SUZANNE COLLINS

The longtime head of the children’s publishing giant Scholastic Inc. who presided over such bestsellers as J.

They refused to give their names to an Associated Press photographer who met them this week in an undisclosed location in Mizoram state. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)MIZORAM – A group of police officers who defied the Myanmar army's orders to shoot opponents of the coup recounted their experience after they escaped to India. Mizoram state in India’s northeast shares a border with Bangladesh and Myanmar. Meanwhile, K. Vanlalvena, a lawmaker from Mizoram state, urged the Indian government not to deport refugees from Myanmar until the return of normalcy there. India shares a 1,643-kilometer (1,020-mile) border with Myanmar, and is home to thousands of refugees from Myanmar in different states.

Atwood and Grisham are among several authors participating in a novel about the pandemic. The Authors Guild Foundation announced Thursday that it had reached a deal with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books & Media to publish Fourteen Days: An Unauthorized Gathering." (AP Photo)NEW YORK – One of the first novels about the pandemic will be a collaborative effort, with Margaret Atwood, John Grisham and Celeste Ng among the writers. Novelist and Authors Guild President Douglas Preston came up with the idea as a way to raise money for the foundation. Atwood is editing “Fourteen Days” and helped recruit a wide range of contributors, including Dave Eggers, Ishmael Reed, Monique Truong, Hampton Sides, Mary Pope Osborne and Emma Donoghue.

FILE - In this Oct. 10, 2016 file photo, author and filmmaker Sherman Alexie appears at a celebration of Indigenous Peoples' Day at Seattle's City Hall. Alexie is included in a list of authors who wrote books that were among the 100 most subjected to censorship efforts over the past decade, as compiled by the American Library Association. All wrote books that were among the 100 most subjected to censorship efforts over the past decade, as compiled by the American Library Association. The association does not formally count the number of times books are actually removed from a library shelf or from a school reading list. “There are actually two lines of objections to the Anne Frank diary,” Caldwell-Stone says.

NEW YORK A decade after the Hunger Games series had apparently ended, readers were clearly ready for more. Suzanne Collins' The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes sold more 500,000 copies last week, even as many of the country's bookstores were closed or offering limited service because of the coronavirus pandemic. NPD BookScan, which tracks around 85 percent of the print market, reported Wednesday that Songbirds and Snakes" topped last week's list with 270,000 copies sold. Collins' book, a prequel to her previous Hunger Games novels, came 10 years after the author seemingly wrapped up the Dystopian series with Mockingjay." Collins' novels, which also include The Hunger Games and Catching Fire," have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide and are the basis for a billion dollar movie franchise.

MEMPHIS, TN Since the early 1990s, 22 death row inmates around the U.S. have been exonerated through DNA evidence. Now, the Innocence Project hopes to go even further and use DNA evidence to exonerate a Tennessee man executed 13 years ago. Sedley Alley received a lethal injection in 2006 for the July 1985 murder of 19-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Suzanne Collins, who was raped and beaten near the former Memphis Naval Air Station in Millington. Her attorneys include Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck, who says investigators outside Tennessee contacted him about an alternative suspect in Collins death.

Hunger75 via Wikimedia Commons(CNN) - Best-selling author Suzanne Collins is returning to the world of "The Hunger Games" in a new novel set long before arrow-slinging hero Katniss Everdeen matched wits with the ruthless President Snow. It had been known as the "Untitled Panem Novel" after the fictional country where the story takes place. The first English printing will be 2.5 million copies and Scholastic says it has sold the translation rights for 28 other territories. "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" takes place 64 years before the events of the original novel on the day tributes were chosen for the Tenth Hunger Games, according to Scholastic. The original "The Hunger Games" novel was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 260 weeks and Scholastic says there are more than 100 million copies of all three books in the trilogy in print and digital formats worldwide.