Genre: Fiction

Tommy Lee Jones is planning to adapt, produce, direct, and star in a film version of Ernest Hemingway's posthumous novel Island in the Stream (Scribner, 1970), Reuters reports. Morgan Freeman and John Goodman are reportedly in discussions to be involved in the project.

Everyone knows there's no sure-fire way of selling a debut novel, but a couple recent deals prove that it helps if the author is a famous actor's brother or a former supermodel.

Lexus Magazine, a quarterly for owners of the luxury cars, recently launched the first installment of its 2008 Lexus Original Fiction Series, which will feature the work of nine notable authors, including Arthur Phillips, Richard McCann, and Curtis Sittenfeld. The series amounts to a collaborative novella titled In the Belly of the Beast. (The main characters of the story lovingly refer to—and constantly comment on—their Lexus IS F as "Beast” as they travel across country.)