LITERARY HONOR

LITERARY HONOR

Tony winners to read at Ted Kennedy tribute in NY

NEW YORK — Tony Award winners Fritz Weaver and Tammy Grimes will be among those reading at a tribute to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Selections from Robert Frost, Walt Whitman and other poets whom Kennedy admired will be featured at the event at Saint Peter’s Church in midtown Manhattan on Monday, which would have been Kennedy’s 78th birthday.

Kennedy, a Democrat from Massachusetts, died of brain cancer last summer.

The event is free and is sponsored by the nonprofit organization Toward International Peace through the Arts.

COMING TO BOOKSHELVES

Bill O’Reilly is Lincoln’s latest biographer

NEW YORK — Meet the latest Abraham Lincoln biographer: Bill O’Reilly. The Fox News host and best-selling author is working on “Killing Lincoln,” a history book that will take readers “into Ford’s Theater and into the mind of Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, and on the manhunt to find and bring to justice the killer of one our greatest presidents,” according to a statement issued by Henry Holt and Company.

“Killing Lincoln” is scheduled to come out in the fall of 2011 and will be co-written by Martin Dugard, whose previous works include “The Training Ground,” an account of the Mexican War.

In a recent interview, O’Reilly said he got the idea after learning about Lafayette C. Baker, a 19th-century detective and spy who led the investigation into Lincoln’s murder and helped track down Booth.

Many of O’Reilly’s books, including “Culture Warrior” and “A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity,” were published by the Random House Inc. imprint Broadway Books. But after Stephen Rubin left Broadway to run Holt, a division of Macmillan, O’Reilly decided to work with Holt.

Journalist’s ’inside account’ of Woods coming in June

NEW YORK — A longtime journalist’s “inside account” of Tiger Woods is being published in June.

Atria Books announced that Robert Lusetich’s “Unplayable: An Inside Account of Tiger’s Most Tumultuous Season” will tell “how golf’s greatest and most famous player built a public persona at odds with his private life.”

Lusetich is a senior columnist for FoxSports.com who reported on Woods throughout 2009. His book is scheduled to come one month after another biography about the golfer. That book is being written by People magazine’s Steve Helling. It’s called simply “Tiger Woods” and promises a “never-before-seen portrait.”

Legal Briefs

NY judge expresses doubts about Google books deal

NEW YORK — A hearing to decide the fairness of a deal that would legally allow Google to create the world’s largest digital library has ended — but not before a judge expressed skepticism.

Judge Denny Chin raised questions toward the end of a five-hour hearing in federal court Thursday in Manhattan indicating he had doubts about the $125 million settlement of two lawsuits.

The judge questioned why the settlement gave Google publishing rights well into the future rather than merely rectifying harm that led authors and publishers to sue it five years ago.

He said settlements typically do not give companies a release from legal claims in the future. Lawyers for Google and authors and publishers who reached the deal defended it as fair.

The judge said he’ll rule later.

Vindicator staff/wire reports