Among next week’s releases are two much-buzzed-about debuts. Library demand is highest for The Postmistress by Sarah Blake, with holds of  6:1 or higher on modest orders.

The tale of an American radio reporter in WWII London, the novel is winning comparisons to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society from booksellers, one of whom touted The Postmistress in PW‘s Galley Talk column, and also in a USA Today story on breakthrough winter titles. The book also carries a blurb from Kathryn Stockett, author of the runaway bestseller, The Help.

Entertainment Weekly gives it an A- in the new issue, saying “There’s both exquisite pain and pleasure to be found in these pages, which jump from the mass devastation in Europe to the intimate heartaches of an American small town.”

The Postmistress Sarah Blake Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam – (2010-02-09) ISBN / EAN: 0399156194 / 9780399156199

Available from Blackstone Audiobooks

• CD: $100; ISBN 9781441725714
• MP3 CD: $29.95; ISBN 9781441725745
• Cassette: $65.95; ISBN 9781441725707

Audio and e-book available from OverDrive

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Union Atlantic, the first novel by Adam Hazlett, author of the bestselling story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here, is also attracting 2:1 hold ratios in libraries we checked. The novel explores the gilded age of the last decade, centering on a land dispute between a young banker and a retired schoolteacher, and was chosen as a #1 Indie Next Pick for February.

New York magazine profiles Hazlett this week, as did PWearlier, both noting that the book, which Hazlett began writing ten years ago, foretells the recent financial crisis and even the bailout. He tells New York that when he began writing it, he feared readers might not know, or even care, what the Fed is.

Libraries have ordered it in similar quantities to The Postmistress, with one-fifth the number of holds.

Union Atlantic Adam Haslett Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Nan A. Talese – (2010-02-09) ISBN / EAN: 0385524471 / 9780385524476

Other Major Titles On Sale Next Week

Adriana Trigiani‘s Brava Valentine (HarperCollins), the second in her Valentine trilogy about a loving but fiery Italian American family, is showing reserves of 6:1 at one library we checked, making it the most-anticipated fiction title of the week.

Alex Berenson‘s The Midnight House(Penguin), the fourth in a series featuring superspy John Wells,  is also much in demand, though not available at all libraries we checked.

Peter Straub‘s A Dark Matter (Knopf Doubleday) “ranks as one of the finest tales of modern horror,” according to PW.

Chuck Hogan‘s Devils in Exile(Simon & Schuster) is “a compelling portrait of a good man who makes bad choices and in the end must battle his way out of a destructive and deadly life,” PW said.

By now, you may feel that you know everything that is in The Politician by John Edwards’ aide, Andrew Young, but in today’s New York Times, Janet Maslin reviews the book, saying, “this,…like Game Change, is a book worth reading for its larger drama.”

Game Change has been in the top three on Amazon’s sales rankings since January 11th, sometimes occupying the #1 position (it was recently knocked down by Michael Pollan’s Food Rules; speaking of strange bedfellows).

The highest level The Politician has reached is #7; it is currently at #52.

Unabridged audio will be available from Tantor:

Publisher: Tantor, 2/22/10 (UPDATE: see comment; Available Now)
Read by: Kevin Foley
Trade: 9781400116508; 10 CD’s; $34.99
Library: 9781400146505; 10 CD’s; $69.99
MP3: 9781400166503; 1 MP3-CD; $24.99

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

Michael Pollan’s paperback original title, Food Rules, has been on the Amazon top five since Jan. 5, It got a boost to #1 from a recommendation by Jane Brody in the New York Times “Health” column on Monday,

In the more than four decades that I have been reading and writing about the findings of nutritional science, I have come across nothing more intelligent, sensible and simple to follow than the 64 principles outlined in a slender, easy-to-digest new book called Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, by Michael Pollan.

Libraries are showing holds as high as 420 on 45 copies.

Here’s a rare thing; an inexpensive bestseller. It’s a great opportunity to buy more and make your customers happy.

Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual Michael Pollan Retail Price: $11.00 Paperback: 112 pages Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) – (2009-12-29) ISBN / EAN: 014311638X / 9780143116387

ebook available from OverDrive

Now the big guns are coming out.

Shortly after Macmillan CEO, Jon Sargent asked Amazon to change the pricing model for Kindle books, Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp (which owns HarperCollins) expressed his desire to renegotiate terms and claims that Amazon appears “ready to sit down with us again,” according to a story by Reuters.

Rebecca Skloot became obsessed with a story of Henrietta Lacks, a woman who contracted cancer in 1951; it was so virulant that it killed her within the year. She was just 31.

Amazingly, however, her cancer cells went on to have a life of their own. A medical researcher had been trying to find cells that would live indefinitely so he could use them in experiments. Lacks’ cells had that unique characteristic and have been used in labs around the world ever since; they were used to develop the first polio vaccine as well as drugs for many other diseases.

But neither Lacks nor her family knew that her cells were going to be used in this way.

Skloot just published a book about the story, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It was covered on ABC’s World News Tonight on Sunday and in the New York Times‘ “Health” section yesterday. Calling the book “gripping,”  the article notes that it raises difficult ethical issues; “if scientists or companies can commercialize a patient’s cells or tissues, doesn’t that patient, as provider of the raw material, deserve a say about it and maybe a share of any profits that result?”

The book is currently at #10 on Amazon. UPDATE: After the author was interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross on Feb. 3, the book rose to #7 on Amazon.

Ordering is light with heavy holds in most  libraries. Where the audio is owned, it is also showing heavy holds

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Rebecca Skloot Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Crown – (2010-02-02) ISBN / EAN: 1400052173 / 9781400052172

Random House Audio; UNABR; 9780307712509; $35
Audio and e-book available from OverDrive.

Given the reviews so far, it seems you either get Jonathan Dee’s fifth novel, The Privileges, or you don’t.

In today’s New York Times, Janet Maslin says that, although the story is “excessively cryptic …[it] is so invitingly told that it’s much easier to be drawn in than turned off.”

The book rose to #108 on Amazon two weeks ago, based on a very strong review in the NYT BR. Holds are heavy in several large libraries, on very modest ordering.

The book follows the marriage of a New York City “golden couple” who rise to great wealth on insider trading. It’s not the plot that hooks the reviewers, but the way it is told; the Cleveland Plain Dealer says the first chapter, about the couple’s wedding, “could stand on it own as an exquisite short story.”

But the review that most makes you want to read the book is in the L.A. Times, which is worth reading in its entirety.

The Privileges Jonathan Dee Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-01-05) ISBN / EAN: 1400068673 / 9781400068678

e-book available on OverDrive.

The scoop-hungry National Enquirer, which is planning to enter the paper’s reporting on John Edwards and Rielle Hunter for the Pulitzer Prize, now claims that Oprah Winfrey is publishing a memoir.

The article reports, “Oprah wrote her memoirs years ago, but shelved the book on the advice of family and friends, sources say. But she’s releasing it now to thwart the impact of Kitty Kelley’s unauthorized book, Oprah: a Biography.”

Back in the mid-nineties, Oprah was indeed close to publishing an autobiography with Knopf, but pulled out at the last minute (there was even a lavish party for the book at the ABA convention; the predecessor to Book Expo America). Knopf told EarlyWord that they know of no plans to publish it now.

Meanwhile, sister imprint, Crown is publishing the Kitty Kelley book in April.

Oprah: A Biography Kitty Kelley Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: Publisher: – (2010-04-13) ISBN / EAN: 0307394867 / 9780307394866

Random House Audio; 9780307749246; $50
Crown Large Print; Pbk; 9780739377857; $30

Another skirmish in the e-book pricing war took place over the weekend. After Macmillan CEO Jon Sargent flew out to Amazon HQ to ask that Kindle pricing be restructured along the lines of the “agency model” offered by the new Apple iBooks store, Amazon not only rejected the suggestion, but retaliated by no longer selling Macmillan titles (which includes the imprints St. Martin’s, FSG, Holt and Tor/Forge); none were available for the Kindle and print editions could only be purchased through third-party retailers. This was covered in many news sources, including the L.A. Times.

On Sunday, it looked as if Amazon had conceded, posting this statement on the Kindle Community area (a somewhat hidden area of the site):

Dear Customers:

Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!

However, as of early Monday, Macmillan titles were still not for sale through Amazon.

What effect will this have on the public perception of e-books? It underscores that only certain titles are available for the Kindle and they can be removed from sale; issues librarians know only too well from dealing with database vendors (e.g., EBSCO & Gale). Corey Doctorow wrote on the tech site, Boing Boing, “this is a case of two corporate giants illustrating neatly exactly why market concentration is bad for the arts.” Futher, he objects to “Amazon draping itself in the consumer-rights flag,” when “Amazon’s ebooks are locked (by contract and by DRM) to the Kindle.” He also points to a post by John Scalzi, All the Many Ways Amazon So Very Failed This Weekend (even if you don’t care about this particular fight, read the post; it’s very funny).

Amazon has worked to give customers the perception that Kindle e-books cost $9.99, but if you are not buying bestsellers, Kindle prices can be quite a bit higher than that. Of the nine titles with full reviews in the current NYT BR, only one is available in a $9.99 Kindle edition; three are not available at all (these do not include any Macmillan titles; curiously, the one Macmillan title reviewed, from Palgrave Macmillan, is available for the Kindle. Guess Amazon doesn’t realize they’re part of Macmillan) and the rest were just $1.13 to $2.83 less than the hardcover price. In one case, the hardcover through a third-party retailer was cheaper than the Kindle version.

But consumers have proven they want the lower prices; none of the titles in the 100 top-selling Kindle titles was above $9.99 when we checked yesterday; the majority of the top “sellers,” 55 titles, were free; 25 titles range in price from $.01 to $9.60 and just 20 titles were at the magic $9.99 price. Clearly, people are still in the experimental phase and not willing to invest in buying content. Amazon sees e-book prices as a key to selling more Kindle readers. So, they’ve rejected the “agency model” (publisher sets the price; retailer gets 30%) even though it would earn them more money per title and get them out of the loss leader business.