• 'Writers remember everything... especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels.

Public Domain Day was yesterday, but you were probably hungover, so here's how to download the tens of thousands of books that became legal to download for free in 2019.

In 1959, Graham Greene and his brother, the journalist Hugh Greene, published an anthology of spy literature titled The Spy's Bedside Book, an amalgam of fiction, reporting, and memoir that helped define the genre for decades to come.

What happens to a song lyric when it lands on the page? It becomes oddly silent but also not silent. Ghosts of its usual rhythms lie at the beginnings and ends of its lines. The blank space around it seems weirdly disconcerting, like white noise.

This year, we were obliged to say goodbye to far too many literary luminaries, as well as a few pretty complicated figures. From the man who made the Strand into 18 miles of books to the woman who made speculative fiction what it is today to Philip Roth, who needs no descriptor.

'Writers remember everything...especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability...