The cover of the June issue of Vanity Fair features a photo from a new book about Marilyn Monroe (Lawrence Schiller’s Marilyn & Me: A Photographer’s Memories, RH/Doubleday/Nan A. Talese), but buzz is building about the magazine’s excerpt of another bio, David Maraniss’s Barack Obama: The Story.

It features “the untold story” of Obama’s post-grad romance with former girlfriend Genevieve Cook, including quotes from her diary. Does that sound like a bit of extraneous gossip aimed at selling books? US News responds with “Why Barack Obama’s Old Girlfriend Matters.”

Meanwhile, The Huffington Post is more interested in “Obama’s Thoughts On T.S. Eliot” and the NYT ”City Room” blog sniffs, “Obama? Just the Forgettable 1980s Boyfriend of a Landlord’s Tenant.”

Barack Obama: The Story David Maraniss Retail Price: $32.50 Hardcover: 672 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2012-06-19) ISBN / EAN: 1439160406 / 9781439160404

Marilyn & Me: A Photographer’s Memories Lawrence Schiller Retail Price: $20.00 Hardcover: 128 pages Publisher: Nan A. Talese – (2012-05-29) ISBN / EAN: 0385536674 / 9780385536677

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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Two of our GalleyChat regulars have started a hashtag for librarians to list their top 11 favorite books from 2011, #libfavs2011. It runs through Dec. 31, so head on over to Twitter and join in. (Thanks to Robin Beerbower, Salem [OR] Library and Stephanie Chase, Multnomah County Library ,for starting and shepherding this project).

So far the title with the most mentions is the debut, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (RH/Crown). Librarians backed it early on (it was BEA Shout & Share pick). Try it on readers who claim to hate science fiction. USA Today put it this way, “This unabashedly geeky view of a 2044 dystopia provides an enchanting escape from today’s economic crisis, dreary politicians and international turmoil,” adding, “Few novels set up an engaging plot as fast as this one.” Check your holds; some libraries are showing a significant number.

Publisher Broadway Books is treating the trade paperback, coming in June, as a relaunch, with a new cover.

Ready Player One Ernest Cline Retail Price: $14.00 Paperback: 384 pages Publisher: Broadway – (2012-06-05) ISBN / EAN: 0307887448 / 9780307887443

RH Audio/BOT; Audio and eBook on OverDrive

A relatively new prize, the three-year-old  Wellcome Trust Book Prize for the “best of medicine in literature” has been awarded to a work of fiction for the first time. Alice LaPlante’s debut novel, Turn of Mind  (Atlantic Monthly, 7/5; Audio, Brilliance; Large Print, Thorndike; audio and eBook, OverDrive) is a mystery with a twist. The protagonist, a brilliant woman surgeon, is under suspicion of murder, but because of the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, she does not know if she is guilty.

The book won over a distinguished short list, which includes Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history of cancer, The Emperor of All Maladies.

The prize committee chair described the book as “…a gripping, intricately plotted, and profoundly moving novel that takes the reader deep inside the mind of someone whose memories are being eroded by Alzheimer’s. As with all the books shortlisted for the Prize, it has something both interesting and important to say about the place of medicine and disease in our lives.”

The book has had a strong audience in libraries, showing holds of 10:1 this summer. Heavy holds continue in several libraries

HBO confirmed this week that they are developing a made-for-tv movie about Ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff with Robert De Niro as producer and expected to play the lead.

It will be based on two books, the recently-released Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family by Laurie Sandell, based on interviews with Madoff’s family (they appeared on Sixty Minutes last week to help promote the book) and The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust by Diana B. Henriques (Times Books/Holt/Macmillan) published earlier this year (the author appeared on the Today Show in April).

Novelist John Burnham Schwartz is writing the screenplay.

Kirkus said of the true crime story, The Man in the Rockefeller Suit by Mark Seal (Viking, 6/2/11), “Patricia Highsmith couldn’t have written a more compelling thriller.” Director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) has been in talks to direct a movie based this unlikely tale of a man who managed to con people into believing he was a member of the Rockefeller family, helping him to land prestigious jobs on Wall Street. He was sentenced to jail after kidnapping his daughter and is now facing charges that he murdered his former landlord in 1985.

The movie may be on the back burner for a while, however. Cooper’s next project is likely to be the adaptation of the Claire Messud novel, The Emperor’s Children (Knopf, 2006), replacing Noah Baumbach. It’s set to star Keira Knightley, Michelle Williams, Eric Bana and Richard Gere.

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter Mark Seal Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: VIKING ADULT – (2011-06-02) ISBN / EAN: 0670022748/9780670022748

Thorndike Large Pring

A GalleyChat favorite, The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson (Ecco, 8/2011), is being optioned by Nicole Kidman’s production company, with plans for her to star, according to the movie news site, Deadline.

For those unfamiliar with the book, it has nothing to do with vampires, but with a quirky family of performance artists. On NPR’s Fresh Air, Maureen Corrigan was glad that it was published during the heat of summer because,

…it’s such a minty fresh delight to open up Kevin Wilson’s debut novel, The Family Fang, and feel the revitalizing blast of original thought, robust invention, screwball giddiness. Every copy of The Family Fang sold in August should have a sticker on it imprinted with the life-giving invitation that used to be issued on movie marquees in summertime during the dawn of the air-conditioning age: ‘Come on in! It’s cooool inside!’

Kidman recently wrapped filming on the film adaptation of Pete Dexter’s novel, The Paperboy. Directed by Lee Daniels (Precious), it also stars Zac Efron, John Cusack, Matthew McConaughey and Scott Glenn.

The Family Fang: A Novel Kevin Wilson Retail Price: $18.99 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Ecco – (2011-08-09) ISBN / EAN: /780061579035/ 006157903

We’re heading into the season of best books lists (Amazon already jumped the gun, with their mid-year “Best Books of 2011 .. so far“).

Publishers Weekly‘s list will arrive in two weeks. Leading up to it, the editors are blogging daily about their favorites. The first title is a debut, The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock, which received strong critical attention from the NY Times , the L.A. Times and Robert Goolrick (author of A Reliable Wife) in the Washington Post, who said it’s “grotesque, violent, haunting, perverse and harrowing — and very good. You may be repelled, you may be shocked, you will almost certainly be horrified, but you will read every last word.”

The Devil All the Time Donald Ray Pollock Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover 261 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2011-07-12) ISBN 9780385535045

Vanessa Diffenbaugh, whose first novel, The Language of Flowers is at #6 on the the Indie Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list and debuted at #13 on the 9/18 NYT list, got a hearty new endorsement for her book in the form of a movie deal, according to The Hollywood Reporter. In a statement, the producers say,”Great characters make great movies and these are the most vivid and compelling women we have read in a long, long time.”

The book has been published in several other countries (the Australian cover is at the left, above and the British one at the right. The words on the cover, which don’t appear on the U.S. edition, are “Anyone can grow into something beautiful”). It has reached #1 on best seller lists in Italy and #5 in the U.K.

The novel explores the difficulty many foster children have in forming relationships. Diffenbaugh, who has raised foster children of her own, used her $1 million book advance, to set up the Camellia Network (in the language of flowers, camellias stand for “my destiny in in your hands”). Among other activities, the network asks book clubs to help raise money for the organization, with the opportunity to win a call-in or personal visit from the author.

The daily NYT is uncharacteristically late to the party in reviewing Ballantine’s big debut novel, The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh,(8/23; Audio, Random House Audio and Books on Tape and OverDrive; Large Print, Thorndike).

Janet Maslin’s review drips with sarcasm about the book’s potential for book clubs, which sounds curiously familiar:

The Language of Flowers, review by Janet Maslin, 9/8/11 – ”Ballantine is surely well aware that there are book clubs that have theme parties based on a literary work’s ambience. In this case the festive possibilities are mind boggling.”

The Help, review by Janet Maslin, 2/18/09 – ”Book groups armed with hankies will talk and talk about [the maids] quiet bravery and the outrageous insults dished out by their vain, racist employers.”

Despite her many reservations about The Help, Maslin rightly predicted that Kathryn Stockett’s “button-pushing book” would be “wildly popular.”

Maslin doesn’t make predictions for the popularity of The Language of Flowers, but it’s already showing signs of success. It moves up the Indie Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list today to #6, from #11 last week (we also hear it debuts at #13 on the 9/18 NYT list).

The Help arrived on the Indie list at #15 the week of its publication; it took six weeks for it to reach #5. It was a much slower journey on the NYT  list, taking 24 weeks before it climbed to #5.

Ballantine is publishing a companion to Diffenbaugh’s novel, a dictionary of flowers, which many libraries have not ordered.

A Victorian Flower Dictionary: The Language of Flowers Companion Mandy Kirkby Retail Price: $22.00 Hardcover: 192 pages Publisher: Ballantine Books – (2011-09-20) ISBN / EAN: 0345532864 / 9780345532862

NBC’s The Today Show leads the other morning shows in the amount of time they devote to books. The Early Show on Saturday Morning, challenges them with the new “R&R Book Club,” featuring monthly picks from the show’s co-anchors Russ Mitchell and Rebecca Jarvis.

One of Rebecca’s picks is a book that we’ve been writing about on EarlyWord, Amor Towles’s debut novel,  Rules of Civility (Viking, 7/26;  Books on Tape; Penguin Audio; audio on OverDrive).

The media has been focused on a major debut coming from a division of Random House, The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern (Doubleday, 9/13).

Meanwhile, another major debut, The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, from another Random House division, Ballantine (Audio, Random House Audio and Books on Tape and OverDrive; Large Print, Thorndike), was released to less media fanfare yesterday. Reviews are mixed, but they contain hints that the book will be a hit.

Despite its old-fashioned sounding title and elegant cover, the book is actually about a gritty subject, how foster care often harms kids. Victoria, who has grown up in the system in present day San Francisco, is newly on her own and homeless. Her background makes it difficult for her to trust people, but her knowledge of the secret messages conveyed by flowers leads to a job and finally a satisfying life.

In yesterday’s review on NPR’s Web site, under the pun-filled headline, “Overly Rosy Premise Proves Thorny In Flowers,” Rachel Syme makes an effort to talk herself down from enjoying the book,

As invigorating as [the language of flowers] is as a literary device, it does border on a gimmick — the overreaching and common curse of debut novels. It all seems to tie together too neatly…Where Diffenbaugh sees plot holes, she simply fills them with flowers.

Nevertheless, it leaves a lasting impression

The language of flowers, as illuminated through Victoria’s words and a special appendix, turns out to be an addictive preoccupation: Once you know that peonies represent anger; basil, hate; and red carnations, heartbreak, every supermarket bouquet takes on a new significance.

The Wall Street Journal throws in a few digs before ending on a positive note:

The Language of Flowers has been as carefully conceived and executed as a handmade wedding bouquet to appeal to readers accustomed to seeing their heroines sink into depths of despair before emerging to claim hard-won redemption. But if the novel is predictable, it is also lucid and lovely—Ms. Diffenbaugh has found a vibrant way to tell a familiar story of rift (Carolina jasmine) and reconciliation (hazel).

Both reviews attest, if condescendingly, to the book’s appeal for book clubs:

NPR; ‘The combination of harrowing orphan story and delicate exploration of a Victorian art form will be catnip for book clubs and airborne readers.”

WSJ; “Victoria’s emotional journey through the tunnel of her memories to the light of second chances is a staple of best-selling and book-club fiction”

The language of flowers may not be as antique as it seems. The UK’s Daily Mail sees a revival, both because of the book, which is a bestseller there, and because Kate Middleton used what is technically called “floriography” to choose the flowers for her wedding bouquet and the Royal wedding cake.

The book is now at #669 on Amazon sales rankings, but at a much higher #46 on B&N.com, where it is promoted on the home page under  ”Cool Books: Titles We’re Talking About.” Some libraries are showing heavy holds.

This week, novels to watch include a new thriller by Danish bestseller Jussi Adler-Olsen and a bittersweet story of committed love from comedy writer Patricia Marx. Usual suspects in fiction include Laura Lippman, Kathy Reichs and Terry Brooks. Nonfiction highlights include a memoir by Erica Heller, the daughter of Joseph Heller, and a parable by Buddhist bestseller Thich Nhat Hanh.

Watch List

Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen (Dutton; Penguin Audio; Thorndike Large Print; audio & eBook, OverDrive) is a thriller by the bestselling Danish author, about former homicide detective Carl Morck in charge of handling Copenhagen’s cold cases, including one about a missing politician. As we noted in an earlier roundup of Nordic Noir coming this summer, PW gave this this one a starred review, saying “Stieg Larsson fans will be delighted.”

Starting from Happy by Patricia Marx (Scribner) is a comical exploration of romance through the unlikely match up of a lingerie designer and a scientist, written in 618 “chaplettes.” The author has written comedy for Saturday Night Live and the New Yorker, as well as the 2007 novel Him Her Him Again The End of Him. Booklist says, “Readers who enjoy the sly observations of Nora Ephron and the smart silliness of Woody Allen and Steve Martin should try it.”

We Others: New and Selected Stories by Steven Millhauser (Knopf) ranges across three decadesof the Pulitzer Prize winner’s stories. The Wall St. Journal says the best stories are “two concerning magicians, ‘Eisenheim the Illusionist’ (the basis of the very good 2006 film The Illusionist) and ‘The Knife Thrower,’ about a performer who may or may not be killing audience volunteers as part of his show. In these shimmering tales, the author deals directly with wonder and uncertainty rather than attempting to conjure those qualities through heavy-handed metaphors.”

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh (Ballantine; Audio, Random House Audio and Books on Tape and OverDrive; Large Print, Thorndike) is a debut about 18-year-old Victoria, who has placed out of the foster care system with perilously few resources, and finds an unlikely path to stabilty in her understanding of flowers, by an author who has fostered many children and also adopted one. The San Francisco Chronicle calls it “Jane Eyre for 2011″ and “a cautionary tale about what happens to kids who’ve grown without families, one that strives to be honest but still hopeful.”

Usual Suspects

The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman (Morrow; Harper Audio; Large Print, HarperLuxe ) follows a circle of Baltimore friends who harbor a deadly secret. The Los Angeles Times say it “occupies the unlikely middle ground between thriller and coming-of-age saga… [but] doesn’t always measure up. On the one hand, [Lippman] effectively evokes the wildness of kids alone in a landscape of their own making… yet there is also something a bit headlong, a bit unformed about [her] writing.”

Flash and Bones by Kathy Reichs (Scribner; S&S Audio; Large Print, Wheeler/Thorndike) is the 14th thriller with forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Library Journal says, “Although devoted Reichs fans will miss the clever repartee and nonstop action of her previous novels, they will still plod through this one. Series newcomers will find earlier titles, such as 206 Bones and Bare Bones, far more interesting.”

Young Adult and Children’s

Bloodlines (Razorbill/Penguin) by Richelle Mead is a new teen fiction series, set in the same world as the Vampire Academy series. Fans rose to the author’s challenge  to pre-order 10,000 copies. The second book in the series, The Golden Lily is scheduled for spring 2012.

Torn by Margaret Peterson Haddix (Simon & Schuster; Large Print, Thorndike) is book four of the children’s time traveling Missing series.

Nonfiction

Yossarian Slept Here: When Joseph Heller Was Dad, the Apthorp Was Home, and Life Was a Catch-22 by Erica Heller (Simon & Schuster; Tantor Audio) recalls the tumultuous and eccentric childhood of Joseph Heller’s daughter. PW says, “The total effect is akin to leafing through a bulging family scrapbook where one finds a few blurry images among many snapshots in sharp focus. Erica Heller has inherited her father’s finely tuned flair with words.” And in a review that compares Heller’s memoir with a new biography by Tracy Daugherty called Just One Catch, The Los Angeles Times adds that Yossarian Slept Here is “much deeper and feels like all a reader needs to get the feel for the man who wrote, and lived with having written, “Catch-22.”

The Novice: A Story of True Love by Thich Nhat Hanh (HarperOne) is a parable about a Vietnamese woman who dresses like a man in order to become a Buddhist monk, by the second bestselling Buddhist author in the U.S.

The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse That Inspired a Nation by Elizabeth Letts (Ballantine) chronicles the surprise success of Harry de Leyer and his horse Snowman in the late 1950s. Kirkus calls it “aheartwarming story begging for the Disney treatment.” USA Today gave it early attention on Friday.

Local attention for Yannick Murphy’s The Call (HarperPerennial, 8/2; ebook on OverDrive) has sent holds skyrocketing at Cuyahoga Public Library (thanks to Ben Wlodarczak for the tip). Cleveland Plain Dealer reviewer Karen R. Long, noting the sameness of titles on best seller lists, says,

If I had one plink of the magic wand this week, I’d inject Yannick Murphy’s jaunty, original novel The Call into the best-seller mix. Here is a book to break the formula, both edgy and moving.

Written in the first person, the novel is in the form of short pieces by a small town veterinarian.

Word is spreading; a equally laudatory piece from The Barnes and Noble Review was republished on Salon on Tuesday; “The portrait of family life that emerges in The Call — at once ironic and warm — is ‘as layered as something in nature.’ Wonderful.” The Boston Globe ran an enthusiastic review on Sunday. UPDATE: People magazine has also discovered it. In the 8/22 issue, they give it 4 of a possible 4 stars, and say it displays “an almost magical economy.”

The Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s Long urges readers to explore the author’s backlist:

Murphy, who lives in Vermont and wrote the astutely sensuous novel Signed, Mata Hari in 2007, creates a different book on every outing, each a reverie and a joy. She is that rarity: a sharp writer unafraid to be tender.

The book is a paperback original, making it easier to buy extra copies for readers advisory and browsing.

The Call: A Novel Yannick Murphy Retail Price: $12.99 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Harper Perennial – (2011-08-02) ISBN / EAN: 9780062023148 / 0062023144

In today’s New York Times, Michiko Kakutani calls Amy Waldman’s The Submission, (FSG; Audio, AudioGo; Large Type, Thorndike) released yesterday, a “nervy and absorbing new novel.”

“Nervy” is a good description. Waldman writes about the blind submission to an architectural panel of  plans for a 9/11-like memorial. It turns out that the winner is a Muslim-American. Kakutani says,

Though this may sound, in summary, like a contrived, high-concept premise, Ms. Waldman not only captures the political furor and media storm that ensue, but also gives us an intimate, immediate sense of the fallout that these events have on the individuals involved… [giving] the reader a visceral understanding of how New York City and the country at large reacted to 9/11.

Waldman knows intimately the many issues an event like this would raise. As a New York Times reporter, she covered the Sept. 11 attacks and interviewed victims’ family members. She also reported on the international response to the attacks.

Listen to the author talk about the book on NPR’s Leonard Lopate Show here.

The Jewish Week calls the book is “much discussed.” We haven’t heard those discussions, but given the moral issues The Submission raises, it is certain to continue being much discussed and therefore, sounds ideal for book clubs. Clearly, there is anticipation, it is showing heavy holds on light ordering in many libraries.

Chris Cleave, the author of Little Bee, reviewing the book in the Washington Post, gave this analysis of significant post-9/11 novels, which is useful as we come up on the 10th anniversary:

[The form came] to prominence in 2003 with Frederic Beigbeder’s Windows on the World, by 2005 [it] had evolved through the twin strands of Jonathan Safran Foer’s urgent and heartfelt Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Ian McEwan’s universalized and reflective Saturday. By 2006, distance permitted the satire of Jess Walter’s The Zero and the subversion of Jay McInerney’s The Good Life, and the next year brought Don DeLillo’s definitive and artful Falling Man. It is by her clever shift of focus from the events of 9/11 to their commemoration that Amy Waldman takes this literary line forward, and it is through her respect for history — her own act of submission in choosing a humbler stage — that her novel stands so proudly within it.

USA Today recently rounded up the forthcoming nonfiction that will be published around the anniversary.