When Nancy Pearl talks books, buyers listen. On NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday, she presented four of her “Under the Radar” picks (the full list of seven, along with a link to the audio, are on the NPR site). Two of the titles received dramatic bumps  on Amazon’s sales rankings.

America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation, David Goldfield, (Macmillan/Bloomsbury). Rose to #189 from #102,066)

Nancy says this book that claims the Civil War could have been avoided, made her “look back and reassess my knowledge and beliefs” about the war and its aftermath.
Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein, (Hyperion). Rose to #216 from #5,238)

This one is not “below the radar” among YA readers. It’s on both the Publishers Weekly and the Amazon Best Books lists. However, as Nancy says, adults will also enjoy this “story of deep friendship, incredible bravery and the difficult choices that life sometimes forces on us.”

GoodReads proves once again that reading stats can be fun (click on the image, or here, to find out which side is more likely to  be a fan of Atlas Shrugged).

We’d sworn off writing about Fifty Shades of Grey, but damn USA Today‘s book editor, Dierdre Donahue who writes a smart piece about the “10 reasons Fifty Shades of Grey has shackled readers,” beginning with the observation that, “Despite its scarlet reputation, the series is an old-fashioned love story with some odd sex toys, riding crops and mild bondage tossed in.”

We’re hoping this will be the final word. We’re growing tired of those covers.

And, since it may be (no promises), we’ll make it a twofer, by pointing out that Goodreads has created an infographic of where Fifty Shades readers live, indicating that it is an East Coast phenomenon (click here for full graphic, with analysis).

It seems unlikely, but the AP reports that a new study says Oprah’s endorsements suppressed the sales of books overall. Because “the books Oprah chose were longer and more challenging,” people ended up spending time with one book, when they might have been reading two or three less difficult books.

The media went on red-alert last week about an erotic fiction trilogy.The New York Post reported on Tuesday that Fifty Shades of Grey by first-time British author E.L. James ”has NYC moms reading like never before.” Apparently, they are also talking nonstop to each other about what they are reading. So much sharing is going on that one woman called it “the new kabbalah for female bonding in this city.”

Canada’s Globe and Mail gives the publishing background,

Through an independent publisher in Australia [The Writer's Coffee Shop is based in New South Wales, Australia; the company's US address is in Waxahachie,Tex] the trilogy has sold more than 100,000 copies, the bulk of them e-books…First time-author E.L. James, a television executive living in London, honed her erotica chops penning BDSM-themed Twilight fan fiction. She has said that the bondage opus was her “midlife crisis.”

The story was picked up by several other news sources, culminating on the Today Show on Friday.

WorldCat indicates that a handful of libraries own or have ordered the print version of the book. Most are showing a modest number of holds. The first title in the series hit the NYT best seller list in ebook format last week (#24, rising to #23 this week).

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Holy Appeal Factors; USA Today offers a rundown of new and forthcoming books to read if your interest in Nordic noir has been “stoked by Stieg.” (Click on titles above for full biblio. info.)

Each annotation includes the “Stieg factor,” such as this one for Hennig Mankell’s latest (and final) in his Kurt Wallander series, The Troubled Man, “The brooding Wallander makes Salander’s black moods feel like a sunny day in Miami.”

In a companion story, Dierdre Donahue looks at this spring’s Scandinavian invasion of authors on book tour in the US.

How quickly one goes from literary darling to Jonathan Franzen, the Writer We Love to Hate (Newsweek, 8/26).

USA Today joins the growing trend of writing about “one of the fastest-growing genres in romance publishing,” novels with Amish settings (Business Week, The Wall Street Journal and the AP have all written about the phenomenon).

Several new and forthcoming titles are cited, including the launch of a new series, from “the queen of the genre,” Beverly Lewis.

The Thorn (The Rose Trilogy) Beverly Lewis Retail Price: $14.99 Paperback: 352 pages Publisher: Bethany House – (2010-09-07) ISBN / EAN: 0764205749 / 9780764205743

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Lydia’s Charm: An Amish Widow Starts Over in Charm, Ohio Wanda E. Brunstetter Retail Price: $14.99 Paperback: 384 pages Publisher: Barbour Books – (2010-09-01) ISBN / EAN: 1602600635 / 9781602600638

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Autumn’s Promise: Seasons of Sugarcreek, Book Three Shelley Shepard Gray Retail Price: $12.99 Paperback: 320 pages Publisher: Avon Inspire – (2010-08-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061852376 / 9780061852374

Blackstone Audio

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Three titles from Harlequin’s Stepple Hill imprint:

The Doctor’s Blessing (Love Inspired) Patricia Davids Retail Price: $5.50 Mass Market Paperback: 224 pages Publisher: Steeple Hill – (2010-08-01) ISBN / EAN: 0373876130 / 9780373876136

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Courting Ruth (Steeple Hill Love Inspired) Emma Miller Retail Price: $4.40 Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages Publisher: Steeple Hill – (2010-09-01) ISBN : 9780373876242

Larger Print; pbk; 9780373815029; $5.00

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Amish-themed mysteries are also being released, including the first in a series originally published by Ohio University Press and being reissued by Plume.

Blood of the Prodigal: An Amish-Country Mystery (Ohio Amish Mysteries) P. L. Gaus Retail Price: $13.00 Paperback: 256 pages Publisher: Plume – (2010-09-28) ISBN / EAN: 0452296463 / 9780452296466

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Wondering why  ”This summer belongs to Stieg Larsson”?

USA Today‘s Deirdre Donahue gives ten reasons.

On next week’s NYT best sellers list (8/1), the books show amazing longevity by          topping three of them — hardcover fiction, mass market paperback and trade paperback.

The phenomenal success of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series in the U.S., has brought attention to other foreign crime writers. According to a story in today’s Wall Street Journal,

The flood of imported crime fiction is striking given American publishers’ longstanding resistance to works in translation. Newly translated books still make up just 3% of titles released in the U.S., according to Bowker…and translated fiction and poetry make up less than 1%. In many European countries, translated books account for 25% to 40% of titles.

Perhaps the best indicator of the trend is the fact that James Patterson has begun partnering with writers in other countries (covered in a separate WSJ story). His Postcard Killers is written with Swedish author Liza Marklund, who wrote a draft in Swedish, based on Patterson’s outline, which was then translated into English for Patterson to edit. The book was released in Europe first, where it did not appeal to Swedish audiences, who prefer more literary crime writing.

The Postcard Killers James Patterson, Liza Marklund Retail Price: $27.99 Hardcover: 432 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-08-16) ISBN / EAN: 0316089516 / 9780316089517

Patterson is also working on a new Private series, with authors in several other countries.

Minotaur Books, is particularly active in bringing in titles from abroad. The Wall Street Journal says that, until just a few years ago, the St. Martins imprint focused on British imports, but their list now features writers from Iceland, Japan, Nigeria, South Africa as well as Sweden. They are “betting big” this coming February, with a 75,000 copy first printing of The Devotion of Suspect X by Japanese best-selling writer, Keigo Higashino.

This August, Pantheon Books will publish another best-selling Japanese crime writer, Shuichi Yoshida, for the first time in the US. The WSJ says that Yoshida’s 2007 book, Villain, is a “moody narrative [that] unfolds from multiple characters’ perspectives.” Publishers Weekly calls it a “subtle but powerful novel.”

Villain: A Novel Shuichi Yoshida Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Pantheon – (2010-08-03) ISBN / EAN: 030737887X / 9780307378873

The WSJ story includes a chart that delineates the characteristics of each country’s crime writers and their appeal to specific reading tastes.

On her L.A. Times book blog, Jacket Copy, Carolyn Kellogg refutes the New York Observer story that claims “Fiction has become culturally irrelevant.”

On the Huffington Post, writer and former book editor Jason Pinter argues that, contrary to the prevailing opinion, men will read, they’re just not being provided with the proper manly material (and, those ads for The Nook and The Kindle? They’d make any man run). Based mostly on anecdotal evidence, Pinter says the problem is that there are so many women in publishing (he says it’s “dominated” by women. That may be true in total numbers, but I’m willing to bet that an analysis of the numbers of women in top positions will show a different story. Among the “big six” publishers, for instance, Carolyn Reidy is the sole CEO).

On Salon, Laura Miller responds to the post and amusingly summarizes the 130 comments it brought. She accepts Pinter’s thesis and adds that men are not attracted to publishing because it “…increasingly resembles those ‘caring professions,’ nursing and teaching, where the joy of laboring selflessly on behalf of a noble cause — in this case, literature — is supposed to make up for the lack of profits and respect.”

You can’t help but wonder, though, over half the books on the NYT Fiction Best Seller list are written by men. Have they all been coerced by women editors into writing for the female audience?

In a thoughtful essay in Sunday’s NYT BR, children’s editor, Julie Just points out that bad parents (rather than simply absent ones) are making their way in to children’s books,

…some of the most sharply written and critically praised works reliably feature a mopey, inept, distracted or ready-for-rehab parent, suggesting that this has become a particularly resonant figure.

She sees the trend in best selling fantasy series such as  Twilight, Shiver and The Hunger Game and in several well-reviewed YA titles such as,

Once Was Lost Sara Zarr Retail Price: $16.99 Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers – (2009-10-01) ISBN / EAN: 0316036048 / 9780316036047

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How To Say Goodbye In Robot Natalie Standiford Retail Price: $17.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Scholastic Press – (2009-10-01) ISBN / EAN: 0545107083 / 9780545107082

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Wintergirls Laurie Halse Anderson Retail Price: $9.99 Paperback: 288 pages Publisher: Speak – (2010-02-23) ISBN / EAN: 014241557X / 9780142415573

And younger readers are treated to distracted parents in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.

Fictional parents in current literature  are being presented with very real flaws, making them vivid and believable. That’s one of the reasons I was so taken with Shiver and How to Say Goodbye in Robot.

Sarah Weinman is one of the few people writing thoughtfully about mysteries in the mainstream media these days (as well as on her own site, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind). This week, in the L.A. Times, she explores the appeal of the unreliable narrator, pointing out some classics (Ira Levin’s A Kiss Before Dying, Dorothy Hughes’ In a Lonely Place and Patricia Highsmith’s books).

She also chooses two newly-published titles.  She describes Jesse Kellerman’s prose as a “silken sheen covering deep existential skeletons” in his new book The Executioner as well as his earlier works.

The Executor Jesse Kellerman Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Putnam Adult – (2010-04-01) ISBN / EAN: 039915647X / 9780399156472

Audio; UNABR; Penguin Audio; 11 Hours | ISBN 9781101154779

The second book may have the best title and cover of the season, Hello Kitty Must Die, which refers to the main character’s efforts to escape the stereotype of the well-mannered Asian American girl. A first novel, it’s available in paperback and hardcover from indie crime fiction publisher Tyrus Books, in Madison Wisconsin. It’s been well-reviewed in both Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. Weinman is a fan, but admits that the book’s audience may be limited to those who,

…cackle and gasp at the book’s opening line — “It all started with my missing hymen” — and are compelled to move on. For those who recoil, well, that’s your loss, but Fiona Yu doesn’t really care what you think or if she’s offended anyone.

Hello Kitty Must Die Angela S. Choi Retail Price: $14.95 pbk/ $24.95 hdbk Publisher: Tyrus Books – (2010-04-01) ISBN: 9781935562023; pbk/ 9781935562030; hdbk

Arriving at #28 on the 3/21 Extended NYT Fiction best seller list is Heresy by S.J. Parris, a pseudonym for Stephanie Merritt. It’s her first outing under this name, her first time writing an historical thriller, and her first time on the best seller list. The Washington Post recently pegged Heresy as part of a subgenre they call “the religious thriller”:

If proliferation is a sign of health, then the most vigorous member of the historical novel species must surely be the religious thriller. We know what to expect of these ecclesiastical romps: Sadistic clerics, heroic visionaries, ancient texts, torture chambers and a sprinkling of Latin are guaranteed whether the turmoil being depicted is the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Inquisition or some obscure schism.

Set in the 16th C. the book is about a real-life Italian monk who was excommunicated for believing that the earth revolves around the sun. Escaping to Oxford, he was recruited as a spy for Elizabeth I and become involved in trying to solve some grisly murders. Heresy was acquired as the first in a trilogy

Merritt/Parris recently wrote in the Guardian that she enjoyed writing this book more than any of her others,

The best crime and thriller novels, though they may work within certain parameters, can offer just as much scope for psychological depth, tenderness and a critical perspective on society as “serious” novels, and writers such as Robert Harris and Matthew Pearl prove that you don’t have to compromise on prose style to create a cracking plot.

Heresy S.J. Parris Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 448 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2010-02-23) ISBN / EAN: 0385531281 / 9780385531283

Random House audio; ABR; 9780307714299; $30
ebook available from OverDrive