It’s that time of year again, with the sound of children whining “I’m booored!”

Coming to the rescue is Unbored: The Essential Field Guide to Serious Fun By Elizabeth Foy Larsen, Joshua Glenn, illustrated by Heather Kasunick and Mister Reusch, (Macmillan/Bloomsbury).

This compendium of activities and facts is a great way to get the kids out of their parents’ hair for a few hours. It’s the title that I’ve been waiting for after rolling my eyes at The Dangerous Book for Boys. It’s an essential purchase for the children’s librarian looking for fresh programming ideas for the afterschool crowds.

A debut novel by Seattle writer and former lawyer Tara Conklin is the #1 Indie Next Pick for February The House Girl (HarperCollins/ Morrow). Bookseller Beverly Bauer of Redbery Books, Cable, WI, describes it,

“Lina, a young, ambitious New York attorney in 2004, never knew her mother. Josephine, a young house slave in 1852, never knew her child. More than a century apart, their lives connect in unexpected ways. Corporate law offices, art museums, antebellum homes, and the Underground Railroad provide the setting for a story filled with secrets, betrayals, and love. Does the House Girl title apply to both women? The paths of these strong women will have the reader marveling at the layers Conklin has created to tell their intertwined stories.”

Digital Review Copies are available via Edelweiss.

After the jump, the February Indie Next titles available as DRC’s from Edelweiss or NetGalley:

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After successful showings in New Mexico in September, the indie film adaptation of Rudolfo Anya’s 1972 novel, Bless Me, Ultima, (Hachette/Grand Central), expands to over 200 U.S. theaters on February 22nd.

Official Web site: www.BlessMeUltima.com

The trailer calls the book “controversial.” While it has been removed from high school classrooms in some areas of the country, it is also one of the titles on the NEA’s Big Read list and has been picked by many “one community read” programs.

The film adaptation of Veronica Roth’s popular Divergent (HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen, 2011) is scheduled for release on March 21, 2014. The female lead has been cast (Shailene Woodley, who received acclaim for her supporting role as one of George Clooney’s daughters in The Descendants and starred in the TV series, The Secret Life of the American Teenager) and the director has been named (Neil Burger), but the male lead, which Variety says is currently “considered one of the more sought-after roles for a young actor” has not yet been decided.

The three leading contenders, according to Variety are Alex Pettyfer, Jeremy Irvine and Lucas Till. Shooting begins this March in Chicago

Meanwhile, Roth is hard at work on the final novel in the trilogy, which will be released sometime in the fall of 2013 but does not yet have a title (Roth insists on her blog that it will NOT be Detergent). The second book in the series, Insurgent, came out in May, 2012.

Winning an award for a hatchet job may not sound like a good thing. The Ominvore (not to be confused with Omnivoracious, Amazon’s book blog) begs to differ. They created “The Hatchet Job of The Year” award in 2011 for the year’s most scathing book review, in an effort to “crusade against dullness, deference and lazy thinking. It rewards critics who have the courage to overturn received opinion, and who do so with style.”

So, congrats to one of EarlyWord‘s favorite reviewers, the Washington Post‘s Ron Charles, who is one of eight nominees for the “Hatchet Job 2012” for his review of Martin Amis’s Lionel Asbo. His review is one of just two that appeared in American publications (the other is Zoë Heller’s review of  Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie in the New York Review of Books).

Here’s hoping that Ron wins a well-deserved year’s supply of potted shrimp (supplied by The Fish Society, the “UK’s premier mail order and online fishmonger,” which sponsors the award — we leave it up to you to speculate on why).

The former commander of the forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, appears on on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart tonight.

His memoir, My Share of the Task, (Penguin/Portfolio), which was released yesterday, is already at #15 and rising on Amazon sales rankings, as a result of media attention, including McChrystal’s appearance on CBS Sunday Morning, coverage in the New York Times and a review in The Wall Street Journal.

He also made news today by supporting gun control on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

Yet another Edwardian period drama is on its way to these shores. The BBC/HBO mini-series based on Ford Madox Ford’s series of four novels, Parade’s End will premiere on HBO February 26 to 28. Tom Stoppard wrote the screenplay for the series directed by Susanna White. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Rebecca Hall and Adelaide Clemens.

The series aired on BBC Two in 2012. Last year, the New Yorker‘s “Culture Desk” blog predicted the books would make “The Better Downton Abbey.”

The NYT Book Review features the latest Oprah 2.0 pick on the cover this week (without mentioning the Oprah connection). Since The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, by Ayana Mathis (RH/Knopf) is set during the Great Migration of African Americans to northern cities, the review was assigned to Isabel Wilkerson, the author of the prize-winning history of that period, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, (Random House, 2010).

Wilkerson calls the novel “raw and intimate” and says “The story it tells works at the rough edges of history, residing not so much within the migration itself as within a brutal and poetic allegory of a family beset by tribulations.”

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie rose to #9 on the Jan. 13  NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list, after 3 weeks, moving up from #10 the previous two weeks.

Weekend Edition went kid crazy yesterday, featuring an interview with Jerry Spinelli about his new book Hokey Pokey, (Random House; Listening Library), coming out this week, as well as one with Bob Dorough, the composer of Schoolhouse Rock‘s classic tunes.

I have Dorough to thank for getting me  through American Government finals with his “I’m Just a Bill.” It’s the the 40th anniversary of those Saturday morning shorts and classics like “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here” and “Three Is A Magic Number” stand the test of time. Fortunately, they are still available on DVD (Walt Disney Video; B00005JKTY).

Laura Schroff’s book about how her simple act of kindness towards an 11-year-old homeless boy changed not only his life, but her own, An Invisible Thread (S&S/Howard Books; Tantor Audio; Thorndike Large Print), came out in 2011. The paperback edition hit the lower rungs of the NYT extended list in September.

The author appeared on the Today Show just before Christmas, bringing Kathie Lee and Hoda to  tears and sending the book to #15 on the Jan. 15  NYT Paperback Nonfiction list.

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An author couldn’t ask for much better than this. Liesl Schillinger’s NYT BR review of Jojo Moyes’ Me Before You, (Penguin/Pamela Dorman Books, Thorndike Large Print), begins “When I finished this novel, I didn’t want to review it; I wanted to reread it.”

People magazine designates it their first “People Pick” of the year, calling this story of a quadriplegic’s relationship with his caregiver,  “funny, surprising and heartbreaking, populated with characters who are affecting and amusing in equal measure. Written in a deceptively breezy style… [it] captures the complexity of love.”

This adds to an equally strong review in USA Today and endorsements from independent booksellers, who made it an Indie Next pick and librarians on GalleyChat.

Moyes, a best seller in the UK and winner of  two  of the UK’s Romantic Novel of the Year Awards (for Last Letter from Your Lover in 2011 and Foreign Fruit, in 2004) appears poised for her breakout here.

It’s a bold prediction to make so early in the new year, but the NYT Magazine’s deputy editor, stepping on the territory of his colleagues at the Book Review as well as those on the daily NYT, predicts that the best book you will read this year is George Saunders’s fourth book of short stories, The Tenth of December (Random House; BOT), which arrives next week. The article calls him a “writer’s writer,” quoting literary fans such as Lorrie Moore, Tobias Wolff, Junot Diaz and Mary Karr.

It’s also reviewed in the L.A. Times,  the Chicago Tribune and Entertainment Weekly.

Dick Wolf the creator of the NBC series Law & Order got air time for his first novel The Intercept, (Harper/Morrow; HarperAudio; Blackstone Audio) from his colleagues on Morning Joe yesterday and on the Today Show this morning.

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The new season comes on strong this week, with new titles by Jayne Ann Krentz, Stuart Woods, Bernard Cornwell, and a collection of Kinsey Malone stories by Sue Grafton. In nonfiction, a new memoir by actress Wendy Lawless mines the rich material of fraught mother/daughter relationships. On our Watch List for the week is a novel aimed at Downton Abbey fans.

Watch List

Ashenden, Elizabeth Wilhide, (Simon & Schuster; Recorded Books; Thorndike Large Print)

A British import touted as perfect for Downton Abbey fans, this debut novel by a prolific writer on interior design, received high praise in the U.K., including this from The Guardian —  “Ashenden is an affecting, intelligent debut which goes way beyond posh country house antics. Framed by chapters set in 2010, when middle-aged Charlie Minton and his sister unexpectedly inherit an estate from their aunt, each significant episode in the house’s history is brought to life.” Booklist, Kirkus and LJ are all enthusiasts, but PW sniffs that it is a “tedious historical exploration of an 18th-century English estate house.” We hear some people don’t get the appeal of Downton Abbey, either.

Chanel Bonfire, Wendy Lawless, (S&S/Gallery Books; Tantor Audio)

This Mommie-Dearest type memoir sports a memorable title (could one own enough Chanel clothes for a bonfire?). Television and Broadway actress Wendy Lawless writes about her painful relationship with her mother who “had the ice queen beauty of a Hitchcock heroine and the cold heart to match.” It’s both an O, The Oprah Magazine and an Indie Next pick for January.

The Bughouse Affair, Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini, (Macmillan/Forge; AudioGo)

Two mystery favorites team up for this first in the  Carpenter and Quincannon series of lighthearted historical mysteries. Prepub reviews call it delightful.

Reviewer Favorites

The Last Runaway, Tracy Chevalier,  (Penguin/Dutton. Penguin Audio)

Chevalier, an American living in London, is known for her historical novels set in Europe and Great Britain. Her background as a graduate of Oberlin College shows here in a novel about runaway slaves in Ohio in the 1860’s. The first book of the new year to be reviewed on NPR, it is on The Atlantic‘s list of “Books to Look Forward to in 2013.” and on O, The Oprah Magazine‘s must-reads for January.

 The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement, Taylor Branch, (Simon & Schuster)

The author’s three-volume history of the Martin Luther King years, the first of which, Parting the Waters, won a Pulitzer Prize, is considered a masterpiece. Here, it’s made more accessible to a wider audience by focusing on the pivotal moments from those three volumes.

Media Spotlight

   
My Share of the Task, General Stanley McChrystal, (Penguin/Portfolio)

The General, who was relieved of command of the forces in Afghanistan in June 2010, after a Rolling Stone magazine profile (he was succeeded by General Patraeus, who has suffered his own negative media attention) is scheduled to appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Tuesday to talk about his memoir.

The Universe Within, Neil Shubin, (RH/Pantheon; BOT)

The paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer is scheduled to appear on The Colbert Report on Wednesday.

Young Adult

Just One Day, Gayle Forman, (Penguin/Dutton)

The much-anticipated next book after the author’s popular If I Stay and Where She Went. It’s the first of two; a companion novel follows next year. Entertainment Weekly‘s “Shelf Life” blog offers an excerpt.

What We Saw At Night, Jacquelyn Mitchard, (Soho Teen; AudioGo)

Weary of vampires, zombies, suicidal girls and dystopian fights to the death? Soho Teen launches a line of YA mysteries, with this first of a projected trilogy by best selling author Mitchard. A group of  teenaged friends all suffer from a fatal allergy to light and are only able to go out at night. For some reason, they decide to take up the extreme sport of parkour, climbing buildings and leaping off them. During one of their nights out, they witness a murder. Prepub reviews complain that this one ends with a cliffhanger, setting up the next book in the series.

Usual Suspects

Dream Eyes, Jayne Ann Krentz, (Penguin/Putnam; Brilliance Audio; Thorndike Large Print)

Collateral Damage, Stuart Woods, (Penguin/Putnam; Penguin Audio; Thorndike Large Print)

Kinsey and Me, Sue Grafton, (Penguin/Putnam; Thorndike Large Print)

Robert B. Parker’s Ironhorse, Robert Knott, (Penguin/Putnam; RH Audio; BOT Audio; Wheeler Large Print)

1356, Bernard Cornwell, (Harper; HarperAudio; HarperLuxe)

A Memory of Light, Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (Macmillan/Tor) — The 14th and final book in The Wheel of Time saga which began in 1990, has spent 103 days on the Amazon Top 100. Library holds are relatively light, however.

We know how Janus felt; we had barely caught our breath from the multitude of 2012 best books lists (our selected links at right) when the first of  2013 reared their heads.

Huffington Post, “Best Books Of 2013?: Our Picks For The Year’s Biggest Reads”

The Atlantic, “Books to Look Forward to in 2013”

Flavorwire, “Flavorpill’s 30 Most Anticipated Books of 2013“

The Huffington Post gets it right that the title The World’s Strongest Librarian (Penguin/Gotham, May 2) will “win over bookstores and libraries;” it got our attention. Subtitled A Memoir of Tourette’s, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family, it’s by Josh Hanagarne, a librarian at Salt Lake City Public Library who writes a blog about books and weight lifting.

Also on the HuffPo list, as well as Flavorpill’s, is a novelization of a life that is ripe for it, Zelda Fitzgerald’s (but, wait, haven’t dozens of others, including her husband, already done that?);  Z, by Therese Anne Fowler (Macmillan/St. Martin’s, March 26). Notes The Atlantic, “we’ll gladly read a hundred novelizations of her life. Especially if they’re all like this one, which lets us into a 17-year-old Zelda’s head.”

Anticipation is already high for Stephen King’s Dr. Sleep, the sequel to The Shining, coming on Sept. 24 (just before the premiere of the new film adaptation of his debut novel, Carrie) as well as  Elizabeth Strout’s The Burgess Boys,(Random House) her next novel after her 2009 Pulitzer  Prize winner, Olive Kitteridge.