Bestselling novelist Jeffrey Archer has announced his next novel, Adam and Eve, will be his last, coming out 50 years after his debut was published.

The 85-year-old author has sold more than 300m books around the world since his first novel, Not a Penny More Not a Penny Less, was published in 1976, according to his publishers. His 1979 novel, Kane and Abel, was his biggest hit, selling more than 34m copies in 119 countries and 47 languages, and being reprinted more than 130 times.

Archer’s 31st and final novel, Adam and Eve, described as “a powerful story which weaves together love, betrayal and the stark realities of a world at war” by publisher HarperCollins, will be out in English in October.

In a statement, Archer said, “When I came across the idea for this novel a few years ago, I knew it was bigger in scope than anything I’d done before and I accepted that the research alone would be more demanding than anything I’d tackled in the past. When I finally sat down to write Adam and Eve I also realised, by the end of the first draft, that this was going to be my final novel, as at the age of 85 I could never hope to equal it again.”

“I can’t quite imagine putting my pen down for good,” he added, saying that he might continue writing short stories. “But I can think of no more fitting way to bring my novel-writing career to a close.”

Despite selling hundreds of millions of books, which were often praised as compellingly readable, Archer failed to win over many critics over the decades. “To open one of his books was to risk being assaulted by a hectic claque of cliche, mixed metaphor, implausibility, solecism and sheer, unadulterated stodginess sufficient to send most readers screaming in breathless delirium to the mature, lucid and urgent pages of Barbara Cartland or Enid Blyton,” Robert McCrum wrote in 2009.

Archer’s career as a novelist was often overshadowed by his colourful, if controversial public life.

He was elected a Conservative MP in 1969 at the age of 29, but resigned from parliament in 1974 when he lost his life savings in a fraudulent investment scheme.

In 1986, he resigned as deputy chair of the Conservative party after the Daily Star reported he had paid a sex worker for sex. The following year he successfully sued the newspaper, claiming he’d never met the sex worker but had later paid her £2,000 to help her escape the press attention. Archer won £500,000 in damages in a trial where the judge famously lauded Archer’s wife’s “fragrance” in his instructions to the jury.

Archer won the Tory candidacy for London mayor in 1999 but was forced to stand down after reports emerged he had persuaded a friend to lie to the court in the 1987 libel trial. Archer was suspended from the Tory party for five years and a perjury investigation began. At the same time he was starring in a production of his own courtroom play The Accused, about the trial of an alleged murderer in which the audience voted on the guilt of Archer’s character each night.

In 2001 Archer was found guilty of two counts of perjury and two of perverting the course of justice, and sentenced to four years in prison, and was made to pay back the damages and costs. While in prison he wrote his three-volume prison memoirs, which were all bestsellers. He was released after serving two years, and spent subsequent decades focused on his writing career, which spans 50-odd works, and his extensive charity work.

Archer remained a member of the House of Lords until his retirement in 2024.

Thousands of copies of Sarah Ferguson’s new children’s book have reportedly been withdrawn and “pulped” in the wake of the renewed scrutiny over her links to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The book had been due for publication on 9 October, but was postponed until 20 November. It has now been removed entirely from publication schedules, and publishing sources have claimed that printed copies are being sent for recycling.

“It’s not been delayed, it’s being pulped,” one publishing insider told the Daily Mail. “It’s an acknowledgment of the inevitable. No one is going to want to buy it.”

The news follows a period of scandal for Ferguson, 66, who earlier this month lost the title Sarah, Duchess of York after King Charles stripped Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of his remaining titles. She is also expected to lose her long-term home at Royal Lodge in Windsor, where she has lived for decades with her former husband, despite their separation.

The withdrawal of the book also prompted the cancellation of a series of planned in-person readings and bookshop appearances. The title has disappeared from the publisher’s website and is no longer listed on major retailers including Waterstones and Amazon. Ferguson has not commented publicly on the decision.

The former duchess has published more than 50 books – largely children’s titles – over several decades, including the Little Red series, Puddle Boots Christmas, and Flora and Fern: Wonder in the Woods, released last year. Her latest was due to be a follow up, Flora and Fern: Kindness Along the Way, about two rabbits learning “kindness and community” during an adventure in the big city. She has also written romantic fiction and published a memoir in 2011, Finding Sarah: A Duchess’s Journey to Find Herself, charting her efforts to rebuild her life “after hitting rock bottom”.

In September, the Mail on Sunday published emails from 2011, in which Ferguson privately described Epstein as her “supreme friend” and apologised for “letting him down”, despite having publicly called her association with him “a gigantic error of judgment”. The messages were sent less than two months after she had insisted she would “never have anything to do with [Epstein] again”, amid pressure over the ties she and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had maintained with him – including a £15,000 payment Epstein made to help settle her debts.

A spokesperson for Ferguson said she had been compelled to write the emails because Epstein had threatened her. The scandal has seen Ferguson dropped by numerous charities with whom she had long-term associations.

New Frontier Publishing did not respond to a request for comment.

The posthumous memoir of Virginia Giuffre, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most prominent accusers, will be published in the autumn, a publisher has announced.

Giuffre had been working on Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, with the award-winning author and journalist Amy Wallace before her death earlier this year.

The 400-page book will be released on 21 October, according to the Associated Press.

Giuffre, who alleged she had been trafficked for sex to Prince Andrew, had completed the manuscript before she took her own life in April, the publisher Alfred A Knopf said.

Prince Andrew has denied Giuffre’s allegations. In 2022, Giuffre and the prince reached an out-of-court settlement after she sued him for sexual assault.

Knopf’s statement includes an email Giuffre wrote to Wallace 25 days before her death, stating that it was her “heartfelt wish” the memoir be released “regardless” of her circumstances.

“The content of this book is crucial, as it aims to shed light on the systemic failures that allow the trafficking of vulnerable individuals across borders,” the email reads. “It is imperative that the truth is understood and that the issues surrounding this topic are addressed, both for the sake of justice and awareness.”

Giuffre had been hospitalised after a serious accident on 24 March, Knopf said, and sent the email on 1 April. She died on 25 April at her farm in Western Australia, where she had lived for several years.

“In the event of my passing, I would like to ensure that Nobody’s Girl is still released. I believe it has the potential to impact many lives and foster necessary discussions about these grave injustices,” she wrote to Wallace.

Knopf’s statement says the book contains “intimate, disturbing, and heartbreaking new details about her time with Epstein, Maxwell and their many well-known friends, including Prince Andrew, about whom she speaks publicly for the first time since their out-of-court settlement in 2022.”

Knopf editor-in-chief, Jordan Pavlin, said Nobody’s Girl was a “raw and shocking” journey and “the story of a fierce spirit struggling to break free”.

In 2023, the New York Post reported that Giuffre had reached a deal “believed to be worth millions” with an undisclosed publisher.

Knopf spokesperson Todd Doughty told AP that she initially agreed to a seven-figure contract with Penguin Press, but moved with acquiring editor Emily Cunningham after she was hired by Knopf as executive editor last year.

Doughty declined to provide further details about the Epstein associates featured in Nobody’s Girl, but confirmed that Giuffre made “no allegations of abuse against [Donald] Trump”, who continues to face questions about the disgraced financier and his former friend.

Nobody’s Girl is distinct from Giuffre’s unpublished memoir The Billionaire’s Playboy Club, referenced in previous court filings and unsealed in 2019. Through Doughty, Wallace says she began working with Giuffre on a new memoir in spring 2021.

“Nobody’s Girl was both vigorously fact-checked and legally vetted,” a Knopf statement reads.

Giuffre’s co-author on her memoir, Wallace, is an award-winning magazine and newspaper reporter whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications.

A representative for Andrew did not immediately return the AP’s request for comment. Buckingham Palace was asked for comment.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press