Sony introduced two new electronic reading devices and cut prices for new and bestselling e-books. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition "will sell for $199 and $299 respectively and will go on sale at the end of August. The devices replace earlier and more expensive versions of the Sony Reader, the 505 and 700, which cost $269 and $399." In lowering selected e-book prices from $11.99 to $9.99, Sony "matches the discount price offered by Amazon for users of its Kindle device and Barnes & Noble Inc.'s Fictionwise."

"They're offering a promotional price because they want people to get used to reading on these devices," said Esther Margolis, president and publisher of Newmarket Press.

"This is a market very much in flux," added Mark Suchomel, president of the Independent Publishers Group. "Once people decide this is how they want to read books, then prices are likely to go up for best sellers."

The New York Times reported that Steve Haber, president of Sony’s Digital Reading Business Division, said the "e-book industry has not hit the mainstream yet. We are focusing on affordability."

"We all know that these companies are taking a loss and that’s not going to continue forever," Jonathan Karp, publisher and editor-in-chief at Twelve, told the Times, adding that "$9.99 has now become the effective price for e-books in August of 2009. Let’s just take a breath and see how long this lasts."

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Mobil Travel Guide will become Forbes Travel Guide effective October 1, 2009, according to an exclusive licensing agreement between Forbes Media LLC and Mobile Travel Guide. In a joint statement, the companies said the transition from the ExxonMobil to the Forbes brand includes the creation of a new "Forbes Four and Five Star Award" designation for hotels, restaurants and spas beginning with the 2010 ratings announcements.

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Larry Kirschbaum, founder of LJK Literary Management and former Time-Warner Book Group president-CEO, and Jane Friedman, former HarperCollins president-CEO, appeared in "a refreshingly frank new video from Samanthus Ettus's interview show Obsessed," Entertainment Weekly's Shelf Life blog reported, noting that "both agree that too many books are published, extol the virtues of so-called vanity publishing, note the slowness of major publishers to adapt to digital formats, and speculate on the fate of 'legacy publishers,' which, Friedman says, will struggle to reinvent themselves 'because there's too much history and there's too much overhead.'"

Kirschbaum observed that ultimately, however, "We're optimists."

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Kingwood, Tex., finally has what its residents were craving--"a bookstore close to home." The Tribune reported that "somewhere, in a parallel universe meaning Katy, Tex., their cry was heard. Sandi Petty, a former Katy ISD teacher, has opened a second neighborhood bookstore, this one in Kings Harbor. The Bookworm Shop's grand opening will be held August 15-16."

The Tribune noted that the new bookstore "is designed with an old-fashioned look to make visitors feel welcome and to feed their sense of adventure."

"We wanted the store to have that neighborhood-store feel to it," said Petty.

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A Boulder, Colo., Daily Camera editorial offered kudos to Barnes & Noble for showing its faith in the city by "opening a new 'hard copy' store on Aug. 12," but also cautioned readers to "not forget the city's premier independent bookseller, Boulder Book Store, which has been the bibliophile's best friend on the 1100 block of Pearl Street since 1973, Boulder's top-notch used book dealers, including the Bookworm, Red Letter Books and the Trident, and small independents like the inimitable, funky Beat Bookshop. They may not have fireplaces, but these are places where books still feel like treasures, not commodities."

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The Daily Beast featured a "Dog Day Reading List" from Nancy Bass Wyden, owner of the Strand Book Store in New York City. She recommended "some last-chance summer books--and a few fall ones she’s already got her eye on."

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Wizards vs. vampires. USA Today reported that Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series "has sunk its fangs" into the newspaper's bestseller list "with no signs of letting go. Meyer's domination of the list for the past 12 months has smashed records that until now had belonged to J. K. Rowling."

Although Rowling has sold more books overall, Meyer's control of the list is notable: "The Twilight books have stayed in the list's top 10 for 52 consecutive weeks. They held the first four spots a total of 13 weeks in the past year. Rowling's first four Potter books were top 10 for 13 consecutive weeks, 24 weeks total, for the first year after Goblet's publication and held the first four spots for two weeks."

"The books continue to find new audiences," said Carol Fitzgerald of BookReporter.com, "so sales can still roll on bigger and bigger. The Twilight graphic novel that was just announced is going to bring a whole new audience to the books, and interest in the movies will keep people reading the books as well."

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Narratives vs. Episodics. "Are you a Huck, Holden or John Ames?" asked the Wall Street Journal, noting that "this being the 100th anniversary of the first American edition of Huckleberry Finn, it is the perfect time to ask an essential question: Are you a Narrative or an Episodic personality? In other words, do you believe that your life tells a meaningful story? Or do you think that you live, like Huck Finn and every other picaresque hero, from isolated minute to isolated minute--episode to episode."

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Effective September 1, Ingram Publisher Services will distribute VeloPress and its imprint Peak Sports Press. They were previously distributed by PGW.

Tomorrow morning on the Early Show: Pamela Satran, author of How Not to Act Old: 185 Ways to Pass for Phat, Sick, Hot, Dope, Awesome, or at Least Not Totally Lame (Harper, $14.99, 9780061771309/0061771309).

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Tomorrow on KCRW's Bookworm: Jim Krusoe, author of Erased (Tin House Books, $14.95, 9780980243673/098024367X). As the show put it: "In this wild and woolly conversation, Jim Krusoe reveals that his zany, unpredictable, hilarity-inspiring novels are, well, descriptions of the human condition (at least as how he sees it)."

Casting additions for two book-to-TV adaptations were disclosed by the Hollywood Reporter:

Brenda Vaccaro will play Dr. Jack Kevorkian's (Al Pacino) doting sister in director Barry Levinson's You Don't Know Jack, an HBO Films' biopic version of Neal Nicol's and Harry Wylie's book Between the Dying and the Dead: Dr. Jack Kevorkian's Life and the Battle to Legalize Euthanasia. Susan Sarandon and John Goodman are already on board for the project.

On Game of Thrones, HBO's adaptation of the George R.R. Martin series, Jennifer Ehle has been cast as "Catelyn Stark, Ned Stark's (Sean Bean) wife who originally was betrothed to Ned's older brother. When the older brother was killed, she fulfilled her duty by marrying Ned and securing the alliance between their two houses."

Julie & Julia, based on the memoir by Julie Powell, opens this Friday, August 7. Julie Powell (Amy Adams) decides to make her life more interesting by cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child's (Meryl Streep) Mastering the Art of French Cooking during a single year. A movie tie-in edition has been served up (Little, Brown, $7.99, 9780316042512/031604251X).

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Steve Zahn will play the father in Fox 2000's adaptation of Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Abrams Books for Young Readers, $12.95, 9780810993136/0810993139), directed by Thor Freudenthal. Variety reported that Zahn will join a cast that includes Zachary Gordon in the title role, Rachael Harris as his mother, Robert Capron as his best friend and Devon Bostick as his brother.

Trigger City by Sean Chercover won the 2009 Crimespree magazine award for favorite book of 2008. Other winners were Chasing Darkness by Robert Crais (best in ongoing series), Brian Azzarello (favorite comics writer), Money Shot by Christa Faust (favorite original paperback, mass market or trade) and Once Upon a Crime, Minneapolis, Minn. (favorite mystery bookstore). You can see the runners-up in all categories at Crimespree's blog, Central Crime Zone.

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Finalists have been named for this year's World Fantasy Awards. The winners will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention, October 29-November 1, in San Jose, Calif.

The shortlist includes:

Novel

The House of the Stag by Kage Baker
The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory
Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

Anthology

The Living Dead edited by John Joseph Adams
The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Ellen Datlow
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2008: Twenty-First Annual Collection edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant
Logorrhea edited by John Klima
Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy edited by Ekaterina Sedia
Steampunk edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

Collection

Strange Roads by Peter S. Beagle
The Drowned Life by Jeffrey Ford
Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link
Filter House by Nisi Shawl
Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan

Special Award--Professional

Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant (for Small Beer Press and Big Mouth House)
Farah Mendlesohn (for The Rhetorics of Fantasy)
Stephen H. Segal and Ann VanderMeer (for Weird Tales)
Jerad Walters (for A Lovecraft Retrospective: Artists Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft)
Jacob Weisman (for Tachyon Publications)

Special Award--Non-professional

Edith L. Crowe (for her work with the Mythopoeic Society)
John Klima (for Electric Velocipede)
Elise Matthesen (for setting out to inspire and for serving as inspiration for works of poetry, fantasy, and SF over the last decade through her jewelry-making and her "artist's challenges")
Sean Wallace, Neil Clarke and Nick Mamatas (for Clarkesworld)
Michael Walsh (for Howard Waldrop collections from Old Earth Books)

A complete list of finalists can be found at Locus magazine.

As life seemingly reaches its closing chapter for Joseph Vaughn, he begins to relate his life story and waits for judgment on who he is and what he has done. It begins in Georgia, near the Okefenokee River, in July of 1939, when 12-year-old Joseph sees a slender white feather drift from the hallway into his room. He believes it's a sign that an angel had come to visit; later that day, Death comes for his father. In November, Death comes again, when a dead girl is found naked in a field, and continues to haunt Joseph for the next decade as 10 girls are murdered.

Fear and paranoia over the killings are fueled in the rural community by the ruptures of wartime. After the fourth victim is found, with still no clues, Joseph pulls together five other boys, who become the Guardians, pledged to protect the girls in the area. But they can't, and he carries the weight of the girls' ghosts, thinking he should have stopped the killings. He worries that he still has to do something so the girls can become angels. By the '60s, he finds out about more victims, murdered over a period of three decades, waiting for their wings, "waiting for me to find their killer and release them."

Ellory's writing is passionate, elegant. His descriptions of people are haunting. Reilly Hawkins, a neighboring farmer, has eyes "going this way and that as if forever searching out something that held a purpose to evade him . . . eyes washed clear and clean by tears for fallen friends." Elena Kruger, a schoolmate, "was like bitter-tasting medicine for an illness long gone." He is a master of tension and dread:

"Though we felt fear then. All of us believed at least that that was what we were feeling. In truth, we had seen nothing yet. In truth, we had no idea how bad it was to become. The real fear came with the fifth girl. That's when it came. Came just like Death along the High Road. Like the mailman, like the windmill-pump salesman, like anyone else walking into Augusta Falls with wares to sell . . .

"[The real fear] moved right in like there'd been an invitation to visit family. Times were it seemed that Death had come to collect all of us, every single sorry one. And had merely started with the children because the children didn't have the mind to fight back.
 
"The fifth girl was the one who sat beside me in Miss Alexandra Webber's class, so close that I knew how she drew the number five backwards. Hell, she sat so close I knew how she smelled.

"I found her Monday, August third, 1942.

"Or, to be precise, I found most of her."

The mystery is compelling; just as insistent is the pull of Ellory's prose, with a deceptively leisurely pace that heightens the suspense. As Sherriff Haynes Dearing says to Joseph, "Sometimes I like to make a journey of what I'm saying so it feels more like a destination when I get there." R. J. Ellory has crafted a dazzling journey.--Marilyn Dahl

Heartsinger by Karlijn Stoffels, originally published in the Netherlands as Koningsdochter, Zeemanslief ("King's Daughter, Sailor's Sweetheart"), has everything to do with music, so it was important to Stoffels that the translation preserve the musicality of the language. At a panel moderated by Marianne Martens in Chicago at the ALA convention last month ("USBBY Mixing It Up: The Process of Bringing International Children's Books to the United States"), Stoffels, as well as her book's translator, her U.S. editor and her U.S. publisher gave a rare opportunity to hear about the process of bringing a foreign book to American shores.
 
Stoffels called Laura Watkinson's translation "magical. . . . What's funny stays funny. When I read her translation, it was like reading a new book, but it was also true to the book." Stoffels, who speaks French, German and Spanish, and who translates from those languages into Dutch, knows how challenging that can be. It quickly became apparent how collaborative this process was between Stoffels, translator Watkinson and U.S. editor Cheryl Klein.
 
Heartsinger centers on Mee, a boy born to deaf parents, with a gift for singing other people's sorrows and helping them to heal, and Mitou, a girl merrymaker born to quarreling parents. The novel follows Mitou after she learns about Mee, her search for him, a prince's quest to find them both in the hope that they can help him win the hand of the King's daughter, and how the two music makers affect others' lives in their travels. Publisher Arthur Levine, who has long been committed to bringing books from other countries to the U.S., said that he looks for a high quality of writing in the original language: "It's not just the plot. What is the language like? What does the reader take away?" he said.
 
Watkinson, who grew up in England and makes her home in the Netherlands, said that the Dutch government, which funds the translation of 12-15 children's books annually to markets abroad, asked her to translate into English a synopsis for Heartsinger. "I loved it straightaway," she said. "It was a joy to work on." Klein explained why the translator's work is so important: "They're not just someone to tell you what's going on." The translator must also convey the lilt of the original text.
 
An example of very specific translation challenges was a Dutch word that means both "womb" and "lap" and is much more colloquial than "womb." This word occurs in the chapter about a wool-dyer and his seven sons ("The Lieutenant with the Flute"). Watkinson explained that the wool-dyer had been able to work through his frustrations with his wife, sexually, in the past. But after the wife develops an illness that estranges her from him, the man takes his frustrations out on his children by beating them. Stoffels said, "Eventually the 'womb/lap' turned into a shoulder, I think." (The wife says to her husband, "Let out your sorrows. . . . Cry on my shoulder. Just let it all flow"; then "a new little wool-dyer would see the light of day.") The mutation of the wool-dyer's sexual energy into a violent energy is subtle, especially given the book's fairytale quality, which serves the more open-ended aura Stoffels had originally intended with the novel.
 
Speaking of open-endedness, Stoffels said that her novel in Dutch originally concluded more ambiguously. Klein, however, urged the author to create a more explicit sense of hope at the end. So Stoffels wrote a new last line in which Mee "sang his heart out." The author felt this brought a "roundness" to the text, with its direct reference to the title.
 
Dutch and American cultural differences were apparent in the two cover images. The Dutch cover of the book shows the sensual mermaid figurehead, carved by the sailor's sweetheart, naked above her finned torso. The American cover depicts the king's daughter, who looks at herself in the mirror because she believes no one else will look at her. Stoffels said of the more sensual original, "In the Netherlands it's acceptable, but not here. For youth, it's a little different."
 
Stoffels is grateful to have this book available in the U.S., her first to be translated into English. "The important things were there. That's why I was so happy with this process," the author said. "The music of the text is the same, maybe sometimes different but beautiful music."--Jennifer M. Brown