Auel's Final Book in Earth's Children to be published in March 2011

Author Jean M. Auel's prehistoric book series, Earth's Children, will end with the sixth and final novel to be published in 2011. Auel's U.K. publisher Hodder & Stoughton has announced that The Land of Painted Caves will be published March 29 next year. Auel started her series in 1980 with The Clan of the Cave Bear, in which an orphaned Ayla, a Cro-Magnon, is adopted by a group of Neanderthals. The book was turned into a movie in 1986 starring Daryl Hannah.