News and Notes

Runaways
Tolstoy was 82 years old when he left his wife and home to die in a remote village. Eighty-five-year-old William L. Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich) is going to delve into the mystery of Tolstoy's disappearance in a forthcoming book, The Road to Yasnaya Polyana: The Last Days of Leo Tolstoy. Shirer's fascination with Tolstoy began almost 20 years ago when his own home broke up.

E for Environment
Twenty years ago, Earth Day was born. Now the environmental movement has spawned several new magazines: Buzzworm, Garbage, and, most recently, E: The Environmental Magazine. The first issue of E(January/February) speculates on the direction the movement will take in the 1990s and gives President Bush an environmental report card — a grudgingly middle-of-the-road C.

Hunting Quayle
Jeff Yoder and Deborah Werksman have started The Quayle Quarterly, ''the only periodical in the world devoted solely to our Vice President.'' Werksman says, ''He's being groomed for the number one spot. Someone ought to keep an eye on him.'' Interested Quayle watchers can send $12 for a year's subscription to ; P.O. Box 8593, Brewster Station, Bridgeport, Conn. 06605.

Quality Control
Richard Russo has won the Quality Paperback Book Club's New Voices award for The Risk Pool, his second novel set in the imaginary town of Mohawk.

Selling Well in Manchester, Vt.
The Northshire Bookstore reports big sales of the following: Bag Balm and Duct Tape, by B. Conger, M.D.; The Borrowed Years, 1939-41: America on Its Way to War, by Richard Ketchum; The Road From Coorain, by Jill Conway; and The End of Nature, by Bill McKibben.

Flagrant Delicts
In a lively departure from their usual fare (The History of Cavalry; All About Tropical Fish), Facts on File is publishing the Encyclopedia of American Scandal ($19.95), a compilation of ''the most infamous intrigues and imbroglios to grab the headlines, from Benedict Arnold to John Belushi.''

Black Hole Dept.
Hearst changed the printing schedule of Jupiter — the country's first full-color, full-size astrology magazine — after one of the magazine's astrologers decided the original timing was celestially improvident. In the January-February issue, now on the stands: gaga advice for the usual suspects — Gorbachev, Bush, and Prince Charles.

Choice Words
Knopfhas announced plans to publish a ''major new book on the modern history and politics of birth control and abortion'' by Faye Wattleton, president of Planned Parenthood. It's due in the spring of 1991.