Obits

Book critic and editor Patricia Holt, 78, died on December 3 after a battle with cancer. Holt was the book review editor at the San Francisco Chronicle for nearly 17 years, beginning in 1982, and previously worked at Houghton Mifflin and Publishers Weekly. She served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle and as its vice-president, and on the board of The Center for the Book at the Library of Congress. She was also the author of The Bug in the Martini Olive. Philip Kogan, founder of UK business book publisher Kogan Page, died on December 24 at age 92. […]

Longtime Tattered Cover owner Joyce Meskis, 80, died at home on December 22. Meskis purchased the small namesake bookstore in 1974 and grew it into a renowned group of stores, and sold the company in 2015. Longtime employee Cathy Langer said, “Her legacy is changing the way people think about bookstores and their role in society.” As the store notes, “Joyce was a literary lioness that evolved our industry in a way that few others had done before her.”

Literary agent Linda Chester died at home in La Jolla, CA on December 9. She was founder and president of the Linda Chester Literary Agency, which she established in 1989. The agency writes: “She had the utmost respect and admiration for writers and their ability to move us, persuade us, to rejoice in the human condition, and also to caution us when the culture strays from its highest values.” They also note: “Well known for her ethics, passion, kindness, and generosity, Linda was well loved by her clients and admired for her big-picture vision and singular sense of style.” The agency […]

Lucia Bernard, 29, senior designer in the Penguin Black interior design department, died on November 18. She had been with the company for six years. The publisher writes, “In her more than six years with the company Lucia touched not only her teammates in Design, Production, Art, and Editorial but also the many grateful authors whose books were elevated by her gifted vision.  She was driven to excellence in all she pursued.” Information about a memorial is TBA.

M. John Storey, 79, who founded Storey Publishing, died on November 26. Storey founded the company in 1983 with his wife Martha when they bought the publishing arm of Garden Way, and it was acquired by Workman in 2000. Dan Reynolds, former CEO of Storey, now svp & publisher of Workman, says, “John Storey was a passionate entrepreneur whose fascinating career reflects much of what was going on in the culture in which he lived, including the back to the land movement, the quest to be self-reliant, and the pursuit of an independent homesteading life…The valuable, trusted information contained in […]

Irish scholar Thomas Cahill, 82, who wrote How the Irish Saved Civilization, which spent almost two years on the New York Times bestseller list, died on October 18 of a heart attack.