cread | read & see

In Luke 19, a rich man climbs a Sycamore tree to get a closer look at Jesus who is passing through the city of Jericho. Inspired to acts of justice after Jesus visits him for lunch, the man, Zaccheus, gives away much of his wealth to those he has previously robbed as a tax collector. In John Grisham's latest legal thriller, Sycamore Row , a rich man climbs a Sycamore tree and hangs himself, and there ensues an almighty court battle over how he has divided his estate. I'll say no more about Zaccheus only that Grisham may well have been inspired by this very gospel story.... Sycamore Row is billed as a sequel to A Time To Kill , being set in the same small southern community of Clanton, Ford County, with same lawyer Jake Brigance in the pivotal legal role. Those who have read A Time to Kill , or seen the movie, will at times find it hard to fit the smouldering performances of Matthew McConaughey and Sandra Bullock, with the somewhat subdued and more nuanced characters ...

Publishing success stories have been in the news following the runaway commercial success of EL James' 50 Shades of Grey and more recently, JK Rowling's first adult book, The Casual Vacancy ,  becoming a best-seller before it was released. It's no surprise that it is still possible to make big dollars in publishing and writing, despite the doom and gloom from the industry. And tensions remain between the artistic pursuit of writing and the commercial business of publishing, the fame notoriety or marketing of the author and the quality and value of what they actually write. So who are the world's highest earning authors and, for a different perspective, what do they do with their wealth in terms of charitable giving ? Forbes magazine has a wide-variety of "rich lists" and these writers are named in their World's Top Earning Authors List . Forbes writer Jeff Bercovici says, "To generate our earnings estimates, we talk to authors, agents, pub...