The 16th-century artist Hans Holbein the Younger’s series of tiny woodcuts, The Dance of Death, should be viewed as dangerous satire and an early form of political cartoon, according to a Cambridge academic.

Holbein’s series of grisly images, created between 1524 and 1526 and showing the folly of greed and pride, are part of a tradition dating back to the medieval idea of the “danse macabre”, which showed death, in the form of a skeleton, acting as the great leveller to kings and emperors. But in a new Penguin Classics edition collecting the woodcuts, Ulinka Rublack, professor of early modern history at the University of Cambridge, argues that Holbein’s version of the story is more than just another religiously-themed moral tale, and is actually a political statement.

Using contemporary sources including local government records from the period, Rublack found that the young artist known for his later portraits of the Tudors was then struggling to survive financially, and part of a group of subversive artists who were being drawn into the movement for political change in Reformation Europe.

She points to images from The Dance of Death such as one of a pope shown surrounded by little demons, which she said was a “very risky” thing to have done. “For me it is a clear reference to Lutheran criticism which claimed the pope was the antichrist. It is taking up the language used by the Lutherans, which was a dangerous thing to do,” she said.

Another image shows death adorned with a cardinal’s face; in another, a nun flirts with her lover. Rublack said she was “surprised” by “how committed [Holbein] seems to have been to issues of social justice. The judges, the notaries, all those who should help poor people, it’s clear [from his woodcuts] that Holbein thought they were open to bribes and dismissive of those they should help.”

“The invisibility comes through of those at the margins of society. I don’t know any other graphic work of the period that does that, that speaks so strongly for the poor, for those who are invisible,” she said.

Rublack is from St John’s College, which described The Dance of Death as the “16th-century Charlie Hebdo”, and said that by “reworking the traditional Dance formula and adding tokens and signifiers that pointed to political concerns specific to its time, Holbein’s Dance was not just a piece for religious meditation but an early form of political cartoon, designed to delight, surprise and offend”.

“What’s striking is how many of his images were about social justice,” added Rublack. “Holbein was part of a movement which was very concerned with radical questions about welfare and reform.

“Looking at it as satire, rather like a publication such as Charlie Hebdo today, is probably the way to think about what he was doing at the time. Criticising the pope and Catholic clergy was dangerous; it could be censored and people could be imprisoned for it. But it’s sobering to think nobody was assassinated for it, which has occurred in response to comparable satire in our own time.”

Holbein produced the work while he was living in the Swiss city of Basle. The Reformation would not arrive there until 1529, but Rublack argues that there was already pressure for reform, and that Holbein, living among artists, would not have been immune to its influence.

“One can only imagine an atmosphere of creative fun and irreverence, which thrived on jokes against monks, priests, the local bishop and popes,” she writes in the new Penguin Classics edition, out this month.

“I think he was engulfed in these discussions from the start,” Rublack told the Guardian. “What really struck me was how many risks he was taking in pushing these critiques. It was such an exciting time because graphic art became so political and the role of satire merges with an extraordinary movement for change.”

Holbein would go on to work in the Tudor court in England, producing works such as The Ambassadors and his famous portrait of Henry VIII.

“What is impressive is that he could have easily made the decision to give up painting, as so many contemporaries did,” Rublack said. “Instead, he made the very risky decision to pursue painting elsewhere. He seems to have known that he had great works like The Ambassadors in him.”

From Gone Girl to The Girl on the Train to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the author Emily St John Mandel has crunched the numbers on books with “girl” in their title and discovered that the girl is “significantly more likely to end up dead”, if the author of the book is male.

Mandel, author of the award-winning novel Station Eleven, was curious about the glut of bestselling titles with “girl” in their titles, a publishing trend which has mushroomed since Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series was published, and which continues to grow. In a piece for Nate Silver’s data journalism website FiveThirtyEight, she analysed Goodreads’ database of books that include the word “girl” in their title.

“Who are these girls? Why are there so many of them? Books with ‘girl’ in their title make up a tiny fraction of all the books published in a given year, but they appear again and again on bestseller lists,” writes Mandel. “I was curious about more than just how often ‘girl’ books appeared; I wanted to understand who was writing these books, and the fate of the ‘girl’ in the title.”

Working with research assistants, Mandel analysed the 2,000-plus most popular books with “girl” or “girls” in the title on Goodreads, filtering out those books with 250 or fewer ratings, and removing cookbooks and books for children and young adults. She was left with 810 books.

Mandel discovered that the “girl” books were much more likely to be written by a female author – 79% of the titles were by women. But the “girl” of the title was also much more likely to be an adult than a child, with 65% of the “girls” actually women, 28% girls, and 7% “indeterminate”.

The girl, she found, was “usually all right”: according to her analysis, she was alive 85% of the time, 7% dead, 7% missing or lost (and less than 1% undead). But “something interesting and faintly troubling happens when you separate the titles by author gender and run the same analysis”: the girl was less likely to be all right if the author was male. According to Mandel’s analysis, the fate of the girl in a book by a male author was to be alive 68% of the time, 17% dead, and 15% missing or lost, while if the book was by a female author, she was alive 90% of the time.

The author is clear that “it wouldn’t be fair to extrapolate from this that women and girls are more likely to be dead or missing across all books written by men; only that they’re more likely to be dead or missing in books by men with ‘girl’ in the title”, but she adds that she “can’t think of any mitigating factor that fully explains this”.

“Sure, women may be more likely to write memoirs with the word ‘girl’ in the title, and we can safely assume a near-100% chance that the girl in the title survived to tell the story, but there are too few memoirs in this list – about a dozen, out of hundreds of titles by women – to skew the data in any significant way,” writes Mandel, suggesting that “the explanation for the divergence between the fates of the titular girls could be as simple as women perhaps being more likely to write books with female protagonists. Book protagonists often appear in the book’s title – think of John Le Carré’s The Night Manager, for instance – and killing off the protagonist is a relatively unusual authorial choice.”

Mandel predicts the phenomenon is unlikely to die off soon, with five new books with “girl” in the title out this autumn. And even Vikram Seth might join the trend, if and when his publishers pin down a publication date for the sequel to his beloved novel A Suitable Boy, which is due to be titled A Suitable Girl.

Mary Astor is probably most famous for playing the slippery femme fatale Brigid O’Shaughnessy opposite Humphrey Bogart’s hardened detective Sam Spade in the 1941 noir classic The Maltese Falcon. What’s lesser known — but equally intriguing — is the fact that Astor spurred one of the biggest Hollywood scandals of all time. In 1936, she sued her ex-husband Dr. Franklyn Thorpe for custody of their daughter Marylyn — and as the court case transpired, Astor was filming Dodsworth, which went on to be hailed as one of her best performances. The trial quickly spun into a media circus: It was front page news for weeks as Thorpe and his lawyer threatened to release the contents of Astor’s diary, in which she details the disillusion of her marriage and her extramarital affairs, most notably with playwright George S. Kaufman. The details — Astor sued Thorpe for bigamy as he had a disputed common law marriage with a woman in Florida, and Kaufman fled California after a bench warrant was issued when he did not appear in court despite receiving a subpoena — prove the truth can be wilder than fiction. It also makes us wonder… how has no one made a movie about this yet!? Well, 80 years after the trial ended, we have books at least: Two vastly different offerings — Edward Sorel’s Mary Astor’s Purple Diary and Joseph Egan’s The Purple Diaries — retell those wild events of 1936.

Sorel is an illustrator by trade and transforms his decades-long obsession with Mary Astor into Mary Astor’s Purple Diary. He decorates the pages with delightful, colorful, and occasionally cheeky NSFW illustrations of the various stages of Astor’s life and court case. Sorel paints himself Astor’s costar in the book by adding personal anecdotes about the disintegration of his own first marriage and career. However, the juicy tidbits of the Astor case get lost between the fast-paced story and Sorel’s own trips down memory lane.

Meanwhile, Joseph Egan’s The Purple Diaries revels in the details: No morsel is too small and no participant is unimportant. Readers quickly become intimately acquainted with not only Astor, but Thorpe, their lawyers, the judge, family, friends, and lovers, as well as a revolving door of fame-seeking supporting characters. Egan offers readers an in-depth look at the case and spends pages on word-for-word accounts from the courtroom. Newspaper clippings and family photos pepper The Purple Diaries, providing a glimpse into the lost world of Old Hollywood and the pandemonium the court case caused. It’s this wider scope that makes The Purple Diaries endlessly fascinating. Now if the present-day Hollywood could just adapt it to the screen.

Mary Astor’s Purple Diary B-
The Purple Diaries A- 

We’re going to assume Quidditch is J.K. Rowling’s favorite sport of all time, but she may have some interest in another (slightly less magical) sport too: American football.

On Thursday, the Harry Potter author tweeted her support of the Seattle Seahawks, particularly Richard Sherman.

“Did I mention that I’m a Seahawks fan? Well, I am,” she wrote, though she did go on to admit that Richard Sherman is the only player she can name. “(Don’t ask me who plays for them apart from R. Sherman.)”

Did I ever mention that I’m a #Seahawks fan? Well, I am.

(Don’t ask me who plays for them apart from R Sherman.)https://t.co/2zoJ8RRKZY

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 27, 2016

The tweet comes after the cornerback for the Seattle Seahawks arrived at a press conference on Wednesday dressed as the boy wizard himself. The exuberant athlete was decked out in Gryffindor robes and tie, had perched a pair of circular-framed glasses on his head, and was even wielding a wand. Sherman clearly takes the Halloween holiday seriously. 

“This is my first and second [choice],” he told the media of his Harry Potter costume choice, also adding that his 20-month-old son encouraged him to dress up. “When you’re a wizard, like we are out there, sometimes you have to show it to the Muggles out in the world. We got a lot of wizards. My son’s a wizard, Earl Thomas does some magical things … I just went to Harry Potter land; it felt like home.”

Watch Sherman’s magical press conference below.

LIVE on #Periscope: Harry Potter…@RSherman_25 Wednesday Week 8 press conference from VMAC. #SEAvsNO https://t.co/JwOci9Etxg

— Seattle Seahawks (@Seahawks) October 26, 2016

Asher’s gift for prose that packs an emotional wallop was apparent in his 2007 novel, the monster best-seller Thirteen Reasons Why. With this decade-in-the-making follow-up, he’s spun a less heavy but equally poignant tale about love, hope, and forgiveness. The protagonist, Sierra, has grown up in a multigenerational Christmas-tree-farm family business. Each winter they travel south to set up shop in California for the holiday season, giving Sierra a brief taste of an alternate life. One year, Sierra meets Caleb—a handsome, troubled boy haunted by a past mistake—and finds herself drawn to him despite warnings from her friends and family. Asher infuses his storytelling with a compelling sweetness and innocence; What Light casts the same warm glow as a room strung with twinkly Christmas-tree lights

The Nordic crime-fiction trend sparked by The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Henning Mankell’s novels shows no signs of abating. One of the best writers to emerge, I think, is Läckberg, whose husband-and-wife team (Patrik’s a cop, Erica’s a writer) solve murders in their Swedish seaside village. There’s a teensy bit of a Miss Marple/Murder, She Wrote vibe—you do wonder, fleetingly, how so many people in such a small place end up dead—but once you’re past that, the books shine. The plot in this installment, which is about the death of a local official, stutters a bit. But Patrik and Erika’s marriage feels real and utterly uncloying, and Läckberg has, as usual, lavished care on their excellent supporting cast: family, friends, local police officers. B

Paul Beatty’s The Sellout has won the 2016 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, the prize announced Tuesday. Beatty, whose book is a satire about race in the U.S., is the first American to win the award.

“The Sellout is a novel for our times,” Amanda Foreman, 2016 Chair of judges, said in a statement. “A tirelessly inventive modern satire, its humour disguises a radical seriousness. Paul Beatty slays sacred cows with abandon and takes aim at racial and political taboos with wit, verve and a snarl.”

Beatty was among the six finalists who awaited to hear the results Tuesday in London. Madeleine Thien (Do Not Say We Have Nothing), David Szalay (All That Man Is), Graeme Macrae Burnet (His Bloody Project), Deborah Levy (Hot Milk), and Ottessa Moshfegh (Eileen) were the other final nominees.

As the winner, Beatty receives a $66,400 cash prize as well as the honor of being given one of the greatest awards in the literary community. Previous winners include The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton in 2013 and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel in 2012.

Delighted to announce our #ManBooker2016 winner is The Sellout by Paul Beatty: https://t.co/wmbl4QT7aV pic.twitter.com/u93YtHluvV

— Man Booker Prize (@ManBookerPrize) October 25, 2016

The longlist, which was announced back in July, also included J.M. Coetzee’s The Schooldays of Jesus, A.L. Kennedy’s Serious Sweet, Ian McGuire’s The North Water, David Means Hystopia, Wyl Menmuir’s The Many, Virginia Reeves’ Work Like Any Other, and Elizabeth Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton.

Husband and wife writing duo Ransom Riggs and Tahereh Mafi discussed their unique writing rituals and how they first met during a panel hosted by our Anthony Breznican at EW’s first-ever PopFest in Los Angeles on Saturday.

“We met because we were both writers in the Young Adult writing community,” said Riggs, who’s best known for penning Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. “I think we met at WonderCon, that’s the first time we ever encountered one another.”

Mafi, who wrote the beloved YA series Shatter Me, clarified their initial encounter. “The first time we really met, I had just purchased his book and asked him to sign it for me,” she said. “I still have that book.”

Both authors have achieved great success with their individual series, but on top of sharing a household and profession, both of their latest projects – Riggs’ spinoff collection Tales of the Peculiar and Mafi’s inventive middle grade fantasy Furthermore – were released in the same week.

“We embraced it, but it was not our idea exactly,” said Riggs of the timing. “My book was kind of tied to the release of the film [version of Miss Peregrine’s].” Tim Burton’s recent adaption of Riggs’ first novel in the trilogy marked the first of their books to hit the big screen, thus creating a new schedule for the couple. “At first it was a little jarring because we thought we wouldn’t see each other for a month,” said Mafi. “We would be like ships passing in the night. But we actually have the same publisher and editor who worked it out.”

As far as their day-to-day writing processes, both authors shared that they have different approaches to the medium. Mafi says she’ll write day and night for two weeks, but is inspired by her husband’s ability to work at a steady pace. “Ransom wakes up in the morning and jumps in the shower,” she said. “He doesn’t even check his email in bed.” An excellent day of writing for Mafi shows “10,000 words, while a pretty good day is half as much.”

Riggs sees the importance in his wife’s writing style though, pointing out how her characters turn out. “She will dig into the character’s mind and soul and start the story there,” said Riggs. “I try to do that too, but that’s a great way to honor your character.”

Their comments at PopFest echo what the authors told EW earlier this year when they sat down for an in-depth look at how the write and work side by side. “She’s like an Italian race car. She writes faster, better and more effectively than anybody I know and she can put out an amazing amount of high quality material and just keep going,” Riggs said of Mafi. Of her husband, Mafi said, “Ransom’s great for reminding me to emerge.”

But the pair won’t be slowing down anytime soon. Riggs recently announced a new trilogy for Miss Peregrine and Mafi’s’s already at work on a sequel to Furthermore.

EW PopFest runs through Sunday. For ticketing info and more, head here.

This article originally appeared on PEOPLE.com

If you’ve ever wanted to eat like Oprah, now’s your chance. The media mogul, who began her weight loss journey with Weight Watchers over a year ago, is putting out a healthy cookbook — and PEOPLE has an exclusive look at the cover.

Winfrey’s new book, Food, Health and Happiness: 115 On-Point Recipes for Great Meals and a Better Life, is due January 3. The cover shows a slender Winfrey in a blue and white striped oxford laughing over a bowl of fresh fruit and green juice. The TV host says she was inspired to write the title — filled with her struggles and triumphs over food – after finally finding what worked for her body.

“As long as I can remember, I’ve been the kind of person who wants to share the things that make life better,” she told PEOPLE in a statement. “When I come upon something useful, something that brings me pleasure or comfort or ease, I want everyone else to know about it and benefit from it, too. And that is how this cookbook came to be. It’s my life story — the lessons I’ve learned, the discoveries I’ve made — told through food.”

The recipes inside are a collaboration with a number of notable chefs including Top Chef winner Mei Lin and her former personal chefs Rosie Daley and Art Smith, who contribute dishes like “Unfried Chicken” and “Turkey Chili.”

After purchasing a 10 percent stake in Weight Watchers, Winfrey revealed she had lost 26 pounds by January. Though she has yet to reveal her total weight loss to date, she told PEOPLE in August that it was enough that her longtime beau Stedman Graham could “pick me up and carry me to the pool.”

“I can straddle him without breaking his back,” she said

A new volume of lost writing by the author Anaïs Nin has been consigned by online retailer Amazon to its “adult content dungeon” – which is not as kinky as it sounds.

Instead it means that Amazon has effectively made the new book, Auletris: Erotica, invisible on its platform to anyone who searches for it under an “All Departments” filter.

The publisher of the book, American independent outfit Sky Blue Press, calls Amazon’s decision “unbelievable”.

Editor Paul Herron, whose detective work is to thank for the discovery of the manuscript, says that Auletris: Erotica exceeds in its “boldness and variety” Nin’s well-known – and still easily available – erotic works Delta of Venus and Little Birds.

“Auletris breaks many taboos. There are tales of incest, sex with children, rape, voyeurism, cutting, sadomasochism, homoeroticism (both male and female) [and] autoerotic asphyxiation, to name a few,” he wrote on the Anaïs Nin blog. “The characters are deliciously decadent, and the themes are largely based on Nin’s own experiences, recorded in her unexpurgated diaries. This book comes along just as interest in both Nin and the genre of erotica is booming,”

Herron told the Guardian: “Amazon has essentially blocked viewers from knowing Auletris exists by placing it in what is known as the ‘adult content dungeon’, which means that it does not show up when one searches for the title, unless the search is refined – and very few potential readers know this.”

If readers go, therefore, to any of the company’s platforms and search “Auletris” under All Departments, the book does not show up. If they change the search filter to Kindle Store or Books, then a message appears saying that the results are adult content and they have to click through to see the product.

“That extra step is the difference between buying or not buying,” Herron says. “Everyone I know in the erotica business tells me that, when Amazon places a book in the dungeon, it kills sales.”

Holland says he has been met with “stiff, mindless opposition” in his appeals to Amazon to have the book removed from the dungeon, and has been told by five different people at the company that “rules are rules” and that “what gets a book rated adult is what you would expect”.

Amazon said that for them to bring the book back into the normal storefront, the cover would have to be modified to remove any bare nipples. The cover image is currently based on an erotic French postcard found in Nin’s possessions. In addition, the content of the book would have to be toned down.

“This is impossible,” Holland says, “because it is, after all, erotica. When I pressed on, using every bit of logic I could muster – for instance [that] Fifty Shades of Grey is searchable, as are Nin’s Delta of Venus and Little Birds – not only was I given the brush-off, I was told that they were considering rating the other Nin erotica as ‘adult’, thereby rendering them as invisible as Auletris. This has yet to happen, but there was at least that threat. Note there is no such threat for Fifty Shades of Grey, which has made them a whole lot of cash.”

The stories that form Auletris were discovered by Herron in the papers of Gunther Stuhlmann, who was Nin’s literary agent and who died in 2002. Correspondence mentioned them and the papers included photocopied pages from the proposed book.

It appears the stories had been written specifically for an unnamed patron in the 1930s, at a pay rate of one dollar per page, and were later published with a print run of just five copies in 1950 by Press of the Sunken Eye, prompting Herron to try to track down a surviving copy. He did, and it was republished by Sky Blue Press on 20 October this year.

Herron says: “The reason I believe Auletris is an important addition to Nin’s canon is that it is pure Nin – not to mention the fact that most of the book has never seen the light of day. I did not tinker with the contents – did not refine, cut, rearrange, change the phrasing, etc – but only tended to grammatical and spelling matters. I want the reader to experience exactly what the mysterious collector, for whom Nin wrote at a dollar a page, did.”

Nin, who died in 1977 aged 73, was no stranger to brushes with prudishness. The publication in 1961 of her lover Henry Miller’s novel Tropic of Cancer led directly to obscenity trials in the States.

At the time of publication, Amazon had not responded to a request for comment.

There may be demons, plagues and the all horrors of the apocalypse, but there’s no room for any spandex superheroes in a graphic novel that its publishers are claiming is the longest ever produced. The only superpowers that feature in the 10,000 panels of the Kingstone Bible are wielded in the good fight, as the greatest story ever told gets a 12-volume comic-book adaptation.

Christian publisher Kingstone has been working on the project for seven years, using more than 45 illustrators to pull together what it is calling “the most complete graphic-novel adaptation of the Bible ever published”, at over 2,000 pages, in either 12 paperback volumes or three larger hardcover volumes.

Art Ayris, the founder of Kingstone, says the publisher plumped for the comics format because “the interplay of text and images allows one to convey a large amount of content in an abbreviated form”.

“A novice to religion who had never read the Bible before would be able to read through this graphic novel trilogy and have an understanding of some of the key narratives as well as key doctrines in the different books,” he says, “especially the Epistles. We have never seen this as a substitute for Bible reading but as a complement to help people ‘see’ the scriptures in a new light.”

Some of the books of the Bible were more difficult to adapt than others, Ayris admits, but artists were selected to fit the text. “For the book of Revelation we used a top horror artist who had been with Marvel, and it was a great fit for the powerful imagery in that book. Where we dealt with Bible reporting on major slaughter, rapes, adultery etc, we tried to honestly communicate but not be over the top with the graphic portrayals.”

Ayris says that Kingstone is aiming the Bible at preteen readers and young adults, but that the publisher’s largest social media demographic is males between the ages of 18 and 29.

“To a lot of people, the Bible is a big daunting book full of hard to pronounce names and seemingly unrelated stories. However, we come at it from the understanding that it is a document of divine revelation about the nature and character of God, his dealings with mankind, a chronicle of ancient history as well as a revelation of the future.”

Even though the Bible is constructed from 66 books it is “one unified story”, Ayris continues, a story the publisher has done its best to respect. “The Kingstone Bible may be a very unorthodox approach to scripture but we have tried to be very orthodox in theological constructs.”

A novel told from the point of view of a teenage girl with autism, written by schoolgirls with autism, has been published after the students – frustrated by their experience of a world that rejects and ignores them – decided to take matters into their own hands.

The pupils at Limpsfield Grange school, the country’s only state-funded residential school for girls with special needs, mined their own most painful – and uplifting – experiences to write M in the Middle, a young adult novel created with the help of their creative writing teacher, Vicky Martin.

“If society just realised the very simple fact that girls can have autism as well as boys, then the life of girls with autism would instantly be so much better because we wouldn’t be so scared of being labelled as weird, abnormal and strange,” said Francesca Warren, 14, one of the 70 girls at the school.

“Because people think autism is something only boys have – and because girls with autism behave completely differently to boys – girls have to constantly mask their condition,” Warren added. “But having to pretend to be someone else is debilitating and humiliating. And it doesn’t even work: people can get annoyed with you even when you mask [because they sense your inauthenticity].”

Warren sits with her friends in the office of Sarah Wild, the headteacher at Limpsfield Grange. Fizzing with as many different opinions as any other group of teenage girls, they only speak with one voice when it comes to the question of whether boys with autism have an easier life.

“Yes. Yes. Yes!” they shout in passionate union. “Ding. Ding!” whooped one girl, for added emphasis.

The hilarity quickly ebbed away. “I’m prey in a world of predators,” said 12-year-old Lauren Mittelmeier, quietly. “Life is really hard for girls with autism. Why is life so difficult?”

The struggle to get their condition recognised is just the start of the battle for girls with autism. Even when they are diagnosed, their life doesn’t necessarily get any easier: there is virtually no specialist support, academic or otherwise, for girls.

Mittelmeier’s parents moved home from Dorset so their daughter could attend Limpsfield Grange school, in Oxted, Surrey. This is not unusual: another family moved from Cornwall. One other girl boards during the week and travels the 250 miles back to her home every weekend.

Mittelmeier said: “I was diagnosed at eight but my autism wasn’t acknowledged by my school. They just thought I was an idiot. They were trained to work with autistic people but I’m guessing it was boys they were trained for, not girls.”

There is no official data on autism diagnoses, although the National Autistic Society (NAS) is calling for local authorities to start collecting it, as well as ending the “autism diagnosis crisis” that sees children waiting for nine years and more for a diagnosis.

Statistics appear to show that more men and boys than women and girls have a diagnosis of autism. The study most quoted, written by Leo Kanner in 1943, found there were four times as many boys as girls. In later years various studies, together with anecdotal evidence, put the men to women ratio at anything from 2:1 to 16:1.

But Sarah Wild, head of Limpsfield Grange, believes there are just as many girls with autism as there are boys.

She said: “I genuinely think there are equal numbers but the stereotype that it’s a male condition is self-perpetuating: the diagnostic checklists and tests have been developed for boys and men, while girls and women present completely differently.”

According to the NAS 2012 survey of 8,000 people with autism, just 8% of girls with Asperger syndrome were diagnosed before six years old, compared with 25% of boys. Only 21% of girls with Asperger’s were diagnosed by the age of 11, compared with 52% of boys. Many adult women who took part in the survey didn’t have a diagnosis at all: 10% compared with 5% of males.

An added problem facing girls and women with autism is that if their true condition isn’t identified, they are at risk of being misdiagnosed, said Wild. “If, for example, a clinician asks a girl with autism if she ‘hears voices’ or ‘sees people’, she’ll say ‘Yes’ because she’s being entirely literal – and then she’ll be misdiagnosed with schizophrenia or another mental health disorders,” she said.

The NAS survey suggests that 42% of females have been misdiagnosed, compared with 30% of males. Many women remain undiagnosed well into late adulthood until they self-diagnose: females in the NAS survey were more likely to have paid for their diagnosis (14% of females, compared with 9% of males).

Misdiagnosis and no diagnosis, as well as a lack of support, understanding and recognition once a correct diagnosis has been made, leave girls and women in a dangerous space. According to the NAS survey, 38% of females with Asperger’s have another serious mental health condition, including eating disorders and depression.

But momentum for change is starting to gather pace: in January, the National Association of Headteachers is holding a girls on the autism spectrum conference to prepare a call for action on the issue.

Before that, on 8 November, there is a private House of Lords round table organised by the autism and girls forum – itself set up just 18 months ago.

“We set up the forum because there is so much energy coming forward now from parents, academics, children and young people’s mental health services (Camhs), and teachers, that we’re missing identifying this group of girls,” said Professor Barry Carpenter, chair of the forum.

“The pattern we’re seeing is that these girls come badly unstuck in their teenage years. They manage to mask it when they’re younger, which means when they crumble, they don’t have any coping strategies and structures to fall back on for support,” he said.

The House of Lords round table has a quest, said Carpenter: “We need to engage political will, without which nothing will change. There needs to be a systematic review, either under the women and equalities committee or we need to set up a new, cross-governmental taskforce.

“We need to harness all this evidence coming to us and marshall it to incentivise more research, more help for schools and Camhs.

“We have a very vulnerable group of girls here,” he said. “I can’t personally live with the fact we’re not doing nearly enough to help them.”

M in the Middle is published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers (£8.99). Click here to buy a copy for £7.37

If the Big Bad Wolf or the Wicked Queen aren’t frightening enough for your bedtime reading, then a nightmarish picture book from the imagination of Stephen King might be the answer.

Charlie the Choo-Choo, by one Beryl Evans, makes its first (fictional) appearance in King’s Dark Tower fantasy series, when it is spotted in a display of children’s books by the story’s child hero, Jake. “On the bright green cover was an anthropomorphic locomotive puffing its way up a hill ... its headlight was a cheerful eye which seemed to invite Jake Chambers to come inside and read all about it,” writes King.

“As he looked down at the cover, Jake found that he did not trust the smile on Charlie the Choo-Choo’s face. You look happy, but I think that’s just the mask you wear, he thought. I don’t think you’re happy at all. And I don’t think Charlie’s your real name, either.”

Now, King has written a real-life version of Charlie the Choo-Choo: out on 22 November from Simon & Schuster, under the pseudonym Beryl Evans, and illustrated by Ned Dameron.

“Engineer Bob has a secret: his train engine, Charlie the Choo-Choo, is alive! Jump on board and join the railroad journey in this compelling picture book about friendship and loyalty,” promises the publisher, before unveiling a series of creepy pages from the picture book depicting the kind of train that would give Thomas the Tank Engine nightmares.

The picture book also carries a quote from King on the front – “If I were ever to write a children’s book, it would be just like this!” – possibly to warn off parents browsing for the latest story from the realms of Sodor, rather than a dark fantasy from the master of horror.

It isn’t the first time King has explored the methods of children’s publishing. He brought out a pop-up version of his story The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon in 2004.

The film adaptation of the first novel in the fantasy western Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger, starring Idris Elba as titular hero Roland Deschain and Matthew McConaughey as the Man in Black, is out in February.

Marlon James, the author of the Booker-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings, has said that it’s “time to stop talking” about diversity, arguing that “it’s not for the black person to be more open-minded. It’s for the white person to be less racist.”

In an essay posted on the Literary Hub on Thursday, the Jamaican novelist suggests that “we too often mistake discussing diversity for doing anything constructive about it”, with the same points raised on panels about diversity year after year.

Imagining the outrage that would greet an all-white panel discussion of diversity, James asks: “Why do we need a black person on a panel to talk about inclusion when it’s the white person who needs to figure out how to include?” The fact the books industry is still having diversity panels, he continues, “not only means that we continue to fail, but the false sense of accomplishment in simply having one is deceiving us into thinking that something was tried”.

Writers of colour, he says, are invited to talk on panels, “as if by getting Claudia Rankine to talk about diversity one has accomplished something”.

“You would think our sole purpose as writers at these panels is to broaden the understanding of white people, when we could, you know, talk about writing,” he writes. “It’s not for the black person to be more open-minded. It’s for the white person to be less racist. It’s not for the trans person to prove why she needs to use the female bathroom. It’s for the bigot to stop attacking trans people. The problem with me coming to the table to talk about diversity is the belief that I have some role to play in us accomplishing it, and I don’t.”

The author Nikesh Shukla said the situation was similar in the UK, where last year’s Writing the Future study found that “an old mono-culture” prevails in publishing. “People are so desperate for things to change, but we don’t want diversity panels, we don’t want to just talk about it,” said Shukla, who edited a recent anthology of essays about race by BAME writers, The Good Immigrant, and has pushed for change in the UK. “But diversity is the wrong word – diversity is the celebration of otherness, often filtered through a cis white male perspective. And I don’t want to be celebrated for what makes me different.”

Shukla said that, like James, he “very much hopes we can stop being short-sighted about diversity, and get to the point where writers can just be writers”.

He pointed to this week’s Frankfurt book fair, where he said that amid a host of announcements about newly acquired books, “barely any are for BAME writers”.

“I feel the will is there for change, but the reality is that in order for true diversity to happen, the gatekeepers and commissioners need to step aside,” he said. “The thing about all this is that we can have the debates and have the panels, and I will still wake up brown tomorrow. I live it every day of my life. White people debate diversity – I live it. And I don’t want to be the subject of debate – I want to be included ... Marlon has got a really good point. Why are we still talking about it? The time for talking or debating or panelising is done. Let’s do something about it.”

Bruce Springsteen couldn’t cast a spell over the the producers of the Harry Potter film franchise, after he confirmed rumors that he had wrote a song for the series that was rejected.

The Boss made the admission during a Wednesday interview on BBC Radio 2 when asked to address a rumor that he had written a song called I’ll Stand By You for one of the Harry Potter films.

“That is true,” he said. “They didn’t use it.”

Springsteen said he wrote the song for his eldest son. “It was a big ballad that was very uncharacteristic of something I’d sing myself,” he added. “But it was something that I thought would have fit lovely.”

Springsteen said he he’s still hoping to have it included in a “children’s movie of some sort because it was a pretty lovely song”.

According to Springsteen fan forum BruceBase wiki, the song possibly dates as far back as 1998, and was inspired by Springsteen’s experience reading the Harry Potter novels to his son. The site alleges that Springsteen offered the song to director Chris Columbus, who directed the first Harry Potter installment, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in 2001. Author JK Rowling is said to have had a contract stipulation that prevented the use of commercial songs in the Harry Potter films.

On Wednesday, members of Trainspotting’s crew claimed that Oasis turned down the chance to feature on the soundtrack for the classic because Noel Gallagher presumed the film was about actual trainspotters rather than an adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s black comedy about heroin addiction in Edinburgh.

Less than two weeks after peers spoke in the House of Lords about the importance of protecting the nation’s libraries, and as residents in Walsall mourn “absolutely devastating” proposals to close 15 out of their 16 local libraries, a charity has warned that libraries should not “receive an automatic ‘get out of austerity free’ card, merely on the grounds of being libraries”.

‘Digital inclusion’ charity the Tinder Foundation said on Wednesday that libraries should not be protected at all costs, and that those not fulfulling their potential should not receive “a free pass”.

“I love libraries. But I love them when they’re fulfilling their potential. When they are not, I believe they are bringing the institution down. I believe they are letting local people down. And I’m fed up of seeing them get a free pass, when other community hubs ­and community centres­ are also at the brink of closures, and also faced with the really pointy end of the local council cuts,” said Tinder chief executive Helen Milner.

The charity, which runs the UK’s network of online centres to provide people with basic digital skills, says that if libraries want to be seen as a hub for the community, then it “takes more than booklending”. During the House of Lords debate earlier this month, the publisher Gail Rebuck said that “libraries should be seen as key community centres, open to all, where, alongside books, people can rely on other essential life services”, while Big Issue founder John Bird called on the government to “supply some emergency relief money to stop local authorities doing this dastardly deed, this process of philistinising our communities”.

But Milner said that while she agrees “that we must protect essential services, knowledge and education for those most disadvantaged in our communities”, she does not agree “that libraries should receive an automatic ‘get out of austerity free’ card, merely on the grounds of being libraries”.

“Knowledge is no longer just found in books. Increasingly, knowledge, education, history, news and even fiction are found online. Books are not synonymous with knowledge, and they are certainly not synonymous with community. To be community hubs, libraries need to be about social inclusion before books. And digital inclusion is part of that picture,” she said.

According to Milner, while some libraries are “doing an amazing job of supporting the needs of their community, using digital and other means to engage and empower excluded and vulnerable groups”, others are not, “and it’s time we faced that fact”.

“In face of less and less money, we need to consider that those libraries need to close. It’s time funding was channelled to the libraries ­ and other community organisations ­ really playing the role of community hubs,” she said. “I believe we can make libraries so strong, so useful and so essential that no one in their right mind would ever close another one. But we won’t do that by pretending all libraries are already brilliant, just by virtue of being libraries.”

A spokesperson for the foundation said the charity was “expecting” Milner’s comments to provoke a reaction. “We’re keen to broaden the discussion around the quality provided by libraries, so hopefully this will allow us to do this. There are lots of libraries doing fantastic things that we think should absolutely stay open, but we need to ensure that the libraries that do remain can attract new people, and are relevant to their communities,” she said.

Nick Poole, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, which is leading protests against plans to close libraries in the UK, admitted that “no library should be protected simply because it is a library”, but said: “We do urgently need a library development plan to oversee the kind of modern, vital services that Helen Milner envisages and communities need.”

“While we would challenge the idea that public libraries have been protected from the impact of austerity, we welcome the Tinder Foundation’s call for a national plan for improving and developing them,” said Poole. “Working with Lord Bird, Cilip has called for a national strategy, accepted quality standards and proper strategic investment and we urgently need the government to fulfil their statutory duty and work with the sector to create this.”

A new literary award with a prize pot of $100,000 (£82,000) puts the Baillie Gifford’s £30,000 and the Man Booker’s £50,000 in the shade. But the entry that takes the inaugural Nine Dots prize will differ from the season’s other prizewinning books in one crucial respect: it won’t exist.

Drawing its name from a puzzle that can be solved only by lateral thinking, the Nine Dots prize is asking for responses to the question: “Are digital technologies making politics impossible?” Established writers and debut authors are invited to send 3,000-word answers, along with an outline showing how they would develop their argument into a short book. The award, judged anonymously by a 12-strong panel of academics, authors and journalists, also includes a book deal with Cambridge University Press.

The prize is funded by the Kadas Prize foundation, a charity that promotes research into “significant but neglected questions relevant to today’s world”. Organisers hope it will “encourage innovative thinking”.

The chair of the judging board, Prof Simon Goldhill, called it “an incredibly exciting and unique opportunity for thinkers to table big ideas that have the potential to change the world”.

“The board,” he said, “will be looking for entries that display originality in everything from the ideas put forward to the ways in which those ideas are communicated. Respondents are entirely free to critique, agree or disagree with, or reject the premise of the question, but they must engage with it fully and insightfully.”

A new question is due to be set every two years. The deadline for entries for the inaugural prize is 31 January 2017, and the result will be announced in May. The winner will work with Cambridge University Press to produce a book of between 25,000 and 40,000 words.

Diane Coyle, a professor of economics at Manchester University who is also on the panel, said the judges hoped the prize would “encourage original and inspiring thinking from diverse individuals coming from a wide variety of places and backgrounds and suggesting innovative new approaches”. Fellow judge David Runciman, a professor of politics at the University of Cambridge, said: “We don’t know how many entries we will get, but we hope the money will get people’s attention. Many writers in different fields may not think of themselves as book writers, but may have a strong argument they want to lay out. So give us the idea, and, if we like it, an expert publisher will guide them into the process of making it into a book.”

Runciman said the board had wanted to set a provocative question, “something people immediately recognise as an important question for now, leaving open the possibility of answering in different ways … We hope to have a real range. We don’t specify anything about the style or the approach – writers could look at it from a cultural or artistic perspective, or historical, or futuristic. We wanted a question which left it open.”

Newly discovered artwork by the Finnish writer and artist Tove Jansson which was sitting uncatalogued and unrecognised at the British Cartoon Archive is to go on display next year at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Jansson is best known for her blobby superstars the Moomins, who became so much more famous than their creator that they decorated the tail fins of Finnish planes, and even the wristwatch of former president Tarja Halonen.

A major retrospective of her art will feature newly discovered artwork for the strip cartoon of the Moomins, found in a mass of material sent for storage by the defunct London Evening News paper, which had serialised her work for years.

The exhibition will showcase her as a serious artist as well as an illustrator, including self-portraits, landscapes, and her work for the Finnish satirical magazine Garm, which first accepted her work when she was just 15. She went on to create hundreds of illustrations and cartoons for the magazine, including more than 100 covers, which in the war years often featured caricatures of Adolf Hitler and other instantly recognisable Nazi figures.

One of the hippo-like Moomins, who hibernate through the winter and wake up as the snow melts in their idyllic valley, made a first appearance in a cameo role in Garm in 1943. The first Moomins book was published in 1945, and they became famous across the world from magazines, books, and television programmes including a 104-part Japanese animated version.

Jansson, who died in 2001, was born into a family of artists in Helsinki in 1914. Her family was closely involved in her work and has kept control of the Moomins – once turning down an offer from Disney for the rights.

Her niece Sophia Jansson, now creative director of the Moomins, said she was delighted the gallery would now show the full range of her work in the exhibition opening in October 2017. “It was hugely important to Tove that she be recognised as a talented fine artist in addition to being creator of the Moomins,” she said. “Balancing her painting and her other projects alongside the demands that the Moomins made of her was something she struggled with all her life.”

Sointu Fritze, chief curator at the Ateneum museum in Helsinki and lead curator for the exhibition at Dulwich, said Jansson’s art and stories were very relevant for Europe today. “Her entire oeuvre and way of thinking are characterised by the acceptance of differences,” Fritze said. “Although the family circle – both the artist’s own and the fictional Moomin family – is central, the door is always open for those seeking shelter.”

The exhibition will be at the Dulwich gallery in south-east London from 25 October 2017 to 28 January 2018.

• This article was amended on 21 October 2016 to recognise that, although the first major retrospective in the UK, the Dulwich show is not the first UK exhibition of Tove Jansson’s art.

A week after the starting gun was fired on the race to the top of the Christmas book charts, YouTube superstars the Sidemen have emerged in front of the likes of Jamie Oliver and Guy Martin in the battle for the No 1 spot.

Last week saw 219 new books published on what the Bookseller magazine has christened “Super Thursday”, the day on which a small avalanche of books expected to be Christmas hits are published. Bookshops tipped titles including Oliver’s Christmas Cookbook, Alan Bennett’s diaries Keeping On Keeping On and Alan Partridge’s Nomad for the top spot – but this week at least, The Sidemen are out in front.

The gamers, who have a total of 33.6 million YouTube subscribers between them, sold 26,436 copies of Sidemen: The Book in the three days after it was published, according to book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan, giving it the No 1 slot in the hardback nonfiction charts.

The book’s publicity pitch promises: “There’s nowhere to hide as the guys go in hard on their living habits, their football ability, and their dodgy clobber, while also talking Fifa, Vegas and superheroes. They’ll also give you their grand house tour, letting you in on a few secrets, before showing you their hall of fame, as well as revealing some of their greatest shames.”

By contrast, Oliver’s Christmas cookbook sold 8,384 copies over the same period, in fifth place behind Martin’s fourth-placed Worms to Catch, which had sales of 8,651 copies. Guinness World Records and Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography Born to Run, both published in September, were in second and third place respectively.

Strong sales were also seen last week for Ladybird’s host of Super Thursday titles, a parody of its children’s books from the 60s and 70s which include How It Works: The Cat and How It Works: The Grandparent, while Phil Collins’s memoir Not Dead Yet took eighth place in the hardback nonfiction charts with sales of almost 8,000 copies.

The YouTubers will be facing stiff competition if they are to hang on to their top spot until Christmas, however: the Bookseller points out that “the festive season is a marathon, not a sprint”, and although last year’s Super Thursday No 1 was also a book by YouTube stars, Dan & Phil’s The Amazing Book is Not on Fire, Bill Bryson’s travelogue The Road to Little Dribbling emerged as the overall bestselling Super Thursday release, with the Christmas No 1 spot eventually taken by Ladybird’s parody guide to the husband. “Veteran chart-hanger (and five-time Christmas No 1) Jamie may just be biding his time,” predicted the magazine.

And the gamers will also be contending with another YouTube star for the top spot - Zoella, aka Zoe Sugg, who publishes the third instalment in her bestselling novel series, Girl Online: Going Solo, in November. Sugg, a fashion and beauty vlogger, saw her debut novel Girl Online become the fastest selling debut novel ever in 2014, racking up sales of more than 78,000 copies in a week but drawing controversy over its lack of acknowledgment of its ghostwriter. Sugg subsequently said that she would write its sequel alone.

After landing the £15,000 Forward prize for best collection in September, the Trinidadian poet Vahni Capildeo is in the running for the UK’s most lucrative award for poetry, the £20,000 TS Eliot award.

Measures of Expatriation, which explores identity and the alienation of the expatriate, is one of 10 collections in the running for the prize. It is up against collections from Alice Oswald, Ian Duhig and Denise Riley, all of which also appeared on the Forward shortlist. Oswald’s Falling Awake examines mutability; Duhig’s The Blind Road draws from both Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and the life of the 18th-century polymath Blind Jack Metcalf; and Riley’s Say Something Back revolves around her late son and includes her long poem about grieving and loss, A Part Song.

Publishers submitted 138 books for the prize. Judges and poets Ruth Padel, Julia Copus and Alan Gillis narrowed them down to a final 10, which also includes Scottish poet JO Morgan, chosen for Interference Pattern, a collection described as a “bracing, original, disruptive book” in the Guardian. Rachael Boast makes the TS Eliot shortlist for Void Studies, the realisation of a project proposed by Rimbaud; Bernard O’Donoghue for The Seasons of Cullen Church, about his childhood in Co Cork; and Katharine Towers for her second collection, The Remedies.

The shortlist is completed by Jacob Polley’s Jackself, a fictionalised autobiography told through the many “Jacks” of legend and folktale, and Ruby Robinson’s debut Every Little Sound.

Padel, who chaired the judging panel, said the judges had been “blown away by the brilliance and freshness of the entries … We were looking for musicality, originality, energy and craft, and we believe the shortlist reflects this in a wonderful range of important and lasting voices.”

Although the shortlist features only two contributions from small presses – Capildeo’s collection, published by Carcanet, and Robinson’s, published by Liverpool University Press – Padel said the judges “applaud the contribution of new and independent poetry publishers”.

“There were,” she said, “many more outstanding books from small presses than we were able to accommodate in our final shortlist: it is clear that such publishers are radically altering the landscape of contemporary poetry.”

The winner will be announced on 16 January. The TS Eliot prize has been running since 1993, and has been won in the past by Oswald, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney and Carol Ann Duffy.

The 2016 TS Eliot prize shortlist

Void Studies by Rachael Boast (Picador)
Measures of Expatriation by Vahni Capildeo (Carcanet)
The Blind Road-Maker by Ian Duhig (Picador)
Interference Pattern by JO Morgan (Cape Poetry)
The Seasons of Cullen Church by Bernard O’Donoghue (Faber)
Falling Awake by Alice Oswald (Cape Poetry)
Jackself by Jacob Polley (Picador)
Say Something Back by Denise Riley (Picador)
Every Little Sound by Ruby Robinson (Liverpool University Press)
The Remedies by Katharine Towers (Picador)

A new film is being planned around the character of Willy Wonka, the eccentric chocolatier at the center of Roald Dahl’s children’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and its sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.

The revival is being brought to the screen by Harry Potter producer David Heyman, according to Variety. The Secret Life of Pets writer Simon Rich is handling the screenplay.

Heyman has experience in rebooting franchises having produced the forthcoming Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which serves as a prequel to Harry Potter, taking place 70 years before Potter ventured to Hogwarts.

The new Willy Wonka film is said to not to be an adaptation of one of Dahl’s two books featuring the character, but a standalone film focused on Wonka’s early adventures. It’s stressed, however, that the film will not be an origin story.

Variety hints that Charlie, the young boy who wins a golden ticket to Wonka’s chocolate factory in the first book, might not make an appearance in the film, suggesting that he’ll appear in “future installments of a possible franchise” if the revamp is a hit.

Wonka was last played onscreen by Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s 2005 blockbuster Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The original Willy Wonka, Gene Wilder, who played the character in the 1971 adaptation, died in August at age 83 from complications from Alzheimer’s. No cast has been announced of yet for the new film.

Dahl’s creation also got a stage musical adaptation courtesy of director Sam Mendes in 2003.

As publishing prepares for the Christmas rush, with a blizzard of titles due for launch this week on “Super Thursday”, a European commission report has shown that life is less than super for many authors in the UK, with average annual incomes for writers languishing at £12,500.

This figure is just 55% of average earnings in the UK, coming in below the minimum wage for a full-time job at £18,000 and well below the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s minimum income standard of £17,100.

In an industry that is becoming increasingly unequal, those at the bottom of the income distribution continue to struggle. Only half of the 317 UK authors who responded to the survey said writing was their main source of income, with respondents who offered a figure reporting total earnings from their latest book averaging at £7,000.

The survey confirms a picture of steady decline in author incomes that was revealed in a 2015 survey published by the Society of Authors (SoA). While the publishing industry has seen revenues begin to rise, with sales up 1.3% in 2015 to £4.4bn, median incomes for authors (a measure that better reflects the experience of most authors) were down 29% in real terms in the last decade.

According to the writer Lucinda Hawksley, who sits on the SoA management committee, initiatives to make life fairer for authors are “utterly necessary”.

“I know from personal experience how difficult it is to be creative when panicking about the state of one’s finances and worrying about the rent [and] trying to meet a publisher’s demands,” Hawksley said. “My books have been well-received and plentiful, which might be assumed to bring in a healthy income, but it is impossible to support myself by writing alone.”

The study was a valuable acknowledgment of this mismatch, she continued. “In a world where publishing is huge business, readers should be made aware of the financially struggling elephant in the room: publishers need to change their attitudes to authors and to recognise that the writer of the book is at the heart of book production.”

A comparison of the legal protections enjoyed by writers across the continent put the UK and Ireland at the bottom of the ranking, with the UK also performing poorly in a measure of authors’ power in collective bargaining. The complicated patchwork of different legal frameworks makes it impossible to “detect any consistent patterns”, the report concludes. But a comparison between two countries with the highest number of responses, the UK and Germany, could suggest “that a more protective legal framework may have a positive effect for the authors’ average income”.

In a world where the digital revolution is opening up a bewildering array of new ways for publishers to make money out of writers’ work, the report argues for written contracts that specify where and how an author’s work is to be used. It adds that rights should be limited to uses that are known or foreseeable.

The SoA chief executive, Nicola Solomon, welcomed confirmation of the mounting evidence of the struggles that many writers face.

“This detailed study shows, yet again, that authors are disadvantaged by an unfair playing field,” Solomon said, “and conclusively demonstrates that simple legal remedies such as controlling the term and scope of contracts can have a positive effect on authors’ earnings, which remain woefully low.” As writers find they are unable to make a living and others are dissuaded from joining the profession, the UK risks “a less diverse creative landscape”, she continued, adding full backing to the “sensible and proportionate” recommendations. “We believe these provisions will help avoid unfair practices that currently prevent authors making a living from writing. We will be pressing the UK government to implement these clauses without delay.”

Rapper Ice Cube will play Fagin in a new musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist.

The former NWA star will also co-produce the film, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Thomas Kail, who won a Tony award for directing the Broadway hit musical Hamilton, will make his film directing debut.

Oliver Twist is the story of an orphan who falls in with a gang of pickpockets in Victorian London, led by the wicked Fagin. It was adapted into a stage musical in 1960 and turned into a successful film in 1968, winning five Oscars, including best picture and best director for Carol Reed.

The new film, which is being made by Disney, will reportedly be a modern treatment of the story and will include several different musical genres, including hip-hop.

The story has been adapted for the screen many other times, including once by Disney in the 1988 animation Oliver & Company, in which the principal characters are cats and dogs.

Ice Cube rose to fame as part of the Los Angeles rap group NWA, who were profiled in last year’s biopic Straight Outta Compton. He is also lined up to play another of Dickens’s best-known characters, Ebenezer Scrooge, in an adaptation of A Christmas Carol.

JRR Tolkien’s legend of the mortal man Beren and the immortal elf Lúthien – a story that meant so much to the Lord of the Rings author that the characters’ names are engraved on the headstone shared by him and his wife – is to be published next year.

The Middle-earth tale tells of the love between the mortal man and the immortal elf. Lúthien’s father, an Elvish lord, is against their relationship, and so gives Beren an impossible task to fulfil before the two can be married, said HarperCollins, which will publish Beren and Lúthien next May. The pair then go on to rob “the greatest of all evil beings, Melkor, called Morgoth, the Black Enemy, of a Silmaril”, or jewel.

“Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that came down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures. And of these histories most fair still in the ears of the Elves is the tale of Beren and Lúthien,” writes Tolkien in his major work, The Silmarillion. The author’s wife, Edith, has the name Lúthien on her grave, while Tolkien himself, who died two years later in 1973, has Beren’s.

The story was written in 1917 after Tolkien returned from the Somme, where he had served as a signaller. It is an “essential element in the evolution” of The Silmarillion, said the publisher, and the forthcoming book is the author’s son Christopher Tolkien’s attempt “to extract the story of Beren and Lúthien from the comprehensive work in which it was embedded”.

“That story was itself changing as it developed new associations within the larger history,” said the publisher. “To show something of the process whereby this legend of Middle-earth evolved over the years, [Christopher Tolkien] has told the story in his father’s own words by giving, first, its original form, and then passages in prose and verse from later texts that illustrate the narrative as it changed.”

The texts about the legend are “presented together for the first time”, said HarperCollins, and “reveal aspects of the story, both in event and in narrative immediacy, that were afterwards lost”.

Beren and Lúthien, edited by Christopher Tolkien and illustrated by Alan Lee, will be released on the 10th anniversary of the publication of The Children of Húrin. That book was started in 1917-18 by Tolkien, who kept working on versions of it over the next three decades. It was restored by his son and went on to become a bestseller.

Although no further Middle-earth titles have been published since The Children of Húrin, a host of previously unpublished works by The Lord of the Rings author have been released, from his retelling of a Finnish legend, The Story of Kullervo, to his poem The Fall of Arthur and his translation of the 11th-century Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf.

Nine-year-old Jaden was getting ready for school when his mom’s disgruntled ex-boyfriend rang the doorbell. Tyler was “just messing around” at his friend Brandon’s house in rural Michigan; Gustin wanted to show off his dad’s Cadillac. All four boys died on Nov. 23, 2013, a date journalist Gary Younge chose randomly before setting out to investigate as many cases of American children and teens killed by gunfire as he could track down within that 24-hour span. (The average daily number is seven; on this “unremarkable Saturday,” it happened to be 10—not counting suicides, which are notoriously underreported.) His hope in telling each of their stories, he writes, is to put a human face—”a child’s face”—on the steady drip of everyday fatalities that “lack the critical mass and tragic drama to draw the attention of the nation’s media in the way a mass shooting in a cinema or church might.”

In fact, most of the stories here didn’t make it past a single evening-news cycle or mention in the local paper, and the scant details of the young victims’ brief lives are both poignant and banal: They loved Xbox and Pixar movies and family pets; some of them were still sweet and unformed, others already had lengthy criminal records. None of them deserved their fate, of course, though the world tends to stratify them anyway, reflexively finding the tiny angels slaughtered at Sandy Hook just a little more devastating than the ones who were brown or poor or struck tough poses on social media.

In thoughtful, evenhanded chapters stacked with footnotes, Younge works methodically to uncover the unique patterns and hypocrisies of his adopted second home. (Though British, he has an American wife and spent a dozen years reporting from the States.) Another Day doesn’t offer solutions, because it can’t; it just makes it impossible not to care.

Elena Ferrante has written her first children’s book… and it’s terrifying.

The Beach at Night is narrated by a doll named Celina forgotten by her owner on the beach. As night falls, she must endure endless horrors before she makes her way back home. Frights include a vicious beach attendant, his terrifying rake, and almost getting burned and swept out to sea.

In Ferrante’s world, dolls can talk because their owners put words in them that they store in their bodies. The evil beach attendant is determined to take Celina’s words—and her name—out of her mouth by force. The illustrations are creepy as well: even Celina, the protagonist, is wide-eyed and unsettling.

A far cry from her beloved Neapolitan Novels, The Beach At Night contains seriously scary moments. Here are the five most horrifying lines.

1. “The Big Rake appears to agree and sticks his teeth out even farther, as if to open up my chest.”

The Big Rake tries to murder Celina by tearing open her chest. Nope, not at all scary.

2. “The Fire finally did it. He leaned forward and grabbed me by the hem of my blue dress. He went ‘Flusss,’ and now the material is burning. It has a nasty smell. ‘Bad Fire,’ I chastise him, but he repeats ‘Fluss’ and spreads even farther, till he brushes my hand with his boiling breath.”

The doll is slowly burning to death. We’re not terrified, not one bit.

3. “He clicks his tongue and from between his lips a small hook emerges, like a raindrop. The Hook, hanging on a disgusting thread of saliva, drops down until it enters my mouth.”

The beach attendant tries to steal her words with the hook in his mouth. What nightmare world is this?

4. “And I’m about to drop onto the sand when a Dark Animal runs by. He grabs me in his teeth and keeps on running.”

[Shudders.]

5. “Your heart I’ll shred/Until it’s dead.”

Just one lyric from the many dark and terrifying songs that the beach attendant sings.

The drama surrounding Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize in Literature continues as Per Wastberg, a member of the Swedish Academy that bestowed the honor, called the singer “impolite and arrogant.” 

Dylan has maintained radio silence since the award was announced earlier this month. Even his official website took down an earlier mention, “winner of the Nobel prize in literature.” 

“One can say that it is impolite and arrogant. He is who he is,” Wastberg was quoted as saying by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (via the Associated Press). He mentioned the academy still hopes to reach Dylan, but added, “We have agreed not to lift a finger. The ball lies entirely on his half. You can speculate as much as you want, but we don’t.”

This echoes previous comments from the Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary Sara Danius. Speaking to a Swedish state radio station SR, she said, “Right now we are doing nothing. I have called and sent emails to his closest collaborator and received very friendly replies. For now, that is certainly enough.”

Danius believes “he will show up” for the award ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 10. 

A rep for Dylan did not immediately respond to EW’s request for comment. 

With the presidential election only two weeks away, a mysterious novel from an equally mysterious author is making headlines for its political relevance.

Pappy Pariah’s Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff starts as a story of a recluse named Bob Honey, before quickly turning into a spy thriller, and then finally becoming an all too timely commentary on the state of the political landscape.

“Just the fact that Donald Trump, unnamed, becomes a character near the end, it’s almost apocalyptic,” says Bill Maher in a documentary short about the audio novel. “And it’s funny because it really captures the way that a lot of people are feeling right now in this country, a month before the election. That this could be our last chance to get it right and if we don’t, I don’t know what happens.”

Ordinarily, the debut novel of an unknown author wouldn’t be garnering the attention of Maher and authors like Michael Weiss and Art Linson, but the curious involvement of Sean Penn sure does help.

The Oscar-winning actor tells the story of meeting a strange man nearly four decades ago and not hearing again from him until recently receiving the manuscript for Bob Honey. Penn was so drawn to the material that he decided to put his weight behind the project by voicing the audio novel, which he recently did a surreal live-reading of in Los Angeles. 

“When you’re in a world where the sociopath is making more sense than the pundits, you better make some quick changes,” says Penn, who continues to deny assertions that he is in fact the out of sight Pariah.

Watch the video above and listen to Bob Honey for free on Audible.

The debate about the authorship of William Shakespeare’s plays has been raging for years, but Oxford University Press just made an unprecedented move: The publisher will credit Christopher Marlowe as co-author on the Bard’s Henry VI plays.

Marlowe was a contemporary of Shakespeare and the author of plays including Doctor Faustus. A new book, called The New Oxford Shakespeare, contains the complete works of Shakespeare, including Henry VI, Parts I, II, and III. It will be published on Dec. 27.

One of the editors, Gary Taylor, told NPR that the decision to credit Marlowe was partly based on research analyzing the language of the Henry VI plays, but Carol Rutter, a professor of Shakespeare and performance studies at the University of Warwick, told the BBC that she doesn’t think the decision is definitive.

“I don’t think [Oxford University Press] putting their brand mark on an attribution settles the issue for most people,” she says.

This question of authorship was the subject of the 2011 film Anonymous. This year is the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.

The saga of Bob Dylan and his Nobel prize in literature continues.

While Dylan has yet to make a statement about his latest achievement, his website has taken down any acknowledgement of the award. Until recently the words, “winner of the Nobel prize in literature” appeared on the page for his forthcoming book The Lyrics: 1961-2012, which you can see below.

However, as The Guardian reported Friday, the mention has now been taken down.

Dylan has yet to publicly comment on his win, and the Swedish Academy has said that they stopped trying to get in touch with him this week.

The Lyrics was originally due out Nov. 8, but after Dylan won the prize, Simon & Schuster, decided to move up the collection’s release date. A new release date has not been announced.

This article originally appeared on PEOPLE.com

In the movie The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, actress Lily Collins plays Clary, a girl who fights demons of the literal and personal kind — all while sporting dagger-high heels and perfect curls.

Collins, 27, will prove she is just as much a warrior in her upcoming memoir, Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me, in which she says she’ll share details about some “extremely difficult” past relationships.

In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Collins discusses her collection of inspirational essays, which will be published through HarperCollins in March 2017.  Beyond dating, Collins’ book will explore body image, her famous family (dad is musician Phil Collins), and finding her confidence.

“It’s definitely like having my diary published,” says Collins.

Some may raise their brows at Collins declaring she has a less-than-fabulous life (though their brows probably can’t compete with her own famous arches). But despite being raised by a famous dad, the actress has paved her own way in Hollywood starring in movies like Mirror Mirror, Stuck in Love, and The Blind Side.

Next up, is her lead role in Rules Don’t Apply (out Nov. 23), directed by Warren Beatty, who she says helped inspire her to write her memoir by teaching her to  “just let go.”

“I was put into many situations throughout the years in acting, in Warren’s film especially, where you’re in an intense situation and you have to fight your way through it, go through the emotions, and live and breath those scenes,” says Collins, who also had to get through intense emotions and “dark places” when she was writing.

Some of these “dark places” included past relationships. Collins is careful not to identify any of her ex-boyfriends in the book but one celebrity she reportedly dated was Jamie Campbell Bower, her co-star in The Mortal Instruments.

“It was not about attacking, it was about showing how you can be given situations in life and turn them into lessons,” she says about her decision to write about her love life. “It takes knowing what you don’t want to know what you do want.”

Though Collins wouldn’t confirm whether or not she is dating anyone, she made it clear she loves herself as is — unfiltered and unapologetic — and so should any potential mate.

“If you’re into it, great,” she says with a laugh. “If you’re not, nice to meet you.”

Collins first thought of writing a memoir a year and a half ago with the goal to help other young women feel less isolated about problems they face.

“This is my way to open up conversation with young women and say, ‘Hey, we’re all the same,’ ” says Collins.

She adds she was inspired to share her story because of her young followers on social media and after attending WE Day events where teens speak out about various issues.

“They’re so open and honest and inspiring about their stories,”says Collins. “It really encouraged me to be brave like them.”

J.K. Rowling’s fandom of Amy Schumer knows no bounds. After the Harry Potter author stepped into the comedian’s Scottish stand-up show — and raved about it — Rowling picked up and raved about Schumer’s book The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo.

“This is the most I’ve ever laughed out loud at a book,” Rowling tweeted at Schumer on Friday night.

Rowling saw Schumer at the end of August and sung her praises: “Just seen the goddess that is @amyschumer live in Edinburgh. What a night,” she wrote at the time. Schumer replied: “Thank you so much! Did you like my sister’s gryffindor hat?!”

The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo was praised upon its release, from critics and Schumer’s peers alike. Chris Rock, Brie Larson, and Aziz Ansari were among those who picked up Schumer’s work and declared their love for it.

.@amyschumer This is the most I’ve ever laughed out loud at a book. pic.twitter.com/2RCQJdKn5e

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 22, 2016

Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach Trilogy, will release his next novel, Borne, on May 2, 2017. But to whet your appetite a little sooner than that, EW is thrilled to reveal an exclusive excerpt and the captivating cover right here.

According to publisher FSG, Borne’s mysterious plot is as follows: “… [A] young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined, dangerous city of the near future. The city is littered with discarded experiments from the Company—a bio-tech firm now seemingly derelict—and punished by the unpredictable attacks of a giant bear. From one of her scavenging missions, Rachel brings home Borne, who is little more than a green lump—plant or animal?—but exudes a strange charisma. Rachel feels a growing attachment to Borne, a protectiveness that she can ill-afford. It’s exactly the kind of vulnerability that will upend her precarious existence, unnerving her partner, Wick, and upsetting the delicate balance of their unforgiving city—possibly forever. And yet, little as she understands what or who Borne may be, she cannot give him up, even as Borne grows and changes… ‘He was born, but I had borne him.’”

Check out the cover and excerpt below:

Excerpt from Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

What I Found and How I Found It

I found Borne on a sunny gunmetal day when the giant bear Mord came roving near our home. To me, Borne was just salvage at first. I didn’t know what Borne would mean to us. I couldn’t know that he would change everything. Including me.

Borne was not much to look at that first time: dark purple and about the size of my fist, clinging to Mord’s fur like a half-closed stranded sea anemone. I found him only because, beacon-like, he strobed emerald green across the purple every half-minute or so.

Come close, I could smell the brine, rising in a wave, and for a moment there was no ruined city around me, no search for food and water, no roving gangs and escaped, altered creatures of unknown origin or intent. No mutilated, burned bodies dangling from broken streetlamps.

Instead, for a dangerous moment, this thing I’d found was from the tidal pools of my youth, before I’d come to the city. I could smell the pressed-flower twist of the salt and feel the wind, knew the chill of the water rippling over my feet. The long hunt for seashells, the gruff sound of my father’s voice, the upward lilt of my mother’s. The honey warmth of the sand engulfing my feet as I looked toward the horizon and the white sails of ships that told of visitors from beyond our island. If I had ever lived on an island. If that had ever been true.

The sun above the carious yellow of one of Mord’s eyes.

To find Borne, I had tracked Mord all morning, from the moment he had woken in the shadow of the Company building far to the south. The de facto ruler of our city had risen into the sky and come close to where I lay hidden, to slake his thirst by opening his great maw and scraping his muzzle across the polluted riverbed to the north. No one but Mord could drink from that river and live; the Company had made him that way. Then he sprang up into the blue again, a murderer light as a dandelion seed. When he found prey, a ways off to the east, under the scowl of rainless clouds, Mord dove from on high and relieved some screaming pieces of meat of their breath. Reduced them to a red mist, a roiling wave of the foulest breath imaginable. Sometimes the blood made him sneeze.

No one, not even Wick, knew why the Company hadn’t seen the day coming when Mord would transform from their watchdog to their doom—why they hadn’t tried to destroy Mord while they still held that power. Now it was too late, for Mord had not only become behemoth, but, by some magic of engineering extorted from the Company, he had learned to levitate, to fly.

 By the time I had reached Mord’s resting place, he shuddered in earthquake-like belches of uneasy sleep, his nearest haunch rising high above me. Even on his side, Mord’s outline rose three stories. Drowsy from sated bloodlust, his thoughtless sprawl had leveled a building, and pieces of soft-brick rubble had mashed out to the sides, repurposed as Mord’s bed in slumber.

Mord had claws and fangs that could eviscerate, extinguish, quick as thought. His eyes, sometimes open even in dream, were vast, fly-encrusted beacons, spies for a mind that some believed worked on cosmic scales. But to me at his flanks, human flea, all he stood for was good scavenging. Mord destroyed and reimagined our broken city for reasons known only to him, yet he also replenished it in his thoughtless way.

When Mord wandered out seething from the lair he had hollowed out in the wounded side of the Company building, all kinds of treasures became tangled in that ropy, dirt-bathed fur, foul with carrion and chemicals. He gifted us with packets of anonymous meat, surplus from the Company, and sometimes I would find the corpses of unrecognizable animals, their skulls burst from internal pressure, eyes bright and bulging. If we were lucky, some of these treasures would fall from him in a steady rain during his shambling walks or his glides high above, and then we did not have to clamber onto him. On the best yet worst days, we found the beetles you could put in your ear, like the ones made by my partner Wick. As with life generally, you never knew, and so you followed, head down in genuflection, hoping Mord would provide.

Some of these things may have been placed there purposefully, as Wick always warned me. They could be traps. They could be misdirection. But I knew traps. I set traps myself. Wick’s “Be careful” I ignored as he knew I would when I set out each morning. The risk I took, for my own survival, was to bring back what I found to Wick, so he could go through them like an oracle through entrails. Sometimes I thought Mord brought these things to us out of a broken sense of responsibility to us, his playthings, his torture dolls; other times that the Company had put him up to it.

Many a scavenger, surveying that very flank I now contemplated, had misjudged the depth of Mord’s sleep and found themselves lifted up and, unable to hold on, fallen to their deaths … Mord unaware as he glided like a boulder over his hunting preserve, this city that has not yet earned back its name. For these reasons, I did not risk much more than exploratory missions along Mord’s flank. Seether. Theeber. Mord. His names were many and often miraculous to those who uttered them aloud.

So did Mord truly sleep or had he concocted a ruse in the spiraling toxic waste dump of his mind? Nothing that simple this time. Emboldened by Mord’s snores, which manifested as titanic tremors across the atlas of his body, I crept up farther on his haunch, while down below other scavengers used me as their canary. And there, entangled in the brown, coarse seaweed of Mord’s pelt, I stumbled upon Borne.

Borne lay softly humming to itself, the half-closed aperture at the top like a constantly dilating mouth, the spirals of flesh contracting, then expanding. “It” had not yet become “he.”

The closer I approached, the more Borne rose up through Mord’s fur, became more like a hybrid of sea anemone and squid: a sleek vase with rippling colors that strayed from purple toward deep blues and sea greens. Four vertical ridges slid up the sides of its warm and pulsating skin. The texture was smooth as water-worn stone, if a bit rubbery. It smelled of beach reeds on lazy summer afternoons and, beneath the sea salt, of passionflowers. Much later, I realized it would have smelled different to someone else, might even have appeared in a different form.

It didn’t really look like food and it wasn’t a memory beetle, but it wasn’t trash, either, and so I picked it up anyway. I don’t think I could have stopped myself.

Around me, Mord’s body rose and fell with the tremors of his breathing, and I bent at the knees to keep my balance. Snoring and palsying in sleep, acting out a psychotic dreamsong. Those fascinating eyes—so wide and yellow-black, as pitted as meteors or the cracked dome of the observatory to the west—were tight-closed, his massive head extended without care for any danger well to the east.

And there was Borne, defenseless.

The other scavengers, many the friends of an uneasy truce, now advanced up the side of Mord, emboldened, risking the forest of his dirty, his holy fur. I hid my find under my baggy shirt rather than in my satchel so that as they overtook me they could not see it or easily steal it.

Borne beat against my chest like a second heart.

“Borne.”

Names of people, of places, meant so little, and so we had stopped burdening others by seeking them. The map of the old horizon was like being haunted by a grotesque fairy tale, something that when voiced came out not as words but as sounds in the aftermath of an atrocity. Anonymity amongst all the wreckage of the Earth, this is what I sought. And a good pair of boots for when it got cold. And an old tin of soup half hidden in rubble. These things became blissful; how could we let names mean anything next to the power of that?

Yet still, I named him “Borne.”