1. "Next" by Michael Crichton (HarperCollins)

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk paid a moving tribute to his father, crediting him with introducing him to the world of literature, in a Nobel lecture given in Stockholm just days before he receives the prestigious prize.

Barnes & Noble looks like a well positioned leveraged buyout candidate, Credit Suisse said in a research note Dec. 6, explaining that the New York-based bookseller generates cash consistently and has cheap stock valuation.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor and filmmaker George Clooney has teamed up with Warner Bros.' specialty studio to buy the movie rights to "The Innocent Man," the first nonfiction book by best-selling novelist John Grisham.

DENVER - Katie Hnida now lives in New York, far away from the football fields that defined her high school and college years and turned them into one part triumph, another part living hell.

NEW YORK - A division of Simon & Schuster has agreed to publish the top three winners of the Sobol Award, offering advances of up to $100,000 for a controversial new literary contest for agentless writers that also includes a $100,000 first prize.

LONDON - Reclusive author Thomas Pynchon has defended Ian McEwan, who is facing criticism over allegations that he used details from another book in his 2002 best seller, "Atonement."

"Ask the Parrot" (Mysterious Press, 279 pages, $23.99) — Richard Stark: When we last saw Richard Stark's series character, the existential sociopath who calls himself Parker, he was on the run from a bank robbery gone bad. As Stark's new book, "Ask the Parrot," opens, Parker is still running.

LOS ANGELES - George Clooney will produce a movie based on John Grisham's "The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town."

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Art imitates life, and life imitates art, and sometimes it's hard to tell which is which.

NEW YORK - Tori Spelling has so many sTORIes to tell.

LONDON (AFP) - British Home Secretary John Reid said the probe into the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko would extend across Europe as police prepared to visit Russia in the hunt for the truth behind his death.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Computer users who type in the same username and password for multiple sites -- such as online banks, travel agencies and booksellers -- are at serious risk from identity thieves, a United Nations agency said on Sunday.

LISBON (AFP) - British author Salman Rushdie no longer fears for his life because of the death threats issued against him by Islamic clerics in response to his book "The Satanic Verses" nearly 20 years ago, he has said in Portugal.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Random House will publish the Iraq Study Group Report in book form on Wednesday, in the hope that the bipartisan policy recommendation can repeat the success of an official report on the September 11 attacks.

Yahoo and Amazon have rebuffed Google's attempt to get to know them -- not that it was a friendly overture. Google, well known for its wish to index the world's information, was sued by the Authors Guild and sundry publishers over Google Book Search, which scans books so Google users can search their content.

NEW YORK - An authorized edition of the much-anticipated "Iraq Study Group Report" will be published by Random House Inc. on Wednesday, the same day President Bush and congressional leaders are to receive the bipartisan committee's recommendations.

MADRID, Spain - Spanish poet Antonio Gamoneda has won the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's top literary award.

LONDON/VIENNA (Reuters) - A British publisher has ignored the wishes of Austrian former kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch and released the first account of her harrowing ordeal living as a captive for eight years in a windowless cell.

NEW YORK - So long, Nathan Zuckerman.

NEW YORK - Former University of Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler had completed a book on leadership at the time of his death and Warner Books will release it next fall, the publisher announced Wednesday.

LONDON - First-time author Iain Hollingshead scooped a dubious literary honor Wednesday, winning the Bad Sex in Fiction Award for his novel, "Twenty Something."

NEW YORK - One of the world's favorite cult writers, Philip K. Dick, is being canonized.

"Next" - Michael Crichton: Give Michael Crichton a millimeter, and he'll take a mile.

MADRID, Spain - Raul Guerra Garrido, known for novels set in Spain's Basque region, has won one of the country's most prestigious literary prizes, the Culture Ministry said Monday.

LONDON (Reuters) - British novelist Ian McEwan on Monday denied claims that he copied the work of another author when writing his acclaimed bestseller "Atonement."

ALMATY, Kazakhstan - A leading Kazakh writer has nominated actor Sacha Baron Cohen for a national award for popularizing Kazakhstan. Novelist Sapabek Asip-uly called on the Kazakh Club of Art Patrons to give Baron Cohen its annual award, according to a letter published by the Vremya newspaper Thursday.

In our previous articles highlighting essays from Harvard Business Review on Corporate Responsibility, we've looked at two important pieces on the topic of corporate social responsibility. First we saw how corporations are able to serve the world's poor, and do so profitably. Next we learned that Canon uses a spirit of cooperation to positively affect communities and the environment. ...

The booksellers have been reporting earnings this week, and it seems Borders Group (NYSE: BGP - News) might face the biggest competitive challenges of them all, considering its quarterly loss widened on a year-over-year basis.