The Wall Street Journal reviews a book that is sharply critical of America’s colleges, The Five-Year Party by Craig Brandon, published by the Dallas-based indie publiser, BenBella Books, sending it up the Amazon sales rankings to #146.

The WSJ review says the book’s “chief villains are a new breed of college administrators, whom Mr. Brandon says have more in common with Gordon Gekko than Aristotle,” and, while no one who has paid attention to higher ed in recent years will be surprised by the book and “Brandon’s ideas for policy reform are uneven…The adults who pay the bills need to know what is happening to their kids on campus.”

Few libraries have ordered it.

The Five-Year Party: How Colleges Have Given Up on Educating Your Child and What You Can Do About It Craig Brandon Retail Price: $14.95 Paperback: 236 pages Publisher: BenBella Books – (2010-08-17) ISBN / EAN: 1935251805 / 9781935251804

A book with an unusual title, The Tower, The Zoo and The Tortoise, is being compared by booksellers to another unusual, but now familiar title, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, according to USA Today, which asks, “Can a quirky novel about a hapless Beefeater guard at the Tower of London and his 181-year-old pet tortoise, Mrs. Cook, be August’s hot beach read?”

Library Journal’s reviewer beat booksellers to the comparison, “Filled with the humor and heart that calls to mind the delightful novels of Alexander McCall Smith, and the charm and beauty of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society [it] is a magical, wholly original novel whose irresistible characters will stay with you long after you turn the stunning last page.”

The book’s editor, Alison Callahan, says the book “makes readers feel good…It’s an uplifting and effervescent story. It’s as funny as it is poignant. It hits all the right notes.”

We mentioned it as a book to keep your eye on in our preview of the week’s upcoming books. Holds are still modest, but up a bit from last week.

The author’s previous title is The Matchmaker of Perigord; she is at work on a third novel.

The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise: A Novel Julia Stuart Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2010-08-10) ISBN / EAN: 0385533284 / 9780385533287

Critics have gotten a look the first episodes of HBO’s new series, Boardwalk Empire, based on the book by Nelson Johnson about Atlantic City during Prohibition (and, appropriately, published by a  New Jersey publisher, Plexus Publishing). The reaction, according to the Washington Post, is a “love fest.”

The series begins September 19, with a season of twelve episodes.

Based on this trailer, there may be a new catch phrase in the making.

Official Web site: HBO.com/Boardwalk-Empire

Based on: Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City, Nelson Johnson

Tie-in:

Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City Nelson Johnson Retail Price: $17.95 Paperback: 296 pages Publisher: Plexus Publishing, Inc. – (2009-09-01) ISBN / EAN: 0966674855 / 9780966674859

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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When Washington Post Carolyn See critic loves a book, she doesn’t hide it. Her review for the debut novel The Doctor and The Diva, begins, “Some novels just naturally enslave you, and this is one of them.” Set in Boston in the early 1900’s, it’s about a woman caught in a conflict between her love for her husband, her desire to become an opera singer and her desire for another man.

The novel is based on a true story that the author researched in depth. Writes See,

The details of the novel — such as the long coach rides down a Trinidad beach where the sands are firm as pavement — gets its richness from diaries, clippings and letters. The effectiveness of the narrative comes from the novelist’s striking skill. From the very first pages, we are utterly engaged in what’s going to happen to these three people — they become as close to us as family friends.

It ’s published under a new Viking Penguin imprint, Pamela Dorman Books. Dorman is known for acquiring and editing The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards, Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding and The Deep End Of The Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard.  When she was at Hyperion, she was responsible for The Physick Book Of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe, The Monsters Of Templeton by Lauren Groff,  as well as the memoirs The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan, and Perfection by Julie Metz.

The Doctor and the Diva: A Novel Adrienne McDonnell Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 432 pages Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books – (2010-07-22) ISBN / EAN: 0670021881 / 9780670021888

Large Print, Thorndike Press, 9781410428554; October 2010

Janet Maslin reviews Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars in today’s NYT using the apt headline, “All the Right Stuff and the Gross Stuff.”

The author is interviewed by the editor-in-chief of the NYT Book Review (which also reviewed it on Sunday), Sam Tanenhaus.

The book rose to #15 on Amazon’s sales rankings over the weekend.

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Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void Mary Roach Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 334 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2010-08-02) ISBN / EAN: 0393068471 / 9780393068474

Brilliance Audio:

• CD, $99.97; ISBN 9781441876638
• Playaway, $74.99; ISBN 9781441878960
• MP3, $39.97; ISBN 9781441876652

We’ve been tracking the mounting reviews for Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story and we fully expected to find it on the cover of this week’s NYT Book Review.

But, no, that space goes to the novels by Hans Keilson, published in the Netherlands in 1947, now being published by FSG in the US. Francine Prose calls The Death of the Adversary and Comedy in a Minor Key masterpieces and Keilson a genius.

Super Sad is reviewed, however, in the issue where it also debuts on the Fiction Best Seller list at #11.

Also reviewed are Mary Roach’s Packing For Mars, (the reviewer agrees with most everyone else, including Jon Stewart, that is is “hilarious”) Mona Simpson’s My Hollywood (“Simpson works her habitual magic”), Rick Moody’s The Four Fingers of Death (doesn’t “succeed as a whole”) and Susan Isaacs’ As Husbands Go (fun characters, but too much detail).

In an essay, Pamela Paul explains she’s not the only one who prefers her kids’ books to those written for adults. Lev Grossman,Time magazine’s book critic says, ““I think young adult fiction is one of the few areas of literature right now where storytelling really thrives.”

Two women’s memoirs are likely to get significant media attention next week.

Rosanne Cash’s Composed, about her music career and life as Johnny Cash’s daughter, is already getting admiring attention, though holds are modest on light ordering at libraries we checked.

The Los Angeles Times calls it “one of the best accounts of an American life you’ll likely ever read. Yes, Cash comes from a well-known family and makes her living in the entertainment business, but ‘Composed’ is really about her spiritual growth as a daughter, a sister, a mother, a lover, a wife and an artist.”

New York Magazine profiles Cash and O, the Oprah Magazine selects it as one of 10 Books to Pick Up in August 2010.

Composed: A Memoir Rosanne Cash Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2010-08-10) ISBN / EAN: 0670021962 / 9780670021963

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Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell is the Boston Globe book critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist’s account of her deep friendship with writer Caroline Knapp. Like Caldwell, Knapp was single by choice, dedicated to her writing and recovering from alcoholism, before she died of cancer in 2002.

Laura Miller in Salon calls it

…a slender and beautiful book… [Caldwell] never stoops to tear-jerking or sentiment. Which is not to say she won’t make you cry. It might be something as simple as her first-page description of love’s tempo that does it: “For years,” she writes, “we had played the easy daily game of catch that intimate connection implies. One ball, two gloves, equal joy in the throw and return.”

It was also a LA Times summer reading pick, and the #3 Indie Next pick for August .

Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship Gail Caldwell Retail Price: $23.00 Hardcover: 208 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-08-10) ISBN / EAN: 1400067383 / 9781400067381

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

Hollywood: A Third Memoir by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster) is a new series of reminiscences from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and screenwriter. Booklist says the chapters are “disconnected,” and “his descriptions are not always charitable, but they are consistently sharp, interesting, and enjoyable.”

Where There Is Love, There Is God: A Path to Closer Union with God and Greater Love for Others by Mother Teresa (Doubleday) offers more wisdom from Mother Teresa culled from private lessons she gave to fellow nuns.

The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World’s Most Perplexing Cold Cases by Michael Capuzzo (Gotham) is about the Vidocq Society, a real-life crime-solving group.  USA Today has a Q&A with the author. This one’s also an August Indie Next pick.

Entertainment Weekly hands out two high grades to novels going on sale next week.

The Tower, The Zoo and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart (Doubleday) is the tale of how a Beefeater, his wife and their menagerie cope with modern life in the Tower of London. Entertainment Weekly gives it a solid A:

“British writer Julia Stuart (The Matchmaker of Périgord) crafts a subculture that is so sweet and enchanting that the whole affair would be terribly twee were it not for the sense of heartbreak and longing that holds it all together.”

It’s also the #2 Indie Next pick for August.

This could be one to keep an eye on – libraries we checked show modest holds on modest orders.

The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise: A Novel Julia Stuart Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2010-08-10) ISBN / EAN: 0385533284 / 9780385533287

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You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin (Riverhead) gets an A- from Entertainment Weekly, which calls it “beautiful, brainy, offbeat,” while praising the author’s “steadying compassion and literary flair in the dissection of miseries, identifying with equal compassion the dissatisfactions of a dead wife and the grief of a bewildered widower.”

But Kirkus, PW and Booklist were all underwhelmed by this debut, calling it “thinly plotted” and criticizing the main character’s “fundamental blandness” - so probably best to wait for more reviews.

You Lost Me There Rosecrans Baldwin Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover – (2010-08-12) ISBN / EAN: 1594487634 / 9781594487637

Notable Fiction On Sale Next Week

Tough Customer by Sandra Brown (Simon & Schuster) tells the story of a private investigator whose estranged daughter is threatened by a stalker. Kirkus says “the narrative, slowed by too many talky scenes and descriptive filler, eventually rewards readers’ patience with a bang-up surprise ending.”

Cure by Robin Cook (Putnam) follows a couple, both medical examiners, who investigate a mob hit. PW says “Even devoted Cook fans may find that the crimes and subterfuges are resolved too swiftly and perfunctorily.”

Veil of Night by Linda Howard is a romantic suspense novel about a wedding planner and the murder of her bridezilla client.

Death on the D-List by Nancy Grace is the second Hailey Dean thriller by bestselling author, attorney, and TV personality Grace.

City of Veils by Zoe Ferraris (Little, Brown), is the author’s second literary mystery, set in Saudi Arabia and featuring the desert guide Nayir Sharqi and forensic scientist Katya Hijazi. The starred Booklist review calls it “a suspenseful mystery and a sobering portrait of the lives of Muslim women. Recommend this potent thriller as book-club reading.” It was also a pick on the LA Times summer reading roundup and the August Indie Next list. Libraries are showing modest reserves on modest orders.

By all accounts, Stieg Larsson was a very private person, so there are few clues to what inspired his writing. This week, the UK paper, The Daily Mail published a piece about him with an attention-grabbing headline, “How a brutal rape and a lifelong burden of guilt fuelled Girl with the Dragon Tattoo writer Stieg Larsson” (it’s also on the Huffington Post today). The story is by Kurdo Baski, who has also written a bio of Larsson, due out this fall, from MacLehose Press, a division of the British publisher Quercus, also Larsson’s UK publisher.

UPDATE: Thanks to a comment from a reader, we’ve learned that this book will be published in the US as Stieg Larsson: Our Days in Stockholm, Pegasus (December 6, 2010) 978-1605981741; $25.

Stieg Larsson, My Friend Kurdo Baksi Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: MacLehose/Quercus – (2010-9-30) ISBN / EAN: 0857050214 / 9780857050212

In addition, Knopf announced that it is releasing a new boxed set of the Millenium trilogy, which will also include a volume called On Stieg Larsson, with essays about the author as well as  emails between him and his publisher, Eva Gedin. Priced at $99, it will be on sale the day after Thanksgiving.

The periodic table is an unlikely topic for a best seller, yet The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean hit the NYT Nonfiction list last week at #12, and continues in the same position on the upcoming 8/15 list.

Published early last month, it’s been reviewed in several consumer publications (including Entertainment Weekly, which gave it an A-), but until today, not in the NYT. Reviewer Janet Maslin clearly enjoys the  ”nonstop parade of lively science stories,” but finds it “is more notable for its gymnastics than its coherence.”

Entertainment Weekly had no such trouble, applauding author Sam Kean for bringing “an enthusiasm for the material that infects even those of us who wouldn’t usually give a flying photon,” and combining “the anecdotal flourishes of Oliver Sacks and the populist accessibility of Malcolm Gladwell…”

Libraries are showing holds as high as 10:1 on moderate ordering. Note that it will soon be available in audio from Tantor (see below).

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements Sam Kean Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-07-12) ISBN / EAN: 0316051640 / 9780316051644

Tantor Audio; UNABR; Read by Sean Runnette; On Sale Date: 08/23/2010

Trade; 9781400119523; 11 Audio CDs; $34.99
Library; 9781400149520; 11 Audio CDs; $83.99
MP3; 9781400169528; 2 MP3-CD; $24.99

Colbert tells Laura Ingraham that The Obama Diaries contains the most “hideous, hackneyed racial stereotypes…”

I have a problem with Gail Caldwell’s wonderful memoir, Let’s Take The Long Way Home, coming next week. I love it, but how do you recommend a book about a friendship that ends with one of the friends dying (as well as the author’s beloved dog)?

Laura Miller at Salon has found the key;

The losing isn’t the exceptional part of this story; everyone loses something, sooner or later. The wonder lies in finding it in the first place.

Let’s Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship Gail Caldwell Retail Price: $23.00 Hardcover: 208 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-08-10) ISBN / EAN: 1400067383 / 9781400067381

Tantor Audio; UNABR; Read by Joyce Bean; Simultaneous

Trade 9781400115600 6 Audio CDs $29.99
Library 9781400145607 6 Audio CDs $59.99
MP3 9781400165605 1 MP3-CD $19.99

On The Daily Show last night, Jon Stewart introduced the author of Packing for Mars as “the hilarious Mary Roach” and her book rose to #41 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

Warning: most of the episode deals with the problems of disposing of fecal material in space.

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Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void Mary Roach Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 334 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2010-08-02) ISBN / EAN: 0393068471 / 9780393068474

Brilliance Audio:

• CD, $99.97; ISBN 9781441876638
• Playaway, $74.99; ISBN 9781441878960
• MP3, $39.97; ISBN 9781441876652

Libraries are still struggling to fill holds for the summer’s surprise British hit, One Day by David Nicholls.

Random House has just released the audio.

Meanwhile, the Scottish tabloid press reports that Anne Hathaway, on the set of the movie version, currently filming in Edinburgh, is “sporting the bookish look” (i.e., she’s wearing glasses).

One Day David Nicholls Retail Price: $35.00 Audio CD: UNABR Publisher: Random House Audio – (2010-07-29) ISBN / EAN: 0307912957 / 9780307912954