Dear Burning Questions,
When will the next volume of Thomas Cahill's Hinges of History series be released, and what is the "hinge" this time?

Joanie Gutermuth
Troy, Ohio

The next book in Cahill's series will be out in the fall of 2006. Though it doesn't have a title yet, its "hinge" will be Medieval Europe and the way in which its developments in science, art and feminism shaped the modern world.

Each book in Cahill's Hinges of History® series examines a civilization that has made important contributions to the Western world. So far, four of the planned seven books in the series have been released: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, Desire of the Everlasting Hills, The Gifts of the Jews and How the Irish Saved Civilization.

FLASHBACK

Dear Burning Questions,
Many, many years ago, I attended high school with Nancy Wright, who later wrote as Nancy Thayer. I was wondering if she is still writing. She was bright and talented as a high school student and I hope she has many years of writing ahead of her. Hi, Nancy if you see this!

Sharon Shea Burnett
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

We hope that Thayer's reading BQ—she would probably be flattered that a classmate is asking about her! Thayer's next book, Hot Flash Holidays, will be available in bookstores in November. The members of the Hot Flash Club brave holiday stress, family quarrels and romantic conflict in this third installment in the series. A resident of Nantucket for more than 20 years, Thayer has written 13 novels in addition to the Hot Flash series.

CLOAKED IN SECRECY

Dear Burning Questions,
Do you know what's next for Patricia O'Brien, who wrote the Civil War novel The Glory Cloak?

Abigail Carey
Sharon, Pennsylvania

Another book is indeed expected from Patricia O'Brien—you'll have to be patient, however, as it isn't due out until December 2006. Details are foggy and it doesn't have a title yet, but we do know that like The Glory Cloak, O'Brien's upcoming book will be a historical novel, this time focusing on writer and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe.

MOVIE PREVIEWS

We love it when our favorite books are turned into movies, if only so we can sit in the theater and mutter about how "the book was so much better." Here's a peek at three highly anticipated books-into-movies premiering this month:

Everything is Illuminated
The film version of Jonathan Safran Foer's acclaimed debut novel features Elijah Wood in his first starring role since The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Wood plays a young Jewish-American man (also named Jonathan Safran Foer) who sets out with a yellowing photograph on a quest to find the Ukranian woman who might have saved his grandfather from the Nazis during WWII.

Capote
Based on Capote: A Biography by Gerald Clarke, Capote the film stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote, who was not only a brilliant writer but a 20th-century media star. The film focuses on the creation of In Cold Blood, Capote's groundbreaking nonfiction account of the 1959 slaying of a Kansas family.

The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
Terry Ryan's 2001 book told the amazing true story of her mother, Evelyn Ryan, who kept her frazzled family of 12 afloat by winning jingle-writing contests. In the big screen version, Julianne Moore stars as the unlikely heroine, with Woody Harrelson playing her alcoholic husband.

Audiobook contest

Judging from the reaction to our Listen While You Knit contest, BookPage readers stay busy while they listen to audiobooks! Sponsored by Random House Audio Publishing, the contest in our June issue was our most popular ever, drawing more than 650 entries. Readers were asked to tell us what they like to do while listening to audiobooks and what their favorites audiobooks are (the top three, in order: the Harry Potter series, the Bible and To Kill A Mockingbird).

Congratulations to Anita Fetzer of Dayton, Ohio, who tells us her favorite audiobook is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Appropriately enough, she likes to knit while listening to audiobooks. Anita received a Listen While You Knit Kit containing five Random House audiobooks, two Learn to Knit Kits and two books from Lion Brand Yarn.

ED McBAIN'S FINAL CHAPTER

BookPage joins other book lovers in bidding a sad farewell to Ed McBain, who died in July of throat cancer. McBain had written for the theater, the silver screen (Hitchcock's The Birds), television, children and adults, but it was his crime fiction that made him a household name.

Born Salvatore Lombino in 1926, he changed his name to Evan Hunter and worked as a teacher before writing his first novel, The Blackboard Jungle, in 1954. This portrayal of an inner-city high school caused a sensation and was adapted into a film starring Sidney Poitier. Two years later, writing under the pen name Ed McBain, he began his 87th Precinct series, which is credited with launching the police procedural genre. Set in a mythical city much like McBain's native New York, the 87th Precinct series grew to more than 50 titles as it tracked the lives and cases of the detectives of its eponymous police squad. McBain's final 87th Precinct mystery, Fiddlers, is reviewed in this month's Whodunit? column.

In a column he wrote for BookPage three years ago, McBain noted that "a printed book is never complete until a reader brings his own sensibility to it." Like readers the world over, we will miss having the opportunity to mingle in McBain's gritty fictional world.