British actor Hugh Laurie, known for his role as the acerbic main character on the TV series House, has won the lead role in a movie adaptation of Mister Pip, the novel by Lloyd Jones. Production will begin in New Zealand next month. Laurie will play Mr. Watts, a teacher in a school on the island of Bougainville during its civil war in the 1990’s. He reads Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations to the children, who become fascinated with the character of Pip. (Deadline)

The book was the winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was short-listed for the Booker, losing that year to Anne Enright’s The Gathering. Lloyd Jones’s next book Hand Me Down World, published last fall in the UK, will be released here by Bloomsbury in September.

The movie is set to be directed by the seemingly unlikely choice of Andrew Adamson, co-director the first two Shrek movies and director of the first two The Chronicles of Narnia films.

Hand Me Down World: A Novel Lloyd Jones Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Bloomsbury USA – (2011-09-27) ISBN / EAN: 1608196992 / 9781608196999

Dragonflight, the first novel in Anne McCaffrey’s extensive science fiction series, The Dragonriders of Pern, is being scripted for a live-action feature, with a plans to begin production some time next year. The series includes 21 novels and novellas as well as several short stories. One of the producers noted, in a bit of an understatement, that there is plenty of material for a franchise. No director or cast has been announced yet.

Pern fans should not hold their collective breaths, however, this is not the first time an adaptation has been attempted.

The Orange Prize for Fiction‘s short list, announced at the London Book Fair yesterday, includes three debuts and one second novel. Of the debuts, Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife, has already received a great deal of media attention (need we mention, again, that Obreht is the youngest of the New Yorker‘s best 20 writers under 40?) and has appeared on the NYT best seller list. The UK bookies’ favorite, however, is Emma Dongahue’s seventh novel, Room, which has been a best seller in both the UK and the US. Reporting on the award, the Independent writes that Donoghue is working on her next book, about a murder in San Francisco in the 1870’s. Says Donaghue, “It’s nice to be doing something completely different to Room; some writers get caught up in weird simulacrum of their previous novel and it’s good to be plunging into a completely different world,” The well-respected A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Eagan, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, did not make the cut to the short list. The winner of the Prize, which is awarded to women writers from around the English-speaking world, will be announced on June 8th. The Orange Short List:

• Emma Donoghue (Canadian/Irish) – Room, Little, Brown, 9/13/11, 9780316098335 (7th novel); was on the Booker short list, but lost to Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question.

• Nicole Krauss (American) – Great House, Norton, 10/12/2010, 9780393079982; (3rd novel); Krauss, along with Obreht, is one of The New Yorker‘s best 20 writers under 40. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award.

• Téa Obreht (Serbian/American) – The Tiger’s Wife, Random, 3/8/11, 9780385343831 (1st novel)

• Aminatta Forna (British/Sierra Leonean) – The Memory of Love, Atlantic Monthly, 1/4/11, 9780802119650 (2nd novel); Set in Sierra Leone, Booklist calls this a “stunning and powerful portrait of a country in the aftermath of a decade of civil war,” It also received admiring reviews from the San Francisco Chronicle and the NYT Book Review. Nancy Pearl interviewed the author on Seattle Cable TV.

• Emma Henderson (British) – Grace Williams Says it Loud; not published in the U.S.; Sceptre in the UK (1st novel); a love story about two people who meet in a mental home.

Yesterday on Oprah, Shirley MacLaine revealed she once had sex with three different men on the same day and that she was in an open marriage for 30 years, engendering a storm of headlines.

The 77-year-old MacLaine  is promoting her twelfth book, I’m Over All That: And other Confessions (Atria/S&S), released last week.

The book rose to #7 on Amazon. Her 1986 book, Out on a Limb, also rose to #102.

Daniel Radcliffe’s post-Harry-Potter career includes his current Broadway run in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He also stars in the upcoming film adaptation of Susan Hill’s 1983 ghost tale, The Woman in Black. A very brief taste is offered in the teaser trailer just released online.

Radcliffe plays a young lawyer, who, while sorting through the papers of a dead client in an appropriately creepy British village, encounters terror and a mysterious woman dressed in black. British author Susan Hill’s book has also been adapted as a play that has been running in London’s West End since 1989.

[UPDATE: The movie is now scheduled for release in the US on 2/3/12, according to IMDB]

Radcliffe is also attached to star in a new adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front, planned for 2012.

For those of you suffering Harry Potter separation anxiety as the series draws to a close on July 12th, a behind-the-scenes Deathly Hallows documentary is in the works.

The Woman in Black is currently available in an illustrated edition from Godine. Vintage/Knopf is releasing a movie tie-in in September (an audio version is coming from Blackstone).

Hill is also known for her Simon Serrailler mystery series, published in the U.S. by Overlook Press.

Crowning a string of very strong reviews, Francisco Goldman’s “fictional memoir,” Say Her Name, is reviewed on the cover of the April 17th NYT Book Review. About the author’s wife, who died as result of a body-surfing accident, reviewer Robin Romm says. “So remarkable is this resurrection that at times I felt the book itself had a pulse.”

The book is also the #1 Indie Next pick for April.

Obviously, this book is more personal than Goldman’s previous four titles. For more background on Goldman and his earlier works,  the Guardian offers an excellent profile.

Say Her Name: A Novel Francisco Goldman Retail Price: $24.00 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Grove Press – (2011-04-05) ISBN / EAN: 0802119816 / 9780802119810

Audio; Tantor; Read by Robert Fass; 4/18/11

Large Type; Thorndike: August; 9781410439529; $32.99

Ann Hood’s reading group favorite, The Knitting Circle has been optioned by HBO Films. Katherine Heigl (Gray’s Anatomy) will produce and star in the film. Hood learned the news second hand from dozens of congratulatory emails.

Heigl will appear as Stephanie Plum in One For The Money, based on the first in Janet Evanovich’s mystery series. It will be released next January.

What happens when a director of disaster epics, such as Independence Day and 2012, turns his attention to the controversy about the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays?

From the trailer of director Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous, released yesterday, the result looks like Dan Brown meets the Elizabethan Era.

That’s Derek Jacobi in the beginning of the trailer. Also featured are Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Elizabeth I (Redgrave’s daughter Joely Richardson plays the younger Elizabeth). Rhys Ifans plays Edward de Vere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, regarded here as the true author of Shakespeare’s plays.

The movie is not  based on a specific book. For those interested in learning more, several books explore the various theories, including last year’s well-reviewed Contested Will by James Shapiro (S&S), which arrives at the conclusion that the author of Shakespeare’s plays is … William Shakespeare.

The movie is scheduled to release on Sept. 30.

Official Web Site: Anonymous-Movie.com

Below, Shapiro says he wrote Contested Will as a way at looking at “why smart people think dumb things.”

The Pale King, the novel that the late David Foster Wallace left unfinished at the time of his 2008 suicide, has an April 15th pub date (not coincidentally, it is set in an Internal Revenue Service processing center). But as we’ve covered, Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com have been selling it since its March 22 release date, infuriating indies who had not received it. Libraries are in the same position, with copies still on order and mounting holds.

Meanwhile, major reviewers have also jumped the pub date, from Time‘s Lev Grossman to the New York Times‘ Michiko Kakutani, as well as Sam Anderson in the New York Times magazine and reviewers at GQ and Esquire.)

The critical verdict? Some of it is great, some of it isn’t, but it’s definitely worth a read, and that’s saying a lot for a novel that’s about boredom.

The Pale King David Foster Wallace Retail Price: $27.99 Hardcover: 560 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2011-04-15) ISBN / EAN: 0316074233 / 9780316074230

• Large print from Little, Brown: $29.99; ISBN 9780316177931
• Compact Disc from Hachette Audio: $34.98; ISBN 9781609419752
• Playaway: $109.99; ISBN 9781611138818

More Notable Fiction

Midnight and the Meaning of Love by Sister Souljah (Atria Books) is the latest from the author of the street lit classic The Coldest Winter Ever, about Midnight, a young African American fighter and devout Muslim.

One Was A Soldier by Julia Spencer-Fleming (Minotaur). tThe followup to her debut In the Bleak Midwinter, sparked enthusiastic responses from librarians in our March GalleyChat. Writing about the bonanza of mysteries coming this April on her blog, Lesa’s Critiques, GalleyChatter Lesa Holstine said:

Is there any April mystery release that has been awaited longer than Julia Spencer-Fleming’s One Was a Soldier? Fans of the series have been waiting to see what happens with police chief Russ Van Alstyne and Episcopalian priest Clare Fergusson. Now, Clare has returned from her tour of duty in Iraq. . . with problems that Russ doesn’t know about, and he’s impatient to marry.

Usual Suspects

Chasing Fire by Nora Roberts (Putnam) is a standalone from the bestselling author that celebrates the smokejumpers of Missoula, Montana. Booklist calls it “a riveting, five alarm tale of romantic suspense.”

Save Me by Lisa Scottoline (St. Martin’s) is a standalone about a mother’s split-second decision about which child to save in a lunchroom explosion, and its consequences. Kirkus says Scottoline “shifts gears at every curve with the cool efficiency of a NASCAR driver [and] expertly fuels her target audience’s dearest fantasty: “every mom is an action hero.”

Nonfiction

The Long Goodbye: A Memoir by Meghan O’Rourke (Riverhead) is based on the nine-part series by the Slate writer, about nursing her mother through her death from cancer, and her grief in the aftermath. O magazine made it one of “18 picks for April.”

The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Livesby Katie Couric (Random House) may not be an utter shoe-in for longevity on the bestseller list, but it will probably be helped by the will-she-won’t-she quit-as-news-anchor headlines that are currently surrounding Couric.

Nonfiction/YA

The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown). You can be forgiven if you thought this was already published. This guide to the books was first announced back in 2008, but ended up being delayed. To add to the confusion, there are also the three Twilight Saga Official Illustrated Movie Companions by Mark Cotta Vaz. The movie version of Breaking Dawn, Part 1, is coming in this November, followed by part 2 next year (and, as night follows day, there will surely be accompanying movie companions for each).

The merit badge at left is for all our GalleyChat regulars (thanks to Ali at Macmillan Library Marketing, who found it for us on the Badger site). Those huge TBR piles are not to be ashamed of, they’re to be celebrated!

Based on Tuesday’s GalleyChat, the one you MUST move to the top of your TBR pile is Before I Go to Sleep, a debut by S.J. Watson (Harper, 6/14). It was first mentioned in our December chat and has gained steam ever since. About a woman with amnesia, trying to piece together her life by writing a daily journal, it’s described as creepy and enthralling (for more about it, listen to the title presentation from HarperC’ollin’s MidWinter buzz session). It’s clearly hot; galleys are now scarce. UPDATE: You can get it as an eGalley through NetGalley.

We love to hear about regional successes. The Baltimore and Raleigh contingents were buzzing about a first novel by a 71-year-old North Carolina author, Anna Jean Mayhew, The Dry Grass of August (Kensington; 4/1). The author’s warm, engaging style is showcased on a local TV show appearance, below, and even more so on the local NPR interview with Frank Stasio. GalleyChatters compare the book to both The Secret Life of Bees and The Help. It’s in trade paperback, making it easier on the budget.

Interest seems to be expanding beyond the region; some litbraries in other parts of the country are showing holds.

A YA title that got several mentions is Bumped by Megan McCafferty (Balzer & Bray/Harperteen; 4/26). Called an “interesting take on the dystopia trend,” the title comes from the central plot point; it’s 2036 and a virus has rendered everyone over the age of 18 infertile, so teens are being paid to procreate. Obviously, this one is quite different from the author’s frothier Jessica Darling series (Sloppy Firsts, etc).

Aside from specific titles, there were comments on reading galleys as eBooks, such as those offered by NetGalley & S&S’s GalleyGrab. Two people noted an unexpected benefit; they’re discovering more debut authors as a result.

To download a transcript of the discussion by title, click here. Please join our next GalleyChat, May 3, from 4 to 5 pm (Eastern).

Janet Maslin is so enthralled with the memoir This Life is in Your Hands, that she dissolves into a booktalking cliche at the end of her NYT review, “If you want to know what happened, read it for yourself.”

In the book, author Melissa Coleman reveals what is was like to grow up with back-to-the-land zealot parents (her father, Elliot Coleman, is a major force in the organic farming movement and the author of several books on the subject). Maslin admits that it can be faulted for too much detail (“…the plink-plink of every freshly picked berry dropped in a bucket can almost be heard”) but, “More often, there is haunting power here, as well as lush, vivid atmosphere that is alluring in its own right.”

An excerpt appears in the April issue of O Magazine.

This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone Melissa Coleman Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Harper – (2011-04-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061958328 / 9780061958328

It’s a big book series and an equally big adaptation. Stephen King’s Dark Tower is planned as three movies, with two TV series between the films. The first of each will be directed by Ron Howard. According to Deadline, Javier Bardem (Eat Pray Love) is close to signing on as the lead and production will begin in September. No news on whether the release date of 5/17/13 is still firm.

King recently announced on his Web site that another installment in the series, The Wind Through the Keyhole, will be released in 2012.

Knopf not only has a strong literary reputation, it is also known for bringing works in translation into the U.S.; a tradition that paid off spectacularly with Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series.

But reviewers are perplexed by Kyung-Sook Shin’s  Please Look After Mom, a book that has sold over a million copies in South Korea. On NPR’s Fresh Air last night, Maureen Corrigan said straight out, “I’m mystified as to why this guilt-laden morality tale has become such a sensation in Korea and why a literary house like Knopf would embrace it.” Reading the book made her fell like she “was stranded in a Korean soap opera decked out as serious literary fiction.”

Janet Maslin, in the daily NYT last week, detailed some of the book’s “Dickensian extremes,” rendering the plot twists laughable. Sister publication, the NYT Book Review, described the book more positively, calling it a “…raw tribute to the mysteries of motherhood,” but still didn’t communicate much enthusiasm for it.

Prepub reviews were much stronger. Library Journal said it “should be one of this year’s most-deserving best sellers.”

Libraries we checked are showing 4:1 hold ratios on light ordering.

The long-postponed trade paperback edition of the best selling phenomenon, The Help, is finally available. It’s also available in several other formats, including downloads from OverDrive, but no mass market as yet.

Many libraries are still showing 2:1 holds ratios, despite owning hundreds of copies.

The movie version arrives this summer, on August 12th. Previews last week at the theater owners convention, CinemaCon, impressed several viewers. A trade paperback movie tie-in is planned for July. No cover art is available yet.

The Help Kathryn Stockett Retail Price: $16.00 Paperback: 544 pages Publisher: Berkley Trade – (2011-04-05) ISBN / EAN: 9780425232200 / 9780425232200

The film adaptation of one of the major books on the financial crisis, Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big To Fail, will premiere on HBO on Monday, May 23.

Penguin is publishing a movie tie-in trade paperback edition.