Mr. Westlake, considered one of the most successful and versatile mystery writers in the United States, received an Academy Award nomination for a screenplay, three Edgar Awards and the title of Grand Master from the Mystery Writers of America in 1993. Since his first novel, The Mercenaries, was published by Random House in 1960, Mr. Westlake had written under his own name and several pseudonyms, including Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Samuel Holt and Edwin West. Despite the diversity of pen names, most of his books shared one feature: They were set in New York City, where he was born.

Mr. Westlake used different names in part to combat skepticism over his rapid rate of writing books, sometimes as many as four a year, his friends said. "In the beginning, people didn't want to publish more than one book a year by the same author," said Susan Richman, his publicist at Grand Central Publishing. Later in his career, Mr. Westlake limited himself to two pen names, each generally focusing on one primary character: He used his own name to write about an unintentionally comical criminal named John Dortmunder, and as Richard Stark wrote a series about an anti-hero and criminal named Parker. Mr. Westlake occasionally wrote about other characters, such as Burke Devore, the downsized executive turned murderer in The Ax, whom The New York Times described in 1997 "as emblematic of his time as George F. Babbitt and Holden Caulfield and Capt. John Yossarian were of theirs."

The full panoply of Mr. Westlake?s books was a spectacle to behold, his friends said. "We were in his library, this beautiful library surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of titles," said Laurence Kirshbaum, his agent, "and I realized that every single book was written by Donald Westlake, English-language and foreign-language editions."

Upon learning that the widely publicized Holocaust love story of Herman and Roma Rosenblat, which inspired the picture book Angel Girl, is not entirely true, Lerner Publishing Group announced yesterday that it would pull the book from shelves. Lerner imprint Carolhroda Books published Angel Girl by Laurie Friedman in September 2008. The house has canceled all pending reprints and is issuing refunds on all returned books. The company is no longer offering the book for sale and is recalling the book from the market.

Angel Girl retold a portion of Mr. Rosenblat's story about surviving a work camp during the Holocaust by receiving food from a girl from the other side of the fence, and then meeting this same girl many years later on a blind date in the U.S. and marrying her. After investigation by the New Republic, Rosenblat and his agent, Andrea Hurst, released statements on December 27, saying parts of his story were fabricated. Hurst's statement said that although Rosenblat's stories from the concentration camps were true, he invented the love story. Rosenblat also revealed that he made up the chance reunion with the girl."

• Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Definitive Collection DVD Box Set. Fans of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective who solves crimes using his little grey cells, will adore this fabulous boxed set of the BBC series which starred the brilliant David Suchet.
  
  
• The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Children's Books, 3rd Edition by Harold D. Underdown (Alpha Books)
  
  
• A Silent Ocean Away by DeVa Gantt (Avon), a breathtaking saga of an extraordinary American family.
  
  
• Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey by William Least Heat-Moon, an ingenious and mirthful exploration of small-town America. (Little, Brown)

Waugh died Dec. 8 in a nursing facility in Torrington after a brief illness, his son Lawrence said Saturday. Waugh's dozens of novels - numbering almost 50, including some he wrote under pen names - earned him a Grand Master Award in 1989 from the Mystery Writers of America. The honor places him in the company of such writers as Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark, Mickey Spillane, Alfred Hitchcock and Agatha Christie.

*****

His first novel, Madame Will Not Dine Tonight, was published in 1947 and began a long string of mysteries in which the characters used real police techniques to solve mysteries. That was a clear departure from the genre in which a private detective, squirreling away facts and relying on his or her wits and instinct, emerged with all the answers. "I was tired of reading about these super-detectives and a police force composed of a bunch of bumbling idiots," Waugh told The New York Times in 1990.

"I wanted to get away from the neat little corpses with the perfect bullet through the head, and instead write a story as it really happened."

His book, Angel at the Fence, came under public scrutiny after a number of scholars questioned important details. The fabricated story says that when Rosenblat moved to New York after the war he met Roma Radzicki by chance and discovered she was the girl who had thrown apples and bread to him. They fell in love and married. But some questioned Rosenblat's descriptions of Schlieben - a sub-camp of Buchenwald - and said it was impossible to throw food over the fence there.

The book was due to be published by Berkley Books, part of the Penguin Group, in February. Advance publicity had included a couple of appearances by Rosenblat on the chat show hosted by Oprah Winfrey. In a statement, Rosenblat, 79, said: "I wanted to bring happiness to people. "I brought hope to a lot of people. My motivation was to make good in this world."

His agent Andrea Hurst told the Associated Press: "I question why I never questioned it. I believed it; it was an incredible, hope-filled story."

Harold Pinter, the British playwright whose gifts for finding the ominous in the everyday and the noise within silence made him the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation, died on Wednesday. He was 78 and lived in London.

The cause was cancer, his wife, Lady Antonia Fraser, said Thursday. Mr. Pinter learned he had cancer of the esophagus in late 2001. In 2005, when he received the Nobel Prize in Literature, he was unable to attend the awards ceremony at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm but delivered an acceptance speech from a wheelchair in a recorded video.

In more than 30 plays -- written between 1957 and 2000 and including masterworks like The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming and Betrayal -- Mr. Pinter captured the anxiety and ambiguity of life in the second half of the 20th century with terse, hypnotic dialogue filled with gaping pauses and the prospect of imminent violence.

Along with another Nobel winner, Samuel Beckett, his friend and mentor, Mr. Pinter became one of the few modern playwrights whose names instantly evoke a sensibility. The adjective Pinteresque has become part of the cultural vocabulary as a byword for strong and unspecified menace.

The sale also set a record for a drawing by the British artist, when one of his most recognizable images, "He went on tracking, and Piglet ... ran after him," sold for 115,250 pounds, more than double expectations. The second highest bid of the night was for another famous image of the lovable honey-loving bear, "Bump, bump, bump - going up the stairs," which went under the hammer for 97,250 pounds, again well above estimates.

The picture of Christopher Robin dragging his bear by the leg up the stairs beside him comes from the final chapter of "Winnie-the-Pooh." Sotheby's auctioneers called the illustrations on offer in London the finest single collection of Shepard's original drawings for the Pooh books to come to the market. "The public have a strong affection for these drawings and we are thrilled that this significant collection has notably exceeded expectations," said Philip Errington, Sotheby's specialist in charge of children's literature and illustrations.

It is the first time that "poetry's old-fashioned praise," as Robert Frost called it, will be featured at the swearing-in since 1997.

"I am obviously profoundly honored and thrilled," she said. "Not only to have a chance to have some small part of this extraordinary moment in American history. . . . This incoming president of ours has shown in every act that words matter, that words carry meaning, that words carry power, that words are the medium with which we communicate across difference and that words have tremendous possibilities, and those possibilities are not empty."

• Robert Frost read at John F. Kennedy's in 1961
• Maya Angelou read at Bill Clinton's in 1993
• Miller Williams, read at Clinton's second inauguration in 1997

The Federal Writers Project operated from 1935-1939 under the leadership of Henry Alsberg, a journalist and theater director. In addition to providing employment to more than 6,000 out-of-work reporters, photographers, editors, critics, writers, and creative craftsmen and -women, the FWP produced some lasting contributions to American history, culture, and literature. Their efforts ranged from comprehensive guides to 48 states and three territories to interviews with and photos of 2,300 former African-American slaves. These are preserved in the seventeen volumes of Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves.

Avary, 43, pleaded not guilty in a Ventura courthouse to manslaughter and other charges connected to the Jan. 13 single-car collision. Investigators said Avary was at the wheel of a Mercedes sedan late that night when he failed to make a curve and crashed into a telephone pole. Prosecutors said his blood alcohol level was above the legal limit.

Passenger Andreas Zini, 34, was killed in the collision. Avary's wife, Gretchen, was ejected from the vehicle. She suffered serious injuries but recovered. Zini and his wife, Maria, 33, both of Italy, were visiting the Avarys on their honeymoon, said Mike Lief, the prosecutor on the case. Maria Zini was in a separate car when the crash occurred, he said.

Avary's attorney, Mark Werksman, said that his client is distraught. Avary, in a dark suit, attended Friday's hearing but did not speak. Now that charges have been filed, Avary hopes to quickly resolve the case, his attorney said. Besides felony manslaughter, Avary faces two felony counts of causing bodily injury while intoxicated, charges that could bring 11 years behind bars. A pretrial conference is set for Feb. 20 in Ventura.

Ibrahim Nasrallah, whose writing has run into frequent difficulties with the Jordanian censors, is shortlisted for the international prize for Arabic fiction for his novel Time of White Horses, which charts the history of three generations of a Palestinian family in a small village, from Ottoman rule to the modern era.

The shortlist of six books for the $60,000 (?40,000) prize cover a topical range of subjects, from Iraqi writer Inaam Kachachi's The American Granddaughter, about an American-Iraqi woman who returns to Iraq as an interpreter for the US army, to Egyptian novelist Mohammad Al-Bisatie's Hunger, an account of day-to-day life close to starvation, and Tunisian author Al-Habib Al-Salmi's The Scents of Marie-Claire, which centres on the relationship between an Arab man and a Western woman.



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