James Bond is back. Again. According to a story in The Wall Street Journal, America's favorite British secret agent will return in Devil May Care his 23rd new novel since creator Ian Fleming died 44 years ago.

So what's different about this one? It may actually sell. Penned by Sebastian Faulks, it has an initial print run of 250,000 in the U.S. and 100,000 in the U.K. (The last Bond novel, The Man With The Red Tattoo only sold 13,000 stateside, but what were they expecting with that title?) Ironically, the current economic woes might help sales. "The downturn in the economy has prompted a demand for escapist fare," Bob Wietrak, vice president of merchandising at Barnes & Noble, told the WSJ.

Whereas previous Bond novels modernized the character, Devil returns to traditional themes of the Cold War, heroin and characters with ridiculous names — in this case, Poppy.

Excerpts from the novel will run in the July issue of Vanity Fair.

After the jump, we've embedded the chase scene from the beginning of Casino Royale, which although almost completely unrelated to this post, is still worth 9 minutes of your day.

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J.K. Rowling will have something to occupy her time while she (and the rest of the publishing world) wait for the verdict in the Copyright case she and Warner Bros. brought against ADR Books. Namely, the author will be the subject of an ABC News profile to air in November. The report includes "several interviews, the book tour for the final Harry Potter installment, and a tour of locations that inspired her characters," according to the Hollywood Reporter.

ABC's working with U.K. producer RDF Media, the company responsible for last year's kerfuffle involving footage of an interview with the Queen which was edited to show her storming out when in fact she was entering the Q&A session.

"Four Questions For...": Because five's a commitment, but three seemed sparse

Sometime subject and full-time friend of FBNY Melissa Walker got herself into a neat piece in this weekend's installment of T — no mean feat since her latest novel Violet By Design's been on shelves for six weeks, inspiring some to argue her promotional moment has passed. She does a nice job on her personal blog in a section she dubs "Marketing Monday" describing how the weekend's piece came about, so in our new "Four Questions For..." feature, we got her to tell us the stuff the NYT piece left us wanting to know more about.

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Last week, we posted about Steve Friess' claims that Wall Street Journal Las Vegas reporter Christina Binkley's book Winner Take All was filled with errors.

Galleycat's Ron Hogan, who has been all over the story, interviewed Binkley, who contacted FishbowlNY after reading our coverage and wanted to respond to Friess' claims. The salient points of his post are below:

"I don't want to blow this up into a brouhaha," she said over the phone. "It's not a big book. But it's my book, and he's putting out information about who I talked to and didn't talk to for it that's completely wrong." In the USA Today review, Friess claims that Binkley got no face-time with Terry Lanni, the CEO of the MGM Mirage. "Lanni spoke to me many times," she counters, including conversations that took place in his office," [and] I'm still trying to get Friess to correct that." Given how often she directly quotes Lanni, she explained, the false allegation about the nature of their interviews undermines the book's credibility in the public eye.

As for the other errors, "you can argue trivia about Vegas into the night," she says, and the "errors" he picks apart are tangential at best to the main narrative drive of her book. "Whether it took ten seconds of twenty-seven seconds for the Sands to implode, for example — and I don't think YouTube is the place to go for the definitive answer on that." He did find one typo; impressionist Danny Gans's name is misspelled once as Ganz, "Of course I regret that, and I want to get it fixed in the next printing," she says, but, she adds, Friess makes it sound as if she got the name wrong throughout the book. "The nasty, blog-like style of these reviews bothers me," she concludes. "The Drudge-like mudslinging is just ugly."

Author, professional comic nerd and Yiddish Policemen's Union media darling Michael Chabon may be a west coast resident, but he also wrote the original script to the New York-set film Spider-Man 2.

Now you can read Chabon's Spider-Man script [PDF], courtesy of book publishers McSweeney's. Dave Eggers and company are putting out Chabon's new book, Maps & Legends — and are making Chabon's script publicly available as a publicity stunt.

As for the book itself:

Michael Chabon's sparkling first book of nonfiction is a love song in sixteen parts — a series of linked essays in praise of reading and writing, with subjects running from ghost stories to comic books, Sherlock Holmes to Cormac McCarthy. Throughout, Chabon energetically argues for a return to the thrilling, chilling origins of storytelling, rejecting the false walls around "serious" literature in favor of an wide-ranging affection.

Wall Street Journal columnist Christina Binkley's new book, Winner Takes All, details the recent explosive development of Sin City and the "race to own Las Vegas." The author, who's spent 10 years as the WSJ's lead reporter covering the city should be the perfect person to pen the tome, correct?

Not according to writer and Vegas resident Steve Friess. In a Las Vegas Weekly , he details am astonishing number of factual errors that found their way into the book.

Our favorite mistake: Her claim that the Dunes took 27 seconds to implode when it actually took less than 10. (If only because Friess provides a link to the incredible YouTube clip.)

Additional highlights, courtesy of Friess, after the jump.

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Monday was the last day of business for the Barnes & Noble at Sixth Avenue and 21st Street. The store had become a Chelsea institution over the past 14 years — and did more magazine sales to the nearby fashion and new media industries than Atlantic News and Borders combined.

One of our favorite New York Times reporters, David Dunlap, just penned an excellent Barnes & Noble eulogy for the paper:

Where plate glass windows beckoned browsers as recently as last weekend, there now hang rolls of kraft paper, intended to block the view of passers-by. But this shield is not seamless, and one can glimpse slices of the interior. The décor is standard B&N issue, though it is ennobled here by colossal columns from the days in the early 20th century when this was the Adams Dry Goods emporium. Familiar as the store looks, it now seems poignantly remote, a relic from another age.

The Chelsea location is the second recent closing in the chain — Barnes & Noble's Astor Place location recently shut down as well.

So this model Ali Michael, who appeared on the cover of Teen Vogue, gained five pounds and was shunned at Paris Fashion Week. Like "sent home to Texas" shunned. The media is up in arms — although anyone who covers fashion and is surprised by this is either lying or not paying attention.

While this isn't a new story — silly models are always trying to eat — it's eerily similar to the plot of Melissa Walker's new book, Violet By Design. The second in a three-part series, VBD follows the teenager Violet as she tries to become a model. Along the way, she gains weight, battles eating disorders and deals with other aspects of the glamorous life. We're not a teenage girl, but we enjoyed it. At the very least, it's better than looking at yet another set of runway pics.

(Full disclosure: Melissa's written and taught for mediabistro.com many times before. But she's great, so we don't care.)

Buddy Holly may have died 50 years ago, but the women he was close to are in a legal battle royale. On one side, Buddy Holly's widow Maria Elena Holly. On the other side, Peggy Sue Gerron — aka Peggy Sue.

Gerron's memoir, Whatever Happened to Peggy Sue?, is scheduled for release next week. In the book, Gerron claims that Buddy Holly promised to leave his wife for her and that she was physically abused by her husband, Crickets drummer Jerry Allison.

Because of that and other passages in the book, lawyers have reported sent Gerron and co-author Glenda Cameron cease and desist orders on Holly's behalf. Holly is also threatening legal action. According to Mark Faulk of the small Texas press TogiEntertainment:

It's obvious that they do not want the work released. My feeling is that Maria Elena fears the truth will come out about Buddy Holly. If there is a lawsuit, our belief is that it will be totally frivolous."

The cease and disist order demands that Gerron cease promotion and sale of the book and cancel all book orders, as well as give refunds on deposits for the book and account for revenues from any sales.

The next time we see Colson Whitehead, we're buying him a beer. The Brooklyn-based writer just wrote the best takedown of the McSweeney's generation we've ever seen:

It's changed a lot. As you may have heard, all the writers are in Brooklyn these days. It's the place to be. You're simply not a writer if you don't live here. Google "brooklyn writer" and you'll get, Did you mean: the future of literature as we know it? People are coming in from all over. In fact, the physical act of moving your possessions from Manhattan to Brooklyn is now the equivalent of a two-year M.F.A. program. When you get to the other side, they hand you three Moleskine notebooks and a copy of "Blogging for Dummies." You're good to go.

Speaking on behalf of Sheepshead Bay, Midwood, Flatbush, Canarsie, Starrett City and all the other 'hoods outside the hipster Brooklyn nexus, all we can say is amen.