News Briefs

OverDrive's new Media Console for Windows Mobile allows patrons with cards from a subscriber library and whose phones have the Windows Mobile operating system to download OverDrive's entire catalog of 300,000 audiobook, music, and video titles wirelessly. Previously, a desktop Mac or PC was a necessary intermediary for the transfer of this content. Full story at www.libraryjournal.com.

Newly available on CD and as a digital download from Penguin Audio: CSI creator Anthony E. Zuiker's Level 26: Dark Origins, read by John Glover and released simultaneously with the Dutton print and ebook editions. The book is being touted as "the world's first Digi-Novel™," i.e., a novel to which one can listen while also watching complementary motion-picture footage at www.level26.com.

Now available on CD and as a digital download from Simon & Schuster Audio: The Time of My Life, a memoir by the late actor Patrick Swayze and his wife of over 30 years, Lisa Niemi. Swayze and Niemi themselves read the abridged audio, released simultaneously with the Atria: S. & S. print and ebook editions. They completed the recording shortly before his death on September 14, 2009, from stage IV pancreatic cancer. More info at audio.simonandschuster.com.

Educational/professional publisher Haights Cross Communications (HCC) announced it will be filing for Chapter 11 to enable financial restructuring that would lower its degree of indebtedness and give it more time to repay its lenders. The operations of its subsidiary, Recorded Books, will be unaffected by the restructuring. Full story at www.publishersweekly.com.

Available October 27 on CD and as a digital download from Books on Tape: Makers, New York Times best-selling YA novelist Cory Doctorow's first adult title (described by the publisher as "a tale of techno-geek rebellion"), read by Bernadette Dunne (see Behind the Mike, LJ 5/15/09). Tor Books will release the simultaneous print edition, and, in a move aligned with Doctorow's well-publicized support of the creative commons license, will continue through January 2010 to serialize the novel for free at Tor.com, with new installments appearing every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.