The first trailer for the STARZ adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series is now available, with the tagline: “What if Your Future Was Your Past?”

There’s no specific release date yet, beyond “Summer 2014.”

Entertainment Weekly interviewed the director Ron Moore recently, asking a crucial question; “how much sex will the show have?” Moore responded, “There is a fair amount. We don’t really have to add very much; there’s a lot of sex in the book.”

Asked if the success of Game of Thrones has influenced him, Moore said, “It’s definitely opened that door and showed that fantasy and genre material has a strong audience on premium cable. They also showed you can take an existing readership and turn it into an audience and then broaden that audience.”

No tie-ins have been announced yet.

The release of the trailer for the new season of HBO’s Game of Thrones has been watched on YouTube nearly 10 million times since it was released on Sunday (it will probably break that number by the time we finish this post). Time magazine offers a handy run down of the new characters glimpsed in the footage.

This season, which begins on April 5, is based on the fourth in George R.R. Martin’s series of books, titled A Feast for Crows. [Note; Thanks to an alert from a reader’s comment, we have learned that season 4 is actually based on the second half of book 3. ScreenRant.com delves in to how the TV series differs from the books).

Tie-ins are listed below (covers have not yet been released; the one above is for the 2005 first edition):

A Feast for Crows (HBO Tie-in Edition): A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Four
George R.R. Martin
RH/Bantam; On Sale Date: April 1, 2014
9780553390568, 0553390562
Mass market (rack) paperback
$9.99 US / $11.99 Can.

A Feast for Crows (HBO Tie-in Edition): A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Four
George R.R. Martin
RH/Bantam; On Sale Date: April 1, 2014
9780553390575, 0553390570
Trade paperback
$18.00 US / $21.00 Can.

Dominating the media today is the unauthorized bio. of Fox News boss, Roger Ailes, The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News—and Divided a Country by Gabriel Sherman, (Random House), an embargoed title releasing today.

Venues from USA Today (in which Michael Wolff accuses the publisher of withholding the book from reviewers who might be critical) to The New Yorker‘s Jill Lapore (who doesn’t explain how she got her advance copy), offer their takes. The Daily Beast‘s “speed read” comes up with “25 Extraordinary Roger Ailes Revelations.”

Sherman, a New York magazine writer, appears on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report tomorrow night.

Library holds are light so far.

Don’t bother searching for it. The new IFC series, The Spoils of Babylon is supposedly “based on the epic best seller by Eric Jonrosh.” Once you realize that this six–episode series was created by Will Ferrell,  you’ll realize that your leg has been pulled.

Those scenery-chewing book-based series from the 1970’s seem ripe for parody and the cast should be up for it (in addition to Ferrell, it features Kristen Wiig, Tobey Maguire and Tim Robbins). Reactions, range from positive to ho-hum and “too retro for its own good.”

In the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, director David Fincher reveals that he has changed the ending of Gone Girl for his film adaptation, which releases on Oct. 3 (the cover shot, left, is not a still from the movie; Fincher himself took the eerie photo of stars Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike in a variation of the famous Yoko Ono/John Lennon pose).

Smart move; this will add the intrigue for the legions of fans of the book. It may also benefit the book; those who see the movie first may be enticed to read the book to compare the endings.

Author Gillian Flynn embraced the complicated job of rewriting her book as the screenplay. She tells Entertainment Weekly, “There was something thrilling about taking this piece of work that I’d spent about two years painstakingly putting together with all its eight million LEGO pieces and take a hammer to it and bash it apart and reassemble it into a movie.”

Here’s a fun game to play with book clubs — “How would you change the ending?” (the web site Bookish offers five spoiler-filled ideas).

We hear that Buzzfeed‘s list of “16 Books To Read Before They Hit Theaters This Year” is having an effect on holds in libraries. Also see our list of upcoming books to movies, with tie-ins (Note: BuzzFeed includes A Long Way Down, Wild,  Serena, none of which have U.S.release dates yet, so we have them listed as In Production).

Janus has officially turned his head. USA Today switches from picking the “10 Best Books Of 2013” to asking”What 10 Books Should You Read This Winter?” Among the books by celebrities and established authors, are two by writers whose earlier books were surprise hits.

Emma Donoghue moves from a the contemporary setting of  her hit The Room (2010) to 1870s San Francisco in Frog Music, (Hachette/Little,Brown; Hachette Audio; April). The common thread is crimes against women; this one is about a grizzly unsolved murder.

Nancy Horan explored the “sandulous” (for the time) relationship between Frank Lloyd Wright and a convention-defying woman who became his mistress, in her best selling debut novel, Loving Frank, (2007). She  stays on familiar territory in her new book, Under the Wide and Starry Sky, (RH/Ballantine;RH Audio; RH Large Print; BOT; Jan. 21), based on the relationship between Robert Louis Stevenson and an aspiring American artist, who had moved to France with her three children to escape her husband.

It seems to always happen this way. Just as you begin to face the list of the things you put off until after the holidays, you suddenly realize that you haven’t put together your Midwinter schedule.

No worries; check the stories below for some tips on what to look for:

Midwinter ’14: Author Events

Midwinter ’14: Get Those Galleys

Midwinter ’14: LibraryReads Program

I hear a some of you grumbling (with a strong hint of envy) that you’re not going to Philly. Don’t let that get you down; do your own private walk through the aisles and avoid the crowds. Check out the authors featured on programs and in the booths (such as Penguin’s listing and the list of titles publishers will highlight during the “Spotlight on Adult Literature“). Look for egalleys of those books on Edelweiss or Netgalley (for the print inclined, email requests for copies to the library marketers; check our links on the right, under “Publisher Contacts”).

Whether you’re heading to Philly or not, you’ll get a great preview of the upcoming publishing season.

We’ve already urged you to sign up for the free AAP/LibraryReads programs (two names alone should entice you — Rainbow Rowell and Ransom Riggs). We hear there are still a few spots open, but hurry, seating is limited.

Also available —  save money by buying advance tickets for the United for Libraries’ Gala Author Tea on Mon., Jan 27. Speakers include Sue Monk Kidd, the author of the latest Oprah pick, The Invention of Wings, (Penguin/Viking; Penguin Audio; Thorndike), as well as Lisa Scottoline and Laura Lippman.

The other author programs (see ALA’s highlights) do not require advance reservations and include several big names, such as  National Book Award winner, James McBride, Silver Linings Playbook author Matthew Quick (his new book, The Good Luck of Right Now is coming from Harper on Feb. 11) and Brian Floca, author of one of the best picture books of the year, Locomotive. (S&S/Atheneum).

Friday night’s Grand Opening Reception in the exhibits hall has turned into a galley stampede (please, people, have sympathy for the library marketers. They’re tired from days of stacking galleys in their booths). The same is true for the “Spotlight on Adult Literature” on Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m., when publishers feature special giveaways (a good opportunity to find out what titles the publishers hope libraries will give special attention).

You don’t have to suffer the crowds. Various publishers offer buzz sessions, opportunities to hear what the library marketers are excited about and to pick up galleys in a more relaxed setting. You could spend the entire conference in the Book Buzz Theater (we sincerely hope the listing for the first session on Saturday, at 3:30 a.m., is an error!).

NOTE: Please RSVP for the following, to help ensure they have enough galleys for the crowd.

HarperCollins Buzz — 

RSVP to librarylovefest@harpercollins.com

Saturday, January 25, 2014
10 – 11:15am
Pennsylvania Convention Center
Room 114 Lecture Hall

If you can’t attend, watch for an interactive version here on EarlyWord shortly after the show.

Random House Royal Book Brunch —

RSVP to library@randomhouse.com with “Royal Book Brunch” in the subject heading.

Sunday, January 26, 2014
10:30  – 11:30am
Pennsylvania Convention Center
Room 121B

To find specific publishers on the show floor, check the interactive floor plan.

The promotional push has begun for the FX TV series based on Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s vampire trilogy,  The Strain, (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2009).

A creepy, Blair Witch type teaser appeared in the mid-season finale of The Walking Dead, a couple of set photos are featured on Yahoo TV and the tie-in cover, based on the poster, has been released (see above, right, next to the original cover).

The lead, Dr. Ephraim Goodweather is played by Corey Stoll, who was a character in the Netflix original series, House of Cards (minus the hair). The series is set to begin in July, but no specific date has been released.

Teaser:

Tie-in:

The Strain: TV Tie-in Edition by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, (Harper, June 24, 2014)
Mass market; 9780062344618,  $9.99

The ABC series Resurrection, based on The Returned, Jason Mott’s debut novel, published in late August (Harlequin/MIRA; Brilliance Audio; Thorndike), debuts on Sunday, March 9th.

About how people in a community would react if dead people suddenly returned to their loved ones, the book was a LibraryReads pick. It was widely reviewed (USA Today was particularly admiring) and appeared on the NYT best seller list for two weeks, hitting a high of #16. A trade paperback, with tie-in cover art, is set for release in March (Harlequin, 9780778317074).

Why is the title of the series  different from the book? To avoid confusion with a French series, also about dead people returning, which aired on the Sundance Channel recently with the English title The Returned.

A new promo for the series began airing over the holidays:

Ishmael Beah’s memoir of being a child soldier in Sierra Leone, A Long Way Gone, was heavily covered by the media when it was published in 2007 and is often assigned reading in schools.

His first novel, Radiance of Tomorrow (Macmillan/Sarah Chrichton; Macmillan Audio) is being published today. Reviewing it in the Washington Post, Ron Charles applauds Beah’s “lyrical style all his own. Even as a multitude of wearying failures mounts, his characters retain their hopefulness in a way that’s challenging and inspiring.”

Beah appears on the Colbert Report tomorrow night and will be a featured speaker at ALA Midwinter on Saturday, January 25, 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm.

Scott Stossel tells Terry Gross about his many phobias on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday. As a result, his book, My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, And The Search For Peace Of Mind (RH/Knopf; RH Audio), rose to #14 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

The book is receiving a mini media blitz, with coverage in the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe (which calls it a “first-rate study of anxiety and [the author’s] candid personal history as an acute sufferer”), The New Republic, and The Atlantic (where Stossel is the editor).

Last month, he and his sister, Sage Stossel, were profiled by The New York Times. She recently released a book of her own, the graphic novel Starling, (Penguin/InkLit), featuring a female superhero who “exhibits some of Sage’s own nervous qualities and frequently scarfs Xanax.”

On the cover of this week’s New Yorker magazine, the lions outside the New York Public Library morph into polar bears in Bruce McCall’s image of the city currently in a deep freeze.

In the issue, author Jennifer Weiner gets a warmer reception in a profile by Rebecca Mead, who says this “unlikely feminist enforcer … has waged a campaign against the literary media for being biased against female writers, and against books written for women … In 2010, when Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom was published, Weiner and Jodi Picoult, another best-selling novelist, objected to the attention garnered by Franzen and his work.”

Meade gives Weiner’s work serious, if not completely admiring, consideration, “Sometimes the reversals of fortune and the discoveries of love in Weiner’s books can feel forced, given the anger and hurt that precede them. Her characters can appear to be mouthing lines they have read in self-help books rather than expressing authentic emotions. It often seems that inside these calculatedly lightweight books there is a more anguished, and possibly truer, work trying to get out.”

Weiner’s next novel, All Fall Down (S&S Atria; S&S Audio) is scheduled for release in April.

Holds are heavy on Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; Blackstone Audio; Thorndike) and are likely to continue to rise. It jumped to #1 on Amazon’s sales rankings soon after Christmas, indicating that this was the gift people were disappointed not to find under the tree and that it will continue to sell in to the new year.

New York’s Frick Museum has been an unexpected beneficiary of the interest. It is host of a traveling exhibit from the Mauritshuis museum, which features the painting of the book’s title, Carel Fabritius’s The Goldfinch. The book was published just as the show opened, causing attendance to spike. The marquee piece of the show, Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring, is now vying for attention with the lesser-known, tiny Goldfinch (one weird reflection of its popularity; the museum shop added a Goldfinch tote bag to the one featuring The Girl).

The painting has a power of it’s own, as Malcolm Jones attests in an appreciation of it in the Book Beast and was even featured in the Wall Street Journal back in 2010.

If you are planning a visit, take a look at 5 Things You Should Know About The Frick. The Mauritshuis exhibit runs through January 19.