The International Association of Culinary Professionals handed out several cookbooks awards at their annual meeting in San Francisco last week.

Among the many publishers that traditionally win awards is a new face, Amazon Children’s Publishing which won in the Children’s, Youth and Family category for Teen Cuisine: New Vegetarian by Matthew Locricchio, the follow up to the author’s previous title, also from Amazon Children’s Publishing, Teen Cuisine, 2010.

The Random House/Crown imprint, Ten Speed, was a big winner, with four awards, including Cookbook of the Year for Jerusalem: A Cookbook, Yotam Ottolenghi, Sami Tamimi, which also won in the International category. Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza, Ken Forkish (a name that’s just too perfect for a culinary professional), won in the Baking category and Vietnamese Home Cooking, Charles Phan (Ten Speed Press) was the winner in the Chefs and Restaurants.
 

Technology gained a foothold among printed books this year. Judges Choice was awarded to a digital cookbook My Provence by Laurent Gras (available via via Amazon). It also won a Digital Media award for Intriguing Use of Technology (the publisher describes it as a “unique HTML5 technology. No special downloads or software are required – it looks beautiful on iPads, Android Tablets, Macs and PCs so you can access it anywhere you want with no hassles.”) The Julia Child Award for First Book went to a cookbook that originated as a blog, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, Deborah Perelman (Random House, Inc. (RH/Knopf)).

In the Digital Media Awards, Salted and Styled won best Culinary Blog and Food52.com best Web site.

The other winners, after the jump (official list of all the winners here)
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William Boyd, selected by Ian Fleming’s estate to write the next James Bond novel, announced on the opening day of the London Book Fair yesterday that the title will be simply Solo, explaining, “In my novel, events conspire to make Bond go off on a self-appointed mission of his own, unannounced and without any authorization – and he’s fully prepared to take the consequences of his audacity.” It will be released in the U.S. by HarperCollins on October 8.

Boyd, who has written several prize-winning novels, including A Good Man in Africa, follows in the footsteps of several others who have donned the Fleming mantle. Jeffery Deaver published Carte Blanche in 2011 (S&S). It was a NYT hardcover best seller for 4 weeks. Sebastian Faulks’ Devil May Care (S&S, 2008) also spent a few weeks on the hardcover list. Raymond Benson published 6 titles from 1997 to 2002; John Gardner, 14 (the same number as Fleming wrote himself), from 1981 to 1996. Kingsley Amis, under the name of Robert Markham, was the first, with Colonel Sun in 1968.

The literary world breathed a sigh of relief when it learned today that there would be a Pulitzer Prize for fiction this  year.  The winner is The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson (Random House), described in the citation as “an exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.”

The finalists are:

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander (RH/Knopf) — “A diverse yet consistently masterful collection of stories that explore Jewish identity and questions of modern life in ways that can both delight and unsettle the reader.”

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (Hachette/Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown) – “An enchanting novel about an older homesteading couple who long for a child amid the hard wilderness of Alaska and a feral girl who emerges from the woods to bring them hope.”

The prizes in the other book awards went to (finalists listed here):

History: Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam by Fredrik Logevall (Random House) — “a balanced, deeply researched history of how, as French colonial rule faltered, a succession of American leaders moved step by step down a road toward full-blown war.”

Biography: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss (RH/Crown) — “a compelling story of a forgotten swashbuckling hero of mixed race whose bold exploits were captured by his son, Alexander Dumas, in famous 19th century novels.”

Non-fiction: Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America” by Gilbert King (Harper) – “a richly detailed chronicle of racial injustice in the Florida town of Groveland in 1949, involving four black men falsely accused of rape and drawing a civil rights crusader, and eventual Supreme Court justice, into the legal battle.”

Poetry: Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds, (RH/Knopf) – “a book of unflinching poems on the author’s divorce that examine love, sorrow and the limits of self-knowledge.”

Just released, the trailer for Romeo and Juliet with script by Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes.

Starring Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit) and Douglas Booth as the title characters, it also features Paul Giamatti as Friar Laurence. It opens in the UK on Oct. 25. A US release date has not been set.

The eighth novel by British author Kate Atkinson, Life After Life, (Hachette/Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print), debuts on this week’s NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list at #3, the highest spot yet for the author. Her previous novel, Started Early, Took My Dog (2011) hit the extended list when it was published.

It has been reviewed widely in the U.S., including an early review by Janet Maslin in the daily New York Times, which states, “Life After Life is a big book that defies logic, chronology and even history in ways that underscore its author’s fully untethered imagination.” It is an IndieNext #1 pick for April and was much buzzed about by librarians on GalleyChat.

For one shining moment this weekend, Dante’s The Divine Comedy broke into the Amazon Top 100, getting a boost from NPR Weekend Edition Saturday‘s feature on a new translation by Clive James (Norton, published today).

Scott Simon introduces the story by saying that the The Divine Comedy, “is a 14th century poem that has never lost its edge. Dante Alighieri’s great work tells the tale of the author’s trail through hell — each and every circle of it — purgatory and heaven. It has become perhaps the world’s most cited allegorical epic about life, death, goodness, evil, damnation and reward.”

It’s a good time for a new translation. Dan Brown’s Inferno, (RH/Doubleday) which refers to the first section of The Divine Comedy, arrives next month. Libraries may want to have copies on hand for events featuring a livestream of the author’s single appearance for the book, at Lincoln Center on May 14.

Still at #1 on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Seller list after 4 weeks, Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In (Random House) urges women to seek egalitarian marriages. Promoting a different approach, 90’s pro volleyball star Gabrielle Reece appeared on NBC’s Today Show and Rock Center on Friday to say that she rescued her marriage to pro surfer Laird Hamilton by becoming “submissive.”

Her book, My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper, (S&S/Scribner), which also outlines Reese’s views on fitness and parenting, arrives tomorrow. It’s now at #53 on Amazon sales rankings. Holds are heavy on light ordering in several libraries.

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No more mini-teasers. Here’s the first full-length trailer for The Hunger Games 2, which debuted on the MTV Movie Awards last night.

Michael Hainey’s memoir, After Visiting Friends, (S&S/Scribner) came out in February, was an IndieNext pick for March, racked up many admiring reviews, and is now gaining new fans. It was on the Today Show yesterday, and  will be reviewed in this Sunday’s NYT Book Review.

The book is about Hainey’s quest to find out what really happened to his father, a Chicago newspaperman, who died unexpectedly when the author was six years old. Reports simply stated that he had died “after visiting friends.”

Libraries are showing heavy holds on modest orders.

Next week brings a new opportunity to get boys excited about reading with a new title from the team of Griffiths and Denton. In picture books, get ready for another sure-fire bedtime book from the author and illustrator who created the enduring best seller, Good Night, Good Night, Construction Site. And, tie-ins are arriving for Lego’s latest theme.

All the titles highlighted here, and more, on our downloadable spreadsheet, Kids New Title Radar, Week of April 15.

Middle Grade

The 13-Story Treehouse, Andy Griffiths, Terry Denton, (Macmillan/Feiwel & Friends)

Last summer’s big debut from Random House was The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker, a crossover sci-fi novel about a girl growing up at the time of a developing disaster caused by the gradual slowing of the earth’s rotation. It became a librarian favorite and went on to appear on several best books lists.

Optioned before publication, the next step in the often rocky road to the screen has been announced; Catherine Hardwicke is now set to direct the adaptation. Hardwicke directed the first Twilight movie, as well as Red Riding Hood, Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown and was attached to direct The Maze Runner, but Word & Film reports she left that project in favor of The Age of Miracles. The Maze Runner is now moving ahead with Wes Ball as director.

Hardwicke was also once attached to direct a movie based on Gayle Foreman’s If I Stay, but that project is now in limbo. In January, the author told  Entertainment Weekly that Chloe Moretz might star, but admitted, “I feel like Hollywood is that boyfriend that keeps breaking my heart … I’ve heard things about dates and pre-production about when things were happening, but there’s been nothing that’s been certain. And I’ve heard it so many times before I don’t know.” Meanwhile, Moretz, who stars in the upcoming new adaptation of Carrie, is in talks to join Charlize Theron in the film of Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places.

In case you’ve had trouble imagining Michael Douglas as Liberace, below is a glimpse via the first trailer for HBO’s biopic about the entertainer, Behind the Candelabra.

Premiering on HBO on May 26th, it also stars Matt Damon as Liberace’s lover, Scott Thorson. It is based on Thorson’s 1988 memoir, Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace, which is being re-released by Tantor Audio in print, as well as audio and ebook on May 2.

Get an early peek at James Dashner’s forthcoming YA novel, which doesn’t hit shelves until Oct, The Eye of Minds (RH/Delacorte YR; Listening Library) on USA Today.com, where the first chapter is posted today (ARC’s have not been sent out yet, but RH Childrens tells us that they will have them at ALA).

It is the first in a new series, Mortality Doctrine, which is described as “a series set in a world of hyperadvanced technology, cyberterrorists, and gaming.” During a TwitterChat last month, Dashner said that it is “basically for the exact same people who love The Maze Runner. A very different story, as Dashner as you can get … but more intellectual and plot-driven than TMR” and that the main female character, Sarah, “is more central than Teresa was in TMR.”

Dashner is currently at work on the sequel titled The Rule of Thoughts.

A film of The Maze Runner, starring Kaya Scodelario, is scheduled for release on Valentine’s Day, 2014.

Pamela Paul, new editor of the NYT Book Review

What do we want from the NYT Book Review? Often discussed, that question takes on added interest now that Sam Tanenhaus is leaving his post as Editor after nine years.

He will be replaced by Pamela Paul, who has been the children’s books editor and the features editor for the Review. She is only the second woman to hold that position (Rebecca Sinkler was the first, from 1989 to 1995).

We have a simple (which is NOT synonymous with “easy”) request: do what good librarians do, approach books with passion and excitement:

Every week, make people say, “I gotta read that!”

Don’t be afraid to show your hand and champion certain titles (like the NYT Magazine did for George Saunders’ book of short stories, Tenth of December, with their cover declaring it “the best book you will read this year“)

A NYT Book Review cover from 2004

Make people look forward to each issue, wondering, “What’s going to be on the cover?”

Develop reviewers that people actively follow

Surprise us with a range of titles and don’t be afraid of the popular

There are reasons to think Pamela Paul may be up to that task:

She is a passionate reader — in an essay on YA books, she went way beyond the cliché of being so engrossed in a book that she missed her subway stop; she admitted to nearly ignoring her new-born because she was in the midst of The Hunger Games.

She appreciates a wide range of authors — her weekly Q&A column, “By the Book,” ranges from authors like Edward St. Aubyn to household names like Jackie Collins (who would have guessed that her favorite genre is ” tough male fiction”?)

She enjoys controversy — She stirred the waters by publishing a much-talked-about piece by Meg Wolitzer on the status of womens fiction

And, she clearly has stamina. In addition to her duties on the Book Review, she  has written for many other sections of the NYT, as well as other publications, and writes a weekly column on children’s books for the daily newspaper. She has also written three books and is raising three children.

She will need that strength. Previous editors have complained that it is a thankless job. When Chip McGrath left that position on 2003, he admitted to The New York Observer, “I have too thin a skin for this job … A lot of people feel that part of their job is to let you know in various ways how unhappy you’ve made them. That’s wearing.” John Leonard, the editor in the early 1970’s, often regarded as the “golden age” of the publication, chimed in, saying, “The job wears you out. I lasted five years. It’s not so much that the books keep coming, but the complaints keep coming.”

Pamela Paul begins that thankless job in May.

Before it was published in August of 2011, Tom Perrotta’s novel The Leftovers, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Macmillan Audio) was acquired by HBO for a possible series.

Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) has just been named as director and shooting is expected to begin in June for a possible 2014 premiere, according to New York Magazine’s culture blog, “Vulture.” Co-writing the script with Perrotta is Damon Lindelof, who was a writer and producer for Lost. In an interview about the project last year, Lindelof indicated that the series would go beyond the book, saying it “probably only has enough content for two or three episodes.”