Highlights from Laura Bush's memoir, Spoken from the Heart (Scribner), which will be released next Tuesday, May 4, include a long, candid discussion of the fatal car crash she was involved in at age 17, "which has haunted her for most of her adult life," the New York Times said.

In the book, the former First Lady also occasionally "admonishes her husband's political adversaries for 'calling him names,' and she pointedly rebuts criticism of some of his key decisions." She also states that she and President Bush and other American attendees of a G8 summit in Germany may have been poisoned.

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Another newsworthy part of this story is that the Times has again broken a book embargo. The paper tartly explained: "A copy of the book, scheduled for release in early May, was obtained by the New York Times at a bookstore."

We'd love an in-depth piece on this bookstore....

Terry Gross's interview yesterday with Ken Auletta on Fresh Air about e-books and the state of publishing and book retailing can be heard here.

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Event Network, which manages stores in a range of museums, zoos, aquariums, science centers and other cultural institutions, is taking over management of the retail and licensing operations of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Management and staff of the Museum's shops are reportedly being let go and may apply for positions with Event Network.

Event Network, which has headquarters in San Diego, Calif., was founded 12 years ago, has sales of more than $100 million a year and has more than 50 partnerships with, among others, Mystic Seaport, Old Sturbridge Village, the Boston Children's Museum, Ford's Theater, the Griffith Observatory, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and the Shedd Aquarium.

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As a guide for people attending BookExpo America, Book Blogger Con or Book Week, Dawn Rennert--who blogs at SheIsTooFondOfBooks.com--is creating a directory of bookstores in New York City called Spotlight on NYC Bookstores. The listings provide basic information, including directions to the store via public transportation, website and social media addresses.

Booksellers are invited to add information either via the Add My Bookstore tab or directly to dawn@SheIsTooFondOfBooks.com.

Rennert said she intends to maintain the site after May.

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800-CEO-READ, the business bookseller, and Inc. Magazine are teaming up to create a list of bestselling business books. The Inc. 800-CEO-READ list will be compiled from 800-CEO-READ's sales data and appear monthly on 800CEOREAD.com and Inc.com, starting May 2.

800-CEO-READ president Jack Covert said he had looked for a media partner to extend the reach of a list he's maintained for 23 years. "This will help business owners sort through the vast array of books on offer, identifying those that have information crucial to succeeding in today’s business environment."

Book trailer of the day: The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking).

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The full schedule of the Book Industry Study Group's Making Information Pay conference May 6 in New York City is now available online.

The best of all possible questions was asked of attendees at last weekend's Los Angeles Times Festival of Books: What are you reading? Answering that question meant "finding space on the formerly all-white wall that after just two hours is dense with book titles, ranging from children's classics to the coming-of-age The Catcher in the Rye, to seemingly equal numbers of postings of The Bible and The Koran. In a city known for its Hollywood glitz and climate-friendly outdoor living, what many don't know about Los Angeles is how much it reveres its book festival; the largest in the nation, attended by 130,000 readers of all ages and ethnicities," the Huffington Post wrote.

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Does Twitter help an author sell books? The New York Observer conducted a "quasi-scientific study" of the New York Times bestseller list and concluded: "It's tough to say that Twitter moves copies, although being a best-selling author sure seems to help one attract followers."

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Is your book trailer prize-worthy? Melville House Publishing is sponsoring the first annual Moby Awards for the year’s best and worst book trailers produced between April 2009 and April 2010. Awards will be presented in several categories, including best big budget book trailer, best low budget book trailer, best cameo in a book trailer, best author appearance in a book trailer and least likely to actually sell the book trailer. The nomination process is open to all, and trailers may be submitted for consideration here.

Winners and "winners" will be honored May 20 during "a formal, red carpet ceremony" at the Griffin in New York City. Melville House publisher Dennis Loy Johnson is hosting, with celebrity guests--including novelist John Wray--opening the envelopes and presenting trophies. The event is open to all publishing and media professionals, authors and their guests. To attend, RSVP here.

The judges are Jason Boog of Mediabistro's GalleyCat; Troy Patterson, television critic for Slate; book blogger Carolyn Kellogg of the Los Angeles Times' Jacket Copy; publisher Colin Robinson of OR Books; and Megan Halpern of Melville House.

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NPR's What We're Reading list this week includes Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende, Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco and Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin by Hampton Sides.

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Goldberg McDuffie Communications has founded GMC Consulting, a division that will help authors, agents and publishers "develop creative strategies to meet the challenges of the digital era." The company continues to provide pr and marketing campaigns.

GMC Consulting will be headed by Camille McDuffie and Lynn Goldberg and provide digital outreach strategies from the beginning of the publishing process--building platforms for authors, developing marketing programs and creating social networking strategies--through the book's publication. It will also offer consulting services to authors on positioning and publicity for the launch of a book, even if the campaign is executed by the publisher, and will help build an author's brand beyond a specific book.

In connection with the founding of the new division:

Monday night at the "Night of Swiss Bookselling," the first set of industry awards sponsored by Schweizer Buchhandel, were given out in Zurich. Winners were Bookstore of the Year Bücherladen Carol Forster, in Appenzell; Newcomer Bookseller of the Year Nasobem Buch- und Kaffeebar, in Basel; Chain Branch Store of the Year Orell Füssli am Bellevue, in Zurich; Publisher of the Year Kein & Aber; and Book Person of the Year Daniel Keel, founder of Diogenes. At the party: (from l.) Andras Nemeth of bookselling chain Orell Füssli; Andreas Grob, CEO of wholesaler Buchzentrum; and Dani Landolf, head of the Swiss Booksellers and Publishers Association.

Melvyn Zerman, founder of Limelight Editions, which specialized in reprinting performing arts classics, died April 19 in New York City. He was 79.

A sales manager at Random House, Zerman "saw a niche in resurrecting worthy books on theater, music, film and dance that the big publishing companies had allowed to go out of print," as the New York Times put it. Limelight, now owned by Hal Leonard Corporation, began in 1984. Zerman also wrote two books, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt: Inside the American Jury System and Taking On the Press: Constitutional Rights in Conflict.

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Elizabeth Post, author of more than a dozen etiquette books and "granddaughter-in-law of the country's foremost etiquette expert, Emily Post," died last Saturday, USA Today reported. She was 89.

Today on Fresh Air: Hampton Sides, author of Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Manhunt for His Assassin (Doubleday, $28.95, 9780385523929/0385523920).

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Today on Talk of the Nation: Thomas Joiner, author of Myths About Suicide (Harvard University Press, $25.95, 9780674048225/0674048229).

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Tomorrow morning on the Today Show: Kelly Corrigan, author of Lift (Voice, $16.99, 9781401341244/1401341241).

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Tomorrow on KCRW's Bookworm: John D'Agata, author of About a Mountain (Norton, $23.95, 9780393068184/0393068188). As the show put it: "In a culture whose major activities include consumption and the production of waste, John D'Agata ponders the adjacency of Las Vegas and a proposed nuclear waste dumping ground. A book-length essay--philosophical, lyrical, dense with fact--is the stunning result."

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Tomorrow on NPR's Here and Now: Mark Oppenheimer, author of Wisenheimer: A Childhood Subject to Debate (Free Press, $25, 9781439128640/1439128642).

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Tomorrow on Charlie Rose: Anna Quindlen, author of Every Last One (Random House, $26, 9781400065745/1400065747).

Lionsgate has acquired domestic distribution rights to The Lincoln Lawyer, based on Michael Connelly's bestselling novel. Brad Furman (The Take) is directing an adapted screenplay by John Romano (Nights in Rodanthe, Intolerable Cruelty), with filming set to begin in July. Matthew McConaughey will star. The cast also includes John Leguizamo, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillippe and William H. Macy.

Variety reported that "Lakeshore secured rights to Connelly's tome prior to its publication in 2005. Only one book from the prolific mystery author has previously been adapted onscreen, 2002's Clint Eastwood-directed Blood Work. Last fall, Tommy Lee Jones dropped out as director and co-star over creative differences. Macy will play the role Jones was to have played."

The winners of this year's Pannell Award, sponsored by the Women's National Book Association in honor of Lucile Micheels Pannell and given to a general bookstore and children's-only bookstore that "excel at inspiring the interest of young people in books and reading," are:

General bookstore: Green Toad Bookstore in Oneonta, N.Y., which the judges praised for "reaching out to young people with special needs and their 'substance mixed with a little flash.' "

General bookstore honorable mention went to Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, Wash.

Children's specialty store category: Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, Ga., which was cited for its "wide range summer camp concept."

The awards will be presented at BEA's Children's Book and Author Breakfast on Wednesday, May 26, at the Javits Center in New York City. Each winner will receive a check for $1,000 and a framed piece of original art. This year's art was contributed by David Diaz and Gianna Marino. Penguin Young Readers Group is again underwriting the award.

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What's so funny about Ian McEwan? Even his most devoted fans may be a bit surprised to learn that the novelist's latest effort, Solar, is one of the finalists for this year's Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction.

McEwan has said, "I hate comic novels; it's like being wrestled to the ground and being tickled, being forced to laugh." But the Independent noted he "did concede that the book had extended comic stretches."

Other books on the shortlist are One Day by David Nicholls, Diamond Star Halo by Tiffany Murray, Skippy Dies by Paul Murray and From Aberystwyth with Love by Malcolm Pryce.

"The winner will be announced at the Guardian Hay festival, and will receive a jereboam of champagne, a set of the Everyman Wodehouse as well as getting a locally raised Gloucestershire Old Spot pig named after the winning book," the Guardian wrote.

Partly in response to mine disasters this month in West Virginia and China, the Association of American University Presses has complied a Books for Understanding bibliography that includes "scholarship on mining history and how it has shaped nations, miners and their labor, and the forces that control policy and regulation in this dangerous area."

Among the titles in the bibliography:

Killing for Coal by Thomas G. Andrews (Harvard University Press, 2008), winner of the Bancroft Prize.
Goodbye Wifes and Daughters by Susan Kushner Resnick (University of Nebraska Press, 2010), the story of the 1943 Smith Mine #3 disaster in Bearcreek, Mont.
Bringing Down the Mountains: The Impact of Mountaintop Removal on Southern West Virginia by Shirley Stewart Burns (West Virginia University Press, 2007), about one of the most controversial mining techniques.
Pennsylvania Mining Families: The Search for Dignity in the Coalfields by Barry P. Michrina (University of Kentucky Press, 2004), an ethnographic examination of mining communities.

Rachelle Rogers Knight is a passionate reader who has enjoyed books her entire life. In 2007, Knight self-published Read, Remember, Recommend and Read, Remember, Recommend for Teens and earned the Bronze Medal for Independent Publisher of the Year from Independent Publisher Online magazine in 2008. Sourcebooks is releasing new editions of the self-published hits this month. Rogers lives in Salt Lake City with her husband, two sons and two dogs. She recently relaunched bibliobabe.com, a blog and resource for book lovers.
 
On your nightstand now:

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters. I enjoyed Fingersmith and have seen great reviews for Waters's newest title, The Little Stranger. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. This has won so many awards and is on a myriad of notable lists. How could I be so behind as to not have read this yet? Still Alice by Lisa Genova. This debut novel has received great press.
 
Favorite book when you were a child:

The Old Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle by Rumer Godden. My mom read this to my sister and me on a warm, dreamy summer night in our backyard.
 
Your top five authors:

Can I have seven?

Cormac McCarthy, a true master. Toni Morrison--how can any favorite author list be complete without Toni Morrison? I will forever be haunted by the images in Beloved. Barbara Kingsolver--The Poisonwood Bible is one of my favorite novels. The creative narration and amazingly informative setting tie together to make a truly wonderful tale.

Stieg Larsson, one of the greatest thriller (and just plain old fiction) writers in contemporary literature. His untimely death troubles me--we will never know the rest of the story. R.I.P., Stieg. Wilkie Collins--I am saving The Moonstone for a rainy day; it's my treat hanging out there for being good. Leo Tolstoy--too pretentious? But once you make the commitment to the big ones, you are never the same reader. Louis Bayard--I jump at the chance to read anything Bayard writes. His historical fiction is told around some of the most interesting figures of the past.
 
Book you've faked reading:

The Frontiersmen by Allen Eckert. A chunkster of a book club selection--I just couldn't get through it!

Books you're an evangelist for:
 
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. For some reason, everyone I have encouraged to read this "can't get into it." My mom, my aunt, my neighbor (okay, she might not count because "she can't find time for reading"). This book has been on the bestseller lists for ages--I can't be crazy, right? I have never wanted to visit a setting or meet a group of people from a novel as much as the people in this book. Can't I please have tea with them all? No need to cook, I will bring the treats.
 
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. This was such an amazing, underrepresented novel (in the mainstream). Although categorized as fantasy, anyone who loves a romping good tale would be delighted with this book. It involves early 19th-century English society, magicians, Napoleon and a just a pinch of adult fairy tale. Who can pass that up?
 
Book you've bought for the cover:
 
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff. Such an intriguing cover--and since then, many others have followed its intricate, branching design. It was a good choice too!

Book that changed your life:

My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. I read this as part of my 10th-grade English class. My teacher, Susan Clarke, was an expert in the art of book discussion. She walked us, mesmerized, through the symbolism of this brilliant coming-of-age tale. This was the true start of my love for great literature.

Favorite line from a book:

"People don't do right because of the fear of God or love of him. You do right because the world doesn't make sense if you don't."--From Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
 
Book you most want to read again for the first time:

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.

Move over, Henrietta, there’s a new chicken in town! The Pinkwaters, who cried fowl in The Hoboken Chicken Emergency--involving a boy and his beloved 266-pound pet chicken, Henrietta--now turn their attention to beautiful, “brave and clever” Yetta. This more realistically proportioned feathered heroine flees her fate by escaping her crate at the back of Mr. Flegleman’s pick-up truck and finds herself in Brooklyn. In one of the standout images of the story, Jill Pinkwater places readers in Yetta’s place: a country chicken thrust into the heart of an urban center, staring up at a skyline with very little sky. Even though she’s free, she looks confined by these towering cement cliffs. Before long, Yetta thwarts a cat’s attempts to capture a small green bird named Eduardo and is embraced by the wild parrot’s flock. (Check out the real Brooklyn wild parrots.) Though Yetta’s native language is Yiddish, and Eduardo and his flock speak Spanish, they find a way to communicate. Their conversation unfolds in an ingenious and helpful series of alternating thought balloons (which includes pronunciation and translation guides). This story speaks to the child who’s new to a country, new to a neighborhood, or who simply finds himself on the outside looking for a way in. Yetta may be out of her element, but she knows who she is and acts with confidence. Brava! --Jennifer M. Brown