For me, “must-see tv” is Nine by Design, Bravo’s reality show about a couple who design and remodel homes while raising seven kids. The couple’s amazing good looks, exciting designs and “improbably poised children” (The New York Times) have inspired envy (the Times calls them “annoyingly perfect, oddly sane”).

On last night’s show, the entire family travels to London to promote the parents’ book, Downtown Chic, published by Rizzoli. This morning, the book, which came out last year, rose to #54 on Amazon.

Downtown Chic: Designing Your Dream Home: From Wreck to Ravishing Robert Novogratz, Cortney Novogratz Retail Price: $45.00 Hardcover: 176 pages Publisher: Rizzoli – (2009-05-05) ISBN / EAN: 0847831736 / 9780847831739

What do you get when you combine high unemployment with a desire to know where your food comes from?

A raft of new gardeners looking for books on raising vegetables, as a recent article in Publishers Weekly points out (and we noted earlier).

That prediction seems to be proving true; Grow Great Grub, aimed at new, urban and hip gardeners was just published and moved quickly up Amazon’s sales rankings to #215.

Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces Gayla Trail Retail Price: $19.99 Paperback: 208 pages Publisher: Clarkson Potter – (2010-02-02) ISBN / EAN: 0307452018 / 9780307452016

The PW piece includes a several other titles aimed at new gardeners that are coming out this season

Amy Stewart, author of Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities, was featured on NPR today, driving up substantial reserves on the book; several libraries we checked did not have it, while others had 18 or fewer copies.

The book offers an anecdotal look at plants that are illegal, dangerous and even deadly. According to a New York Times “At Home With” profile of the author in May, Wicked Plants “makes no pretense of being a comprehensive guide to poisonous plants. While it is instructive, its focus is on great yarns.” (The Times also reveals that, intriguingly, Stewart began cultivating a ”poison garden” when she started working on the book three years ago.)

Although the author has received local coverage in her Portland, OR hometown, East Coast papers such as the Newark Star-Legder have also picked up on the book because of a corresponding exhibit at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York City.

The deadliest plant according to Stewart? Tobacco–as it has killed 90 million people.

Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities Amy Stewart Retail Price: $18.95 Hardcover: 223 pages Publisher: Algonquin Books – (2009-05-21) ISBN / EAN: 1565126831 / 9781565126831

I’m getting a little tired of looking back at 2008, so it’s a relief to turn to the American Booksellers Association’s list of favorite titles coming in January (Indie NextList).

Topping the list of 20 titles is the comic first novel Beat the Reaper, about a hit man turned medical intern. Bookseller Amy Pierson of Toad Hall Bookstore, Rockport, MA says “The briskly paced thriller offers an entertaining plot, quirky characters, and a shocking ending that will haunt the reader for a long while.”

This is Little, Brown’s big Winter debut novel, acquired by Reagan Arthur, an editor with a great track record for spotting debut hits, such as The Historian and And Then We Came to the End.

Library ordering is relatively light, despite strong reviews in all four prepub sources — PW, LJ,  and Kirkus and Booklist (“Who would have thought that extreme violence liberally sprinkled with obscenities could be both funny and tender?”). Note that it is also available in audio and large type.

Beat the Reaper

by Josh Bazell

• Hardcover: $24.99; 320 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown (January 7, 2009)
• ISBN-10: 0316032220
• ISBN-13: 978-0316032223

• Audio CD: Unabridged; $29.98
• Publisher: Hachette Audio; (January 7, 2009)
• ISBN-10: 1600244327
• ISBN-13: 978-1600244322

• Hardcover: $30; 240 pages
• Publisher: Taunton Press (January 1, 2009)
• ISBN-10: 1600850081
• ISBN-13: 978-1600850080

An article in today’s NYT Business Section reads like a collection development piece. “A Shift in Real Estate Books” looks at what today’s home buyers and sellers want to know and how publishers are scrambling to meet their needs.

Rather than information on how to make money in a real estate boom, people now want to learn how to get out of bad investments and, on the other side, how to make money on foreclosures.

It’s sad reading; you can’t help but think about all those unfortunate people (including Ed McMahon, who stands in as the Everyman in the article. Yes, the Johnny Carson guy. Yes, the Publishers Clearinghouse guy. He is $644,000 behind on his mortgage. He even went on Larry King to talk about it.)

Here’s the wrap-up of the new titles the NYT mentions.

Getting out of real estate

Home Staging for Dummies

• Publisher: Wiley
• Pub. Date: April 2008
• ISBN-10: 0470260289
• ISBN-13: 978-0470260289

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Selling a Home

Alpha, an imprint of Penguin, has decided to split their Complete Idiot’s Guide to Buying and Selling a Home into two titles, because “in an environment like this, we had to cover a lot of territory on strategies like staging and pricing.” No pub info. yet.

Taking advantage of the downturn:

Property Management for Dummies

Wiley

The pub date for the new edition of this title was moved up to August. No further information available at this point.

The 250 Questions Everyone Should Ask About Buying Foreclosures

• Publisher: Adams Media Corporation
• Pub. Date: July 2008
• ISBN-10: 1598695835
• ISBN-13: 978-1598695830

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Buying a Home

Penguin/Alpha

As mentioned above, the publisher has split The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Buying and Selling a Home into two parts.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Buying Foreclosures

Publisher Penguin/Alpha is working on a new ed. No pub information yet.