The Pixies are busy this spring with a steady diet of touring — not to mention the upcoming release of their first album in eons — but frontman Black Francis has found time to engage in a more literary endeavor, this week publishing his first novel, “The Good Inn,” co-authored with Josh Frank.

“Mad World: An Oral History of New Wave Artists and Songs that Defined the 1980s” arrives in stores this week, offering a page-turning tour through 35 classic songs via new interviews with the artists, a list that includes Depeche Mode, Echo & The Bunnymen, INXS, OMD, Adam and the Ants and more.

Next week sees the publication of “Mad World: An Oral History of New Wave Artists and Songs that Defined the 1980s,” a tour through 35 classic songs via new interviews with the artists, a list that includes Depeche Mode, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Smiths, Simple Minds and many, many more.

Originally due out last October, “Barbed Wire Kisses” — a 272-page biography of The Jesus and Mary Chain by music journalist and author Zoë Howe — is now set to be published in the U.S. and U.K. on May 19, but the paperback will be available a full month early, on Record Store Day, in the U.K.

Soundgarden will celebrate the 20th anniversary of its blockbuster album Superunknown this year with an ambitious reissue project that begins on Record Store Day with a collection of five limited-edition 10-inch singles, this is followed in June by 2CD and 2LP reissues, plus a monster 5CD “super deluxe edition.”

Perhaps now we know why The Governor has yet to re-appear on the new season of “The Walking Dead”: Actor David Morrissey, who portrays the power-mad villain on the AMC zombie series, is the voice behind the unabridged audiobook of Morrissey’s “Autobiography,” the singer revealed late Sunday.

Morrissey may have bemoaned he had no U.S. publisher for his just-released autobiography — cleverly titled “Autobiography” — but that’s no longer the case. The singer announced today that G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of his U.K. publisher Penguin, will put the best-seller out in the U.S. on Dec. 3.