So you’re Kate Feiffer, and you think you’re set to have two new children’s books released, with all the attendant tours and book signings . . . when along comes another project with a yesterday-deadline attached to it, some super-sized hoopla stemming from its topicality, and the next thing you know USA Today’s Life section features it on the front page, Stephen Colbert is flashing a copy of your book on the air, and your Amazon.com sales perform a turn-around jump shot.

A devoted, multigenerational crowd gathered at the Judy Blume book signing at Bunch of Grapes Bookstore last Saturday afternoon, the first jointly held book signing between the store and Riley’s Reads.

Ms. Blume was signing any and all of her 28 releases, including the newest, Friend or Fiend? With the Pain and the Great One.

The Vineyard may yet be the scene of another big fish film under the eye of Steven Spielberg: the Jaws director’s studio, DreamWorks, has just bought the film rights for a soon to be released book about the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby.

The book, The Big One: An Island, an Obsession and the Furious Pursuit of a Great Fish, by David Kinney, published by Atlantic Monthly, will be released on April 8.

When authors die, some of their work lives after them. In or out of print, it’s bound and sitting on shelves. But another chunk of inventory survives the author, often to the chagrin of his or her heirs: unpublished or unfinished manuscripts. What to do with this material?

Writer, director and theatre maestro Jon Lipsky, of West Tisbury, was confronted with just such a dilemma when his father, author Eleazar Lipsky (1911-1993), left behind a stack of research books and a synopsis for a riveting historical saga.

As a prize-winning sociologist and Harvard professor of education, Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot possesses the curriculum vitae of one of the most successful women alive — in that achievement-oriented way that we worship in the ambitious classes of America. And yet she radiates the serenity and contemplative qualities of a genuine holy woman.

IN MY LIFE. By Thomas Dresser. Red Lead Press. Spring 2009. $17, softcover.

Young love in the sixties. These five words summarize In My Life, the brief, quirky and charming novel by local author Thomas Dresser. Set against the backdrop of the turmoil of the bygone decade, In My Life tells the story of Rusty and Jodie, two teenagers in central Massachusetts whose blossoming love is colored by the sexual revolution, rock and roll, and the draft board.

Comic Book Talk

Eisner Award winning New Yorker cartoonist Paul Karasik will talk about and sign his book, You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation: The Comics of Fletcher Hanks, Volume II, at the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven at 7 p.m. Of the previous volume edited by Mr. Karasik, the notorious Robert Crumb said “I must have this book for my library.” For details, call 508-693-2291.

Island Historian

Reveals New Book

David McCullough, Pulitzer-prizewinning author of The Path Between the Seas, Truman, John Adams and 1776, is working on a new book, set for release in 2010. The as-yet-untitiled tome chronicles the remarkable history of innovation and achievement in the fields literature, medicine, design and the arts by Americans living in Paris.

Feminist Lecture

New York University Professor Dr. Carol Gilligan will discuss her new book, The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance and Democracy’s Future, on Wednesday, August 26 at 5:30 p.m. at the Chilmark Public Library.

John Sundman is a Tisbury-based science fiction writer. He has recently self-published his third book, The Pains, a dark, satirical vision of 1984 America that blends George Orwell’s classic dystopia with a surreal version of the real-life Reagan-era. According to the author, it is a “story of faith in a world that appears to be falling apart. It tells the story of Norman Lux, a 24-year-old novitiate in a religious order, who becomes afflicted with something akin to stigmata.”