Here's all you need to make sure your day by the sea is stylish and problem free... just make sure to bring them home with you

Are you a fondler? Or do you keep your hands to yourself in a bookshop? The question is seen as a vital one for publishers keen to preserve the traditional paper book. Why? Because a tactile, finger-friendly cover can often mean the difference between a strong seller and one that bombs at the tills, or so the thinking goes.

The boss of Rupert Murdoch's British book publishing arm, HarperCollins, dramatically departed yesterday as parent company News Corporation moved much of the UK responsibilities to its head office in New York.

As it gets taken over, Penguin is quitting the UK for the US, while talismanic publisher Gail Rebuck takes a back seat. But can the combine keep its top authors?

Book publisher Penguin Random House today completed its merger in a move that will see Penguin’s headquarters move from London to New York and Random House’s UK boss, Dame Gail Rebuck, step back from the day-to-day running of the company.

Intimate portrait of a family and its monstrous matriarch

Various directors DVD/Blu-ray (528mins)

Of such things are Nigel Farage's nightmares made ...

It's all over the place – but there is much to savour in this irresistible adaptation

Fans of Salley Vickers's appealing mix of psychological acuity and religious appreciation will have few complaints here, because this novel traces territory familiar to previous works such as Miss Garnet's Angel or Mr Golightly's Holiday.

Amateur cook’s blog about feeding her family on £10 a week attracted huge online audience

Financial Times owner Pearson today admitted underlying sales fell 1% to  £1.2 billion in the first quarter, against a 3% rise a year ago, in a sign of the tough task facing new chief executive John Fallon.

Possibly overshadowed by Kevin Powers's equally excellent The Yellow Birds, which also came out last year, this novel by Texan-born Greg Baxter, who has lived in Dublin and now resides in Berlin, also has at its centre a US veteran of the Iraq war who is coming to terms with his experiences as he settles himself uneasily in an unnamed European city.

Is this how to sell Robinson Crusoe and Bleak House to a new generation? To package them like pulp fiction (complete with cheap-looking yellow-sprayed colour edges), give them a raunchy cover and précis the contents with a trashy tagline? Oldcastle Books thinks so. Its “Pulp! The Classics” imprint has already brought out retro versions of Pride and Prejudice (“Lock Up Your Daughters – Darcy’s In Town!”), Robinson Crusoe (“Solitude Was Driving Him Nuts!”) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (“Murder… Mystery… Walkies!”) with cover art by David Mann, and inevitably it has turned its sights on The Great Gatsby, to coincide with the movie’s release on 15 May.