Attesting to strong word of mouth, further fueled by Oscar buzz, Ben Affleck’s Argo moved to #1 at the box office during it’s third week. About a crazy scheme to rescue a group of Americans from Teheran in the early ’80’s, using a made-up Hollywood production as its cover, the tagline is, “The Movie was Fake, the Mission was Real.”

How real was the mission? Slate looks at that question in detail in “How Accurate Is Argo?”

As source material, the movie credits “a selection from The Master of Disguise by Antonio J. Mendez and the Wired Magazine article ‘The Great Escape,‘ by Joshuah Bearman.”

The Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA is still in print in trade pbk from HarperCollins/Morrow, downloadable from Overdrive and available in the original 1999 hardcover in many libraries. In it, Tony Mendez, played by Affleck in the movie, writes, with co-author William McConnell, about his CIA career which began in 1965. The Booklist review said, “the reader receives a vivid sense of the clandestine world through [Mendez’s] part in the successful operations to extract a KGB defector from India and an Iranian spy from revolutionary Iran … he also divulges the hitherto-suppressed details of the [Argo] caper.”

Mendez again recounts that story, with a different co-writer, Matt Baglio, in Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History, released in September (Viking) to coordinate with the move. It’s also available in audio from Blackstone and downloadable audio through OverDrive.

Mendez met his wife Jonna when they worked together on another mission. Together, they wrote Spy Dust: Two Masters of Disguise Reveal the Tools and Operations That Helped Win The Cold War (S&S/Atria; still available in trade paperback).

But wait; there’s yet one more book association. The real script for the fake movie, Argo, was  based on Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light (Harper/Voyager). Try putting it on display, to see who catches the reference.

“For readers who liked Ian McEwan’s Atonement,” has become shorthand for novels that blend psychological suspense with a strong sense of the atmosphere of a particular time, deft writing and romance.

McEwan himself has to undergo that comparison. Atonement has become a modern classic (Time magazine included in its list of 100 all Time greatest novels), with every book he’s published since compared to it.

In today’s NYT the hard-to-please Michiko Kakutani, asks whether McEwan’s latest, Sweet Tooth (RH/Nan A. Talese), arriving next week, lives up to the “author’s dazzling 2001 masterpiece.” In a word, she says, “No.”

The book was released in the UK in August and British reviewers also made comparisons, with The Independent saying, “though this is his best book since Atonement, Sweet Tooth has none of the disquieting tragedy and dazzling technique of that novel, which remains perhaps the greatest in contemporary British literature.”

On the other hand, The Economist compares it to several other McEwan’s titles; “Sweet Tooth is not Mr McEwan’s finest book. It has neither the darkness of The Comfort of Strangers nor the passion of Enduring Love, nor even the forensic observation that made On Chesil Beach such an uncomfortable and memorable read. It is a clever book—ostensibly about spying, yet really about writers and the alchemy of fiction. But it is also curiously forgettable. What it lacks is not so much an animating spirit, as a heart.”

The Guardian, however, appraises Sweet Tooth on its own merits; “This is a great big beautiful Russian doll of a novel, and its construction – deft, tight, exhilaratingly immaculate – is a huge part of its pleasure.”

Statistician Nate Silver has become the media’s go-to guy for election predictions, based on his NYT blog, “FiveThirty­Eight.”

His book, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don’t (Penguin Press) rose to #5 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Seller list this week. He is scheduled to appear on the Colbert Show tonight  and on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Wednesday.

Will interest continue in the book after tomorrow’s election? Sunday’s NYT Book Review says it will, and that it “could turn out to be one of the more momentous books of the decade” because Silver previously “took aim mostly at sports pundits and political handicappers. But the book hints at his ambitions to take on weightier questions. There’s no better example of this than his chapter on climate change…That Silver is taking this on is, by and large, a welcome development. Few journalists have the statistical chops; most scientists and social scientists are too abstruse.”

On yesterday’s 60 Minutes, Morley Safer interviewed David McCullough to get some perspective on American elections. He noted that, as a historian, McCullough has “bridged that yawning gap between academic and popular history.” The reminder sent his books up Amazon’s sales rankings.

The interview will continue next Sunday.

This week’s Parade Magazine‘s cover story features National Book Awards Finalist Kevin Powers, “A Soldier’s Story: Returning Home From Iraq.”

Powers’s novel, The Yellow Birds (Hachette/Little, Brown; Thorndike Press; Hachette Audio), debuts at #13 on the new NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list. It was on the cover of the NYT Book Review last month.

This issue of Parade also includes a list of “10 Books by the Latest Generation of War Veterans.”

The mainstreaming of erotic novels continues. Sylvia Day’s Reflected in You goes to #1 on the new NYT Paperback trade Best Seller list, just above E.L. James’s Fifty Shades trilogy. The first in Day’s Crossfire series, Bared to You, is at #7 on the list, after 20 weeks.

The 2011 cover

The life-long Californian, is also nosing aside British native James in the U.K.

Day has published several other books in various genres. One of her historicals, Seven Years to Sin (Kensington; Brilliance Audio) also debuts on this list, at #18, after being re-released with a new cover. Day has said that Bared to You, “in some ways .. feels like an extension of Seven Years to Sin … even though they’re set 200 years apart.”

On our Crystal Ball as the potential surprise hit of the season, The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg (Hachette/Grand Central) arrives at #133 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list and at #25 on the NYT Extended Hardcover Fiction list, after its first week on sale.

The book is often compared to The Corrections and author Jonathan Franzen himself gave it a rare blurb, “The Middlesteins had me from its very first pages, but it wasn’t until is final pages that I fully appreciated the range of Attenberg’s sympathy and the artistry of her storytelling.”

The two books may also compare in best seller history. The Corrections made its debut on the USA Today list in a similarly low position, at #150, but rose to #1 after five weeks.

Consumer reviews, while strong, have not been as widespread as would be expected from the advance attention (the NYT relegated it to a mention in their “Newly Released Books” column). In the Washington Post, Ron Charles  says, “The nimble structure of this novel is just one of the elements that keep it engaging.”

The Chicago Tribune review was also very strong, saying that it “stun[s] with its blunt, unsparing and unflinching depictions of family dysfunction among the Jewish-American middle class in Chicago and its suburbs.”

Holds are heavy in libraries where ordering was light.

Michelle Hodkin’s second YA novel, The Evolution of Mara Dyer (S&S YR, 10/23), is her first best seller. It arrives at #8 on the NYT Children’s Chapter Books list this week.

As Hodkin writes on her blog, she is clearly thrilled,

This is especially astonishing to me because The Unbecoming [of Mara Dyer,  S&S YR, 2011] was not a “big” book. There was no major deal. No fortune to fuel the hype machine … A book that many people, if not most, still don’t know how to categorize. I still have trouble describing what it’s about. The odds of a book hitting the New York Times list is low to start, but the odds of books like mine hitting it? Even slimmer.

The LA Times called the first book, an “unsettling paranormal romance [in which] a young girl survives a trauma but discovers she may be going insane.”

The third book in the trilogy will be The Retribution of Mara Dyer, planned for fall, 2013.

Below, Dyer talks about her rapid path to becoming a published author, how the internet has changed that process and the joy she gets from contact with fans through social media.

A side note; the story on her blog about rescuing her beloved dog Maggie, is harrowing, but uplifting.

Headlines are doing little to dispel rumors that Stephenie Meyer plans to continue the Twilight saga.

At a press conference for Breaking Dawn – Part 2 (which, need we remind you, is the final movie in the series), Meyer was cagey about the question, but the headlines are less so:

IndieWire —‘Twilight’ Author Stephenie Meyer Says She Has More Stories Planned

ABC News — Stephenie Meyer Not Ruling Out More ‘Twilight’ Stories

Entertainment Weekly — Stephenie Meyer says more ‘Twilight’ books a possibility, but not today

The actual quotes, from the Entertainment Weekly story, are more along the lines of “Who knows? Stranger things have happened.”

In response to a question about what happens to Jake (Taylor Lautner in the films), and Renesmee, (Mackenzie Foy):

I planned out where [the story] would go for a couple more books. So, I knew exactly what  would happen.

Will those books see the light of day?

Maybe someday, I’ll write it out just for myself. We’ll see.

It seems nobody asked, however, if they might become movies instead.

The new season of AMC’s zombie apocalypse series, The Walking Dead, beat out all other programming, including broadcast shows, to become the #1 entertainment series on TV. The first three episodes drew at least 6.5 million viewers each, stunning industry observers.

The Walking Dead began life as a comic series, written by Robert Kirkman (see our earlier story). Compilations of those series have dominated the NYT Graphic Books Best Seller list for months (Book 1, published by Image Comics, is at #3 on the o hardcover list after 67 weeks; the most recent, Book 8, at #2, took up residence 3 weeks ago).

Last year, Kirkman wrote the first in a projected series of prose novels, The Walking Dead: Rise of The Governor, which hit the extended list last year at #18 and stayed on for one week.

Volume two, The Walking Dead: The Road to Woodbury (Macmillan/Thomas Dunne Books; Macmillan Audio), outdid its predecessor last week, arriving on the main list at #11 (it slips to #31 on the extended list this week). Several libraries are showing heavy holds.

Called an “Investigative Satirist,” by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, Jon Ronson talked about his new book, Lost at Sea (Penguin/Riverhead) on Wednesday night’s show. Stewart uttered the magic words, “You’ve gotta go get Lost at Sea.” It rose to #9 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

Ronson was on the show in 2011 for his earlier book, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, which went on to become a NYT best seller, reaching a high of #10. He also wrote The Men Who Stare at Goats (S&S, 2004), which was the basis for the 2010 movie starring George Clooney.

Big names in fiction returning next week include Barbara Kingsolver, Ellen Hopkins and Caleb Carr, along with notable novels by Lydia Millet, Whitney Otto and James Kimmel. The final volume of William Manchester‘s Churchill bio also arrives, written posthumously by Paul Reid, while Larry McMurtry weighs in on General Custer, Sean Carroll explores a new landmark in physics, and Oliver Sacks explores hallucinations.

Watch List

Magnificence by Lydia Millet (Norton; Dreamscape Audio; Center Point Large Print) concludes the trilogy that began with How the Dead Dream (2008) and Ghost Lights (2011). This one is the story of a woman who comes to terms with her life and adulterous affairs when she suddenly becomes a widow. Kirkus says, “The deeply honest, beautiful meditations on love, grief and guilt give way to a curlicued comic-romantic mystery complete with a secret basement and assorted eccentrics.”  The response on GalleyChat was unmitigated; “Magnificence was magnificent. What an amazing writer. Love her unsentimental style.”

Eight Girls Taking Pictures by Whitney Otto (S&S/Scribner; Thorndike Large Print) fictionalizes the lives of eight women photographers as they intersect – including icons like Imogen Cunningham, Lee Miller and Sally Mann, as well as lesser known figures. By the author of How to Make an American Quilt, it was a BEA librarians’ Shout ‘n’ Share Pick. Kirkus says, “although overly schematic, Otto makes these eight women and the differing lenses through which they view the 20th century hard to forget.”

The Trial of Fallen Angels by James Kimmel, Jr. (Penguin/Amy Einhorn; Dreamscape Audio) is a debut novel about an ace lawyer who dies and becomes a defender of the souls of the dead on Judgement Day. Early reviews are mixed: Kirkus says it’s heavy on the spiritualism side, but still intriguing. PW says it fails as a page-turner, but Booklist gives it a starred review, calling it fascinating.

Returning Favorites

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper; HarperAudio; HarperLuxe) may be the first novel about the effects of climate change. It arrives with uncanny timing, the week after Hurricane Sandy. In this instance, the evidence is dramatic but not devastating. A vast flock of monarch butterflies descends on a Bible Belt community in what seems like a religious miracle, but turns out to be a more disquieting displacement. It’s a People Pick in the magazine this week, with 4 of 4 stars. Says the reviewer, Kingsolver, “brings the complexities of climate change to her characters’ doorstep, illustrating with rich compassion how they … must find their new place on shifting ground.”  The author’s previous, The Lacuna, was a best seller and won the Orange Prize.

Collateral by Ellen Hopkins (S&S; Atria) is the second adult novel by this YA author, about two best friends and the military men they love, and are separated from, written in the author’s signature poetic verse style. PW says, ” clear narrative that is uplifting and heartbreaking, but also familiar and a little too easy, featuring characters grappling with the serious issues of our time.”

The Legend of Broken by Caleb Carr (Random House; S&S Audio) finds the author of the Alienist turning his sights on the medieval era, where invaders and internal tensions roil a fortress. LJ has a wait-and-see attitude toward this one’s commercial prospects.

Childrens

Infinity Ring Book 2: Divide and Conquer by Carrie Ryan (Scholastic) is the second in a middle grade series about two fifth-grader geniuses who live in an alternate universe and travel back in time to fix various “breaks” in history. Like the 39-Clues, this planned seven-volume series, with six authors, was devised in-house at Scholastic and comes with links to an interactive Web Site. The titles will be released in quick succession, with this one arriving just three months after the first, Infinity Ring Book 1: A Mutiny in Time, by the Maze Runner’s James Dashner. Rick Riordan, who wrote the prototype, 39-Clues, was given the unenviable task of reviewing Book 1 for the the NYT Book Review. His reaction was mixed, concluding that it is, “vivid, intriguing, not fully realized but hinting at a larger story that feels right.” This second volume is by the author of The Forest of Hands and Teeth, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. Kirkus, the only source to review it so far, doesn’t buy it, saying, “It’s hard to go wrong with Vikings. But if you asked a classroom full of students to write about a Viking and a time machine, most of them would come up with something more inventive.”

Nonfiction

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940–1965 by William Manchester and Paul Reid (Hachette/Little, Brown; Blackstone Audio) is the final volume in this biographical trilogy. The New York Times Magazine heralds it this Sunday by calling its release, “one of the longest waits in publishing history” and explains how the little-known Paul Reid, who had never written a book before, ended up tackling this project, based on Manchester’s sketchy and often illegible notes. It ended up taking so long that Reid was forced to sell his house, use up his savings and live on credit cards. It may have been worth it. Says the NYT Magazine, it is “more of a stand-alone book than a continuation of the first and second volumes.” PW says it “matches the outstanding quality of biographers such as Robert Caro and Edmund Morris.” 200,000 copies.

Custer by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster) is not quite a biography, more of an “informed commentary” on one of American history’s great military blunderers by this respected novelist, according to Kirkus, which also calls it “distilled perceptions of a lifetime of study, beautifully illustrated.” USA Today puts it simply, “This ‘Custer’ cuts through all the Bull.”

The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World by Sean Carroll (RH/Dutton) is the story of how science history was made with the search for the Higgs Boson, part of the Higgs field that gives atomic particles their mass – finally discovered earlier this year. PW says, “whether explaining complex physics like field theory and symmetry or the workings of particle accelerators, Carrollas clarity and unbridled enthusiasm reveal the pure excitement of discovery as much as they illuminate the facts.” UPDATE: We jumped the gun; this title is actually coming out on Nov. 13.

Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks (RH/Knopf; RH Audio; BOT Audio) finds this bestselling neurologist revealing that hallucinations are actually normal aspects of human experience during illness or injury, intoxication or sensory deprivation, or simply falling asleep. Kirkus says, “A riveting look inside the human brain and its quirks.”

Movie Tie-Ins

The Hobbit (Movie Tie-In) by J.R.R. Tolkien (HMH/Mariner trade pbk; RH/Del Rey mass market) are the tie-in editions of the novel. Also coming are various behind-the scenes books for both adults and children. For the full list, check our Upcoming Movies with Tie-ins).

Jack Reacher’s Rules, with introduction by Lee Child (RH/Delacorte) is a 160-page hardcover compilation of Reacher wisdom and lore; a single quote printed on each page. It arrives, as the publisher puts it, “just in time for [Reacher’s] first movie,” starring Tom Cruise, which lands in theaters on 12/21. It was a drop-in title that hasn’t been reviewed and thus, most libraries have not ordered it. Those that have it are showing holds (Hennepin County has 50 on 9 copies). The tie-in of One Shot, which the movie is based on, also arrives next week, in both mass market and large print.

There’s no official release date yet for the film adaptation of G. P. Taylor’s Mariah Mundi and the Midas Box, but its sequel already has the green light. Producer Peter Bevan told The Northern Echo, that the decision “has been very much based upon how happy we are with the first movie as it comes together, and reactions from test audiences.”

The budget for the British production is estimated at $25 million and is expected to be released in 2013.

The author, a former vicar, self-published his first novel Shadowmancer. Word of mouth took off and British publisher, Faber and Faber bought the rights to it as well as Taylor’s next ten books, for £3.5million. It was published here by Penguin/Putnam in 2004 and spent ten weeks on the NYT Children’s Hardcover list, two of them at #1.

The Midas Box was considered a successor to the Harry Potter series in the U.K., but it was not as successful in the U.S. as Shadowmancer. Two more titles in Mariah Mundi series, The Ghost Diamonds and  Ship of Fools, have been released in the U.K., but not here.

The film adaptation of S.J. Watson’s best selling novel, Before I Go To Sleep (Harper, 2011), is moving along.  Nicole Kidman is set to play the lead role as a woman who has lost her memory. Her doctor suggests that she record each day’s events. In the process, she discovers that things are not what they seem. Variety reports that Mark Strong (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) will play the doctor.

Don’t be fooled by the poster; shooting hasn’t begun. Release date is expected in late 2013.