Cover of the first edition

Kristen Stewart, star of the Twilight series, is rumored to have landed the lead in an adaptation of  William Styron’s 1951 classic, Lie Down in Darkness, to be directed by Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart). New York magazine’s “Vulture blog,” broke the story. There is some dispute about whether it is true, causing ‘Vulture” to add a defense of their reporting. “Vulture” also notes that Jennifer Lawrence was hoping to nab the role.

Lie Down in Darkness was Styron’s first novel, about a Virginia family coming together for the funeral of their young daughter, Peyton Loftis, who has committed suicide.

An eBook version of the book, along with Styron’s other works, was published by Open Road Itegratd Media in 2010 and is available on OverDrive and B&T’s Axis360. The movie is being produced by Jeffrey Sharp, founder, along with Jane Friedman, of Open Raod.

Click on cover to see larger version

The number one Indie Next Pick for September is a title that hasn’t been on radar screens; The Vanishing Act by Mette Jakobsen (Norton, 9.17). Publishers Weekly hails this debut by the Danish-born Australian author as “refreshingly pared-down story of one girl’s tiny world and the life lessons available in the smallest of existences.” Libraries have placed modest orders on the book.

The digital ARC is available on Edelweiss.

It was blurbed by Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus; “The best stories change you. I am not the same after The Vanishing Act as I was before.”

Valerie Arroyo of Brewster Book Store on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, revuews it for Indie Next;

 Minou is a 12-year-old girl who lives on a tiny, snow-covered island with her philosopher father, Boxman the magician, and a dog called No-Name. When a dead boy washes up on the island, Minou makes a connection between the boy’s arrival and her mother’s disappearance a year earlier. Using philosophy along with the power of her imagination, Minou tries to uncover the truth behind her mother’s absence. What she discovers is haunting and unforgettable. The Vanishing Act is a charming, fable-like story, beautifully told, and filled with magic!

The majority of the other titles on the Sept. Indie Next list were hot at BEA.

Called a “long-gestating” project by The Guardian, the film of  William Gibson’s 1984 novel, Neuromancer seems to be making its way to the screen. News leaked recently that Mark Wahlberg and Liam Neeson have been approached to star.

Two such big names would give the movie the boost it needs, the Guardian warns it is “a long way from getting the green light” and that, even if it does, “it is surely likely to be at least 2014 before Neuromancer finds its way into cinemas.”

The Guardian says director Vincenzo Natali specializes “in intelligent genre fare that has not always performed spectacularly [Cube, Splice] at the box office,” and that “The Wachowski siblings would have been the obvious choice to bring Neuromancer to the big screen, having purloined so many of its ideas for their earlier trilogy [The Matrix], but they’re currently busy with David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.”

The book is credited with launching the cyberpunk genre. A twentieth-anniversary edition was released on 2004 (Penguin/Ace).

Jim Holt’s intriguingly titled new book, Why Does the World Exist? comes with an equally intriguing subtitle, An Existential Detective Story. It’s already received wide attention (Slate, the L. A. Times, the Wall Street Journal, among others), with more to come. The author appeared last night on the Charlie Rose Show, the book is reviewed in today’s NYT by Dwight Garner (who points out that it got a blurb from Christopher Hitchens days before he died) and will be featured on the cover of Sunday’s NYT BR. 

Several libraries are showing heavy holds on modest ordering.

Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story Jim Holt Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Norton/Liveright – (2012-07-16) ISBN / EAN: 0871404095 / 9780871404091

Next week’s debuts to watch include Outside magazine contributing editor Peter Heller‘s post-apocalyptic literary debut, and Cambodian refugee Vaddey Ratner‘s autobiographical novel. Usual suspects include Sherrilyn Kenyon, Julie Garwood, Chelsea Cain, Lisa Jackson and W.E.B. Griffin, and Michael Koryta – plus new childrens and YA novels from James Patterson, Amanda Hocking and Rebecca Stead. In nonfiction, there’s a new bio of Julia Child by Bob Spitz.

Watch List

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (Knopf; Random House Audio) is a literary debut about a pilot who survives a flu pandemic that wipes out 99% of the population, and then sets out to find the distant voice he hears on his radio. Booklist‘s starred review calls it a “surprising and irresistible blend of suspense, romance, social insight, and humor… [a novel] of spiky pleasure and signal resonance.” It is an Indie Next pick for August.

City of Women by David R Gillham (Penguin/Putnam/Amy Einhorn; Penguin Audiobooks) is the third in the Penguin Debut Author program. Set in Berlin during World War II, it effectively presents the lives of ordinary Germans living in extraordinary times, forcing readers to wonder what they would have done. It is an Indie Next pick for August. Read our online chat with the author here and our brief audio interview.

In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner (Simon & Schuster; Thorndike Large Print) is a debut told through the eyes of a seven-year-old survivor of Cambodia’s genocide under the Khmer Rouge, written by a woman who escaped the country as a refugee in 1981. It was a Book Expo Editor’s Buzz Panel pick, and also a People pick in last week’s issue: “Ratner’s lyrical first novel finds love and surprising humanity in a horrifying setting …Raami, the book’s 7-year-old heroine, is lame from polio (as is the author) yet she remains a tenacious dreamer.” An Indie Next pick for August, it is scheduled for media attention next week on NPR in USA Today, the NYT Book Review and several monthly magazines.

Usual Suspects

Time Untime by Sherrilyn Kenyon (St. Martin’s Press; Macmillan Audio) is the latest installment in the popular Dark Hunter series, in which warrior Ren Waya, must kill Kateri Avani, the one person he has always cherished, to ward off an ancient evil.

Sweet Talk by Julie Garwood (Penguin/Dutton; Brilliance Audio; Thorndike Large Print) is a romantic thriller about an IRS attorney determined to bring down her father’s shady scheme, and the FBI agent who rescues her from an assault. Kirkus says, “The evil characters lack any semblance of humanity, and the good characters, including the Fed-crossed lovers, are perfect and unbecomingly smug about it. A standard melodrama with occasional flashes of originality.”

Kill You Twice by Chelsea Cain (Macmillan/Minotaur Books; Macmillan Audio; Thorndike Large Print) marks the return of Gretchen Lowell, otherwise known as “The Beauty Killer,” who appeared in Cain’s first three novels – along with police detective Archie Sheridan. Kirkus says, “Cain’s abiding determination to outdo the suspense, plot twists and gore of each previous outing is both perverse and awe-inspiring.”

You Don’t Want to Know by Lisa Jackson (Kensington; Brilliance Audio) is a standalone thriller about a woman who loses her grip on reality after her child disappears, and becomes the prime suspect in a string of murders. PW says, “Multiple red herrings and a host of sinister characters help keep the pages turning.”

The Spymasters: A Men at War Novel by W.E.B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth, IV (Putnam Adult; Brilliance Audio; Thorndike Large Print) is the seventh in this thriller series and the third the author has written with his son. The plot centers on threats to the Manhattan Project during WWII, Kirkus says the authors “are completely at ease mixing fact and fiction, skillfully piecing together pieces of their narrative puzzle. Their writing is straightforward to a fault, sometimes reminding you of a scholastic You Are There novel, but the book never sags, and the characters never lose our interest.”

The Prophet by Michael Koryta (Hachette/Little Brown; Little Brown Large Print) is the author’s ninth novel, about two brothers in a small Midwestern town who were divided as teenagers by the death of their sister, and clash again years later when another local teen dies. PW says, “Koryta has a gift for melding a suspenseful, twisty plot with a probing, unflinching look at his protagonistsa weaknesses.” His So Cold the River and Cypress House are being developed for movies. Adaptation rights were also sold for this new title at the end of May (Deadline).

Childrens & Young Adult

Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure by James Patterson (Hachette/LBYR; Hachette Audio; Thorndike Large Print) is the final installment in the Maximum Ride series.

Wake by Amanda Hocking (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Griffin, Macmillan Audio) is the first installment in the new Watersong series about three contemporary sirens. It follows Hocking’s successful self-published Trylle Trilogy (later republished by St. Martin’s). Entertainment Weekly‘s “Shelf Life” blog features an “exclusive” trailer this week  and an interview with Hocking. PW says, “While Hocking’s writing isn’t always polished (the foreshadowing can be painfully heavy), the well-structured story and strong characters carry readers over the rough spots. A cliffhanger ending sets up the next book, Lullaby, due [in] six months.”

Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead (RH/Wendy Lamb Books; Listening Library) is the story of two boys who become friends when one moves into the other’s Brooklyn neighborhood. PW says “chock-full of fascinating characters and intelligent questions, this is as close to perfect as middle-grade novels come.” Stead’s When You Reach Me won the 2010 Newbery Medal.

Movie Tie-in

Gangster Squad by Paul Lieberman (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; also trade pbk and mass market; Macmillan Audio) is the tie-in to the movie starring Sean Penn, famously rescheduled to next year because of a scene uncomfortably close to reality (a shooting in a movie theater). That scene was created for the movie and is not in the book, which is shipping as originally planned. This will be the book’s first publication (which is the reason it arrives in hardcover, audio, as well as two tie-in editions). Both the book and the movie are based on the LA Times writer Lieberman’s research into the LAPD’s eight-man “Gangster Squad” and their efforts to trap gang leader Mickey Cohen.

Nonfiction

Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child by Bob Spitz (RH/Knopf; Random House Audio) raises the question, do we need another book about Julia Child? The answer is a resounding “Yes!” from librarians at BEA’s Shout ‘n’ Share panel. PW says, “Released to coincide with Child’s centenary [August 13], Spitz’s delightful biography succeeds in being as big as its subject.” Why did Spitz, the author of major works about the Beatles and Bob Dylan turn his attention to a celebrity cook? He answers that question in an interview on the RH Library Marketing blog.

Warner Bros announced yesterday that William Hurt has been cast in the final major role for the movie Winter’s Tale based on Mark Helprin’s 1983 novel. Production is set to begin in October. Hurt will play the father of a young girl, played by Downton Abbey‘s Jessica Brown Findlay, who is dying of consumption in late 19th C Manhattan. Colin Farrell is set to play a thief who breaks into her mansion.

At the time it was published, Winter’s Tale received extraordinary praise in the the NYT BR. After several paragraphs about the plot, the reviewer finally despaired, saying, “We’re now scarcely more than a tenth of our way through Winter’s Tale, and my plot summary is a tissue of (to me) painful omissions.” He also despaired of doing the writing justice, saying he found himself “nervous, to a degree I don’t recall in my past as a reviewer, about failing the work, inadequately displaying its brilliance . . . Not for some time have I read a work as funny, thoughtful, passionate or large-souled. Rightly used, it could inspire as well as comfort us. Winter’s Tale is a great gift at an hour of great need.”

Perhaps it’s no wonder, then, that the film’s director Akiva Goldsman has been working for seven years to get the project off the ground.

It happens that Helprin’s next book, In Sunlight and Shadow (HMH; Blackstone Audio), will be published in October, the same month that filming is set to begin on Winter’s Tale.

The Paperboy, based on Pete Dexter’s novel (Random House, 1995), now has a trailer (below). To be released on Oct.5, it stars Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey and John Cusack and is directed by Lee Daniels (Precious).

After its premiere at the Cannes film Festival, the critics either loved it or hated it in wildly disperate reviews, from the Telegraph, “It feels like clips from around 20 other films, none of them good, sandwiched back to back, and the talented cast can only grit their teeth,” to the Atlantic, “one of those rare movies that feels spontaneous and unhindered, sampling from genre conventions, creating its own tone, winking at the audience (with repeated shots of Efron’s impeccable torso and Kidman’s killer figure), and occasionally urging us to take things a bit more seriously.”

Those reviews may help, if you find the trailer a bit opaque.

Tie-in:

Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (Nation Books, 6/12/12), a collaboration between Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges and cartoonist Joe Sacco debuts on the Indie Hardcover Nonfiction Bestseller list at #4. It was recently featured on Bill Moyers and Company. 

Libraries are showing a wide range of holds, from just a few to over 100.

Kirkus reviewed it, saying that the authors are each known for covering international wars, but “the war they document here is in America, where ‘[c]orporate capitalism will, quite literally, kill us, as it has killed Native Americans, African Americans trapped in our internal colonies in the inner cities, those left behind in the devastated coalfields, and those who live as serfs in our nation’s produce fields.’ Through immersion reportage and graphic narrative, the duo illuminate the human and environmental devastation in those communities, with the warning that no one is immune.”

Tana French’s fourth novel in her Dublin mystery series, Broken Harbor, (Penguin/Viking; Recorded Books; Thorndike Large Print), debuts at #2 on the new Indie Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list, the highest spot yet for the author.

The author is a reviewers’ darling. NPR lauds French’s “ability to … easily sow doubt, all the while building to a truly gut-wrenching conclusion.” Entertainment Weekly says she “has that procedural pro’s knack for making mundane police work seem fascinating. And she’s drawn not just to the who but also to the why — those bigger mysteries about the human weaknesses that drive somebody to such inhuman brutality.”

In the NYT, Janet Maslin says, “Ms. French’s books all give the same first impression. They start slowly and seem to need tighter editing. But as in Faithful Place, she patiently lays her groundwork, then moves into full page-turner mode … like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, this summer’s other dagger-sharp display of mind games, Broken Harbor is something more [than it appears].”

Inside HBO’s Game of Thrones, the “official companion book” to the series based on George R. R. Martin’s books, will be released on September 25. Entertainment Weekly is touting an exclusive look at four of the interior pages (click through to view details with a clever virtual magnifying glass).

The book includes interviews with actors and crew members, a preface by Martin and is bound with a “lavishly debossed padded cover” (we’re not sure what “debossed” means, either).

It may not be an exclusive, but we have our own spread, via Edelweiss (no virtual magnifying glass, but you can click on the image for a larger version and then use your own magnifying device):

Inside HBO’s Game of Thrones Bryan Cogman Retail Price: $40.00 Hardcover: 192 pages Publisher: Chronicle Books – (2012-09-25) ISBN / EAN: 1452110107 / 9781452110103

Season three begins March 31. It’s based on the first section of A Storm of Swords, the third in the book series.

Word is out that the second title in Sylvia Day’s Crossfire series, Reflected in You, is coming October 2, causing it to rise on Amazon’s sales rankings, where it is currently #24.

The series began with Bared to You, widely considered the successor to Fifty Shades of Grey, (the author objects to this, pointing out that both books were published at the same time, in an interview on the romance site, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books). Like Fifty Shades, it was originally self-published and then picked up by a traditional publisher, in this case, Penguin/Berkley. In its first week of reissue it hit the New York Times trade paperback list at #4.

Unlike Fifty Shades author, E. L. James, however, Day has published several books in other genres — historical, fantasy, and paranormal — with traditional publishers Kensington and Macmillan/Tor, before trying the self-published route. Many libraries own several of Day’s earlier titles.

During their interview with the author, Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and Jane Litte of DearAuthor.com, talked about the similarities and differences between Day’s series and Fifty Shades. While Litte says readers who liked Fifty Shades are likely to enjoy Bared to You, the latter is darker and doesn’t have the “Cinderella quality” of Fifty Shades. In a review on DearAuthor, she suggests “it is what 50 Shades could have been.” (see Smart Bitches list of other Fifty Shades read-a-likes).

We’ve been tracking the debut title The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman (S&S/Scribner; S&S Audio), which has growing holds in libraries. After its release yesterday, it rose into Amazon’s Top 100 (to #58 from #1,035). Holds have tripled since our first alert last week.

It’s the lead title on the O Summer Reading list. The description begins,

There’s something irresistible about a morally complex story that makes you root for all its flawed characters, even when they’re at odds with one another. The Light Between Oceans, M.L. Stedman’s seductive debut, is just that sort of book. And it comes with a bonus: a high-concept plot that keeps you riveted from the first page.

Those qualities are undoubtedly the reason Cuyahoga PL apotted it for their Book Discussion Sets.

This week’s People magazine declares, “Stedman’s debut signals a career certain to deliver future treasures.” The New York Times warns that it “does occasionally dip into the melodrama pot; Isabel at one point screams, ‘Don’t take my baby away!’ It’s a moving tale, regardless. Prepare to weep.”