Ciccone's tell-all book -- called Life With My Sister Madonna -- will tell of lesbian flings and other sordid secrets of Madonna's past when it is out later this month. Sources say that Ciccone -- an interior designer -- will reveal how she took drugs with leading showbiz executives. Ciccone, 47, will also tell all about her rocky marriage to Hollywood actor SEAN PENN.

And the explosive book will spill the beans about her rows with film director hubby Ritchie. He will say the pair are locked in explosive rows and split by growing differences. Their seven-year marriage is only kept together by the intervention of a rabbi who travels to their homes to act as informal counsellor. Homesick Madonna is desperate to return permanently to New York. But Guy, 39, is said to want to remain in Britain, seeing it as a better home for their three kids.

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A source said: "The book is a warts-and-all account. Chris was there for all the key moments in Madonna's life. There is no-one better placed to tell the real story behind Madonna's public image."

The audiobook downloads can be played on a wide variety of MP3 players, thanks to the lack of Digital Rights Managment security software designed to limit usage. Simply Audiobooks will make about 1,000 titles available immediately and plans to add more than 4,000 titles by the end of the summer. Among the Random House DRM-free titles available are Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope, James Rollins's Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull and Stephenie Meyer's Twilight.

Consumers have long complained that DRM embeded in CDs, discs and downloads restrict the use of and devices that can play their content. Last fall Simply Audiobooks joined the digital entertainment retailer eMusic in announcing that it would make its audiobook downloads DRM-free, and has since been in negotiations with publishers fearful that their content will be unprotected and freely distributed after purchase.

Diane Sanabria, the youth librarian in Leominster Public Library's Robert Cormier Center for Young Adults, said many teens that come through the doors are falling in love with a series about vampires. "Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" series is the hottest thing right now," Sanabria said. "The new book in the series, "Breaking Dawn" comes out August 1st." The series began in 2006 and tells the story of a teenage girl in love with a vampire. McCarron agreed Meyer's books are a huge hit and noted they are geared more toward female readers, but boys read them too.

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Both librarians noted a series by James Patterson called "Maximum Ride" is very popular with teens. The series chronicles a group of teens who escape from a lab where they were bred as 98 percent human and 2 percent bird. "Those books are really popular with both genders," McCarron said.

Vincent Puglisi's decision to reject a plea bargain carrying a 30-year sentence backfired on Tuesday when a jury convicted him of first-degree murder and robbery with a deadly weapon. Now he will be sentenced to either death or life in prison for the frenzied stabbing and bludgeoning death of Alan Shalleck, 76, of Boynton Beach, who collaborated on many of the Curious George films and books. Puglisi nodded his head in agreement as each of the guilty verdicts was read.

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Shalleck was repeatedly stabbed and clobbered with a paddle in his home on Super Bowl Sunday in February 2006. Ditto used one of Shalleck's own steak knives to stab him, and it broke, Puglisi later told investigators. Then he used a second steak knife, and it broke.

"He just kept saying the son-of-a-bitch won't die," Puglisi told authorities. But Shalleck did die, and was left in his driveway inside large garbage bags "like a piece of trash outside," Assistant State Attorney Andy Slater told jurors.

Those anticipating Jon Krakauer's meditation on the nature of heroism, examined through the story of Pat Tillman, the former football star killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire, may have to wait quite a bit longer than they planned. According to Doubleday, which had The Hero scheduled for October (and planned go to press with a hefty 500,000-first-printing), Krakauer has withdrawn the title.

Krakauer is apparently unhappy with the manuscript and is holding onto it indefinitely. David Drake at Doubleday confirmed that the decision was entirely the author's and that, while the imprint is "disappointed," it supports its author. Speaking to the book's future, Drake said the situation is "a little bit wait and see" and that if the book does get rescheduled it likely wouldn't come out until at least 2009.

The triple-decker edition was inscribed on behalf of Austen to her close confidante, the governess Anne Sharp. One of only 12 presentation copies printed, which otherwise went to family members and publisher John Murray's contacts, it was the only one given to a friend of the author. Yesterday's auction at Bonhams in London was won by an anonymous British bidder, outstripping an anticipated sale price of £50-£70,000, the highest price ever paid for an Austen novel, and comfortably ahead of the £114,000 fetched by a first edition of Wuthering Heights last November.

Walters' mid-career love life is detailed largely in two chapters in the middle of the book, "Fun and Games in Washington" and "Special Men in My Life." Not all that special, or all that fun, apparently, because the audio book skips the two chapters entirely. Missing is any note of her affair with Brooke, not to mention her flings with future Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Virginia Senator John Warner and several more.

A consumer might be excused for feeling victimized by the old bait and switch, since promotional material for the book hints broadly at the romantic revelations ("Here, too, are her relationships with men - in and out of her marriages - and with her friends, co-workers and rivals," reads the Alfred A. Knopf catalog copy); the Brooke affair was the chief headline of virtually every gossip column item on the book; and Walters herself talked about it freely on shows like Oprah.

A call to Random House Audio elicited the usual reminder that abridgements must, of necessity, leave out a lot of material, and a polite passing of the buck to the author. "We had a limited time for the audio, and Barbara was instrumental in choosing what was kept in," said the spokesperson. "She had final approval over everything, and that was the version she wanted to record."

It's no surprise that Oprah Winfrey gave copies of Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth to the 4,666 graduates of Stanford University when she gave the commencement address on Sunday. Now No. 8, A New Earth was No. 1 for 11 consecutive weeks on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list after Winfrey chose it as her book club pick in January. She also gave copies of Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future (Riverhead, $15), published in 2005. The book argues that professional and personal success in the 21st century will require traits such as empathy in addition to left-brain qualities like logic.

Though Pink has never spoken with Winfrey, he says his publisher had given him "an inkling that something was going to happen." "I was amazed, grateful and humbled," the writer from Washington, D.C., says.