The second trailer for the final Harry Potter film, HP and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two, appeared on the Web late Thursday. The movie opens on July 15th.

Causing even more excitement among Potterites is a mysterious new J.K. Rowling Web site that appeared on Wednesday, Pottermore. It links to a YouTube page, with a countdown clock to a Rowling “announcement” on June 23 at 7:00 a.m., Eastern. The Bookseller, the UK’s book publishing trade magazine, quotes a Rowling spokesperson, who crushes hopes by saying, “It is not another Harry Potter book but we cannot reveal any more at this stage, fans will have to keep an eye on the website. It will be launching soon.”

Scholastic has announced not just one, but three movie tie-in titles for The Hunger Games, coming in February (the movie releases March 23, 2012). In addition to reissuing the book itself, taking a page from the Twilight tie-in playbook, they will publish an illustrated movie companion. The third book, The World of Hunger Games, has not yet been described.

In addition, a slipcased “collectors edition” of The Hunger Games will come out in November, in time for holiday gift-giving.

The movie, directed by Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Seabiscuit), stars Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone, the upcoming X-Men: First Class) as Katniss Everdeen, Josh Hutcherson (The Kids Are Alright) as Peeta Mellark, and Liam Hemsworth (The Last Song) as Katniss’s hunting partner Gale Hawthorne. It is expected to the the first of a series.

Tie-ins:

The Hunger Games: Movie Tie-In Edition ($12.99, February 2012, ISBN: 9780545425117),

The Hunger Games: Official Illustrated Movie Companion ($18.99, February 2012, ISBN: 9780545422901)

The World of The Hunger Games ($17.99, February 2012; ISBN: 9780545422901)

Below is the first trailer for the movie based on Micheal Lewis’s book about the Oakland A’s, Moneyball. It opens on 9/13/11.

Does it feel a little like The Social Network? Aaron Sorkin worked on the screenplay for each.

The tie-in releases 8/15/11 (9780393338393).

It may be a while before Lasse Hallstrom get around to directing the adaptation of this summer’s big Swedish noir title, The Hypnotist. (FSG, 6/21). He has just committed to directing a film based on Nicholas Sparks’ Safe Haven (he directed 2010’s Dear John, also based on a Sparks novel).

In addition to Dear John, several other Sparks novels have been made into movies; The Notebook, The Last Song and Nights in Rodanthe.

Production is expected to begin this year.

Jason Reitman, who was nominated for an Academy award for the George Clooney movie, Up in the Air, is directing an adaptation of Joyce Maynard’s  Labor Day, (Morrow, 2009).

Entertainment Weekly just announced that Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin will star. It is expected to begin shooting in New England in 2012.

Abrams just announced the title of the sixth book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, and it’s a perfect title for the winter, Cabin Fever. The laydown date is Tues., Nov 15, with a 6 million copy first printing.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid 6 Jeff Kinney Retail Price: $13.95 Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: Amulet Books – (2011-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 1419702238 / 9781419702235

Despite Harlan Coben’s best-selling status, only one of his books has made it to the big screen. Tell No One, (Delacorte, 2001), was adapted as a 2006 French thriller directed by Guillaume Canet and starring Francois Cluzet and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Now that book is getting a second, Hollywood version. Ben Affleck has just signed to direct an English-language version. It will be a while before it hits screens, however; Affleck is currently directing Argo, planned for release in 2013.

Below is the trailer for the French film:

The faux picture book phenomenon, Go The F**k to Sleep, gives parents a chance to vent their frustrations with their recalcitrant offspring. But why should parents have all the fun?

Be honest; you’ve felt this way on at least one occasion:

The above is a panel from “Learn to F*cking Search” on Emily Loyd’s comic blog, Shelf Check.

None of the much-anticipated “next Stieg Larsson’s” have come close to that author’s uber-best-selling popularity. The latest contender, The Snowman by Jo Nesbo, Knopf, landed on the NYT Hardcover Fiction list, where it is now at #13 after 4 weeks, slipping from a high of #9, making it unlikely to touch the Larsson record. Still, it’s quite an achievement for a book in translation.

For fans who want more, USA Today offers a list of “Scandie Lit” coming out this summer (all are international best sellers). Below are their picks, with our annotations:

The Inspector and Silence: An Inspector VanVeeteren Mystery by Swedish writer Hakan Nesser, Pantheon, 6/14 — the fifth title in the series to be translated into English; excellent prepub reviews.

The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler, FSG, July 5 — Expected to be a major success (it’s one of People‘s Picks for the summer, calling it “spellbinding”), this first novel by a Swedish husband-and-wife team, it’s been signed for a movie, to be directed by Lasse Hallstrom.

Bad Intentions: An Inspector Sejer Mystery by Karin Fossum, HMH, 8/9; Fossum has been called the “Norwegian queen of crime.”

Call Me Princess by Denmark’s Sara Blaedel, Pegasus,  8/17; the publisher compares this “Danish crime queen” to both Stieg Larsson and Camilla Lackberg. This is her American debut.

The Keeper of Lost Causes by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen. Dutton, 8/23; winner of several Danish crime fiction prizes, Adler-Olsen has dominated Danish best seller lists, but most of his books have not been translated into English. PW gives this one a starred review, “Stieg Larsson fans will be delighted.”

Not on the USA Today list

Until Thy Wrath Be Past, by Swedish crime writer Asa Larsson, SilverOak/Sterling 8/9; SilverOak is a new imprint that focuses on Scandinavian crime; they brought Three Seconds by Roslund & Hellstrom to the US. It was on the NYT Hardcover Fiction list for four weeks in January, rising to #8.

You may have heard about filmmaker Werner Herzog’s taped reading of  G*T*F*T*S at the launch party for the book at NYPL last night. Happily, someone has posted it on YouTube:

And, here’s the official Samuel L. Jackson version, from Audible and Brilliance:

The International Association of Culinary Professionals named Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan  (HMH) the Cookbook of the Year earlier this month.

Winning in the American category was The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern (Random House).

The full list of winners and finalists is available here.

The news about this season’s most popular gift book, Go The F@@k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach (Akashic Books, published yesterday) just keeps coming. Audible is offering a downloadable audio version with Samuel L. Jackson reading (free download now available here). Brilliance will be releasing a physical audio version in mid-July (both Audible and Brilliance are owned by Amazon). Jackson is scheduled to read from the book on the Letterman Show on Thursday. You can see a clip of him reading the book for the audio here.

There have been stories about another audio version featuring Werner Herzog. It appears that recording was made for the book launch at NYPL last night (a take-off on the many Herzog impersonators who have read actual childrens’ books on YouTube, to hilariously chilling effect, such as this reading of Where’s Waldo?). It’s not clear, however, whether the Herzog version will be released as an audiobook.

The NYPL/Akashic press release describes the book as,

…a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world; profane, affectionate, and radically honest. California Book Award-winning author Adam Mansbach’s verses perfectly capture the familiar—and unspoken—tribulations of putting our little angels to bed for the night. He begins a conversation about parenting in the process, granting us permission to admit our frustration, and laugh at its absurdity. Bright and whimsical hand-painted illustrations by Ricardo Cortés evoke the traditional bedtime story in clever contrast to Mansbach’s hilarious verses. Go the F**k to Sleep is beautiful, subversive, and pants-wettingly funny—a book for parents new, old, and expectant.

Target has said they will only carry the book only if it is shrink-wrapped (it is not currently available on their Web site), while Wal-Mart has refused to carry it at all. In New Zealand, a Christian group, Family First, has called on booksellers not to stock the book. The head of the New Zealand Booksellers Assoc. responded to the local press that Family First “needed a sense of humour.”

The book is also be available in eBook format from Open Road (available on OverDrive).

The adaptation of Max Brooks’ World War Z (Crown, 2006) has been in the works for a long time, hampered by a $125 million production budget. With new financing, production has begun and  filming will begin in August in Glasgow, Scotland, which is being transformed into a Zombie war-torn Philadelphia. Brad Pitt is starring, along with Mireille Enos and James Badge Dale. In talks to join the cast are Ed Harris and Matthew Fox. The director is Marc Foster.

Pitt also stars in Moneyball, based on the book about major league baseball by Michael Lewis (Norton, 2003; tie-in edition, 9780393338393), to be released 9/23 this year. He just finished filming  Cogan’s Trade, based on the novel by George V. Higgins, (Knopf, 2004), to be released some time next year.

The announcement that Tom Cruise is working on a deal to play Jack Reacher in the film adaptation of One Shot (Delacorte, 2005), the ninth book in the series by Lee Child, has the movie blogs going nuts (Reacher is described in the books as 6’5″ and 250 lbs).

The movie site Deadline quotes Lee Child himself on the subject, “Reacher’s size in the books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force, which Cruise portrays in his own way.”

One Shot is the ninth novel in the  Reacher series. The next title, #17 in the series is The Affair, (Delacorte, 9/27).

After publishing 9 books in Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling series as original mass market paperbacks, Berkley decided to release the tenth title in the series, Kiss of Snow, in hardcover. The gamble has paid off; the book landed at #9 on the 6/19 NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list.

It received a starred review from Booklist ; “Singh proves she’s the alpha author of paranormal romance… Even readers who have not previously followed the series will be thrilled with Singh’s tale.”

We can’t help being amused by the difference between the American and British covers (American on the left, if you hadn’t guessed already).