Dead Celebrity Alert

Bebe Moore Campbell, whose many best sellers such as “Brothers and Sisters” touched on America’s ethnic and social divides, died Monday. She was 56. … Read full obituaryl

William Diehl, best-selling author of “Primal Fear” and other novels, has died at Emory University Hospital. He was 81. … Read full obituary

Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, whose lighthearted memoir, “Cheaper by the Dozen,” detailed the frenentic life of a family with 12 children and inspired several films, has died.

Carey died Saturday of natural causes at St. Agnes Medical Center in Fresno, her son Charles Carey Jr. said. She was 98. … Read full obituary

William Styron, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who wrote “Sophie’s Choice,” died Wednesday in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.

He was 81. … Read full obituary

Gyorgy Faludy, Hungarian poet and Nazi resistance fighter; in Budapest.

Mickey Spillane, the macho mystery writer who wowed millions of readers with the shoot-`em-up sex and violence of gumshoe Mike Hammer, died Monday. He was 88. … Read full obituary

Screenwriter and author Ted Berkman, whose film credits include “Bedtime for Bonzo” and “Fear Strikes Out,” has died. He was 92. … Read full obituary

Stanley Kunitz, a former U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner whose expressive verse, social commitment and generosity to young writers spanned three-quarters of a century, has died. He was 100. … Read full obituary

Gordon Parks, who captured the struggles and triumphs of black America as a photographer for Life magazine and then became Hollywood’s first major black director with “The Learning Tree” and the hit “Shaft,” died Tuesday, a family member said. He was 93. … Read full obituary

Peter Benchley, whose novel “Jaws” terrorized millions of swimmers even as the author himself became an advocate for the conservation of sharks, has died at age 65, his widow said Sunday. … Read full obituary

BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. — Alan Shalleck, who collaborated with the co-creator of “Curious George” to bring the mischievous monkey to television and a series of book sequels, was found dead outside his home, and police were treating the death as a possible homicide.

The bloodied body of Shalleck, 76, was found Tuesday covered in garbage bags in the driveway of his mobile home. Police said it was there for at least a day before a maintenance man discovered it. … Read full obituary

Betty Friedan, whose manifesto “The Feminine Mystique” became a best seller in the 1960s and laid the groundwork for the modern feminist movement, died Saturday, her birthday. She was 85. … Read full obituary

Pioneering psychotherapist and writer Betty Berzon died Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 78 years old.

Berzon had been sick with cancer, but still continued to see patients and write while undergoing chemotherapy. …

She [became] one of our community’s best-known, with a gift for helping gay people come to terms with their true selves and with each other. …

She was one of the founding board members for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center in 1971. … Read full obituary

CBC News — December 19, 2005 — A Calgary woman who wrote a book about being attacked by a grizzly bear has died in Kelowna, B.C.

Patricia Anne Van Tighem, 47, took her own life. Her family says it was the long lasting effects of the attack 22-years ago that led to her death. … Read full obituary

Stan Berenstain, who with his wife, Jan, created the classic children’s books about the Berenstain Bears, has died at the age of 82. … Read full obituary

Shelby Foote, the author who died in Memphis June 27 at the age of 88, never imagined fame would come the way it did. As a youth in Mississippi, he dreamed of being a great novelist, like William Faulkner, whom he and his boyhood pal Walker Percy once visited. … Read full obituary

Richard Eberhart, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet considered one of the foremost writers of lyric verse in the 20th century, died on Thursday at his home in Hanover, N.H. He was 101. … Read full obituary

The American feminist icon, writer and campaigner Andrea Dworkin, who linked pornography to rape and violence, died at the weekend, her agent said today. She was 59 years old. … Read full obituary

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“Deep Throat” star Linda Lovelace

NEW YORK — Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, a master of comic melancholy who in Herzog, Humboldt’s Gift and other novels both championed and mourned the soul’s fate in the modern world, died Tuesday. He was 89. … Read full obituary

DENVER Feb 21, 2005 — Hunter S. Thompson, the acerbic counterculture writer who popularized a new form of fictional journalism in books like “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” fatally shot himself Sunday night at his Aspen-area home, his son said. He was 67. … Read full obituary

Author Susan Sontag, widely regarded as one of America’s leading intellectuals, has died aged 71.

The writer, who had suffered from leukaemia, died at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. … Read full obituary

John H. Waller, a former high-ranking official in the CIA who also wrote a half-dozen books on espionage and other topics, died of complications from pneumonia Nov. 4. He was 81. … Read full obituary

NEW YORK — The body of actor-writer Spalding Gray was pulled from the East River over the weekend, two months after he walked out of his Manhattan apartment and disappeared. He was 62. … Read full obituary

Washington: Prize-winning Indian-American poet Reetika Vazirani and her two-year-old son were found dead with their wrists slashed at a house she had been staying in, The Washington Post said on Friday. …

Neighbours and friends of Vazirani, 40, said she had been distraught in the days leading up to the tragedy. She said she had tried to meet with a neighbourhood priest and borrowed a Bible from a neighbour. … Read full obituary

Sara Ann Freed, who was the editor in chief of Mysterious Press, died on Wednesday after having received treatment for leukemia. She was 57. … Read full obituary