Harry Potter author JK Rowling earned more than anyone else on any of Forbes' lists, with a total of $300m (£150m).

The home I grew up in... was a beautiful, very middle-class American colonial house. It was set over six acres of land and there was an apple orchard out the back. My dad got me selling the apples to our neighbours at an early age.

Eckhart Tolle's guides to living 'In The Now' and dealing with your 'pain-body' are a publishing phenomenon, beloved of Paris Hilton, Annie Lennox and a host of other celebrity names. But who is he? Does he really say anything new? And what the hell is a pain-body anyway? Ether Walker investigates

Since James Bradley's Gothic thriller The Resurrectionist was first published a year ago it has, to be kind, enjoyed modest sales. The tale of Edinburgh body-snatchers in the murderous era of Burke and Hare has sold fewer than 300 copies.

Her speciality is being rude – very rude – about Hollywood celebrities. David Usborne looks at the career of Chelsea Handler, the comedienne and chat-show host who has taken America by storm

She is the embodiment of the American Dream, a Mississippi girl born into poverty who became the queen of US television. But now viewers are deserting her. By Guy Adams

His sensational memoir sold more than five million copies. But when he was forced to admit fabricating some of the details, his life fell apart. Now he's back, with a work of fiction – and it's already a bestseller. Guy Adams reports

The Commons' passage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill without the Tories' proposed "common-sense" amendments insisting on a "father or male role model" has sparked yet another debate about children's need for father-figures.

What is not immediately obvious as you stroll into the open-plan, 17th-floor offices of Tommy Hilfiger, brightly lit by windows that stare down New York's Hudson River, is whether you are entering the home of a fashion house or a music label. Sure there are racks of pick'n'mix clothes rolled across the aisles and a fashion shot or two on the desks, but the walls are adorned by guitars, photographs of rock and rap stars, and album covers. In one frame sits the Tommy Hilfiger sweater worn by Michael Jackson in a Vogue feature. In another, the designer himself posing with Mick Jagger. In a third, a broody black-and-white still of Tommy and his three brothers – Andy, Bobby and Billy (who died of a brain tumour in 2001) – looking every inch the rock band.

The South Beach sunshine is splitting the palm trees in the fantastically froufrou garden overlooking the pool at the Delano Hotel. In the midst of this Miami cliché sits Jamie Oliver, the epitome of the Brit abroad, mulling over the question of how to crack America. But he's not being given much of a chance – every few minutes a passer-by butts into our conversation ("I'm your biggest fan!") and pulls out a camera. On each occasion he is polite, patient and poses with a trademark grin. "I love that," he says, as we're left alone. "They always say 'Sorry to interrupt', then they start talking for 10 minutes. Being known in America, it's horrible. Imagine being really famous here..."

Simon Cowell turned his "Mr Nasty" image on its head and paid off the mortgage of a couple whose three-year-old daughter has cancer.

James Frey, the American writer who was first embraced and then publicly lambasted by Oprah Winfrey for his not-so-truthful drugs and prison memoir, A Million Little Pieces, is embarking on a literary genre where he would probably have been most comfortable from the start – novelistic fiction.

The Baftas are coming, but a bit of glitz and glamour can't disguise the fact that British cinema has little to celebrate

Oprah Winfrey is getting her own television network. OWN – Oprah Winfrey Network – will debut next year in nearly 70 million homes with cable and satellite, as part of a deal with Discovery Communications. It will replace the Discovery Health network.