AP - "Fever of the Bone" (HarperCollins, $14.99), by Val McDermid: When serial crime fiction is done well, readers can drop into any installment and within a few chapters, understand nearly everything about the primary characters and their relationship with one another.

AP - "The Elephant's Journey" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24), by Jose Saramago: This is a book Serious Readers should love. Consider the pedigree: a recently deceased Nobel Prize-winning author, a benevolent animal protagonist and a space on bookstore and library shelves in the hot category Historical Fiction.

AP - A book-launch party for former British Prime Minister Tony Blair at London's top modern art venue has been postponed following a threat by protesters to picket the event.

Reuters - Former premier Tony Blair has postponed a party at the Tate Modern art gallery celebrating the launch of his autobiography because of threats from protesters, his office said on Wednesday.

AP - Less than three weeks before publication, Bob Woodward's new book finally has a cover design and a title: "Obama's Wars."

AFP - Peter Carey could scoop the Booker Prize for a record third time after the Australian author was named on the shortlist Tuesday for one of the world's most prestigious literary awards.

AP - "Pretty Little Things" (Vanguard Press, $25.95), by Jilliane Hoffman: Jilliane Hoffman takes the standard "To Catch a Predator" plot — adult male sex offender ensnaring unsuspecting teens by various online chat rooms or social networks — and escalates it to a thoroughly creepy serial killer level.

AP - Australian writer Peter Carey moved closer to a literary hat trick Tuesday when he was named a finalist for fiction's prestigious Booker Prize, an award he has already won twice.

AP - "The Grand Design" (Random House, $28), by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow: Cosmologists, the people who study the entire cosmos, will want to read British physicist and mathematician Stephen Hawking's new book.

AP - "Trail of Blood" (William Morrow, $24.99), by Lisa Black: The discovery of a body that appears to have been hidden for over 70 years spurs a contemporary murder spree in "Trail of Blood," Lisa Black's latest novel featuring forensic scientist Theresa MacLean.

AFP - Sexist, obscene, racist were the accusations thrown at Michel Houellebecq over his previous novels. Now it's plagiarism, after France's best-known living writer allegedly cut and pasted chunks of Wikipedia into his new book.

AP - Sara Paretsky's latest installment in her series about feisty, female private detective V.I. Warshawski opens with the heroine outside a Chicago nightclub, the bloody body of a woman who was just shot to death in her arms.