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Doctorow, who won the 1990 PEN/Faulkner for Billy Bathgate, will receive $15,000. Four runners-up will each receive $5,000: Karen Fisher for A Sudden Country; William Henry Lewis for I Got Somebody in Staunton ; James Salter for Last Night ; and Bruce Wagner for The Chrysanthemum Palace.

Other previous PEN/Faulkner winners include Philip Roth, Don DeLillo and Ha Jin. The PEN/Faulkner Foundation, based in Washington, D.C., is "committed to building audiences for exceptional literature and bringing writers together with their readers."

Plain old courtship just doesn't seem to cut it anymore. At least not with readers of romance novels. More women want more fiction about what's going on between the sheets, book publishers say.

"If you had said five years ago, 'erotic, hot, sexy romances,' people would have said 'What, are you crazy?' " says Kensington editor in chief John Scognamiglio. "Publishing goes in cycles. Erotica now seems to be the new hot thing." Kensington introduced its erotica line, Aphrodisia, in January. Harlequin's Spice imprint hits stores in May, and HarperCollins will publish the first two titles in its Avon Red line in June. Berkley was a pioneer with its Heat line last May.

"Over the past few years, romances have gotten sexier," says Liate Stehlik of Avon Red, "And with the advent of Sex and the City and more sex in movies and online, there's a sexual aspect to all forms of entertainment that women are feeling more entitled to than they have in the past."

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But that doesn't mean customers fit a stereotype. "They really appeal to a wide variety of women - 18- and 19-year-olds as well as women into their 50s and 60s," Harlequin's Susan Pezzack says.

"The spoken word versions will certainly add another dimension to his writing and will entice new audiences to his work," Hemingway's son said. "The market for unabridged, full-length books only started taking off over the last few years. And we think Hemingway will be especially popular for audio downloads," Chris Lynch, executive vice president and publisher of Simon & Schuster Audio, told The Associated Press Wednesday.

Lynch said that the audio versions had been distributed by Books on Tape, a division of Random House, Inc., that sells primarily to schools and libraries. Simon & Schuster, which releases the print editions, acquired the audio rights after they became available last year. According to Mary Beth Roche, president of the Audio Publishers Association, most major authors have their books out in audio. In a statement issued through Simon & Schuster, the author's son, Patrick Hemingway, said his "father would have been pleased to have so many of his finest works published in audiobook form."

"Reading Hemingway is to listen to him, to 'hear' the dialogue. The spoken word versions will certainly add another dimension to his writing and will entice new audiences to his work," Patrick Hemingway said.

In May, audio versions of A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea will be released, with the readers still to be announced. Other audio books to come out include The Sun Also Rises, A Moveable Feast and Death in the Afternoon.

"Immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, my first thought was that I didn't know if I could write fiction again," McInerney says. "It just seemed irrelevant and foolish at that time. You know, made-up stories, imagined characters - it was hard to reconcile with the urgency of the moment. ... Later I thought, 'I'm a New York writer. I write about New York and this is the biggest thing that's happened in my lifetime and probably in the history of the city unless you count the draft riots in 1863.'"

McInerney's new book draws on his personal experience at ground zero. He handed out sandwiches to rescuers and solicited elaborate meals from chic restaurants such as Babo and Union Square Cafe. "It made me feel less at loose ends and less useless," the 51-year-old writer says. "Being a novelist seemed a really lame thing to be at that moment. One of my few skills is that I know a lot of restaurateurs."

Writing about the event was the farthest thing from his mind then. But later, he hit on a solution: Concentrate on the implications of that day - the trauma and grief, but also the time when everyone briefly became their best self and reordered priorities.

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The Sept. 11 attacks came during a fallow period for McInerney, who was going through his third divorce and a bout of writer's block. By the time he returned to the keyboard, he had changed. "I felt like I couldn't use my old tone ... Social satire and witty banter and elaborate wordplay didn't seem appropriate. As a writer, as in life, I've always been afraid of not amusing people. I've always tried, perhaps overly hard, to do so," he says. "I had to really rethink my technique and my persona."

Gone is based on the Dennis Lehane novel of the same name and was adapted by Affleck. The story revolves around two Boston private eyes who investigate a missing child in a neighborhood of broken families, bitter cops and crazy ex-cons. Monaghan and Casey Affleck, who is Ben's brother, will play the private detectives.

"In keeping with Miramax tradition, I was instructed to find the 'hottest young stars around' to cast in the movie," Ben Affleck said. "I got a list of two names: Michelle Monaghan and Casey Affleck. I was lucky enough to get them both."

On making his directorial debut at Miramax, the studio that launched his career with Good Will Hunting when it was run by the Weinstein brothers, he said: "I am a first-time director given an opportunity to pursue an artistic ambition I would not likely have the chance to elsewhere. The budget is excruciatingly tight, I am regularly abused and I expect to be fired sometime before we shoot. It's nice to see that, at Miramax, continuity has been maintained."

The book is about Ronald Keith Williamson, the second-round draft pick of the Oakland Athletics in 1971. He later was convicted of murder in his Oklahoma hometown, spent 12 years in prison and came within five days of being executed. He was exonerated by DNA evidence and released from prison in 1999. After struggling with psychiatric disorders, he died on Dec. 4, 2004.

The tragic tale has a lot of traditional Grisham elements: small-town Southern setting, a guy wronged, a murder, a trial, imprisonment, exoneration and baseball. Grisham, who was born in Jonesboro, Ark., dreamed of becoming a pro baseball player before attending Mississippi State, then law school at the University of Mississippi.

Rubin says the book is about 75% finished and adds that Williamson's family is fully cooperating with the author. The tale is more proof that "truth can be stranger than fiction."

Tom Cruise is livid at biographer Andrew Morton for allegedly hiring a gay porn star to investigate him for a new book. Morton has written about a number of celebrities including David and Victoria Beckham, and even worked with the late Princess Diana on a book about her life. The couch-jumping Scientologist is the subject of Morton's next page-turner. To aid him in the venture the writer is recruiting the services of gay porn star-turned private investigator Paul Baressi.

Cruise?s lawyer, Bert Fields, reportedly corresponded with Morton in a letter explaining, "[Morton was] obviously entitled to write the book but," Fields stressed, "make sure you check your facts."

However, it's Baressi's involvement that seems to have ruffled a few feathers. Fields now claims he will sue if his letter is used to denote Cruise's sexuality. "Mr Cruise is not gay," Fields insisted.

Child was a frontrunner in the race for becoming the successor to Raymond Benson, but has declined an offer to pen the 2008 James Bond novel. When his official website was asked about the speculation surrounding him and the project, his representative said: "Lee was indeed contacted with regard to writing the next few Bond novels, but he had to decline their very generous offer.

Forum member "Moore" investigated. The reply continued, "right now, he's focusing on Reacher and only Reacher. In fact, The Hard Way (out on May 16th in the US and July 3rd in the UK) is the first in a new four Reacher novel contract so we've got a lot to look forward to!"

Ian Fleming Publications announced last year that they were planned to release a new adult James Bond thriller novel in 2008 to celebrate the centenary of Ian Fleming's birth. It now appears that this is not just a one off project, with authors being approached to pen a series of books.

Rex Spears Ditto, 29, of Pembroke Pines, and Vincent J. Puglisi, 54, of Oakland Park, voluntarily surrendered late Wednesday at the Boynton Beach Police Department. They were arrested on charges of first-degree murder, armed home invasion, aggravated battery and dealing in stolen property, police said. "They came in ... and confessed to robbing and murdering this guy," Sgt. Gladys Cannon said. Both men were being held in the Palm Beach County jail.

A maintenance worker found Shalleck's bloodied body Tuesday covered in garbage bags in the driveway of his home. He suffered several stab wounds and was stuffed beneath a heap of trash, Cannon said. Authorities allege Ditto and Puglisi stole jewelry from Shalleck and pilfered funds from his checking account. Cannon said authorities tracked Ditto and Puglisi using Shalleck's telephone records. "They were acquaintances," she said. Cannon declined to elaborate on their relationship with the victim or provide further details of the crime.

Shalleck, 76, co-wrote more than 28 "Curious George" books and helped write and direct 104 film shorts. The monkey, created in 1939 by Hans and Margret Rey, makes his big screen debut Friday in movie theaters across the United States.

Why would any self-respecting person engage in such a thing as writing a memoir? To begin with, Mr. Frey's book is not a memoir, let alone representative of the genre. Critical events were fabricated. It was written and first submitted as fiction, then fraudulently resubmitted and published as a memoir. Unsuspecting readers, thinking they were getting an honest remembrance, got Frey's flights, or descents, of fancy.

I don't mean to imply that memoirs need to be held to the standards of journalism, or even that imagination can have no place in it. A memoir is the creation of a mind remembering. The writer recalls and reflects on the past and evidence gathered about that past. Usually, the more evidence the better, but as any memoirist will tell you, remembering is always a tricky business.

There are many levels of accuracy. There are memories that the writer can verify empirically. There are memories for which the evidence is irrecoverable. And, moving farther from "objective truth," there are hazy memories, then conjecture, then informed imagination. Here fact and fiction do indeed become blurry.

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At its best, a memoir combines hard research, an engaging narrative, the intimacy of lyric poetry, and the thoughtfulness of an essay. The aspirations of memoirs are different from those of fiction or nonfiction, and the measures by which they are judged should also be different. A good story is important. Factuality is important. But the ultimate question about a memoir is: Out of how deep and considered a life does it spring?

The Time Warner Book Group is the fifth-largest U.S. book publisher, with authors including James Patterson and Malcolm Gladwell, Paris-based Lagardere and New York-based Time Warner said in e-mailed statements today. Lagardere has been seeking media takeovers to lower the company's dependence on its stake in the maker of Airbus aircraft, and it acquired W.H. Smith Plc's Hodder Headline unit for 223 million pounds ($389 million) in September 2004. Time Warner has been selling divisions including its music unit to reduce debt, and said its book business needed the global ``scale'' of being part of a larger book publisher.

"This is a major step in fulfilling a Lagardere objective to create a balanced portfolio in three main languages, French, English and Spanish," said the statement from Lagardere, whose chief executive is Arnaud Lagardere. Besides publishing its own titles, Time Warner Books acts as a distributor for third parties such as Walt Disney Co. and Microsoft Corp., the Time Warner statement said. The company operates in the U.S., Britain, Australia and New Zealand, it said.

"Lagardere are very, very aggressive," said media analyst Theresa Wise of Accenture Ltd., citing such moves as the Hodder deal and the acquisition three years ago of part of publisher Larousse in France. The deal is also "geographically important" by making Lagardere a bigger player in U.S. publishing, she said.

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"This is a terrific transaction that is the right thing to do for both the Time Warner Book Group and our shareholders," Time Warner Chairman and CEO Richard Parsons said in the statement. The division performed well in 2005 and "is at the top of its game," he said. "To build on this success, however, it needs the scale and other advantages that come from being part of a larger, more global book publisher."

Newsweek: What makes you, Dave Barry, qualified to give financial advice?

Dave Barry: I looked around and I realized that I was the only person who hadn't written a book about financial advice. And I thought, either I write it or Suze Orman was going to have to write her 97th book. Plus I was running out of topics, so it was this or Su Doku.

Newsweek: Did you do any research?

Dave Barry: I read Donald Trump's book. It's called: How to Get Rich. It took about an hour to read it, which I'd say is an hour longer than it took him to write it. It's like this collection of random neural firings from Donald. I have a chapter [in my book] that really summarizes it including some quotations.

McDonald, now v-p and executive editor, at Riverhead Books, said he learned about the allegations "the same way as everyone else." He said he has not commented up until now because the situation was constantly changing and he wanted to give Frey the chance to comment on the book.

His statement also sought to clarify a few aspects of the situation: "A Million Little Pieces was submitted to me in early September 2001.From the beginning, I understood it to be a memoir. As an editor, I was drawn to the literary voice, and I worked closely with James to hone his style in telling his story.Throughout the editing process, I was assured by James that the events he recounted in the book - even the most extraordinary ones - were accurate and true."

....Ms. Talese truly had no idea what she was in for. "I was asked to go onto a program that was going to have James on it, and then I was going to be joined by Frank Rich and Richard Cohen to talk about 'Truth in America.' That was the program," Ms. Talese said by phone this past weekend. As she was walking onto the set of the special live broadcast, however, she was informed that the theme of the show had been changed to something called "The James Frey Controversy." Ms. Talese was surprised.

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Suddenly called upon to defend the troubled industry she?s worked in for decades, Ms. Talese faltered. "I hoped I would have the opportunity to explain that publishing is a business of trust--we trust our authors are telling the truth," said Ms. Talese later, outlining what she had wanted to say. "Fact checkers will no more protect people against those who do not honor truth any more than they protect the public against newspapers, television, bloggers?the Internet is rife with misinformation?or indeed from politicians and corporations. So in the end, it depends on honor, trust and character. And, indeed, forgiveness for mistakes."

Yet, like Ms. Talese, many?perhaps most?people in the book business claim they don?t think that anything is wrong with the old way of doing things, which explains the clash of civilizations apparent on Ms. Winfrey?s show. Thus far, it seems that no major changes will be made to ensure that future memoirs will be more truthful. "It worked until now. I?ve only been doing it for 30 years," said one veteran literary agent, who wouldn?t speak for attribution. "Most authors are law-abiding authors, but you get one in 1,000 who is a nutcase, and no magazine, no book publisher, can defend against that," said another, who also requested anonymity.

"It will change for a nanosecond because of the fear factor," said one publisher at a well-regarded house. "If you hope to book somebody on Larry King, you?ll ask harder questions of that writer so nothing explodes in your face. The biggest terror everyone has right now is that Oprah will suddenly say 'Oh, to hell with it and stop doing her book club."

Production Weekly reports that the film is a noir thriller set in Texas which follows a man who goes on the run after finding a suitcase full of money. The film is due to go into production in May and will shoot in Texas and New Mexico. McCarthy's book All the Pretty Horses was previously made into a film starring Matt Damon, Henry Thomas and Penélope Cruz.