MM Kaye, author of The Far Pavilions, has passed away. She also used her experience in Africa and India to write detective stories.

What most people don’t realize about Orwell’s 1932 treasure is that it’s actually a bundled collection of his bills. Orwell buried them so that he could tell his creditors that he never received them. Of course, there were more solipsistic concens than mere finances. Orwell’s relationship with his Gordon Setter was on the skids. So he needed to demonstrate to his pet, an aspect of Orwell’s life often overlooked by his biographers, that he was legit.

Andrew Sean Greer notes that Updike was right about his influences. “I don’t know how he did it,” said Greer, “but I was reading The Runaway Jury over and over while writing this book. I’m not really a big Grisham fan. But I was trying to read anything that would give me an edge. I needed to land a deal.”

About 50 of Eudora Welty’s photographs are on display at the Mississippi Musem of Art. Photography and writing were just two of Welty’s pursuits. She also played the ukelele and cooked a mean roundhouse, if, of course, she decided that her visitors were “nice enough.”

The Rocky Balboa statue is now up for auction. “Nobody really cares about Stallone anymore,” said a spokesman for sculptor A. Thomas Schomberg, “and, frankly, Thomas is embarassed. He was caught up in the 1970s frenzy and now it’s damage control time. This is the first step.” Adding insult to injury, the statute has been put onto eBay.