The Danish writer who commissioned cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, igniting violent protests across the Muslim world, says he can't find a publisher for his latest work, a translation of the Qur'an.

Go figure.

An NY literary landmark and intellectual oasis since 1927, The Strand has always been a hip, independent and romantic symbol of the city’s literary status. Nowadays, though, it’s become the scene of ire, rife with allegations of racial discrimination and accusations of tyranny. Is the independent and world’s largest used bookstore morphing into a corporate entity that cares only for profits?

Women stop reading serious literature and turn to 'chick-lit' after having children, research suggests. Mothers were shown to swap novels and non- fiction for lighter reads including celebrity autobiographies by the likes of Victoria Beckham and Jordan.

Winners of this year's Nebula Awards, presented by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, were announced this evening, Saturday April 26, 2008. Best novel: Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Click through to see short story and cinema winners.

ONE of the great publishing taboos of modern Germany is beginning to buckle: historians are pressing the authorities to bring out a new edition of Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic manifesto, Mein Kampf.

A London-based Canadian financier and investment manager is establishing the world's largest prize for non-fiction historical literature, and he's getting his alma mater, Montreal's McGill University, to administer it.

The Cundill International Prize in History is worth $75.000 and will be presented annually, with the inaugural prize awarded on November 25th.

Scottish scientists are searching for the antidote to decaying books by bottling the atmosphere of the British Library in test tubes and using mass spectrometers to isolate the chemicals given off by decaying paper…by their smell. Armed with this info, researchers hope to design a chemical ‘nose’ that can be placed on library shelves to give the alarm when the decaying process begins.

A new digital book-browsing tool is to make the full works of about 500 authors, including Sebastian Faulks and Jacqueline Wilson, available to read and search online. Launched today at the London Book Fair, the application by the publisher Random House will eventually be expanded to include as many as 5,000 books by the end of the year.

Sounds like a good deal for readers.

In the late 1980’s, a French scholar discovered that Alexandre Dumas had penned an obscure work entitled The Last Cavalier. Lost for over a century, this “stirring 750-page rampage through the Napoleonic wars” echoes the themes and style of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. The author’s final novel is already a big hit in France, and will be published in Britain next month.

In 1990 Salman Rushdie claimed he had renewed his Muslim faith and repudiated the attacks on Islam in his novel Satanic Verses, for which there was a fatwa on his head. Now he’s recanted that statement in an interview to be broadcast next month, saying it was all a sham, a product of “deranged thinking”.

Well, it will be a noble death, I suppose.