Since he died, raving insanely in a hospital bed, Poe's demise has been the subject of a multitude of theories, ranging from murder to mugging to alcoholism to political skulduggery to catching an infectious disease such as rabies. Now a leading American author, who has written a novel about Poe's death, believes that he has come up with convincing evidence that could at last solve the puzzle: brain cancer.

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Matthew Pearl, author of The Poe Shadow, spent three years researching Poe, especially the circumstances of his death. He had hoped to uncover new evidence to solve a mystery that has perplexed experts for more than 150 years. He thinks he has unearthed proof that Poe had a terrible brain tumour, which could explain why he died so dramatically. 'It would explain his hallucinations and his mental state before he died,' Pearl told The Observer.

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Pearl's evidence came in the form of several old newspaper stories written about the exhumation of Poe's body 26 years after his death. Poe's coffin was being moved to a more prominent spot in the cemetery and the onlookers were amazed to see that his shrunken brain was still visible inside his skull. It was described as being 'dried and hardened in the skull' in an 1878 article in the St Louis Republican newspaper, whereas a letter in the Baltimore Gazette claimed that: 'The cerebral mass... evidenced no sign of disintegration or decay, though, of course, it is somewhat diminished.'

Pearl contacted a friend's wife who worked as a forensic pathologist. She pointed out that the descriptions could not possibly have been of a brain, as it is one of the first parts of a corpse to rot after death. But she said some forms of brain tumours can calcify after death and leave a hardened mass. One account described the brain as almost rattling around inside Poe's head. Pearl also looked up pictures of calcified tumours and discovered that some resembled shrunken brains.

Carrie Underwood is used to seeing crowds at the Ryman Auditorium. For three days in February, though, she had the former home of the Grand Ole Opry pretty much to herself, as she and a dozen Nashville songwriters worked on new tunes. "We just ruled the Ryman for a little bit," the 24-year-old singer says. "We kind of hung out there. We ate on the stage. We thought it would be a nice place to get inspiration from."

After the release of her 2005 debut, Some Hearts, which has sold nearly 6 million copies, Underwood committed to developing her songwriting skills for her new album, Carnival Ride, out Tuesday. "I'm the kind of person that, if I got in there and wrote and it was bad, I'd be, like, 'I'm not a writer; I'll let the professionals handle this,' " she says. "But it was something I definitely wanted to see if I could do."

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The three-day retreat at the Ryman offered Underwood such a pause. In a place where Hank Williams and Patsy Cline once sang, where Johnny Cash taped his ABC variety show, Underwood got to write with such top tunesmiths as Craig Wiseman, whose credits include Tim McGraw's Live Like You Were Dying.

"The goals were twofold," says retreat organizer Chris Oglesby, who runs OWM/19 Entertainment, the Nashville office of the company that manages Underwood's career. "One was to continue to get Carrie more comfortable writing and writing with different writers. The other was to create an environment where we could build some camaraderie, as well as find some great songs to put on a record."

"He's not in very good shape. It's breaking my heart," ex-wife Carol Mailer said yesterday. "He went in this time because his lung collapsed. . . . They got the scar tissue out, and the surgery was successful. "But I just don't think he's doing well. My heart is heavy," she said. Mailer, who was raised in Brooklyn and grew up to win two Pulitzer Prizes, was hospitalized over Labor Day in Boston for asthma.

But the 84-year-old dad "insisted on leaving the hospital to be at [daughter Maggie's] wedding" Sept. 8, even if he was too weak to walk her down the aisle, said Carol Mailer. An in-law at his home in Brooklyn yesterday said, "Everything's fine. He's recovering." Carol Mailer said: The kids are [at Mount Sinai] every day. "Norman still has a huge spirit and is making jokes," she said. "He was even thumb-wrestling. "He's an extraordinary man. He's a fighter."

"Saul Friedlander gave a voice to the grievances and cries of those human beings who were turned to dust _ he gave them memory and a name," the German Book Trade association said in awarding Friedlander its 2007 peace prize. "The acknowledgment of human dignity forms the basis for peace among mankind, and Saul Friedlander returned to the murdered millions the dignity of which they had been robbed," it said.

Friedlander, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, was awarded the $35,500 peace prize on the final day of the annual book fair in a ceremony at Frankfurt's St. Paul's Church. Among Friedlander's best-known works is his two-volume collection "The Third Reich and the Jews." "Friedlander is one of the last historiographers to have witnessed and experienced the Holocaust _ a genocide that was announced early on, planned openly and carried out with machinelike precision," the association said. "Friedlander rejects the distanced approach often associated with the writing of history: He creates a space for incomprehensibility _ the only possible reaction to such an unfathomable crime."

There, we've done it. We've gone and changed the name of Holtzbrinck. Just like that, we're Macmillan. Actually, we've been talking inside about the name change for so long — over a year now — that it's somehow shocking to see it finally happen. Of course, this is much more than just a name change. (Although, I confess that it will be nice that my English mother will finally know who I work for.)

In Macmillan, we in the US are adopting a name that Holtzbrinck has been known by internationally for years. But it's not only our business cards and boxes that are changing. That's the easy stuff. Underneath, we are shifting the way we think about how we do what we do.

And what do we do? We publish.

Yes, we publish books, magazines, and textbooks. But our role as publishers is not really to turn paper into books. It is to help creators find and connect with their audiences wherever they are. It is to publish information, entertainment, education, and ideas in whatever media and formats are appropriate. And through all the channels – digital and traditional – where our audience can be found.

His reasons for leaving science fiction behind are many. For a start, there's his much-quoted bon mot: "The future is already here - it's just unevenly distributed." I ask him if perhaps it's because there isn't a future to see and he shrugs: "I don't find it at all imaginable." Still, he says, it's fun to be able to write about the 21st century without having to make it up. "Here we are," he smiles. "And how much stranger it is than anyone imagined it to be." Though he does have his own blog (williamgibsonbooks.com) and a noted propensity to Google, somewhat surprisingly he regards the Net as "simply a welcome distraction from creating elaborate narratives that might convince a reader to turn the page."

Some argue that his first novel, Neuromancer, imagined the World Wide Web itself, but he insists that no one "envisioned the Internet until it happened." On the other hand, the new economy of the high-net-worth individual (a crucial facet of Spook Country) is something he believes he did predict in the earlier work.

Back then, he used Mexico City as a template - a city where there were only the very rich and the very poor, a place where the middle class had been excised. "Now, Manhattan is in the preserve of the very wealthy and the looming version of London with no one inside the M25 except the super-rich may not be too far-fetched." He pauses, then adds: "Vancouver is the same: Strathcona was a bargain for what? Two weeks?" Vancouver makes its William Gibson debut in Spook Country, something that gave the author a few sleepless nights. "I had real anxiety about it," he admits. "But when I got the characters all here, I realized I had three quite different and foreign viewpoints that each opened up a side of the city I hadn't really seen before. It turned out to be a lot of fun."

The publisher is forming a multiyear alliance with Hart Sharp Entertainment offshoot Sharp Independent called Sharp Independent at HarperCollins. The division will acquire film rights to existing and future HarperCollins adult titles to create new films, housed in HarperCollins offices and overseen by Harper/Morrow president and group publisher Michael Morrison.

The move makes sense for HarperCollins, which has had big success with film adaptations from such titles as "The Chronicles of Narnia" series and "The Pursuit of Happyness." But SI head Jeff Sharp's screen adaptations in recent years have been disappointments at the box office.

Sharp's reported $13 million all-star adaptation of the novel "Evening" earned $12.5 million this year. His reported $20 million adaptation of the Broadway hit "Proof" took in $7.5 million in 2005, his $6.5 million adaptation of "A Home at the End of the World" earned just $1 million in 2004 and his reported $10 million 2002 adaptation of "Nicholas Nickleby" grossed $1.6 million. Sharp's 2006 adaptation of HarperCollins' book "The Night Listener" grossed $7.8 million on a reported $10 million budget.

London diamond dealer Laurence Graff is putting 30 works of art on the auction block, including some important contemporary pieces. Collector and philanthropist Louise Blouin MacBain just auctioned off $4.6 million worth of Hermès handbags, Manolo Blahnik shoes and furniture from two of her homes. And an anonymous European seller is parting with 29 pieces, including works by Andy Warhol, Edward Ruscha and furniture designer Marc Newson.

These sales -- and a host of other prominent works headed for the auction block in London in a few weeks -- are sending a ripple through the art market. With an unusual number of works up for sale, some dealers and collectors say they are concerned about signs of potential weakness in what has been a gravity-defying market for years now. Some dealers are referring to the series of London auctions that kicks off Oct. 12 as "Judgment Week" -- a potentially watershed moment. Market players will be watching the level of bidding for signs that a downturn is at hand.

The sheer volume of works planned for sale is fueling the nervous buzz. Christie's has estimated the works it will have on the block at its major London sales in October at $154 million -- compared with the $83 million it made at those sales last year and $33 million in 2005. Sotheby's is selling 387 works at its London auctions next month, compared with 254 last year and 206 the year before.

The London sales come at a time when the art market's anxiety level about a bursting bubble is reaching new heights. Turbulence in the financial markets has some collectors and dealers worried about Wall Street's woes spilling into the art world.