2009

MARCH

Penguin Classics will publish The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime

APRIL

National Geographic Books will publish In the Womb: Animals

25-26
Michael will be at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books talking about The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime on a panel about Victorian crime fiction, with Dan Simmons (author most recently of Drood), Selden Edwards (author of The Little Book), and Leslie Klinger (editor of The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes), and moderated by Nick Owchar (editor and reviewer for the Los Angeles Times).

SEPTEMBER

21-26
Michael will be at the Fall for the Book Festival at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, giving two separate talks, about both In the Womb: Animals and The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime.

OCTOBER

9-11
Michael will be at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, giving two separate talks, about both In the Womb: Animals and The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime.

2008

Penguin published the paperback of Apollo's Fire, with the new subtitle A Journey through the Extraordinary Wonders of an Ordinary Day.

National Geographic Books asked Michael to adapt the popular National Geographic Channel documentaries "In the Womb: Animals" and "In the Womb: Extreme" into a book. He did so, completing it in November.

During 2008 Michael spoke to university classes, Friends of the Library groups, and other organizations; presented talks, gave readings, and participated in panel discussions and other events, on science writing, the natural history of everyday life, nonfiction writing, crime fiction, and other topics, in Philadelphia, Nashville, Raleigh, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco; at the Virginia Festival of Books in Charlottesville, at the Fall for the Book Festival at George Mason University, and at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville; in his home town of Crossville, Tennessee, in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, where he lives now, and elsewhere.

He was on a nonfiction-writing panel with Pulitzer-winning historian Edward J. Larson, author most recently of A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign; on a science-writing panel with Jennifer Ackerman, author most recently of Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream: A Day in the Life of Your Body, and Susan Freinkel, author of American Chestnut: Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree, and historian Susan Tyler Hitchcock, author most recently of Frankenstein: A Cultural History; on a mystery fiction panel with novelists Nicholas Griffin, author most recently of Dizzy City, and Dallas Hudgens, author most recently of Season of Gene. Michael also presented a talk about how we imaginatively explored outer space before we could actually go there, along with an account of real and upcoming explorations delivered by NASA scientist Claudia J. Alexander, in a joint presentation by the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, as part of the Carnegie International Exhibition, in Pittsburgh.

He continued to review books for the Washington Post Book World and the Los Angeles Times Book Review.

2007

Penguin published Michael's second collection of literary classics, Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Thief, by Maurice Leblanc.

Viking published Michael's third nonfiction book about nature and science, Apollo's Fire: A Day on Earth in Nature and Imagination.

On National Public Radio's "Science Friday," Deborah Blum, the Pulitzer-winning former president of the National Association of Science Writers and author most recently of Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life after Death, recommended Apollo's Fire as one of the Best Science Books of the Year.