Simon & Schuster will publish memoir by Val Kilmer… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

I’m Your Huckleberry: A Memoir

by Val Kilmer

Pre-Order Kindle Price: $12.99

Legendary actor Val Kilmer shares the stories behind his most beloved roles, reminisces about his star-studded career and love life, and reveals the truth behind his recent health struggles in a remarkably candid autobiography.

Val Kilmer has played so many iconic roles over his nearly four-decade film career. A table-dancing Cold War agent in Top Secret! A troublemaking science prodigy in Real Genius. A brash fighter pilot in Top Gun. A swashbuckling knight in Willow. A lovelorn bank robber in Heat. A charming master of disguise in The Saint. A wise-cracking gumshoe in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Of course, Batman, Jim Morrison, and the sharp-shooting Doc Holliday.

But who is the real Val Kilmer? In this memoir—published ahead of next summer’s highly anticipated sequel Top Gun: Maverick, in which Kilmer returns to the big screen as Tom “Iceman” Kazansky—the actor steps out of character and reveals his true self.

Kilmer reflects on his acclaimed career, recounts his high-profile romances, chronicles his spiritual journey and reveals details of his recent throat cancer diagnosis and recovery—about which he has disclosed little until now. While containing plenty of tantalizing celebrity anecdotes, I’m Your Huckleberry—taken from the famous line Kilmer delivers as Holliday in Tombstone—is ultimately a deeply moving reflection on mortality and the mysteries of life.

We can’t get enough of these authors… and neither can our readers! Here’s the top 5 most followed authors on BookGorilla:

Nora Roberts

Nora Roberts is an American author of more than 225 romance novels. She writes as J. D. Robb for the in Death series and has also written under the pseudonyms Jill March and for publications in the U.K. as Sarah Hardesty.

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James Patterson

James Brendan Patterson is an American author and philanthropist. Among his works are the Alex Cross, Michael Bennett, Women’s Murder Club, Maximum Ride, Daniel X, NYPD Red, Witch and Wizard, and Private series, as well as many stand-alone thrillers, non-fiction and romance novels.

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Janet Evanovich

Janet Evanovich is an American writer. She began her career writing short contemporary romance novels under the pen name Steffie Hall, but gained fame authoring a series of contemporary mysteries.

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Stephen King

Stephen King is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, and fantasy novels. His books have sold more than 350 million copies, many of which have been adapted into feature films, miniseries, television series, and comic books. King has published 61 novels and six non-fiction books.

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John Grisham

John Grisham is an American novelist, attorney, politician, and activist, best known for his popular legal thrillers. His books have been translated into 42 languages and published worldwide.

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Jane Buckingham was sentenced on Wednesday to three weeks in prison for taking part in a vast U.S. college admissions cheating and fraud scheme in order to help her son gain an unfair advantage, according to Nate Raymond of Reuters… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

Jane Buckingham, a marketing executive who authored parenting advice books, received less than the six-month prison term that federal prosecutors in Boston sought after she admitted to paying $50,000 to have a corrupt test proctor secretly take the ACT college entrance exam on her son’s behalf.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani rejected a request by defence lawyers to sentence the author of “The Modern Girl’s Guide to Motherhood” to probation after noting other wealthy parents also received prison time for their roles in the scheme.

“It’s a serious crime,” said Talwani, who also ordered Buckingham to pay a $40,000 fine.

Buckingham is among 52 people charged with participating in a scheme in which wealthy parents conspired with a California college admissions consultant to use bribery and other forms of fraud to secure the admission of their children to top schools.

William “Rick” Singer, the consultant, pleaded guilty in March to charges he facilitated cheating on college entrance exams and helped bribe sports coaches at universities to present his clients’ children as fake athletic recruits.

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In 1954, at the height of his fame, Richard Wright published a thriller with a white psychotic hero. The literary world did not approve according to Michael Gonzales from Crime Reads… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

While Richard Wright was known as a “serious” author whose books on race, class and violence were published in hardcover editions, in his heart the Mississippi native was a hardboiled pulp writer who had no problem crafting criminal minded protagonists for the paperback market. A favorite Wright novel since I discovered it twenty-four years ago is the little-known Savage Holiday.

Utilizing a New York City locale, the psychological noir’s lead protagonist was based on the “extreme ambivalence toward women” diagnosed in two-time murderer Clinton Brewer. The slim book was quite different from any other of Wright’s published material with its urban existentialism that reminded me of more of his friend Albert Camus (The Stranger) than his friend Jean-Paul Sartre.

Savage Holiday was Wright’s singular novel that featured a majority white cast and took place on the moneyed streets of Upper East Side Manhattan. The book was conceived in November, 1952 when, according to biographer Hazel Rowley, Wright was suffering from a high fever. The following month, on Christmas Day, Wright began the actual writing, finished a 60,000-word first draft in January and a final rewrite on Easter (April 5th) Sunday, 1953.

Wright’s powerful literary agent Paul Reynolds Jr. thought the book was too dated and discouraged his author from submitting it. Later, the manuscript was rejected by Wright’s primary publisher Harper & Brothers and World Publishing Company also declined. Though no one expressed it outright, I believe the negative response was made because the primarily Caucasian characters signaled that Wright was drifting away from the ghetto where he could be contained to examine life beyond the boundaries of Blackness the gatekeepers were used to.

Savage Holiday wasn’t a book on “the race problem” in the way the writer usually communicated his ideas. Wright was more interested in being innovative and growing as a writer, rather than creating a repeat performance of Native Son or Black Boy.

Read full post on CrimeReads

In the early fall of 1933, first-time novelist James M. Cain and his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, had a problem, according to the Library of Congress… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

James M. Cain, a hard-drinking journalist from Baltimore trying to hang on in Hollywood, had written a crackerjack crime novel about a California drifter and his married lover.

It was short, mean and scandalously sexy. It had a brilliant opening: “They threw me off the hay truck about noon.”

The problem: The title, “Bar-B-Q,” was a limp noodle.

“Dear Mr. Cain,” Knopf wrote in a three-line letter on Aug. 22, shortly after acquiring the 30,000-word novel for $500, “BAR-B-Q is not a good title and I think we must devise something better.”

The ensuing struggle to find a title – which would become one of the most famous in 20th-century American literature – is one of many captivating episodes in Cain’s papers, which reside in the Manuscript Division. Correspondence with film stars such as Joan Crawford, Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck – all of whom starred in film adaptations of his books – and journalism legends, such as H.L. Mencken and Walter Lippmann, fill dozens of boxes.

But, in 1933, Cain was going nowhere fast. He’d gotten canned from his last screenwriting gig and was scraping by on freelance magazine features. He and his second wife (there would be a total of four) were living in a little house in Burbank, at $45 per month. Knopf wanted to get the book out in January of 1934, and Cain needed the money. So he churned out a flurry of new titles. How about “Black Puma”? “The Devil’s Checkbook”? “Western Story”?

Pffft, said Knopf. He didn’t like any of them. As September turned to October, and the first galleys still had “Bar-B-Q” on them, Knopf began to get anxious. “We really must christen the book soon,” he wrote. He came up his own title – “For Love or Money” – and pushed Cain to take it. “It’s good,” he wrote on Oct. 6, underlining “good” four times.

Pffft, Cain scoffed back. Sounds like a musical.

Read full post at The Library of Congress

Whether it’s John Milton or Danielle Steel, who decides which books are great? Livia Gershon from Jstor analyzes what makes a “great book”… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

Do you feel guilty picking up a romance novel or a comic book when you still haven’t finished Paradise Lost? You might trace your anxiety to the development of the concept of “Great Books” which, the historian Tim Lacy explains, occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. At that time, Lacy writes, U.S. universities were turning into something different from the longstanding European model of higher education. Rather than focusing on “mental discipline” and classic Greek and Latin texts, students often specialized in particular disciplines designed to prepare them for professional careers. Modern science was becoming more central to universities, and students had more chances to pick elective courses.

In the face of these pressures, some men and women of letters demanded a different kind of education. They sought out what the British critic Matthew Arnold called the chance to engage “the best which has been thought and said in the world.” Lacy writes that this wasn’t just an elite phenomenon. In the U.S. and in Britain, a growing publishing industry and new public libraries put more books than ever within reach of the reading public. To figure out what to read, people browsed newspaper reviews and lists of the “hundred best books.” Publishers met the demand with series like the Harvard Classics’ “Five-Foot Shelf of Books.”

Lacy writes that intellectual elites who compiled these lists and collections sometimes had a commercial motive but, for the most part, really hoped to foster a “democratic culture.” That was partly a utopian dream—that a nation of readers would be classless and fully self-governing—and partly a reaction to sociopolitical problems. Some intellectuals worried that a society previously unified by a religious worldview was fracturing. To Arnold, religion was shrinking from an engagement with the world involving “all the human faculties” into a mere matter of moral judgments, leaving a space for “culture” to fill.

Read full post on Jstor

Four Bookish Halloween Couples Costume Ideas… Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free right now!

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Kindle price: $2.99

This works best with twins, but anyone can do it! Wear the same or similar clothes, but make one set disheveled. Bonus points for Victorian-era doctor’s garb to reflect the literature’s actual era.

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Dorian Gray and his portrait from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Kindle price: $2.99

Another great choice for twins but workable for anyone. Dress in your dandiest clothes. One person should also carry or wear a picture frame and age both the clothes and themselves with makeup, spiderwebs, tears, and other spooky details.

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Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Kindle price: 60 cents

Get your Regency era fashion on! Grab an empire waist dress for Miss Bennett’s look, some high-waisted pants and a cravat for your Darcy, and you’re halfway to happily ever after!

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Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Kindle price: $12.99

Use Gatsby as an experience to live out your 1920s fashion dreams. Whether you go with a more demure look including a cloche hat or a sassier, flapper girl dress, your Gatsby will look the part with a suit—though white will really drive the costume home.