Marianne Pearl didn’t attend a Book Expo panel on how her memoir, A Mighty Heart, was adapted into a Michael Winterbottom movie starring Angelina Jolie. However, she did chime in via BlackBerry to Scribner editor-in-chief Nan Graham — to rave about her famous new BFF. “[Angelina] has become one of my dearest friends, with whom I can talk about anything,” she wrote. Since having a playdate with Jolie and little Maddox shortly after Brad Pitt pitched Pearl on the movie, she said, “We have become very close.” Pearl and Jolie are actually the perfect couple, Graham explained. “You haven't seen how glamorous Marianne Pearl is — one of the great beauties of our time. When she walks down the street, cars stop.”

While co-writing Pearl’s book, Sarah Crichton admitted, she primped and glammed herself up before the beautiful widow arrived. Crichton recalled that Pearl was preternaturally composed — and, unlike Jolie, wouldn’t cry on demand — something Crichton says hurt her on Oprah: “I kept finding people who were really annoyed that Marianne didn’t cry.” What still rankles Graham, though, was the way Bernard-Henri Lévy's book was considered the serious take on Daniel Pearl's death in Pakistan, while Pearl's was written off as a widow memoir. “He of course decided that he could go into Danny Pearl’s head,” Graham huffed. “I feel like we haven't trashed BHL enough.” —Boris Kachka