leg of the book tour when I found out, and I was so ecstatic.”

Miranda was already well aware of Reese’s Book Club before her own anointing. (She “adored” Daisy Jones and the Six, Reese’s March pick, she says.) Writers or people who work in the publishing industry frequently are. Since Reese’s Book Club launched in 2017 in partnership with the actress’s media company, Hello Sunshine, it has become an industry phenomenon with the power to catapult titles to the top of the bestseller lists. And Witherspoon — of Legally Blonde and Big Little Lies and Wild and Cruel Intentions — has become, like Oprah Winfrey before her, one of a select few tastemakers who can launch a book into the stratosphere.

Last September, when Reese’s Book Club picked Where The Crawdads Sing, a debut novel by the unknown 70-year-old author Delia Owens, it pulled the book out of midlist obscurity and put it on the path toward megastardom. Where the Crawdads Sing’s first print run was 27,500 copies; industry tracker NPD BookScan reports that it has since sold over 1.4 million print units, not including ebooks. It has been at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for 52 weeks.

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