Archive for July, 2012

OUTLANDER TV Series

Wednesday, July 18th, 2012

Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series has been optioned several times for movies.

Sony Pictures TV just closed a new deal, with plans for a TV series. A producer and script writers have been assigned and, according to Deadline, the project is being pitched to cable networks this week.

All those fans who have made dozens of videos offering cast suggestions, have reason to hope that the project will finally come to pass.

For the Love of OZ

Wednesday, July 18th, 2012

Two of the stars of Disney’s Oz The Great and Powerful, Michelle Williams and Mila Kunis (who play the good and the bad witches respectively) were trotted out at Comic-Con, where the trailer was also introduced and, according to some reports, enjoyed the best buzz of the show. The studio just released several high-res images from the film, to emphasize that, if nothing else, it is visually arresting. In addition to Williams and Kunis, the film stars James Franco and Rachel Weisz. It’s scheduled to arrive in theaters on March 8, 2013.

Disney Book Group, of course, will be publishing several tie-ins, including a junior novelization, an early reader, a storybook and a behind-the-scenes book. They are also republishing the first two titles in L. Frank Baum’s series, The Wonderful World of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz.

More Oz magic is on it’s way. The long-awaited film adaptation of the musical Wicked, based on the book by Gregory Maguire, may finally come to fruition; Deadline reports that Universal is courting Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot) to direct. Also on the drawing board is an animated film, Dorothy of Oz. In April, it was reported that Bernadette Peters joined the cast as the voice of Glinda.

The conclusion to Gregory Maguire’s Oz series, which began with Wicked, was published last October (NOTE; We mistakenly said it was coming out this year; that’s the date the paperback edition will be released).

Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years
Gregory Maguire
Retail Price: $15.99
Paperback: 608 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins/Morrow – (2012-10-02)
ISBN / EAN: 0060859733 / 9780060859732

A&E’s COMA

Tuesday, July 17th, 2012

Hitting theaters this week is the trailer for A&E’s two-night movie Coma, based on the Robin Cook’s first novel, which launched the medical thriller genre. Cook, a medical doctor, says he chose the thriller as a way to educate readers about various public policy issues.

The series, which begins on Labor Day, stars James Woods, Geena Davis, Richard Dreyfuss, Ellen Burstyn, Lauren Ambrose and Stephen Pasquale.

Official Site: AETV.com/coma/

The book, still in print in a 25th anniversary edition, was made into a film in 1978, directed by Michael Crichton, starring Michael Douglas and Geneviève Bujold.

COMA
Robin Cook
Retail Price: $7.99
Mass Market Paperback: 381 pages
Publisher: Penguin/Signet – (2002-11-05)
ISBN / EAN: 0451207394 / 9780451207395

Cook’s next novel, his 29th, is coming in January.

Nano
Robin Cook
Retail Price: $26.95
Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Penguin/Putnam – (2013-01-08)
ISBN / EAN: 0399160825 / 9780399160820

Penguin Audio

Hill’s HORNS To Movies

Tuesday, July 17th, 2012

Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter, The Woman in Black) has just signed for the lead in the film adaptation of Joe Hill’s 2010 supernatural horror novel, Horns, directed by Alexandre Aja. At the time it was published, Time magazine called Hill “one of America’s finest horror writers,” based on “the strength of two masterly thrillers – 2007′s Heart-Shaped Box and his newest, Horns.”

On his Web site, Hill expresses his excitement, saying he is “amped beyond all rational measure. I could not be happier about the casting of Daniel Radcliffe as Ig Perrish. My fanboy feelings for the Harry Potter pictures are well-established, but aside from that, I thought Woman in Black was one of the best horror films of the last decade, and the picture worked because of Radcliffe’s quietly focused performance. I hope HORNS serves the kid just as well.”

The film is scheduled to begin shooting this fall, with a likely release date sometime in 2013.

Horns: A Novel
Joe Hill
Retail Price: $25.99
Hardcover: 370 pages
Publisher: Harper/Morrow – (2010-02-16)
ISBN / EAN: 0061147958 / 9780061147951

Yet One More Thing We Missed at Comic-Con

Monday, July 16th, 2012

Entertainment Weekly gives us a look at a behind-the-scenes video of Jennifer Lawrence shooting a scary scene for Hunger Games (EW claims it as an exclusive, but it’s on YouTube) which was shown at Comic-Con:

Locations for the sequel, Catching Fire, are being scouted in Atlanta (the first film was shot in North Carolina). Several new cast members have been announced, the most notable being Philip Seymour Hoffman, who will play Head Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee. Glee star Grant Gustin recently tried out for the role of Finnick Odair.

Catching Fire is scheduled to be released just before Thanksgiving, 2013. Following the tradition set by the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises, the final book in the series, Mockingjay will be released as two movies. They are scheduled to follow each successive November. The L.A. Times questions whether the studio can handle the intense schedule of a new movie every twelve months.

Rotten Tomatoes for Books

Monday, July 16th, 2012

A new site called I Dream Books is being called “Rotten Tomatoes for Books,” a reference to the movie site that rounds ups critics responses to movies.

The founders tell Publishing Perspectives that although there are several other book review aggregators, their site is different because their user interface is better, “it’s made for discovery: there’s an emphasis on covers and images. The site is like looking in a shop window.”

After examining it, we’ll stick with our favorite aggregators; Bookmarks magazine’s web site, which lists the reviews for the week from 25 publications, as well as the most-reviewed titles for the past 8 weeks and the subscription service Publishers Marketplace ($20/month, which includes a host of other services). The latter indexes reviews from over 40 publications, with a brief excerpt and a simple indicator of whether each review is “Generally positive” or “Generally negative”.

In comparison to those sources, I Dream Books is not as timely. The latest reviews we could find are from May; no reviews are listed for Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies (published by Macmillan, one of the Big Six publishers that I Dream Books is currently focused on). Bookmarks shows 14 reviews for the title and Publishers Marketplace, 13. In addition, some of the information is perplexing; several titles are listed by their paperback release dates, with no mention of the hardcover.

I Dream Books has an advantage in the number of sources they coverincluding several book blogs. As print coverage of books shrinks, this could be very useful. However, since many book blogs are by genre fans, they skew the listings. For instance, Jinx, a new graphic novel version of the Archie Comics, is listed as the #2 Top Rated fiction title of the year.

News stories:

Huffington Post — iDreamBooks Review Site: Rotten Tomatoes For Books?

MediaBistroIdreambooks.com Is Like Rotten Tomatoes For Books – AppNewser

Publishing PerspectivesiDreambooks Promises “Rotten Tomatoes-like” Site for Books

Demo video:

HOBBIT Footage a Hit at Comic-Con

Monday, July 16th, 2012

News sources are advising Peter Jackson to get his Oscar speech ready. The 12-minute footage (or 13-minute, depending on which source you believe) from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, that he presented at Comic-Con over the weekend was, by all accounts, a huge hit with the 6,500 fans who lined up, many overnight, to see it.

Unexpected Journey opens on December 14. The sequel. The Hobbit: There and Back Again is due next year. Peter Jackson made comments during an interview at  Comic-Con, that touched off rumors that the second film may be split into two, resulting in a trilogy. He quickly backed off, however, saying talk of a trilogy is “very premature.

The clips shown at Comic-Con were up on YouTube briefly and then removed. For now, the only glimpse we have is the trailer that was released last December and behind-the-scenes footage on Peter Jackson’s blog.

Official Movie Web Site: TheHobbit.com

The tie-in is being published in September.

The Hobbit (Movie Tie-In)
J.R.R. Tolkien
Retail Price: $13.95
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: HMH/Mariner Books – (2012-09-18)
ISBN / EAN: 0547844972 / 9780547844978

HMH/Mariner also lists a behind-the-scenes book for young readers.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey–The World of Hobbits
Paddy Kempshall
Retail Price: $9.95
Paperback: 48 pages
Publisher: Mariner Books – (2012-11-06)
ISBN / EAN: 0547898738 / 9780547898735

On the other hand, reports the NYT, The Host, Stephenie Meyer’s new project, ” was greeted with puzzled expressions and tepid applause. That sent a publicist for its distributor, Open Road Films, scrambling to point a reporter toward positive reactions from bloggers.”

Embargoed: 4% Solution

Monday, July 16th, 2012

The NYT notes that George W. Bush, after remaining largely silent on the upcoming presidential campaign, “gingerly enters the fray a little more this week with a new book outlining ways to rebuild the economy.”

Coming on Tuesday is a collection of essays by various economists called The 4% Solution because it offers ideas on how to expand the economy by that amount per year. Bush has written the introduction and will launch the book at an event in Dallas tomorrow. The NYT calls it a “wonky paean to free enterprise.”

The book was embargoed, so several libraries have not ordered it. Those that have are showing few holds.

The 4% Solution: Unleashing the Economic Growth America Needs
The Bush Institute
Retail Price: $26.00
Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Crown Business – (2012-07-17)
ISBN / EAN: 0307986144 / 9780307986146

 

The Neil Gaiman Pipeline

Friday, July 13th, 2012

D.C. Comics made a splash during a Comic-Con panel yesterday when they announced that Neil Gaiman is returning to his classic comic series, The Sandman. He is planning a miniseries to explain why “Morpheus [was] so easily captured in The Sandman No. 1, and why he was returned from far away, exhausted beyond imagining, and dressed for war.” It will be released some time next year from the Vertigo imprint.

The day before, HarperCollins Children’s division announced that Gaiman has signed a deal for three novels and two picture books. On his blog, Gaiman writes that one of the picture books, Chu’s Day, illustrated by Adam Rex, is finished and will be released on Jan. 8th (9780062017819). He says it is “the first book I’ve ever written for really little kids. Ones who cannot read. Ones who can only just walk.”  The second Chu book is written, but there is no release date yet.

Interior art below (Chu is on the far right; click on the image for a larger version):

The other three titles are middle-grade books, says Gaiman, “Fortunately, the Milk (already written), and the next Odd novel (started and plotted) and a mysterious book that I think I know what it is (not even started, won’t be for quite a while, and I think I know the setting but not the story)…”

He is also at work on a novel for adults, Lettie Hempstock’s Ocean, “which should be out in 2013 some time, although contracts aren’t signed.”

GONE To the Movies

Friday, July 13th, 2012

Hollywood deal making isn’t just about self-published erotica these days. Gillian Flynn’s major breakout, Gone Girl, was the subject of a major rights auction, resulting in a 7-figure deal to 20th Century Fox, with Reese Witherspoon producing.

All three of Flynn’s books have been optioned. Dark Places (RH/Crown) is moving along; Amy Adams will to star and Gilles Paquet-Brenner direct (Word and Film recently interviewed Flynn about that project). Flynn’s first novel, Sharp Objects (RH/Broadway), was optioned by Alliance Films and has a producer, but no director or cast yet.

Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn
Retail Price: $25.00
Hardcover: 412 pages
Publisher: RH/Crown – (2012-06-05)
ISBN: 9780307588364

Audio, BOT; audio and ebook on OverDrive; Thorndike Large Print, Sept.

New Title Radar: July 16 – 22

Friday, July 13th, 2012

Next week will bring several books by celebrities, including Glee star Chris Colfer‘s middle-grade fantasy debut, a memoir from Giant’s receiver Victor Cruz, and Elton John‘s look back on his fight against the AIDS epidemic. Usual suspects include Iris Johansen, Orson Scott Card, Daniel Silva, James Lee Burke, and Chris Bohjalian.

Watch List

Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussmann (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; Thorndike Large Print, Nov) is a debut novel set on Martha’s Vineyard after WWII, about two women finding marriage and motherhood more complicated than they expected, when a murder throws their lives into further turmoil. The author is Herman Melville’s great-great-great-great-grandaughter. It’s getting glowing advance praise, including from PW: “this carefully crafted soap opera skillfully commingles mystery with melodrama, keeping readers guessing about what really happened until the end . . . Her characters’ duplicitous behavior will elicit strong reactions.”

Shine Shine Shine by Lydia Netzer (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Macmillan Audio) is a whimsical debut novel about a woman who’s been hiding her baldness to fit into her suburban Virginia community and her astronaut husband, whose lives are redefined by freak accidents. The advance buzz brought an early review from  Janet Maslin in the NYT a week before publication, saying, “it is so full of oddities that no simple summary [presumably, like the one we just did] will do it justice. ” It also had several fans on GalleyChat in June.

Usual Suspects

Close Your Eyes by Iris Johansen (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press; Brilliance Audio) is the fourth collaboration by this mother-son team, and stars Dr. Kendra Michaels, an FBI consultant and music therapist who was born blind and developed her other senses to an extraordinary degree before her sight was restored at age 20. PW says, “The authors combine idiosyncratic yet fully realized characters with dry wit and well-controlled suspense that builds to a satisfying conclusion.”

Earth Unaware by Orson Scott Card (Tor Books; MacMillan Audio) is a science fiction adventure that gives fans of the Ender series a new backstory to the classic Ender’s Game. LJ says, “Card’s gift for strong, memorable characters combined with screenwriter Johnston’s flair for vivid scene-building results in a standout tale… [that] should also please readers of military SF.” Production of the movie of Enders’s Game, starring Harrison Ford and Abigail Breslin has recently wrapped and is scheduled to be released on Nov. 1, 2013.

The Fallen Angel (Gabriel Allon Series #12) by Daniel Silva (HarperCollins; Harperluxe; HarperAudio) stars art restorer and spy Gabriel Allon in Rome, who gets a call from the pope’s personal secretary about the body of a woman in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Creole Belle: A Dave Robicheaux Novel by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster; Wheeler Large Print; Simon & Schuster Audio) finds southern Louisiana deputy Sheriff Dave Robicheaux recovering from the wounds he received in the last book (The Glass Rainbow), and facing another round of New Orleans-style homicide. Kirkus says, “Burke, in his latest attempt to outdo himself, ties the Gulf oil spill to art fraud, sexual slavery and Nazis. A darkly magnificent treat for Dave’s legion of admirers, though not the best place for newcomers to begin.” One-day laydown.

The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian (RH/Doubleday Books; Random House Large Print; Books on Tape) is the story of modern American woman who joins her father on a philanthropic trip to Syria to aid Armenian refugees, and pieces together the lives of her great-grandparents, who met on the eve of the Armenian genocide of 1915-16. It has been featured in many summer reading roundups, and is a GalleyChat favorite. Entertainment Weekly gives is a B+. The reviewer notes that Bohjalian, draws ” for the first time on his own heritage [as] the grandson of Armenian survivors [and] pours passion, pride, and sadness into his tale of ethnic destruction and endurance,” but notes the book’s structure is  “precariously ornate.”

Kids/Young Adult

The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell by Chris Colfer (Hachette/LBYR; Hachette Audio) is a middle-grade debut by the Glee star, and finds 12-year-old twins Alex (a girl) and Conner roaming fairy tale land after falling into their grandmother’s book of stories, trying to collect the elements for a wishing spell that will get them home. Booklist says, “Golden Globe winner Colfer writes for an audience that will likely include plenty of teen readers (i.e., fans of Glee), and generally they will not be disappointed by the giddy earnestness of the writing, cut with a hint of melancholy.” Unsurprisingly, the author is getting plenty of media attention. The audio is read by the author.

Spark: A Sky Chasers Novel by Amy Kathleen Ryan (St. Martin’s Griffin, MacMillan Audio) is the sequel to Glow, in which girls and boys struggle with issues of leadership and violence on a spaceship after their parents have been kidnapped.

Nonfiction

Out of the Blue by Victor Cruz (Penguin/Celebra) is a memoir by the 25-year-old salsa victory-dancing Superbowl champion. USA Today says it “will include the highs and lows of his life — his spotty college career and rocky road to professional football (he was undrafted), his father’s suicide and his recent triumphs.” It will also be published in Spanish as Momento de Gloria in September.

Love Is the Cure: On Life, Loss, and the End of AIDS by Elton John (Hachette/Little, Brown) is the pop singer’s personal account of his life during the AIDS epidemic, including stories of his close friendships with Ryan White, Freddie Mercury, Princess Diana, Elizabeth Taylor, and others, and the story of the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

The Violinist’s Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code by Sam Kean (Hachette/Little, Brown) is the next book by the author who made the periodic table fascinating in The Disappearing Spoon. In this new book, he explores the secrets of DNA. Leading up to the book’s release, Kean has been “Blogging the Human Genome” for Slate.


THE DARK KNIGHT’s Closeup

Thursday, July 12th, 2012

The publicity drum is beating for the release of the third installment of the series based on the Batman comics, The Dark Knight Rises, which arrives in theaters next week.

As a result, a forthcoming behind-the-scenes book is rising on Amazon’s sales rankings:

The Art and Making of The Dark Knight Trilogy
Jody Duncan Jesser, Janine Pourroy
Retail Price: $40.00
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Abrams – (2012-07-20)
ISBN / EAN: 1419703692 / 9781419703690

MONKEY MIND A People Pick

Thursday, July 12th, 2012

It’s already been covered in a wide range of publications, from The Jewish Daily Forward to the Psychiatric Times. Now Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety by Daniel Smith (S&S, July; Blackstone Audio) gets the lead, four-star review in the new issue of People magazine and is named one of 8 People picks of the year. The reviewer calls it an “unforgettable, surprisingly hilarious memoir, [in which] journalist and professor Smith chronicles his head-changing, flop sweating battles with acute anxiety.”

The Psychiatric Times predicts it “will be recognized in the years to come as the preeminent first-person narrative of the anxiously lived life,” adding,”it is wonderful to have a narrative of Generalized Anxiety Disorder that can join the classic narratives already written for our other major diagnoses; William Styron’s Darkness Visible for depression, Redfield Jamison’s Unquiet Mind for bipolar disorder and Elyn Saks’s The Center Cannot Hold for schizophrenia.”

GONE GIRL Tops HUNGER GAMES

Thursday, July 12th, 2012

Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is #1 on the Indie Fiction Best Seller list  for the fifth week in a row. Sales are still climbing, as indicated by the USA Today list, where it rises to #4, from #6 last week, breaking through the Hunger Games blockade. Now all that stands between it and #1 on that list are the three Fifty Shades titles.

USA Today‘s Bob Minzesheimer looks into the reason Flynn’s third novel is her breakout, quoting Jackie Blem of  Denver’s revered Tattered Cover bookstore,

What is different about Gone Girl is she creates one story, carefully, with great detail, all very believable, and then turns all of it on its ear. The magic of this book, for the reader, is that there is actually two unreliable narrators and multiple versions of every event.

Holds continue to climb in libraries, with some showing over 1,500. Holds on the audio are also high. Large print coming from Thorndike in September.

Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn
Retail Price: $25.00
Hardcover: 412 pages
Publisher: RH/Crown – (2012-06-05)
ISBN: 9780307588364

Audio, BOT; audio and ebook on OverDrive; Thorndike Large Print, Sept.

Archived Chat with David R. Gillham, Author of CITY OF WOMEN

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012