News & Notes is a weekly Saturday post featuring book- and publishing-related news, links to interesting articles and opinion pieces, and other cool stuff.
NOTE on paywalls: Publisher’s Weekly and The Guardian may require you to sign up for a free account in order to read their content. Both The New York Times and the Washington Post have paywalls, but allow a small number of free articles per month.
Literary Losses
Madeline Hunter, best-selling historical romance author, died April 15, 2025, of cancer. Her publisher, Kensington Books, said of her, “The award-winning New York Times & USA Today bestselling author of over 35 historical romances with more than 6 million copies in print, Madeline also had a Ph.D. in Art History and once taught at the university level before becoming a full-time author. Her books have also been translated into a dozen languages. A long-time resident of Pittsburgh, PA, she leaves behind two sons, an enduring legacy of unforgettable romantic heroes and feisty heroines, and all the readers whose lives were touched by her captivating stories about the quest for enduring love.” (Kensington Publishing Co.)
Hunter’s last book, The Heiress Bride, came out in May 2023.
Obituaries and tributes: Kensington Publishing Co.; Smart Bitches Trashy Books. Several authors have also posted tributes on Ms. Hunter’s Facebook page. Bibliography and Biography: author’s website (last updated 2023); Goodreads; Wikipedia
Bookish News
- ABA Promises Huge Celebration of Indie Bookselling on Saturday, April 26 (Publishers Weekly)
- Students at Pentagon schools sue Hegseth over book bans on race and gender (The Guardian)
- US Naval Academy removes 400 books from library in anti-diversity purge (The Guardian)
- IMLS Staffers Cry Foul as New Leadership Continues to ‘Slash and Burn’ (Publishers Weekly)
- The Hugo Award finalists were announced. The winners will be announced at Seattle WorldCon 2025 on Aug. 16.
- ‘This treasure belongs to the nation’: Miriam Margolyes and Brian Cox join calls to save Wordsworth’s home (The Guardian)
- ‘Book brigade’: US town forms human chain to move 9,100 books one-by-one (The Guardian)
- Non-profit that runs writing programs for Boston students withdraws federal grant application because the group doesn’t exist to cater to mediocre white men (Universal Hub)
- SF author Joe Haldeman To Receive Inaugural Arthur C. Clarke Memorial Award given by the National Space Society at their annual international conference (NSS)
- Scandal-hit creative writing website NaNoWriMo to close after 20 years (The Guardian) If you missed my News & Notes post two weeks ago, you may not have seen this yet: NaNoWriMo (the organization and website) is shutting down. That doesn’t mean people will stop doing NaNoWriMo, and some of them may even continue calling it that. NaNoWriMo was a thing well before there was an actual organization, and I think it will go on being a thing.
Worth Reading/Listening
- A new chapter for publishing? Book subscription services launch their own titles (The Guardian)
- AO3 is entering a new era: “A new generation of fans is taking over AO3, according to the data.” (Polygon)
- ‘Funny, sexy and a bit weird’: inside the new wave of literary parties in the UK (The Guardian)
- The delightfully analog art of letter-writing (NPR)
- ‘The Great Gatsby’ turns 100. What’s it like teaching it today? (NPR)
Reviews and LitCrit
- “A Mystery Novel Like No Other Before.” On Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time (Sarah Weinman, Literary Hub) The Daughter of Time ranks easily within my top 5 mystery titles, along with Sayers’ Gaudy Night and Laurie R. King’s The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. Like those, it is as much novel as genre mystery. It’s a gem, and one guaranteed to make you question the conventional picture of Richard III as an evil usurper who murdered his young nephews, the “Princes in the Tower.” If you’re curious, I reviewed The Daughter of Time in 2016.
Book Lists
- For this Indie Bookstore Day, here are odes to ten of our favorite bookstores. (Literary Hub)
- Reactor’s Fiction Affliction features the sci-fi and fantasy books coming out each month. April lists have been up for a couple of weeks; May lists aren’t out yet.
- Fantasy Adventures featuring Siblings! (Bella on Books blog)
Cool, Fun, and Awesome
- Check out this gorgeous LOTR Fountain Pen and Inks Kickstarter from Ferris Wheel Press! This is “Ringbearer”; it also comes in “Gandalf” (white) and “Sauron” (red.) I am sorely tempted, but I’m not buying any more fountain pens until I start using my current ones more often. The Kickstarter ends on April 30 at 7:05 EDT, so if you want one, you’d better back the project soon.
- Scientists hail ‘strongest evidence’ so far for life beyond our solar system (The Guardian) How cool is that! To be clear, they aren’t claiming they found alien life. What they found is the signature of a molecule in the planet’s atmosphere that, as far as we know, can only be produced by living organisms. And there appears to be a lot of it—much more than in our own atmosphere. The molecule is produced by algae here on Earth, so potentially—potentially—it’s produced by something similar on K2-18 b.
- Middle-Aged Man Trading Cards Go Viral in Rural Japan Town (Tokyo Weekender) This is a delightful little story! (Except I wish it wasn’t limited to men.)
- Pulp Romance card game Kickstarter (below.) The solo game is played with cards and dice, and is designed by Todd Sanders using vintage pulp-romance magazine art.
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