All about the links

So silly me — I thought that pairing Jonathan Yardley and Michael Connelly’s THE CLOSERS seemed rather odd. But what do you know? He loves the books, and especially this one.

Larry Kirshbaum, the longrunning CEO of Time Warner Books, is stepping down from his post to pursue other opportunities — most likely as a literary agent.

It’s particularly fitting in light of yesterday’s discussion, but Lawrence Block, James Lee Burke and Nevada Barr talk to NPR’s Martha Woodroof about their aging, long-running protagonists.

Susanna Yager’s latest crime column finally shows up at the Telegraph website, and she looks at the latest by Denise Mina, Leonardo Padura, Barbara Vine, Jess Walter, David Hewson, John Lawton, Lisa Gardner, Lee Child and Robert Crais.

Robert Hanks  of the Independent looks at what may be the most striking feature of a Penguin paperback in the 70 years they have been produced: their covers.

The Sunday Herald talks to Jamie Byng, the man who engineered one of Scotland’s biggest literary successes: Canongate books, which was in receivership only four short years ago.

Will fiction rule the waves at the beach this summer? Carol Memmott at USA TODAY seems to think so.

Wanna be a literary DJ? Thanks to Penguin’s latest initiative, you can download spoken word samples, mix them however you want and win a prize or two.

And finally, WTF? Incorrect spelling won’t count on future English exams? So it’s perfectly acceptable to wr1t in 1337-sp34k? R0xxor my b0xx0r!!!!!!1