Melissa Bank, whose 1999 bestseller “The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing” was a series of interconnected stories widely praised for its wit and precise language and embraced by many young readers has died.

Whedon, the prominent film and TV creator who faced a claim of abusive behavior on the set of Justice League, drew criticism Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2021, from actors who worked with him on Buffy the Vampire Slayer including Gellar and Carpenter. Whedon didnt immediately respond to a request for comment. “While I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don’t want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon,” Gellar wrote. The company said then that “remedial action” had been taken, but did not go into specifics. Last month his character Cyborg was removed from appearing in the upcoming “Flash” film, which Carpenter said was the last straw for her.

Nanci Ryder, a powerful Hollywood publicist and co-founder of BWR Public Relations who became close to such stars as Rene Zellweger and Courteney Cox, died Thursday of Lou Gehrigs disease in Los Angeles. Zellweger thanked Ryder in her best actress acceptance speech when she won the Academy Award for Judy earlier this year. Stints at Goldberg-Ehrlich Public Relations and Management and Michael Levine Public Relations followed, before she formed Nanci Ryder Public Relations in 1984, with Fox as her first client. In 1987, she co-founded the firm BWR Public Relations with Paul Baker and Larry Winokur. This spring, the firm's parent company, Burson Cohn & Wolfe, shut down BWR Public Relations, moving staffers or laying them off.