Reagan Administration Book Beat Picks Up

A quiet recluse in Southern France, Graham Greene, 83, has written a new novel, “The Captain and the Enemy.” The book is scheduled for September publication from Viking, Greene’s publisher from 1938 until 1970, when he moved to Simon & Schuster. The new book, the author explains in a preface he calls an “apologia,” has a long and curious history. Greene began the book in 1974 but put it aside. After several more false starts, he completed the slender novel about a young boy growing up in England in what the publisher calls “touching and odd circumstances” in the fall of 1987. Last year, Greene became one of 24 men and women who hold the title of Order of Merit in Great Britain.

ADVANCE WORD: Based on the “revelations and scope of the submitted manuscript,” Harcourt Brace Jovanovich has upped the publication date of Donald T. Regan’s “For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington.” The former White House chief of staff’s book, for which HBJ paid $1 million, will now be in stores by May 16. And not far behind: Larry Speakes’ “Speaking Out: The Reagan Presidency from Inside the White House” (Scribner’s). Neither is expected to be gentle with the boss.

SECORD SUES. Iran-Contra headliner Richard Secord, recently indicted for conspiracy to defraud the government, has filed a $38 million libel suit against Leslie Cockburn and Atlantic Monthly Press over their book “Out of Control: The Story of the Reagan Administration’s Secret War in Nicaragua, the Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection.” The book, published last November, claimed that a CIA-NSC operation sold drugs to raise money for the Contras.

HEMISPHERIC HIGHLIGHTS: Avon is marking the 50th anniversary of the original Brazilian publication of Jorge Amado’s “The Captains of the Sands” by publishing the first English translation of this early work by the author of “Showdown,” “Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands,” etc. In St. Paul, Minn., meanwhile, Graywolf Press has announced a new series of Latin American literature in translation, “Palabra Sur” (Words From the South). The project will be developed by Cecilia Vicuna, a Chilean poet living in New York, and will focus on poetry, nonfiction and fiction not previously available to North American audiences.

GLASNOST, CONTINUED: Doubleday has acquired world English publishing rights to a Soviet novel, Daniel Granin’s “The Bison,” and two Soviet nonfiction projects, Nikolai Shmelyev’s “The Turning Point,” and a report on Soviet and American women to be co-authored by playwright/essayist Zoya Boguslavskaya and U.S. author Francine du Plessix Gray. The three books were acquired by Doubleday by former U.S. Ambassador Heyward Isham, who was appointed consulting editor at Doubleday last July, with special responsibility for acquiring books by Soviet and European authors.

NOTES FROM THE BENCH: Author William Peter Blatty has lost his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking review of last December’s California Supreme Court decision throwing out his suit against the New York Times. Blatty had contended that he lost $3 million in sales when the Times failed to include his hardcover novel, “Legion,” on its best-seller list, but the California court ruled that the newspaper could not be held liable for the omission.

RECALL: Printing errors prompted Bantam Books to request that booksellers return all copies of Dr. Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time.” Corrected editions will be identifiable by their blue jackets.

BEYOND POOH: “Once Upon a Time,” A. A. Milne’s “fairy story for grown-ups,” will be published in a first-ever paper edition this August from New American Library. The book, the only adult fantasy from the creator of “Winnie the Pooh,” was first published in 1917 by Houghton & Stoughton and has been out of print for many years.

R.F.K. REMEMBERED: Twenty-First Century Books, in cooperation with the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, has contracted with Bantam Books to publish “Robert Kennedy in His Own Words: The Unpublished Recollections of the Kennedy Years.” To be edited by Edwin O. Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman, the book is scheduled for June publication from Bantam Books.

ANNIVERSARY EDITION: To prepare for the new deluxe limited edition of John Muir’s “My First Summer in the Sierra,” artist and engraver Michael McCurdy followed the same path the West’s legendary geologist, explorer and naturalist took on his first journey into the Sierra in the summer of 1869. McCurdy’s sketches and engravings from that outing served as the basis for the 12 engravings that illustrate the Yolla Bolly Press edition, to be published April 21, in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Muir’s birth.

ARE THE ‘60s HISTORY, ALREADY? Apparently so, as Doubleday prepares to publish an oral history commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Woodstock Musical Festival. Titled “Woodstock: The Oral History,” the book by journalist Joel Makower will include 150 black-and-white photographs. It’s due out in August, 1989. -

BANNED IN BULGARIA: “Windmills of the Gods,” the latest effort from mega-best seller Sidney Sheldon, has been banned by the governments of Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The book, with a 3-million-copy first printing in paperback from Warner Books, deals with America’s first (fictional) female ambassador to Romania.

LITERARY LABOR: The Atlantic Monthly Press is billing “Mobbed Up,” its forthcoming biography of Teamster boss Jackie Presser as an expose of “the dirtiest union story ever told, and the biggest union scandal since Jimmy Hoffa disappeared.” The author is investigative journalist James Neff.

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THE ART OF THE DEAL: With a bid in excess of half a million dollars, Warner Books has won paperback rights to Donald Trump’s mega-best seller. Warner plans a first-run printing of at least 1 million copies of “Trump: The Art of the Deal.”