Ancient Manuscript Reveals Jane Austen Collaborated with Anonymous Female Writers' Circle

Archivists restoring a hidden chamber beneath Prague's Strahov Library have uncovered a cache of letters exchanged between Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez and Czechoslovak writers during the 1970s, revealing previously unknown connections between Latin American magical realism and Eastern European literary resistance.

A book collector in Edinburgh has discovered a first edition of Frankenstein containing extensive margin notes in Mary Shelley's own hand, offering unprecedented insight into the creative mind behind literature's most famous monster.

A trove of 14 previously unknown short stories by Agatha Christie has been found hidden in a secret compartment of an antique writing desk at Greenway Estate. Literary experts believe the manuscripts date from 1942-1945 and feature both Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.

On February 10, 1837, Alexander Pushkin died from a gunshot wound sustained in a duel over his wife's honor. He was 37 years old, roughly the same age you were when you finally understood that your ex wasn't 'complicated' – they were just terrible. And here's the thing: this Russian aristocrat who's been dead for 189 years probably understood your relationship better than your therapist does. Pushkin didn't just write poetry. He invented the template for every brooding love interest, every 'he's broken but I can fix him' fantasy, and every dramatic rejection that made you cry into your ice cream at 2 AM.

On February 5, 1914, in a stuffy St. Louis mansion, a baby was born who would grow up to accidentally kill his wife during a drunken game of William Tell, become the godfather of counterculture, and write some of the most banned, reviled, and ultimately celebrated books of the twentieth century. Happy birthday, Bill. William Seward Burroughs II came from money—his grandfather invented the adding machine that made the family fortune—but he spent most of his life running from respectability like it was a plague of giant centipedes (which, incidentally, feature prominently in his nightmares and his fiction).

Here's a confession that might get me banned from every book club in existence: the first time I tried to read 'The Sea, the Sea,' I threw it across the room. Not because it was bad—God, no—but because Iris Murdoch had the audacity to make me feel like the intellectual equivalent of a golden retriever staring at a calculus equation. Twenty-seven years after her death, this Irish-born philosopher-novelist continues to haunt our literary consciousness.