Archive for July, 2015

Titles to Know and Recommend, the Week of Aug 3

Friday, July 31st, 2015

9780316407175_177cbIt may be hard to believe, but next week we head into the fall publishing season. It will be a while before we begin to see multiple marquee name authors dominate . The only one this week is James Patterson with Alert, co-authored by Michael Ledwidge (Hachette/Little, Brown).

But we do have a cornucopia of peer recommendations, eleven titles from Indie Next alone. We’ve highlighted the ones getting the most buzz below and have included them all in this collection.

The titles covered here, and several more notable titles arriving next week, are listed with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet EarlyWord New Title Radar Week of 8/3/15

Advance Attention

9780525954194_0f570The Man Who Wasn’t There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self, Anil Ananthaswamy, (Penguin/Dutton)

isn’t the only way the brain can go wrong. In this book Ananthaswamy examines the many ways the brain can go wrong, including Alzheimer’s  and body integrity identity disorder, or BIID, a which can make a person turn on his own body. .On Fresh Air, 7/28, Ananthaswamy tells Terry Gross the story of a man who had his healthy leg amputates because he had become convinced it wasn’t his own. The book is reviewed in the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, which calls it “a blazingly original excursion through the brain.”

Consumer Media Picks

9780316211369_bd062  Trust No One

Villa America, Liza Klaussmann, (Hachette/Little, Brown)

People “Pick of the Week,” 8/10/15 — “In the fictionalized look at 1920s socialites Sara and Gerald Murphy — real life inspirations for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night — party central is the Cote d’Azur and the players include novelists, painters and a stoic WW1 pilot Fitzgerald fans may go mad trying to separate truth from fantasy, but Klaussmann’s portrait of a marriage that endured many temptations (including Hemingway!) is intriguing and tender to the bone.”

Trust No One: A Thriller, Paul Cleave, (S&S/Atria)

People pick, 8/10/15 –“Jerry Grey, a thriller writer with early-onset Alzheimer’s, confesses a horrific murder to the police. Or is his jumbled mind just reciting the plot of his first bestseller? And why are cops convinced he really HAS killed someone — a crime he can’t remember? Cleave’s whirligig plot mesmerizes as Jerry fights his decline and tries to put together the pieces.?

Peer Picks

9781451693591_e4f7eThe Marriage of Opposites, Alice Hoffman

Indie Next:
“Hoffman’s newest novel is based on the life of Rachel Pomie Petit Pissarro and her favorite son, Camille, who would become the famed ‘Father of impressionism.’ Growing up in a Jewish refugee community on tropical St. Thomas in the 1800s, strong-willed Rachel dreams of the cool, rainy streets of Paris. Raised by a stern mother and a kind-hearted father, Rachel is forced to marry a widower to save her family’s business and later follows forbidden passions, creating a scandal that turns her community against her. Hoffman fills the pages with the island’s magic and color in this unforgettable tale of what it means to walk the tightrope between tradition and independence, love and logic.” —Julia Sinn, Bookshop Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA

LibraryReads:
“Exquisite… Alice Hoffman’s finest work to date. The Marriage of Opposites is a beautiful love story of a man and woman and a mother and child intricately woven together to capture the author’s true message: Love more, not less.” — Marianne Colton, Lockport Public Library, Lockport, NY

Alice Hoffman talks about the inspiration for the book in the following video:

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In a Dark, Dark Wood, Ruth Ware, (S&S/Gallery/Scout Press)

LibraryReads:
“Leonora Shaw is a crime writer who lives a solitary life in London until she receives an invitation to a hen party for a friend she hasn’t seen in nearly ten years. The party takes place in a remote location with spotty phone service. Are you nervous yet? We know from the opening pages that something horrible happens, but just what, and to whom, how, and why will keep readers guessing — and flipping the pages. Recommended for fans of The Girl on the Train.” Vicki Nesting, St. Charles Parish Library, Destrehan, LA

Entertainment Weekly:
“… you’ll find it almost impossible to put this twisting, electrifying debut down … it’s foggy atmosphere and shilling revelations will leave you breathless.” A-

9781250049582_bf495Lord of the Wings: A Meg Langslow Mystery, Donna Andrewsm, (Macmillan/Minotaur)

LibraryReads:
“It’s Halloween in Caerphilly and the town has come up with another festival to bring in the tourists. Meg Langslow is heading up the “Goblin Patrol”, there’s trouble at the Haunted House, and body parts are being found at the zoo. Meg is once again called in to save the day and solve the crime. If you enjoy your mysteries packed with humor and fun, don’t miss this return to Caerphilly with Meg and her zany family and friends.” — Karen Emery, Johnson County Public Library, Franklin, IN

9781250057808_9918fFishbowl : A Novel, Bradley Somer, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s)

Indie Next:
“Somer uses the unusual device of a goldfish plunging off of a high-rise balcony to tie together the disparate stories of the building’s inhabitants. As our hero, Ian, plummets past floor after floor, he glimpses the lives of the residents — witnessing birth, heartbreak, new love, and all of the pathos and wonder that comprise human existence. Although Ian has only a goldfish’s seconds-long capacity for memory, readers will find themselves returning to the essential truths of Somer’s characters again and again.” —Jill Miner, Saturn Booksellers, Gaylord, MI

The U.K. book trailer is our pick of the week:

Tie-ins

9781610395533_00710-2Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal, Dick Lehr, Gerard O’Neill, (PublicAffairs)

Boston crime boss beginning in the early 1970s,, Whitey Bulger wasn’t found guilty of his multiple murders and other crimes until 2013, a verdict greeted by the Hollywood press as providing a convenient ending for the biopic.

Published last year, Whitey BulgerAmerica’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice by Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy (Norton, 2/11/13) was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air and described as not only a fascinating story, but “just a great read.”

He was called “Whitey” for his balding white blonde hair, which meant that Johnny Depp had to change his look for the role.

The movie opens 9/18/2015 (for our full list of upcoming adaptations, see our Books to Movies and TV and our listing of tie-ins).

A new trailer was released this week.

9780553538229_19f65-2The Scorch Trials Movie Tie-in Edition (Maze Runner, Book Two), James Dashner, (RH/Delacorte hardcover; Trade Paperback)

The second movie in the series opens 9/18/15. A third movie, The Death Cure, 2/17/17. For once, it looks like the finale of a series will not be split into two movies.

The second trailer was released last week:

AMERICAN SNIPER’s Footsteps

Thursday, July 30th, 2015

9781455582297_3f737  American Sniper

Following the success of Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, Hollywood is mad for military movies based on books. Underscoring that, a film based on 13 Hours: The Inside Account Of What Really Happened In Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff (Hachette/Twelve,2014) opens on January 15, 2016, the same weekend that its predecessor opened last year.

Retitled 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, it is directed by Michael Bay and stars John Krasinski and James Badge Dale,

The release of the trailer was enough to send the book moving up Amazon’s sales rankings (currently at #88).

Tie-ins:

13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi
MItchell Zuckoff
Hachette/Twelve: November 24, 2015
Trade Paperback
Mass market

ROOM, Trailer

Thursday, July 30th, 2015

Those who have read Emma Donoghue’s claustrophobic best seller, Room  (Hachette/Little,Brown) may have trouble imaging a movie version. Director Lenny Abrahamson took it on, with Brie Larson starring. Just released is a teaser trailer that Entertainment Weekly calls “chilling,” Wired calls “heart-crushing” and E says may be “the year’s creepiest.”

Starring Brie Larson (recently seen in a quite different movie, Trainwreck Amy Schumer), it opens 10/16/15

Tie-ins:

Room : A Novel
Emma Donoghue
Trade Pbk.
Hachette/Back Bay: September 8, 2015
Mass Market
Audio CD

THE END OF THE TOUR Arrives Tomorrow

Thursday, July 30th, 2015

9780307592439_19091  9780316920049

The movie adaptation of David Lipsky’s Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace, (RH/Broadway Books, 2010), titled The End of the Tour,  opens tomorrow.

The book and the movie are based on interviews with the normallly press-averse David Foster Wallace (Jason Segal in the movie) by Rolling Stone journalist Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) conducted when Wallace toured for his novel Infinite Jest. (Hachette/Little, Brown, 1996).

As a result, Wallace’s book, not Lipsky’s, is rising on Amazon sales rankings.

THIS ONE SUMMER Wins
Top Eisner

Thursday, July 30th, 2015

Analyzng the Eisner Awards, announced earlier this month at Comic-Con, the  LA Times views them as reflecting a “creative swell in children’s comics,” with several titles winning in categories not defined by age.

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Caldecott honoree This One Summer by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki (Macmillan/First Second; OverDrive Sample) won for best New Graphic Album (essentially the best graphic novel of the year) and Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Brooke Allen, and Shannon Watters (S&S/BOOM! Box; OverDrive Sample) won the Best New Series award while Raina Telgemeier’s middle-grade Sisters (Scholastic, a companion to her previous title, Smile) won in the Writer/Artist category.

9781596436978_2cd2cTor.com views the awards as making a leap beyond superheroes, noting that the Best Writer Awards have traditionally gone to “an author producing pamphlet comics—serial, monthly works—rather than graphic novels.” This year breaks precedence with the award going to The Shadow Hero (Macmillan/First Second) by Gene Luen Yang “a writer who has made his name in the graphic novel industry, where he wrote and illustrated the first ever graphic novel to be a finalist for the National Book Award [Boxers and Saints]—and the first ever graphic novel to win the Printz Award [American Born Chinese].” They also note the number of women writers winning awards this year, with titles addressing subjects never before covered in graphic novels indicates that “the depth and breadth of what comics are—and can become—are reaching ever new heights.” This change was noted earlier this year by the Wall Street Journal.

Screen Shot 2015-07-30 at 11.54.12 AMThe award for the best nonfiction graphic work went to Hip Hop Family Tree, vol. 2, by Ed Piskor (Norton/Fantagraphics).Volume one was published in 2013; volume three is coming in August.

Screen Shot 2015-07-30 at 11.56.31 AMEmily Carroll’s Through the Woods (S&S/Margaret K. McElderry) won for Best Graphic Album-Reprint, giving those who do not yet own this beautifully creepy work all the more reason to buy it. Carroll also won the Eisner for Best Short Story.

Bechdel and the LATE NIGHT Bump

Thursday, July 30th, 2015

Fun Home  CD_funhome2015_194x194

Continuing his somewhat incongruous attention to books, Seth Meyers featured graphic memoirist Alison Bechdel on yesterday’s Late Night show, devoting the entire second half to her book Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2006) and its Tony-winning Broadway musical adaptation.

Meyers asked Bechdel to share the impetus behind Fun Home. Although it’s covered in the book, Bechdel’s recounting added emotional depth to  the story of  her coming out while in college and how that ultimately revealed her father’s hidden homosexual infidelity. He died shortly after in an accident that may have actually been a suicide.

That sad moment was balanced against a scene from the play, staged on Meyers set, in which the Broadway cast performed “Changing My Major.”

Holds are spiking in some libraries beyond ratios of 6:1 while a few libraries we checked had copies on the shelf.

A cast album is also available:

Tesori, Jeanine, composer, Fun home: a new Broadway musical(PS Classics)

2015 Man Booker Longlist Announced

Wednesday, July 29th, 2015

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The Man Booker Prize, Britain’s most prestigious literary award and, oddly, one of the few awards that affects sales in the U.S., surpassing our own National Book Awards, has released the 2015 longlist of thirteen titles.

This is only the second year that US authors have been eligible for the Prize. When the rules were changed, many feared the US would dominate the list, but that didn’t prove true in the first year, with only four titles by US authors on the longlist and the Prize going to Australian Richard Flanagan for The Narrow Road To The Deep North (RH/Knopf).

However, this year, says the Guardian, “those fears look more well-founded, with five US titles on the longlist of 13, and strong ones too.”

The shortlist of six books will be announced on September 15 and the winner on October 13.

Below is the longlist, with U.S. publishing information and links to U.S. consumer reviews.

Bill Clegg, Did You Ever Have a Family (S&S/Gallery; S&S Audio; Sept. 8, 2015), US

Forthcoming, so no consumer reviews yet, but it’s been popular  on GalleyChat and at BEA this year.

Anne Enright, The Green Road (Norton; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample; May 11, 2015), Ireland

Reviews — NYT Sunday Book Review; Washington Post

Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings (Penguin/Riverhead; HighBridge Audio; OverDrive Sample; Oct. 7, 2014), Jamaican, living in the US

Published last year in the US, this title appeared on many of the year’s best books lists.
Reviews — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times;  Washington Post; Wall Street JournalNYT Sunday Book Review

Laila Lalami, The Moor’s Account (RH/Pantheon; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample; Sept 9. 2014), US, born in Morocco
Published last year in the US, this title appeared on many of the year’s best books lists.

Reviews — NYT Sunday Book Review; L.A. Times

Tom McCarthy, Satin Island (RH/Knopf; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample; Feb. 17, 2015), UK

Reviews — NYT Sunday Book ReviewWashington Post; L.A. Times

Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen (Hachette/Little, Brown; OverDrive Sample; April 14, 2015), Nigeria

Reviews — NYT Sunday Book Review; NPR review

Andrew O’Hagan, The Illuminations (Macmillan/FSG; Tantor Audio; OverDrive Sample; March 24, 2015), UK

Reviews — NYT Sunday Book Review

Marilynne Robinson, Lila (Macmillan/FSG; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample; Oct. 7, 2014), US

Published last year in the US, this title appeared on the majority of of the year’s best books lists.
Reviews — David Ulin, Los Angeles TimesNYT Sunday Book ReviewWall Street Journal Ron Charles, Washington Post; Michiko Kakutani,  New York Times

Anuradha Roy, Sleeping on Jupiter (US publication has not been announced), UK, born in India

Sunjeev Sahota, The Year of the Runaways (RH/Knopf; 9781101946107; Mar. 2016), UK

Forthcoming, so no US consumer reviews yet

Anna Smaill, The Chimes (US publication has not been announced), New Zealand

Anne Tyler, A Spool of Blue Thread (RH/Knopf; Random House Audio; OverDrive Sample: Feb. 10, 2015), US

Reviews —NYT Sunday Book Review; Ron Charles, Washington PostLos Angeles Times; Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life (RH/Doubleday; OverDrive Sample; March 10, 2015), US

Reviews — Washington Post; NYT Sunday Book ReviewLos Angeles TimesWall Street Journal; NPR review on Fresh Air

Hummingbird Love

Wednesday, July 29th, 2015

9780544416031_43983Reviewers are falling in love with Fastest Things On Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood,  Terry Masear, (HMH).

There’s probably not much more you need than the title and cover to also become unchanged, but here’s a sampling of the reviews:

Fastest Things on Wings: inside the rehabilitation of injured hummingbirds — he Washington Post

Fastest Things on Wings is the soaring tale of a hummingbird rehabber — Los Angeles Times

Hollywood’s Hummingbird Rehabber Tells All —  National Geographic (take a look at this one, if only for the photos)

Even the New York Post calls it a “must-read

It was also featured on WBUR’s “Here & Now

The book is rising on Amazon sales rankings. Library orders are light.

Alison Bechdel on LATE NIGHT

Wednesday, July 29th, 2015

Fun HomeSeth Meyers has brought something unusual to late night TV, authors.

Tonight, he goes another step further, featuring graphic novelist Alison Bechdel as well as a scene ftrom the Tony Award winning play based on her book Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2006). According to TheatreMania, this will be the first time a Broadway show has been performed on Late Night.

Ann Rule Dies at 83

Tuesday, July 28th, 2015

Screen Shot 2015-07-28 at 10.01.30 AMKnown for her true crime titles beginning with The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule died on Sunday at age 83.

She got to know serial killer Ted Bundy on a counseling hot line. That relationship inspired her fist true crime book The Stranger Beside Me, which became a best seller in 1980.

She went on to write over 30 more books including And Never Let Her Go, Everything She Ever Wanted, Bitter Harvest, and Green River, Running Red.

CNN’s obituary includes an excerpt from their 1999 interview with the author. Discussing the dangers of becoming jaded while immersed in stories of crime and criminals, she concluded, “I am not a cynic because I find at least three dozen heroes for every bad guy or gal I have to write about … The good in humanity always comes out wayyyyy ahead!”

The remembrance in USA Today includes a statement by Carolyn Reidy, president and chief executive officer of Simon & Schuster, Rule’s longtime publisher: “By deciding to focus her books on the victim, Ann Rule reinvented the true-crime genre, and earned the trust of millions of readers who wanted a new and empathetic perspective on the tragic stories at the heart of her works … She will be remembered not only for her many books, but also for her ongoing and tireless work on behalf of victims’ rights.”

Screen Shot 2015-07-28 at 9.57.14 AMReaders’ Advisory: The Stranger Beside Me remains Rule’s best known book and is the place for new readers to begin. Her most recent book, about a 2003 mureder,  is Practice to Deceive. (S&S/Gallery Books, 2013).

Jon Stewart’s Next To Last Week On THE DAILY SHOW

Tuesday, July 28th, 2015

True to form, two of the four guests featured by Jon Stewart during his next-to-last week as host of The Daily Show are authors.

Last night, it was historian David McCullough, filling in at the last moment for presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who inexplicably backed out of his scheduled appearance. Cruz missed his chance if his goal was to promote his book, A Time for Truth: Reigniting the Promise of America (HarperCollins/Broadside Books; 6/30/15). McCullough’s The Wright Brothers,(S&S, 5/5/15), already a best seller, jumped up Amazons’ sales ranking as a result of the appearance.

On Wednesday Stewart will bring back one of his favorite guests, Doris Kearns Goodwin. Her latest book is The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, which they discussed when it was published in 2011.

Goodwin’s first appearance on the Daily Show, at the end of 2005, was to discuss her previous title Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

Since then, Goodwin  has been on the show several times, bringing her perspective on the history of the presidency to discussions of George W. Bush’s final State Of The Union speech (lacking substance, he appears as if “he’s ready to go back to the ranch”), whether Obama would win the 2008 election (“Yes”), then his first hundred days (Goodwin, “he’s doing pretty well”; Stewart was more skeptical) and his first State of the Union address (“he’s failing to articulate a clear legislative vision”)

GalleyChat July 2015, Familiar Faces

Monday, July 27th, 2015

Editors Note: GalleyChatter Robin Beerbower is off this month and we’re grateful to one of our go-to readers advisors, Jennifer Dayton of Darien (CT) Public Library for stepping in to write about the titles librarians were buzzing about during July’s post-ALA GalleyChat:

9780525429142_89846-2 Fates and Furies 9780062390547_07f37 Best Boy

There was still a lot of buzz this month among GalleyChatters for the titles by authors that thrilled them at BEA such as Kitchens of the Great Midwest, Fates and Furies, The Art of Crash Landing and Best Boy, (recently selected as the LibraryReads #1 pick for August), but excitement is also beginning to surface for some other titles.

The majority of the new titles are from familiar and beloved authors, titles we’d expect to see on everyone’s TBR piles, such as Louise Penney’s continuation of the Inspector Gamache series, The Nature of the Beast (Minotaur/Macmillan August), Geraldine Brooks’ The Secret Chord  (Viking/Penguin, October) as well as JoJo Moyes’ sequel to the surprise hit Me Before You entitled, of course, After You (Pamela Dorman/Penguin, September). But not all the authors are well-known and two debut memoirs are also getting word of mouth.

Familiar but not predictable:

Guest RoomChris Bohjalian is a favorite among GalleyChatters, but he is always a surprise because you don’t know what subject he will tackle next. The Guest Room (RH/Doubleday, Jan) is the  story of a bachelor party that’s worse than anything imagined in the Hangover movies. The fallout opens the fault-line cracks in the life of main character, Richard Chapman. As always with Bohjalian, he is interested in larger topics, in this case the failure to ensure  women’s rights globally. Susan Balla (Fairfield Public Library, Fairfield, CT) says, “Chris Bohjalian is a master of writing a woman’s point of view”.
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Kristi Chadwick (Advisor, Massachusetts Library System) was so engrossed in Karin Slaughter’s standalone Pretty Girls (RH/Delacorte, Sept.) that she got sunburned while reading it on the San Francisco docks during ALA. Kristi calls it “a fabulous standalone  There is a lot more to discover than the whereabouts of a missing girl, and the revelations keep coming long after you think the answers are found. It’s a stomach-dropping roller-coaster of a thriller.”

9780399171314_d699dKatie Dunneback (@younglibrarian, Washington DC) was not alone in her excitement about Along the Infinite Sea by Beatriz Williams (Penguin/Viking, Nov).  “Williams ties off her Schuyler Sisters trilogy with the story of beautiful young woman trying to hide, a restored antique car whose origin in Nazi Germany is unknown, and the rich older woman who may have the answers for both.”

9781250006301_6ea26The hot-button topic of teen bullying is examined in The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs by Martin Dicks (Macmillan.St, Martins, September). Jennifer Winberry (Hunterdon County Library, NJ) says that readers will “be glad when Caroline Jacobs returns to confront her former BFF who turned on her and finds that things have not gone so well for her.” That IS the perfect comeback.

Non-Ficti9780316200608_cfea2on:

Andrienne Cruz, (Adult Services Librarian, Azusa City Library, CA) managed to score a rare ARC of The Witches by Stacy Schiff (Hachette/Little, Brown, Oct) at BEA.  She says that, “It is not something you can regard lightly, the writing is very detailed in such a way that allows readers to discover for themselves how the Salem trials could have resulted the way they did. The reader will search for clues within and will feel bewitched in how Schiff’s research unfolds itself like magic.”

Black Man Whiite CoatBlack Man in a White Coat:  A Doctor’s Reflection on Race and Medicine by Damon Tweedy (Macmillan/Picador, Sept) was a BEA Editor’s Buzz choice and Tracy Babiasz (Chapel Hill Public Library, NC) backs that up. She calls this memoir of a black doctor trying to find his way “Equal parts objective and empathetic.” and applauds it for its “fascinating study of relationship between race and medicine.”

9781250068828_bbeef-2  9781250077004_1feac

Two other memoirs, Home is Burning by Dan Marshall (Macmillan/Flatiron Books, Oct) and Furiously Happy; A Funny Book About Horrible Things  by Jenny Lawson  (Macmillan/Flatiron, Sept), got a lot of love from GalleyChatters for the humor used in exploring the serious subjects of cancer and ALS (Home is Burning) and depression (Furiously Happy).

9781604695991_5b19cAnd finally, The Natural World of Winnie the Pooh; A Walk Through the Forest that Inspired the Hundred Acre Wood  by Kathryn Aalto (Workman/ Timber, Oct) seemed to be on multiple To Be Read piles.  While Vickie Nesting and I confessed that we do indeed pick it up and “fondle it” frequently, we haven’t cracked it yet.

Perhaps it will come up at the next GalleyChat, Tuesday, August 4th,  4:00-5:00 (ET) with virtual cocktails at 3:30. Please join us.

Dr. Seuss on The TODAY SHOW

Monday, July 27th, 2015

9780553524260_6faefOn the eve of the release of Dr. Seuss’s new book, What Pet Should I Get? (RH Books for Young Readers; Listening Library), the Today Show features a story focused on the production of the lost manuscript.

Seuss’s longtime assistant offers a reason Seuss may not have published the book himself, suggesting that One Fish, Two Fish appealed to him more, a preference that The New York Times’ Michiko Kakutani agreed with in her rhyming review.

In her cover review for the NYT Sunday Book Review, Maria Russo offers the theory that What Pet Should I Get? was a warm-up for One Fish, Two Fish.

RITA Awards Announced

Monday, July 27th, 2015

The Romance Writers of America Association announced the 2015 RITA winners.

As described by the association’s website, the awards are given “to promote excellence in the romance genre by recognizing outstanding published romance novels and novellas” and are selected by a panel of judges.

The RITAs have multiple categories, a full list is available online. Below are the big four along with the Librarian of the Year pick.

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Contemporary (Long): Baby, It’s You by Jane Graves (Hachette/Forever; OverDrive Sample).

Historical (Long): Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran (S&S/Pocket; Tantor Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Romantic Suspense: Concealed in Death by J.D. Robb (Penguin/ G.P. Putnam’s Sons; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Paranormal: Evernight by Kristen Callihan (Hachette/Forever; OverDrive Sample).

Lisa Schimmer, a senior cataloger at NoveList, won the Cathie Linz Librarian of the Year Award.

Holds Alert: THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU

Monday, July 27th, 2015

Screen Shot 2015-07-26 at 1.18.52 PMAuthor Chelsea Cain reviews A.J. Rich’s The Hand That Feeds You in this week’s New York Times Sunday Book Review.

The story follows a student at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who comes home to find her fiancé mauled to death by her three dogs . As she tries to piece together what happened, she discovers her fiancé was not the person he claimed to be.

As we reported, booksellers are behind it and so is Cain, who says it is “a tense, intriguing psychological mystery … [with] a clearheaded, character-driven style… [filled with] the sort of celebration of simple moments more often seen in short stories.”

As Cain points out, the creation of the novel is as interesting as its plot. A.J. Rich, is the pen name for two authors, Amy Hempel and Jill Ciment, who collaborated on the project begun by their dying friend, Katherine Russell Rich.

Holds are outpacing copies across the country.