Marisha Pessl’s second novel, Night Film (Random House/; RH Audio) after her award-winning Special Topics in Calamity Physics, (Penguin; perhaps anticipating even greater success with this new book, the paperback cover now prominently states that Pessl is “The author of Night Film“) is enjoying red carpet treatment for its release two weeks from today:

NPR — Exclusive First Read (with an audio excerpt)

Author profiled in the new issue of New York magazine

Entertainment Weekly‘s “Shelf Life” blog offers an “exclusive” of the “chilling” trailer (not all that exclusive; it’s also available on YouTube and below)

Many consumer reviews for this literary thriller are in the works. Prepub reviews are divided; Booklist stars it, LJ is strongly positive overall, but notes it “slows down a bit over its considerable length.” PW also expresses that concern and Kirkus criticizes it for being “A touch too coyly postmodern at times,” but adds it’s “a worthwhile entertainment all the same.” With all the attention, readers will want to find out for themselves; a few libraries are already showing holds in the low triple digits.

Find out for yourself; advance digital copies are currently available on Edelweiss.

Zooming up the Amazon charts overnight, now at #16 and rising, is The Sports Gene, (Penguin/Current), a ” deliciously contrarian exploration of great athletic feats.” (Library Journal) by David J. Epstein, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated.

The book was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday. It has also been covered by the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Science News and Businessweek, among others.

Library ordering is conservative.

Lionsgate, the studio that adapted Orange is the New Black, which debuted last month on Netflix, The Hunger Games and Twilight, has optioned the rights to Sylvia Day’s Crossfire series, for a TV series, according to Deadline.

We’re assuming they aren’t intending to try to sell it to network TV.

Meanwhile, Universal has sent out a casting call for the big-screen adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey, tentatively scheduled for release 8/24/13.

One of the first people to single out Robert Galbraith’s The Cuckoo’s Calling (Hachette/Mulholland; Hachette Audio) for special attention was one of LJ‘s mystery reviewers, Terry Jacobsen, formerly of Solano County (CA) Public Library, who made it LJ‘s Mystery Debut of the Month for April. Shortly after the author’s true name was revealed, Jacobsen was interviewed on CNN.

So, what is Jacobsen’s most recent pick? It’s…

Jump the Gun: An Annabelle Starkey Mystery #1, by Zoe Burke, (Poisoned Pen, simultaneous hdbk, trade pbk and large print; Blackstone audio)

Releasing tomorrow, Jacobsen describes it as, “Quickly paced and so clever, Burke’s debut is a winning semi-cozy caper, perfect for movie fans. She never misses a beat with her light rom-com banter, multigenerational ensemble, and sense of fun.”

See all of Jabobsen’s picks here.

After several stellar reviews, holds are rising on Ivy Pochoda’s second book, Visitation Street, (HarperCollins/Ecco/Dennis Lehane Books; Thorndike Large Print), released last month. The New York Times Book Review‘s mystery columnist Marilyn Stasio calls it a “powerfully beautiful novel” that brings to life the neighborhood it is set in, Red Hook, Brooklyn, through the eyes of “people from the neighborhood — diverse characters who are vibrantly, insistently alive.”

It happens that Red Hook is very close to EarlyWord’s “World Headquarters,” so it may seem natural that we are fans. But as specific as the setting is, it has a wider resonance. As the Miami Herald writes, “…what’s most haunting is [Pochoda’s] searing, all-too-familiar portrait of a community bitterly divided by the usual suspects of American unrest — race, poverty, culture, drugs. Her Red Hook is alive and not well, a place ruled by real and artificial boundaries, a city of flesh and blood and failed dreams.”

Ivy recently recorded an interview with HarperCollins Library Marketer, Annie Mazes (watch out Susan Stamberg; Annie’s giggle is even more infectious than yours). It opens with photos from the EarlyWord/GalleyChat tour held during BEA, and sponsored by HarperCollins. From the description of the neighborhood in the reviews, you might not think that Red Hook would be a good place for tourists, but its position on the NY Harbor makes for spectacular views. Also, Pochoda’s book portrays a community just beginning to gentrify. That is now in full swing, with an upscale chocolate factory and even a winery. (Thanks to Robin Beerbower, Salem [OR] Public Library, for the photos — more here, with quotes from the book).

The next GalleyChat is tomorrow, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 4 to 5 p.m. ET (details on how to join are here).

The NYT‘s publishing reporter, Julie Bosman, has pronounced The Silent Wife by A. S. A. Harrison (Penguin, 6/25), the next Gone Girl, now that it has hit best seller lists (debuting on the NYT‘s own combined print and ebook list at #11).

The NYT is a bit late to the party (their reviewer, Janet Maslin, predicted a different novel, Lauren Beukes’s The Shining Girls, Hachette/Mulholland, would be the heir. The NYT has yet to review The Silent Wife). In libraries, holds have been growing steadily (we issued our first holds alert for it on July 2).

The article details the book’s publishing history and points out that Walmart has only just ordered it. Once copies begin selling there, it is likely to reach new heights on best seller lists.

One of our favorite mystery reviewers, Sarah Weinman writes in the New Republic about the appeal of the unlikeable heroine, as exemplified by The Silent Wife. Watch for Weinman’s forthcoming book, Troubled Duaghers. Twisted Wives, (Penguin) an anthology of stories by women crime writers. Her introduction should be required reading for all readers advisors.

Of the titles releasing next week (downloadable spreadsheet, Kids New Title Radar, Week of Aug. 5), below are a few that should be particular hits with kids.

NG Kids Ultimate Weird But True 2: 1,000 Wild & Wacky Facts & Photos! (National Geographic)

This is the second in a high-interest reading series that appeals to kids who can read, but choose not to. Each page is a glossy color photo with fun facts. The first one flew off the shelves and this one will too.
 

Robots, Robots Everywhere!  Sue Fliess, illus. by Bob Staake (RH/Little Golden Books)

Short rhyming text perfectly supported by Staake’s primary colored graphic images demonstrate why “Golden Books” is a go-to brand for preschool story time.

The Surprise Attack of Jabba the Puppett: An Origami Yoda Book, Tom Angleberger, (Abrams/Amulet)

The first title in this series, The Strange Case Of Origami Yoda was a best seller and for good reason. It was a terrific school story, told from different points of view, formatted in the style of Wimpy Kid. We all know series that peter out after the 2nd or 3rd book. Angleberger demonstrates in this 4th book that he has hit the mark in portraying contemporary middle school life.

Llama Llama And The Bully Goat, Anna Dewney, (Penguin/Viking)

Llama Llama Red Pajama continues to be be one of my favorite read alouds for the pre-school set. Anna Dewney continues the series that and helps children manage “big feelings.” In previous books we learned that sharing is hard and it’s okay to get angry. Now she tackles teasing with just the right light touch.

Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales Donner Dinner Party, Nathan Hale, (Abrams/Amulet)

Thanks to one of my trusted sources, Susan Faust, school librarian and children’s book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle, for recommending this one. She says,

“Heading up to Tahoe on Interstate 80? A tidy graphic novel recounts the mess at the summit in the winter of 1846-47. Quick summary: Things go from bad to worse for a wagon train headed from Illinois to California, and there is nothing left to eat but each other. The narrator is Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale, who foresees another gruesome chapter in American history right before the British hang him in 1776. (With the same name as the real-life author, he ties together the Hazardous Tales series.) Although it’s based on somber truths, irreverence rules with Mad Magazine edge and snarky asides. Still, the main themes are intact: arduous journey, bad choices, hubris, hunger, cold and an infamous end.”

James Patterson releases his 115th title next week, Mistress, (Hachette/Little, Brown), putting him on track to match last year’s record output of 13 titles (5 of them children’s). This is his second title with David Ellis, following Guilty Wives. Ellis released a title of his own just last week, The Last Alibi (Penguin/Putnam; Thorndike).

Other usual suspects arriving next week are Faye Kellerman with The Beast (HarperCollins/Morrow), W.E.B. Griffin and son William E. Butterworth’s next in the “Badge of Honor” series The Last Witness, (Penguin/Putnam), Julie Garwood’s Hotshot (Penguin/Dutton; Thorndike) and Erica Spindler’s  Justice for Sara, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press).

In an unusual move, Dorothy Garlock’s Under a Texas Sky (Hachette/Grand Central; Thorndike) is being released simultaneously in hardcover and trade paperback.

All the titles highlighted here are listed on our downloadable spreadsheet, New Title Radar, Week of Aug. 5. Some are still available as digital ARC’s on Edelweiss and/or NetGalley, but hurry, they are generally removed once the books are published.

Watch List

Sandrine’s Case (Perseus/Mysterious Press; HighBridge Audio)

With the number of titles he’s published and the awards he’s won, Thomas Cook can be considered a “usual suspect” but he is an author that still deserves to be introduced to a broader audience, according to many librarians. Booklist calls him a “master plotter” and this psychological courtroom drama “another fine effort from the always insightful Cook.”

Brewster, Mark Slouka, (Norton)

Lots of excitement surrounds this one. Librarians on GalleyChat have been talking about it for months and it was also A. Carstensen’s Shout ‘n’ Share Pick:

“One of the most beautiful books of the year. Set in Brewster, NY, in the late 1960s, this is the story of four young people, but especially Jon and his friend Ray. Jon’s parents were destroyed by his younger brother’s death. To escape, Jon takes up track where he makes a friend, Ray. Ray is always getting into fights, but when it is just them, he is insightful and honest. There is real darkness in their town, and it seems to collect around Ray’s father, a bigoted man. The writing is extraordinary, especially the way the author uses metaphors and the music of the era.”

A quick, evocative description comes from Norton’s Library Marketing Manager Golda Rademacher —  “It’s like entering a Bruce Springsteen song.”

Booksellers agree. It’s an IndieNext pick for August; “Raw and brutal at times, the well-drawn characters of this poignant story stay with you well after the book is closed.”

This Sunday’s New York Times Book Review calls it an “intense and elegiac novel … Slouka’s storytelling is sure and patient, deceptively steady and devastatingly agile.” Lots more reviews are coming — People, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the Boston Globe.

Babayaga, Toby Barlow, (Macmillan/FSG)

Another GalleyChat favorite that is also resonating with independent booksellers who made it an IndieNext Pick for August. The author’s debut,  Sharp Teeth, was described as “Romeo and Juliet, werewolf-style.” It was an Alex Award-winner as well as on the RUSA’s Best Adult Genre Fiction Reading List. It was written in verse, but the new book is straightforward prose.

The Realm of Last Chances, Steve Yarbrough, (RH/Knopf; RH Audio)

This is one of the titles Wendy Bartlett, Cuyahoga P.L. is betting on, buying extra copies for browsing. She calls it “a cheatin’ book for people who think they’re too smart to ruin their lives by cheating .. for the strong literary crowd who were not quite satisfied by Gone Girl. This has that same frisson of danger in a tamer setting that book clubs will secretly tell each other about … The author has literary credentials (a PEN/Faulkner finalist) and he writes like a  modern day Flaubert about a morally conflicted modern Emma Bovary. Unfortunately, the cover doesn’t do much for it, but  if that gets in the right reviewer’s hands (the two prepub reviewers are diametrically opposed; LJ was lukewarm and Kirkus red hot), it will be very strong.”

The Rathbones, Janice Clark, (RH/Doubleday)

A debut set in a whaling community in 1850’s Connecticut, with elements of the supernatural, which Booklist says is “a dark combination of fairy tale and fever dream, replete with reality-bending, dark secrets, and a fascinating, multigenerational family.” It is on The Millions‘ list of most-anticipated titles, with this description, “Think Moby-Dick directed by David Lynch from a screenplay by Gabriel Garcia Marquez …with Charles Addams doing the set design and The Decembrists supplying the chanteys.”

It comes with a cover blurb from Erin Morgenstern (The Night Circus) “A remarkable tale, both  epic and intimate. Beautifully crafted and elegantly told A siren song of a story.” The author spoke to librarians at the Random House BEA Breakfast.

The Ghost Bride: A Novel, Yangsze Choo, (HarperCollins/Morrow)

Word must be getting out about this big debut from Morrow (listen to the description from HarperCollins Buzz session at ALA); it is already showing holds in many libraries. Another IndieNext Pick for August, “Set on the Malay Peninsula in the late 19th century, this debut novel tells the story of Li Lan, whose father promises her in marriage to the recently deceased son of a wealthy local family as a means of discharging his considerable debt. When the dead son begins visiting Li Lan in her dreams, she becomes increasingly desperate to escape him. After an accidental overdose of a sleeping draught separates her soul from her body, Li Lan must navigate the world of the dead with the aid of two allies — Fan and Er Lang — neither of whom are what they appear to be. Full of danger, romance, and eerie beauty, this is the tale of a young girl’s quest to find her own destiny and choose love over duty.” —Billie Bloebaum, Powell’s Books at PDX, Portland, OR

Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America’s Most Celebrated Publishing House, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, (S&S)

Independent booksellers have made this insider’s look at publishing their #1 pick for August of titles they plan to handsell. As fascinating as the book sounds (“scintillating history… [of] a cosmopolitan, intellectual, if shabby kingdom where sex was the currency of the realm” Booklist), it’s hard to imagine it reaching a wide audience and, indeed, library ordering is very light. The Entertainment Weekly review in the new issue, is generally positive, but gives it a B+, marking it down because, “Kachka labors too long over the minutiae of contracts and deals.”  The author is a contributing editor at New York magazine, which will guarantee a certain amount of attention.

Queen’s Gambit, Elizabeth Fremantle, (S&S; Thorndike)
This debut historical novel arrives with an unusual number of positive pre-pub reviews (only Kirkus manages to rain on this parade). About Katherine Parr, the sixth wife of Henry VIII, it’s drawing comparisons to Hilary Mantel’s critical and popular successes, Wolf Hall, and Bring Up the Bodies.

Hungry: What Eighty Ravenous Guys Taught Me about Life, Love, and the Power of Good Food, Darlene Barnes, (Hyperion)

Who can resist a memoir by a woman who had the cajones to try to introduce a bunch of frat boys to a decent diet? Read the Kirkus review; it will convince you even if the cover and subtitle don’t.

Media Magnets

Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson, Jeff Guinn, (S&S)

It’s been over 25 years since Vincent Bugilosi’s major best seller, Helter Skelter (Norton; amazingly still in print) examined the lurid 1969 Hollywood murders committed by Manson and his band of followers. Attention is building for this new look at the case; USA Today interviewed the author this week. Entertainment Weekly gives it B, saying, “If the result is low on flair, Guinn gets high marks for diligence.” More media is coming, including NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered, and TV’s Inside Edition.

These Few Precious Days: The Final Year of Jack with Jackie, Christopher Andersen, (S&S/Gallery)

The author, a former senior editor for People magazine, has written over a dozen best-selling bios of well-known figures. He is scheduled to appear on NBC’s Today Show next week. The upcoming 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination will bring increased interest in the Kennedys, which will be fed by more books and  the movie Parkland, opening Sept. 20, about the chaotic hours after the dying JFK was brought to the Dallas hospital of the title.

Best Seller Followup

Clark Howard’s Living Large for the Long Haul: Consumer-Tested Ways to Overhaul Your Finances, Increase Your Savings, and Get Your Life Back on Track, Clark Howard, Mark Meltzer, Theo Thimou, (Penguin/Avery; Tantor Audio)

Howard has a show on CNN’s Headline News. His previous title, was on the NYT Pbk. Advice best seller list for 21 weeks, hitting #1 in it’s third week. You can expect that he will be promoting this new book on his show.

There are no prepub reviews, so several libraries have not ordered it.

The new USA Today best seller list confirms what holds in libraries have been indicating; The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison, (Penguin, original trade pbk) is a word-of-mouth success. It debuts at #17 on the list after five weeks on sale.

See our earlier story for more on the book.

“Jerusalem fever” is spreading across the country, according to the NYT.

Jerusalem: A Cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi (Ten Speed), released last year, was chosen as the IACP’s Cookbook of the Year, and was the James Beard  winner in the International category.

The NYT story notes that Ten Speed already has 200,000 copies in print, which is unusual since most new cookbooks, especially those that are not by celebrities, “disappear without a trace” (sadly, the same could be said for all book categories).

At least part of the success is attributed to social media. Fans started a page on Facebook dedicated to it, as well as on Pinterest and Instagram. The hashtag #tastingjrslm, allows them to communicate about favorite recipes. The NYT itself features the authors on this month’s “Recipe Lab” videochat.

Holds in libraries are unusually high for a cookbook (one library shows 90 on 17 copies). The NYT story quotes the rector of an Episcopal church, who says, “I took it out from the library as many times as I was allowed to. And there were still so many things I wanted to make that I was forced to buy it.” (We like the image of the library rapping the reverend on the knuckles for hogging the book).

Four of the five novelists in Stephen King’s family have books out this year, so the upcoming New York Times Magazine features them in a cover story. Each family member is profiled, including daughter, Naomi, the only one who has not written a book. Although she was big reader growing up, “the power of her father’s books was lost on her,” due to a chronic deficit of adrenaline, making terror “a hard emotion for her to access.”

Son Joe Hill’s third novel,  NOS4A2 came out in April (HarperCollins/Morrow). Younger son Owen’s first novel, Double Feature, (S&S/Scribner) was published in March. Daughter-in-law Kelly Braffet (married to Owen),  publishes her third novel Save Yourself, (RH/Crown) on Aug. 6. Stephen King says it reads as if  “James Cain adapted S.E. Hinton for David Lynch.”

And, of course, father King published Joyland in June (Hard Case Crime) and Doctor Sleep the sequel to The Shining arrives in September (S&S/Scribner).