Books are an easy gift choice, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be fresh.

Some 250 copy editors, marketing assistants and other employees at HarperCollins Publishers went on strike Thursday, with the two sides differing over wages and benefits, diversity policy and union protection.

“Maus” cartoonist Art Spiegelman will receive an honorary National Book Award this fall, a medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

The latest adventure for “Game of Thrones” actress Gwendoline Christie is the audiobook for one of publishing’s most imaginative storytellers, Brian Selznick.

Michael Cunningham, Edwidge Danticat and Carmen Maria Machado are among the prize-winning authors who are contributing stories to a new collection.

For those who find their dreams in books, there’s a group of readers who are hungrily consuming a particular style of narrative to escape from the past year’s reality: “cozy” mysteries. It is escapist perfection.”In television form, the cozy can be seen in popular shows such as “Murder, She Wrote,” “Midsomer Murders” and “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.” Cozies claim roots in early 20th-century British mysteries by such writers as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. “So I’d pick up a cozy mystery to take my mind off everything.”She estimates that she reads 120 books a year. Valerie Burns writes gentle murder mysteries under the pen name of V.M. A murder mystery with no violence.

This image released by the Sundance Institute shows a scene from the Edgar Wright film "The Sparks Brothers," an official selection of the Premieres section at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Ever heard of the band Sparks? “At some point when you’re a fan of a band like Sparks you become a sort of evangelist for them,” Wright said. “We’d always been hesitant about the idea of having a documentary for Sparks,” said Russell Mael. Wright endeavored to make not just a documentary about Sparks, but to make it feel like a Sparks project as well.

NEW YORK – Neil Gaiman, Anita Hill and Ann Patchett will be among the contributors to Book the Vote, an online initiative to provide information on the electoral system, voting registration and civic topics. Book the Vote is a collaboration among Penguin Random House, PEN America, the non-profit organization When We All Vote and the literary retailer Out of Print, which is owned by Penguin Random House. One feature is called “How America Works” and covers four topics: the right to vote, voting for the president, the Supreme Court and the electoral college. “Truth, facts, press freedom, and the future of open discourse are all on the ballot this November,” PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel said in a statement. Noseel and Penguin Random House U.S. CEO Madeline McIntosh said they were pleased to be working together to provide credible and authoritative information about the U.S. election and voting rights.