Jacobs' family members filed a lawsuit last June, claiming Rowling's 2000 book Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire steals segments of the writer's novel The Adventures of Willy the Wizard - No 1 Livid Land. Rowling was named as a defendant in the lawsuit on Wednesday after the trustee of Jacobs' estate, Paul Allen, realised the time limit to sue the writer had not run out.

But Rowling has moved quickly to slam the accusation, insisting she has never even read Jacobs' book and will be applying to have the claim dismissed immediately. In a statement, she says: "The fact is I had never heard of the author or the book before the first accusation by those connected to the author's estate in 2004; I have certainly never read the book.

"The claims that are made are not only unfounded but absurd and I am disappointed that I, and my U.K. publisher Bloomsbury, are put in a position to have to defend ourselves. We will be applying to the court immediately for a ruling that the claim is without merit and should therefore be dismissed without delay."

Sir Brian Vickers, an authority on Shakespeare at the Institute of English Studies at the University of London, found that a comparison of phrases in The Reign of King Edward III with early works by Shakespeare "proves conclusively" that the bard wrote it in collaboration with Thomas Kyd, a popular contemporary playwright, the newspaper says.

Vickers used the software called Pl@giarism to compare the text from the play, which was anonymously published in 1595, when Shakespeare was 32 years old, with other plays of the period. He found that there were 200 matches of "linguistic fingerprints" -- phrases of three of more words -- between the play and works by Shakespeare published before 1596. Likewise, there were a large number of matches in other scenes of the play with works by Kyd, The Times says.

"Signet has conducted an extensive review of all its Cassie Edwards novels and due to irreconcilable editorial differences, Ms. Edwards and Signet have mutually agreed to part ways," the publisher said in a statement Friday. "Cassie Edwards novels will no longer be published with Signet Books. All rights to Ms. Edwards' previously published Signet books have reverted to the author."

*****

Penguin initially said that Edwards, who lives in Mattoon, Ill., had "done nothing wrong" and that any use of other texts was protected by "fair-use doctrine." Edwards has written more than 100 novels, although not all with Penguin, which has said that more than 10 million copies of her work are in print.

"Writing my Indian romances is my small tribute to those beautiful first people of our land who have suffered so much injustice," Edwards writes on her home page on Penguin's Web site. "And I have just begun. My upcoming books will continue with more passion and adventure and rich historical settings. Enjoy!"

As it turns out, even authors not living in this online age are in trouble. My fellow literary sleuth Alex MacBride recently revealed to me that he'd uncovered an old crime in a new way. MacBride, a linguist employed by Google, idly ran a phrase from England Howlett's 1899 essay Sacrificial Foundations through Google Book Search, his employer's massive digitization of millions of volumes from university libraries. The search had nothing to do with his job—like the rest of us, sometimes Alex just kills time by plugging stuff into Google—and rather than go to the trouble of digging out Howlett's book by name, he'd decided to call it up with a phrase. To his surprise, he got more back than just Howlett: The search also revealed a suspiciously similar passage in Sabine Baring-Gould's 1892 book Strange Survivals. A lot of suspiciously similar passages.

Perhaps it's not too shocking that a small-time amateur like Howlett swiped from Baring-Gould, a frenetically prolific folklore scholar who published hundreds of books and articles. But, the search results revealed, this was not quite the end of the story. "Charmingly," MacBride e-mails, "Baring-Gould seems to have had sticky fingers himself." The wronged author, you see, had in turn used the unattributed quotation from a still earlier work: Benjamin Thorpe's 1851 study Northern Mythology.

Batswala Dala, France Amoore and Tom Shane all have published letters to the editor in Bay Area newspapers. Trouble is, none of the men exist.

Under dozens of pseudonyms, Kyle Vallone has orchestrated the publication of scores of letters to the Times, San Francisco Chronicle and the Tri-Valley Herald during the last decade. A Times investigation found that the San Ramon man submitted more than 100 letters under fictitious identities to the three newspapers. Vallone estimated that he has had a hand in 200 bogus letters published in Northern California newspapers.

Vallone said the idea occurred to him while he was working on a Republican campaign in 1994. He and other workers would write letters on behalf of a candidate and send them to a "tree" of supporters who would sign their names and send them to newspapers. It occurred to him that he could skip a step, make up fictitious identities and send the letters via e-mail. He used free e-mail accounts and various voice-mail systems, his cell phone and home phone numbers to pull off his hoax.

Vallone, a three-time state Republican party delegate, said he didn't consider the deception involved. "I thought of it in terms of getting the message out and also, all these campaigns do it. The unions do it. Everybody does it. They all do it. They have trees of people that they use," he said. "OK, does that make it right? I don't know," he said.