NEW YORK (Reuters) – American author Jonathan Franzen’s best-selling new book “Freedom” is expected to be influential talk show queen Oprah Winfrey’s new book club pick, publishing industry sources said on Thursday.

Winfrey will make an official announcement on her TV show on Friday, marking her first book club choice this year. Many of her past 63 selections, which range from classics like John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” to inspirational works like “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle, have become big-sellers.

Dennis Johnson, founder of independent Melville House Publishing, reported on his blog earlier this week that Franzen’s new novel, about a depressive mid-western family, would be chosen.

Johnson posted a photograph on his blog on Wednesday showing the cover of “Freedom” with Winfrey’s blue book club sticker, ready to hit book stores.

Franzen’s publishers and Winfrey’s production company declined to confirm the reports ahead of Friday’s TV show.

Franzen, 51, has become a literary darling in the United States. The release of “Freedom” last month appeared on the cover of Time Magazine under the title, “Great American Novelist.”

The book shot straight to No. 1 on The New York Times hardcover fiction list. The newspaper said in its review of the book, which tells the story of liberal middle class American family, that Franzen had written his “most deeply felt novel yet.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U2 frontman Bono said on Friday the songs composed for the most expensive show in Broadway history were simpler to write than the more personal songs he has written for the Irish rock band.

The songs for the eagerly anticipated $60 million production of “Spider-Man:Turn Off the Dark,” turned out to be surprisingly less challenging than conjuring up melodies for U2, the singer told TV show “Good Morning America.”

“The real question for us was, could we do it? Could we write songs that drove a story inspired by characters?,” Bono told the TV show via satellite from U2′s world tour. “It turns out it is actually harder to write songs about yourself than it is to write about other people.”

The long-awaited musical inspired by the Marvel Comics hero with music by Bono and The Edge, will open on Broadway in December after being caught in financial problems and delayed from a February opening.

One of the songs played on the show, “Boy Falls From The Sky,” sounded similar to U2′s rock sound, but Bono said there would be variety in the music.

“It swerves all over the road,” Bono said about the sound. “That’s the fun of it from a U2 perspective, you have got the big rock-n-roll tunes, melodrama, big melodies, there’s orchestral stuff too.”

Producers have promised a new take on the story of teenage science geek Peter Parker, who is bitten by a genetically-altered spider and wakes up the next morning clinging to the ceiling.

MILAN/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Clothing retailers and big-name fashion designers in the United States and around the world joined together on Friday in festive promotional events aimed at enticing recession-weary shoppers to go on a spending spree.

“Fashion’s Night Out,” the brainchild of Vogue magazine editor Anna Wintour and designed to jump-start the industry from recession and encourage shoppers to visit stores, is back for a second year. This time, the events are set in 100 U.S. cities from New York to Los Angeles, Houston and Miami.

Joining in are shops in Australia, Portugal, South Korea and Turkey, along with those in fashion centers who held events last year such as Britain, Italy, France, Greece, Russia, Brazil, India, Spain, China, Germany, Japan and Taiwan.

In Milan, tens of thousands of fashion-hungry shoppers and party-goers thronged the Italian fashion capital’s small streets for a party on Thursday, hoping to rub elbows with big-name designers at Valentino and Prada who offered champagne and artistic performances.

“This city, usually, is dead at night, and that’s not because of the downturn,” said fashion supremo Giorgio Armani, who offered a live performance of British pop band Hurts.

London events featured actress Gwyneth Paltrow and model Claudia Schiffer helping to draw big crowds.

‘NATIONAL HOLIDAY FOR SHOPPING’

NEW YORK (Reuters) – British television host Piers Morgan will replace CNN talk show host Larry King in January, bringing what is expected to be a more acerbic tone to the network’s prime-time interview slot.

CNN said on Wednesday that Morgan, 45, a judge on the popular NBC show “America’s Got Talent” and former British tabloid newspaper editor, would start his CNN show in January. King, 76, announced in June he would end “Larry King Live” after a 25-year run.

Morgan will keep his job with “America’s Got Talent,” CNN said.

The name of Morgan’s CNN show, which will air weeknights at 9 p.m. /0100 GMT in King’s time slot, has not been announced but it is begin billed by CNN as a “candid, in-depth newsmaker interview program” based in New York. Morgan also will do shows from London and Los Angeles.

Morgan has been host of a variety of shows in Britain and has a reputation on “America’s Got Talent” as a caustic critic in the vein of fellow Briton Simon Cowell, who he has appeared alongside as a judge on the British show “Britain’s Got Talent.”

Morgan, the winner of Donald Trump’s “The Celebrity Apprentice” reality show in 2008, also will keep his job on British network ITV, where his program “Life Stories” has included interviews with celebrities and politicians, the New York Times said.

King, who forged a reputation for nonconfrontational interviews with an eclectic guest list, will host his last show in mid-December, CNN said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Piers Morgan will replace CNN talk show host Larry King in January, bringing what is expected to be a more acerbic tone to the network’s prime-time interview slot.

CNN said on Wednesday that Morgan, 45, a judge on the popular NBC show “America’s Got Talent” and former British tabloid newspaper editor, would start his CNN show in January. King, 76, announced in June he would end “Larry King Live” after a 25-year run.

Morgan will keep his job with “America’s Got Talent,” CNN said.

The name of Morgan’s CNN show, which will air weeknights at 9 p.m. /2 a.m. British time in King’s time slot, has not been announced but it is begin billed by CNN as a “candid, in-depth newsmaker interview program” based in New York. Morgan also will do shows from London and Los Angeles.

Morgan has been host of a variety of shows in Britain and has a reputation on “America’s Got Talent” as a caustic critic in the vein of fellow Simon Cowell, who he has appeared alongside as a judge on the British show “Britain’s Got Talent.”

Morgan, the winner of Donald Trump’s “The Celebrity Apprentice” reality show in 2008, also will keep his job on British network ITV, where his program “Life Stories” has included interviews with celebrities and politicians, the New York Times said.

King, who forged a reputation for nonconfrontational interviews with an eclectic guest list, will host his last show in mid-December, CNN said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Gay marriage and interracial adoptions can be divisive topics across America, but a new crop of TV shows and films showing “modern” families are winning audiences and awards.

Television show “Modern Family” won the best comedy series Emmy on Sunday. “Glee” was also honored and new films such as “The Kids Are All Right” and documentaries are finding that families outside the mom, dad and two kids norm can make decent financial returns.

“Television is reflecting the way the American family has evolved, the way society has evolved,” said Todd Gold, managing editor of Fancast.com. “The shows we are seeing on prime time as well as movies like ‘The Kids Are All Right’ are looking at a new kind of family.”

Mockumentary-style comedy “Modern Family” features a gay couple and their Vietnamese baby and a man married to a much younger Colombian woman. Eric Stonestreet, who plays one of the gay fathers on “Modern Family”, won a best supporting actor Emmy for his performance.

The characters on musical comedy “Glee,” include a gay teen who has a crush on a straight football player and a geeky girl adopted at birth by two men.

The two TV shows, which won a combined total of 10 Emmys on Sunday, currently reach a healthy ten million strong U.S. audience each.

“We knew we didn’t want to do things that family shows had done before,” said “Modern Family” co-creator Christopher Lloyd.

By Christine Kearney

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – The now ex-wife of Tiger Woods has broken the silence she maintained through the ordeal of dealing with the torrid sex scandal that engulfed their marriage, saying she has been through “hell.”

Elin Nordegren spoke to People magazine in an interview published on Wednesday, two days after she and Woods issued a statement confirming their divorce, which had been widely anticipated for months after his public confession of infidelity.

“I’ve been through hell,” the Swedish-born former nanny told the publication. “It’s hard to think you have this life, and then all of a sudden — was it a lie? You’re struggling because it wasn’t real. But I survived, it was hard, but it didn’t kill me.”

Nordegren, 30, who met Woods at the age of 21 while minding children for a Swedish golfer but is now studying psychology, said she never suspected the affairs that Woods, reputed to be the world’s wealthiest sports star, admitted to and publicly apologized for in February.

“I’m so embarrassed that I never suspected — not a one. For the last three and a half years, when all this was going on, I was home a lot more with pregnancies, then the children and my school,” she said.

Woods, who has won 14 major championships, returned to the game in April after losing up to $35 million in sponsorship revenue as his private life unraveled over allegations that surfaced in late November and December about affairs between him and several women.

(Adds details)

By Christine Kearney

NEW YORK, Aug 25 (Reuters Life!) – The now ex-wife of Tiger Woods has broken the silence she maintained through the ordeal of dealing with the torrid sex scandal that engulfed their marriage, saying she has been through “hell.”

Elin Nordegren spoke to People magazine in an interview published on Wednesday, two days after she and Woods issued a statement confirming their divorce, which had been widely anticipated for months after his public confession of infidelity.

“I’ve been through hell,” the Swedish-born former nanny told the publication. “It’s hard to think you have this life, and then all of a sudden — was it a lie? You’re struggling because it wasn’t real. But I survived, it was hard, but it didn’t kill me.”

Nordegren, 30, who met Woods at the age of 21 while minding children for a Swedish golfer but is now studying psychology, said she never suspected the affairs that Woods, reputed to be the world’s wealthiest sports star, admitted to and publicly apologized for in February.

“I’m so embarrassed that I never suspected — not a one. For the last three and a half years, when all this was going on, I was home a lot more with pregnancies, then the children and my school,” she said.

NEW YORK, Aug 24 (Reuters) – Singer Katy Perry wooed U.S. critics with her second major-label album release on Tuesday, packed with flirty, giggly pop songs, strong dance beats and plenty of “gurl-talk”.

The 25-year-old singer, who was once tagged as a one-hit wonder for the song that launched her to fame — 2008′s “I Kissed a Girl ” — released 12 new songs on “Teenage Dream” that includes the summer hit single “California Gurls.”

The album, whose packaging is meant to smell like cotton candy with an image of Perry lying naked on a pink cloud, features lyrics about sex, love, youth and relationships. It is is due out in Europe and the rest of the world next week and has been heavily promoted as a fun summer record.

Rolling Stone magazine gave the album three stars out of five, declaring it “miles ahead of Perry’s breakthrough disc, ‘One of the Boys,’ with her clever songwriting boosted by top-dollar pros” including several top European music producers.

The album released by Capitol Records, owned by the EMI Group TERA.UL, is full of breezy disco beats that “is the kind of pool-party-pop gem that Gwen Stefani used to crank out on the regular,” the magazine said.

Perry’s affinity with being provocative and cheeky has tough competition from Lady Gaga and nothing on the new album “may match the sheer pop majesty of Madonna’s most memorable hits,” according to USA Today, but “the ambitious brunette serves up percolating confections laced with saucy humor and disarming earnestness.”

Perry, a California-born former singer-songwriter who started out by recording a failed gospel album in Nashville, Tennessee, is engaged to loudmouth British comedian and actor Russell Brand.