Archive for May, 2013

Sequel to MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME

Friday, May 31st, 2013

The sequel to Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (Quirk Books) arrives this coming January. Entertainment Weekly reveals the title, Hollow City, (Quirk Books, 9781594746123, pbk, $17.99; AudioGo) along with a preview (no photos and no cover, however).

As to Miss Peregrine, the movie, a  screenwriter was assigned in December of 2011. Tim Burton was rumored to be interested in directing it, but there’s been no recent news and Burton is now at work on a biopic about painter Margaret Keane, whose kitschy portraits of kids with enormous eyes were popular in the ’60’s. It’s being called, of course, Big Eyes.

On his Web site, Riggs announces that he is going on tour in June for the paperback of Miss Peregrine, which will also include some extra photos and the first chapter of Hollow City.

Below is the book trailer for Miss Peregrine.

SEA OF MONSTERS, Second Trailer

Wednesday, May 29th, 2013

Director Thor Freudenthal (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) replaces Chris Columbus (the first two Harry Potter movies) for the second Percy Jackson movie, which opens on August 7.

Official Web Site: PercyJacksonTheMovie.com

Sea of Monsters Tie-inThe tie-in edition arrives in July:

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Two The Sea of Monsters (Movie Tie-In Edition), Rick Riordan

Disney/Hyperion, 9781423160076, 142316007X $7.99 US / $8.99 Can

ENDLESS LOVE Arrives Valentine’s Day

Wednesday, May 29th, 2013

Endless LoveUnderscoring the title, the remake of Endless Love, based on the 1979 best seller by Scott Spencer (HarperCollins), has been scheduled to open on 2/14/14.

The original movie was directed by Franco Zeffrelli in 1981 and starred Brooke Shields and Martin Hewitt. The new version stars Alex Pettyfer, who starred in two  movies based on teen novels, I Am Number Four and Beastly. and Gabriella Wilde appeared in The Three Musketeers.

The book is also available in e-book from Open Road Media, through library e-book vendors.

It will be a big weekend for book-related movies. Also opening on that date are The Maze Runner and Vampire Academy: Blood Sister.

The Summer Beach Read Challenge

Wednesday, May 29th, 2013

The Shining GrilsThe NYT‘s Janet Maslin has declared The Shining Girls, (Hachette/Mulholland) by Lauren Beukes “a strong contender for the role of this summer’s universal beach read” (i.e., the next Gone Girl). Cuyahoga P.L. buyer Wendy Bartlett is a bit skeptical. Cautioning that she’s not yet read it, she says, “as cool as the plot sounds, it involves a killer who time travels and for most of our customers, time travel is an acquired taste.”

She’s issued a challenge to the Cuyahoga staff to read the galley and let her know whether she’s right or she needs to buy additional copies (she’s ordered a modest 19 copies for Cuyahoga’s 28 branches; most libraries around the country have also placed modest orders).

We’re inviting you to join in. E-galleys are on Edelweiss and NetGalley. Request the book (but hurry, e-galleys will only be available through Monday), read it and tell Wendy what you think in the comments section below.

If you’re not convinced that this is the Book of the Summer, which one are you betting on?’

@Bookblrb

Wednesday, May 29th, 2013

Those clever young ‘uns, Bill Barnes and Gene Ambum, over at the library-based comic, Unshelved have started something that may catch on — @bookblrb, tweet-sized blurbs for some of their favorite books. They even have a Facebook page.

As Bill puts it,

Writing very concise copy like this is surprisingly hard, and we think we are the right people to do it. After all, cartooning is basically the art of trimming away every unnecessary word (and every possible drop of ink) to let the joke come through. We have been doing this for a while with our comic strip book reviews, all we’ve done here is crank up the volume to 11, and the number of characters down to 117.


PEMBERLEY Comes to BBC

Wednesday, May 29th, 2013

Death Comes to PemberleyThe BBC is about to begin filming a three-part adaptation of P.D. James’s Death Comes to Pemberley  (RH/Knopf), a murder mystery featuring some of Jane Austen’s most beloved characters, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, who began married life in a house named Pemberley.

When the book was released in 2011, USA Today praised it saying, “Countless authors writing in a plethora of genres have tried to re-create Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but James’ new novel is incomparably perfect.”  NPR’s Fresh Air called it “a glorious plum pudding of a whodunit.”

Matthew Rhys plays Darcy, Anna Maxwell Martin is Elizabeth and Matthew Goode is Wickham [Sorry for the earlier mistake — we said the actors are Americans, but they are all British. Thanks for the corrections!].

Deadline reports that filming starts next month in Yorkshire, with the series expected to begin at the end of the year in the UK (no word yet on when it may appear here).

Stephen King’s JOYLAND

Wednesday, May 29th, 2013


Joyland_510x816Interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday, Stephen King explained why he chose a small independent publisher for his next book, Joyland, arriving on Tuesday,

Hard Case Crime is a throwback to the books that I loved as a kid. We lived way out in the country, and my mother would go once a week shopping, and she would go to the Red & White or the A&P to pick up her groceries. And I would immediately beat feet to Robert’s Drugstore, where they had a couple of those turn-around wire racks with the hard-boiled paperbacks that usually featured a girl with scanty clothing on the front. … The teaser line that I always loved the most was for a novel called Liz where it said, “She hit the gutter and bounced lower.” … I loved that, and the one on the front of Joyland says, “Who dares enter the funhouse of fear?”

Colorado KidThis is the second book King has published with Hard Case Crime, after 2005’s The Colorado Kid. In addition to original titles, Hard Case is known for bringing back to print crime novels from the ’40’s and ’50’s, with the kind of covers King remembers so fondly.

Reviewing Joyland in the new issue, Entertainment Weekly gives it a B+, marking it down for  being “really an overgrown short story,” but adding that it “features some of King’s most graceful writing … a relatively straightforward story of a young man’s adventure … it’s written in the complicated voice of a much older man’s memory: ruminative, amused, digressive, marvelously unaffected, and finally, devastatingly sad.”

Coming this fall is King’s Doctor Sleep, (S&S/Scribner), the sequel to The Shining.

Philippa Gregory’s WHITE QUEEN On Starz

Wednesday, May 29th, 2013

Philippa Gregory’s novels in The Cousins’ War series, set during Great Britain’s War of the Roses, have been adapted into a ten-part tv series that will premiere on STARZ cable network on Saturday, August 10th at 9pm ET/PT. Titled The White Queen, the BBC/STARZ production is actually based on the first three books [UPDATE: the fourth title, The Kingmaker’s Daughter is also being released as a tie-in], which are being released as trade paperback tie-ins in early July by S&S/Touchstone.

The White Queen,9781476735481

The Red Queen, 9781476746302

Lady of the Rivers, 9781476746319

The Kingmaker’s Daughter, 9781476746326

The White Queen  The Red Queen  Lady of the Rivers

It stars Max Irons (son of Jeremy Irons, he appeared in the movie Red Riding Hood), Amanda Hale (The Crimson Petal & The White), James Frain (The Tudors). Newcomer Rebecca Ferguson plays the Elizabeth Woodville, the White Queen. Amanda Hale is Margaret Beufort, the Red Queen and Faye Marsay is Anne Neville, the Lady of the Rivers. Gregory is an executive producer on the project.

The two teasers give quite different impressions of what to expect (see if you can guess which is the STARZ promo and which the BBC without looking at the credits).

First:

Second:

The next book in the series, The White Princess, (S&S/Touchstone; S&S Audio) will be published on July 23.

Sudden Backlist Best Sellers

Tuesday, May 28th, 2013

We’ve written about backlist titles hitting the NYT E-Book and Combined Best Seller lists as a result of sudden discounts by retailers.

The NYT explores the impact of  such “flash sales” in a story that appeared yesterday. Sourcebooks was a recent beneficiary. Their 1994 title, The Oracle Glass, by Judith Merkle Riley, hit the list last week after being featured simultaneously as a Kindle Daily Deal and a Nook Daily Find.

While some of these books quickly return to their former level of sales, for others, it has helped readers discover authors raising the sales of all their titles.

Don’t discount old-fashioned marketing, however. It can still renew sales of print backlist titles. See, for instance, City of Women, by David R. Gillham (Penguin/Putnam/Einhorn), now on the trade paperback list.

The Beach Read of The Summer

Tuesday, May 28th, 2013

The Shining GrilsJanet Maslin declares Lauren Beukes’s The Shining Girls, (Hachette/Mulholland), “a strong contender for the role of this summer’s universal beach read,” in Tuesday’s NYT, narrowly avoiding the cliche of  “this summer’s Gone Girl.”

On the Salon site Laura Miller, has no such compunction, counting it as one of seven titles worthy of that mantle, occupying the “sweet spot where literary quality mingles freely with crackerjack storytelling.” She notes that Beukes has brought together two favorite fictional themes, time travel and serial killers into “a soulful puzzle novel with an evocative final twist.”

Beukes’s earlier books have ben have been “closer to hard-core science fiction” says Maslin (Zoo City won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2011), but this one is a “pure thriller …an expert hair-raiser.”

Readers will have to wait a bit, however. The book isn’t due to be published until June 4. Librarians can get a jump on it by requesting e-galleys through Edelweiss and NetGalley.

CITY OF WOMEN Best Seller Debut

Tuesday, May 28th, 2013

City of WomenA debut novel set in Nazi Germany, City of Women, by David R. Gillham (Penguin /Putnam /Einhorn) was published in August.

After it was released in trade paperback and was chosen as a Book of the Month by COSTCO’s book buyer, the author went on a 17-city tour, which is just winding down.

It makes its first appearance on the NYT best seller list, at #15 on the 6/2 trade paperback list.

It was part of our Penguin First Flights program; read the online interview and listen to a podcast interview with the author here.

Maggie Hope A Best Seller

Tuesday, May 28th, 2013

Mr. Churchill's Secretary   Princess Elizabeth's Spy   His Majesty's Hope

The strategy of introducing a new author in less-expensive trade paperback, rather than hardcover, has paid off  for the Maggie Hope series about a British code breaker in WW II. The third novel, His Majesty’s Hope, (RH/Bantam; BOT Audio) hits the NYT best seller list at #18 (tied with #17) this week.

The author, Susan Elia MacNeal was nominated for an Edgar for Best First Novel by an American, with the first in the series, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary. The second,  Princess Elizabeth’s Spy was selected by Oprah.com as one of  seven “Compulsively Readable Mysteries (for the Crazy-Smart Reader).”

Best Seller Withdrawn

Tuesday, May 28th, 2013

Until I BreakWe’ve been following some of the changes to best seller lists brought about by e-books; backlist titles making their debuts as a result of Amazon discounts, titles appearing before print publication, and erotic fiction making inroads.

A new twist arrives this week; Until I Break, an erotic fiction title by Michelle Leighton debuts on the 6/2 NYT E-Book Only list at #13. That should be cause for celebration for any author, but in this case, Leighton has already withdrawn the book from publication.

Not Yet in Print, Already a Best Seller

Tuesday, May 28th, 2013

Eyes Wide OpenEyes Wide Open, an erotic romance by Raine Miller, debuts on the USA Today Best Seller list at #6, on the 6/2 NYT E-Book Only list at #2 and at #3 on the NYT Combined Print & E-Book list.

It’s the third in a series, which was originally self-published, with rights later acquired by S&S’s Atria imprint. Currently only available in e-book, the paperback edition will be released in August.

Several libraries own print copies of the first two titles in the series, but in Spanish, published by Santillana.

EIGHTY DOLLAR CHAMPION Rides To Number One

Tuesday, May 28th, 2013

Eighty Dollar ChampionWe’ve seen Amazon discounts affect best seller lists before, but never this dramatically. The number one title on the 6/2 NYT Nonfiction E-Book Only best seller list (also #7 on the Combined list) is The Eighty-Dollar Champion, by Elizabeth Letts (Random House). Published in hardcover August, 2011, it was on that list for 2 weeks, hitting a high of #10. After it was released in e-book last year, it appeared on list for 4 weeks.

The sales jump is likely due to Amazon, which recently discounted the e-book edition to $1.99.