Titles to Know and Recommend, Week of March 28, 2016
Eliciting the most holds of book arriving next week is Karen Robards’ romantic suspense novel, Darkness (S&S/Gallery; Brilliance Audio), its neon-colored jacket belying the title. Library ordering is in line with strong holds.
Two titles that libraries may have underbought, based on holds ratios, are Karen Kingsbury’s Brush of Wings (S&S/Howard; S&S Audio) and Jacqueline Winspear’s latest Maisie Hobbs novel, Journey to Munich (Harper; HarperAudio; HarperLuxe).
Kingsbury has gained new readers as a result of the Hallmark series based on her earlier book, The Bridge. More adaptations of her novels are coming. Hallmark is at work on another of her novels, A Time to Dance and Roma Downey recently acquired the rights to produce Kingsbury’s Baxter Family series for TV.
Winspear’s series has been growing in popularity. The last few titles in the have all landed on the NYT best sellers list in the top five
The titles covered here, and several other notable titles arriving next week, are listed with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of March 28, 2016
Advance Attention
Melancholy Accidents: Three Centuries of Stray Bullets and Bad Luck, Peter Manseau, (Melville House)
Author Manseau has come up with a brilliant and haunting way to examine the history of American gun violence, by reproducing stories from old newspapers, which often used the term a “melancholy accident” for such events.
That clever idea gets equally clever marketing by the book’s indie publisher, Melville House, which has bombarded the NRA and pro-gun politicians like Ted Cruz with images from the book:
All the macabre history of gun accidents that’s fit to print, every day until we publish this tiny beauty. pic.twitter.com/UXvxg27TYJ
— Melville House (@melvillehouse) March 3, 2016
Appropriately, given the political implications, the book received an early review from Ron Charles in the Washington Post, who writes,
“While acknowledging that his compendium of mayhem may read like a political argument against guns, that wasn’t his intention. The people he’d really like to reach are gun owners. Their adaptation of smart guns, which electronically limit who can fire them, is our best chance for progress, he says.”
The author writes in an opinion piece in the New York Times, Trigger Warnings, “Though often seen as an embodiment of the nation’s freedom-loving swagger, every gun comes loaded with an alternate history: not heroic self-reliance but hapless tragedy.”
Consumer Media Picks
People magazine’s “Book of the Week” is Lee Smith’s memoir Dimestore: A Writer’s Life, Lee Smith (Workman/Algonquin; OverDrive Sample), which came out last week; “With restrained prose and charming humor, she illuminates a way of life that has all but disappeared and explores the impulse to bear witness that underpins the storyteller in all of us.”
It is also an April LibraryReads pick.
Peer Picks
One LibraryReads title hits the shelves this week, the highly anticipated return of the Romance series known as the Bridgertons.
Mary Aileen Buss, of Long Beach Public Library, NY, offers this annotation of Because of Miss Bridgerton, Julia Quinn (HC/Avon; HarperAudio):
“This is the first in a prequel series to Quinn’s popular Bridgerton series, set a generation earlier. Billie Bridgerton spent her childhood running wild with the neighboring Rokesbys, Andrew, Edward, and Mary. Now she runs the family estate for her father and still runs as wild as she can. The eldest Rokesby, George, never really approved of Billie, but when he rescues her from a roof they begin to come to a new understanding.”
Another long awaited return of a fan favorite is an Indie Next pick, Lust & Wonder: A Memoir, by Augusten Burroughs (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press; OverDrive Sample).
“We have read about his crazy childhood, his struggles with alcohol, and his troubled relationships with his father and Christmas. Now, we have Burroughs’ take on love and romance, and what a tale it is! This is a love story as only Burroughs can tell it — the wrong lovers, the long-term relationship that turned out to be toxic, and the love that was staring him in the face all along. Roses and moonlight it is not, but the course of true love never does run smooth. I laughed, I cried — just read it!” —Susan Taylor, Market Block Books, Troy, NY.
It will be issued as a one-day laydown on March 29.
There is also an All Star title with 
Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, Adam Hochschild (HMH; OverDrive Sample) hitting shelves on the 29th.
It earned starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. It is also reviewed in today’s New York Times.
Tie-ins
This week sees the release of the tie-in to John le Carré’s The Night Manager (TV Tie-in Edition) (PRH/Ballantine Books; OverDrive Sample).
It hits shelves in advance of the AMC limited series (by way of BBC One) that begins airing April 20 and stars Tom Hiddleston (The Avengers) and Hugh Laurie (House). It is directed by Academy Award winner Susanne Bier (In a Better World).
As we reported earlier, the tie-in is particularly notable as the 1993 best seller is no longer in print.
For our full list of upcoming adaptations, download our Books to Movies and TV and link to our listing of tie-ins.