With her book, Lean In still  on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction list after 53 weeks, Sheryl Sandberg has geared her message to a younger generation with Lean In: For Graduates (RH/Knopf; RH Audio). She appeared on the Today Show this morning.

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As the anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing approaches, the Boston Public Library unveils an exhibit, “Dear Boston: Messages from the Marathon Memorial,” which includes items from the a spontaneous memorial that developed in Copley Square

One of the people who was injured in that tragedy, Jeff Bauman, appeared on the Today Show this morning, to talk about his remarkable recovery from losing both his legs and his book, released today, Stronger, (Hachette/Grand Central).

Bauman, will also be featured in a special report on Friday’s NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, “108 Hours: Inside the Hunt for the Boston Marathon Bomber.”

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If you’re going to commit a crime in the U.S., go for the big bucks, says Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi on The Daily Show. If you are caught, the consequences are likely to be less severe. Our jails are filled with people doing time for smaller crimes, while bankers who steal billions go free.

His new book, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, (RH/Spiegel & Grau) released today, rose to #39 on Amazon’s sales rankings as a result of his appearance.

The movie Life of Crime, based on the late Elmore Leonard’s novel The Switch, (HarperCollins/Morrow), has been set for release on August 29.

In The Rolling Stone last year, director Daniel Schechter described his efforts to buy the rights to the novel and expressed hopes that Leonard would have appreciated the outcome.  With the exceptions of Jackie Brown, Get Shorty, and the FX series, Justified, Leonard wasn’t a fan of the majority of the many adaptations of his work.

The film, featured at the Toronto Film Festival was called by Variety‘s critic, a “fitting memorial” to the author.

Starring Jennifer Aniston, it was renamed Life of Crime, presumably to separate it from a very different movie starring Aniston, The Switch, based on a Jeffrey Eugenides’ short story The Baster.

Life of Crime also stars John Hawkes, Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), Isla Fisher and Tim Robbins.

The novel is one of a series of trade paperback rereleases of Leonard’s classic backlist published by HarperCollins/Morrow. It is  also in the Library of America collection, Elmore Leonard: Four Novels of the 1970s, coming in September (Penguin/Library of America).

The first teaser trailer for HBO’s The Leftovers, based on Tom Perotta’s novel, gives away very little:

The 10-episode series is co-created by Perotta and Damon Lindeloff, co-creator of the tv series Lost, who recently told Entertainment Weekly that the book first came to his attention via Stephen King’s review in the New York Times Book Review.

The series, starring Justin Thoreau, Amy Brenneman and Liv Tyler, premieres on June 15 at 10 p.m. EST, following the season finale of Game of Thrones.

The Leftovers (TV tie-in edition)
Tom Perrotta
St. Martin’s Griffin/Macmillan
On Sale Date: June 3, 2014
Trade paperback; 9781250054227, 1250054222

With a new novel, In Paradise, (Penguin/Riverhead), set for release on Tuesday, Peter Matthiessen died at 86 on Saturday.

Both NPR and the New York Times magazine released profiles of Matthiessen just before the news broke.

Ron Charles, reviewing the new novel in the Washington Post writes, “Like the rest of Matthiessen’s vast body of work, In Paradise leads us into questions that define our most profound mysteries.”

The Los Angeles Times Book Critic, David Ulin, offers his picks of Matthiessen’s over 30 books, “five essential reads and why they matter.”

A feature movie based on the classic WWI memoir, Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain, began filming last week at the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway in West Yorkshire, England, according to local news stories.

Just last year, 80 years after publication, the book was called “one of the most powerful and widely read war memoirs of all time,” by The Guardian. When it was published in 1933, it was “an instant hit,” and Virginia Woolf wrote in her diaries that she had to stay up all night to finish it. It’s pacifist message fell out of favor during WWII, but in 1978 the feminist Virago Press brought it back into print to great success. Today, notes The Guardian, “the book seems to strike a chord with contemporary readers who have themselves lived through an era of renewed conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The title role is being played by Swedish actress Alicia Vikander (whose breakout was in the supporting role of Kitty in Anna Karenina; she also starred in the Oscar-nomated Danish movie, A Royal Affair), replacing Saoirse Ronan, who was originally cast for the role.

The book is currently available in the U.S. in trade paperback from Penguin Books:

Testament of Youth
Vera Brittain
Penguin Classics, 2005
9780143039235, 0143039237
Trade paperback $20.00 USD

The final season of HBO’s True Blood, based on the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris, premieres Sunday, June 22, 2014 at 9pm ET/PT.

The teaser trailer, below, will be shown before tonight’s premiere of Game of Thrones season four.

Tie-in:

All Together Dead (TV Tie-In)
Charlaine Harris
Penguin/Ace Hardcover
On Sale Date: May 27, 2014,
9780425271551, 0425271552
Mass market (rack) paperback
$7.99 USD / $9.99

Although the Sookie Stackhouse series ended with Dead Ever After, (Penguin/Ace Hardcover, 2013), death in the Stackhouse universe is a relative thing. She continues to appear in short stories:

Games Creatures Play, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner (Penguin/Ace Hardcover; Brilliance Audio; April 1) – includes a new Sookie Stackhouse story

Dead But Not Forgotten: Stories from the World of Sookie Stackhouse, edited by Charlaine Harris, Toni L. P. Kelner (Penguin/Ace Hardcover; Nov. 25, 2014) —  a collection of 15 stories written by authors chosen by Harris.

Harris begins a new trilogy in May, set in the small town of Midnight, Texas; Midnight Crossroad, (Penguin/Ace Hardcover; Recorded Books; Thorndike; May 6). The town has strange residents, of course, including a vampire that works in a pawn shop (on the night shift).

Publishers Weekly calls it “a solid entry in Harris’s catalogue [that] will do very well with her fans.”

Libraries are showing holds.

Titles arriving next week with guaranteed spots on the best seller list are Lisa Scottoline’s Keep Quiet and Stuart Woods’ Carnal Curiosity. Below are five others you need to know.

These titles and several more arriving next week are listed on our downloadable spreadsheet with full ordering information and alternate formats.

The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories, Marina Keegan, S&S/Scribner; Tantor Audio

Who wouldn’t tear up, reading this from a student as she faces graduation, “We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life.” Those words becomes even more poignant when you learn that their talented writer, Marina Keegan, died in a car accident just before she was set to begin a dream job at the New Yorker. Her final column for the Yale Daily News, became an internet hit after her death. It and several other writings that Keegan left behind are brought together in this book, featured as the lead review in People magazine, with 3.5 of 4 stars.

Family Life, Akhil Sharma, Norton

This LibraryReads pick is featured on the cover of NYT Book Review this week. Also on Entertainment Weekly‘s “must list,” it is described as an “autobiographic novel about an immigrant family derailed by an accident. It’s beautifully evocative and — tragedy notwithstanding — surprisingly funny.” It will  be featured on NBC’s Weekend Today Show.

Love Life, Rob Lowe, S&S; S&S Audio

Lowe already proved himself an entertaining memoirist with Stories I Only Tell My Friends. This follow up gets a nod from Entertainment Weekly, which says Lowe, “Goes out of his way not to tread the same ground he did in hits first memoir … this book is just as breezily enjoyable as its predecessor.”
Astonish Me, Maggie Shipstead, RH/Knopf; RH Audio

The author’s debut, Seating Arrangements, was a favorite among librarians and booksellers and her new title is an Indie Next pick. The Huffington Post also picks it as “The Book We’re Taling About” this week (even though they are not completely taken with this “leaping departure” from the author’s previous title). Jen Dayton at Darien Public Library, who was the first to alert us to Seating Arrangements, long before it become a best seller, reviews it on Edelweiss, saying it is, “a fascinating look into the lives of professional dancers and the damage that secrets can do. Book groups could have a field day with this one.”

In Paradise, Peter Matthiessen, Penguin/Riverhead

Matthiessen is known as a nonfiction writer, but considers himself a novelist who “writes other things,” as a long profile of his fascinating life in Sunday’s NYT Magazine details (unfortunately for Matthiessen, the author of the profile is not taken with his fiction). Wendy Bartlett, Cuyahoga Public Library, recommends In Paradise to librarians, saying this “book about a professor of Holocaust history who joins a spiritual retreat at Auschwitz and what he discovers about himself as he confronts a history he believes he already understands, is universal and personal at the same time … Matthiessen also explores how the Holocaust resonates for various countries and cultures by peopling the retreat with characters from all parts of the world. It’s a masterful and incredibly thought provoking construct” making it one to get “for your smart book discussion members.”

We’re being showered with some great kids books this month. Below are some new arrivals that caught my eye (for my picks of YA titles, click here).

The Pigeon Needs a Bath!, Mo Willems, Hachette, Disney-Hyperion

Over ten years ago four-year-olds everywhere screamed, denied, and prevented a small blue pigeon from driving a bus. Pigeon has found a hotdog, wanted a puppy, longed for a cookie, stayed up late and I am pretty sure that we are not surprised that now he needs a bath.

The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend, Dan Santat, Hachette/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Beekle is a doughy white roundish creature with a golden crown. He is an imaginary friend who lacks a child. Beekle impatiently waits in the land of imaginary creatures for his perfect match until he just can’t wait any longer and journeys off to find the child himself. Santat has created a fantasy world of helpful imagined companions. We meet a navy blue octopus who seems to have mehndi designs trailing up its tentacles, a cheerful wind cloud who helps fly a kite, and a playful salamander-like creature; all part of a community of children in a familiar yet strange landscape saturated with color.

Have You Seen My Dragon?, Steve Light, Candlewick

Counting from 1 to 20 we wander the street of Manhattan as a the eponymous dragon hides in plain sight. Light’s retro crowded pen and ink drawings evoke the hustle and bustle of the big city with judicious spots of color to help young readers find the 2 red hotdogs in golden buns, 3 purple buses and so on and so on.

Cowy Cow , Chris Raschka, Abrams/Appleseed

When I found out that Abrams Appleseed was bringing the Thingy Thing books back in print, I did cartwheels. When I found out that they were adding 4 new titles right away, I did hand springs. Okay not really, but my heart did. I have adored these simple stories that are just right for the emergent readers since the silly Moosey Moose who pined for long pants to wear on his antlers. Don’t worry, kids get the joke.

Ninja, Ninja, Never Stop!, Tad Carpenter, Abrams Appleseed

Picture books about ninjas abound:

The Boy who cried Ninja, Alex Latimer, Peachtree Publishers

Wink the Ninja Who Wanted To Nap, J.C. Phillipps, Penguin/Viking Juvenile

The Three Ninja Pigs, Corey Rosen Schwartz, Dan Santat, Penguin/Putnam Juvenile

Nighttime Ninja, Ed Young, Barbara DaCosta, Hachette/Little, Brown

This one with its bold graphics and bouncy rhyme is a delightful romp.

A year a go I proclaimed my adoration of Andy Giffiths, author of The 13-Story Treehouse, illustrated by Terry Denton, (Macmillan/Feiwel & Friends). It bears repeating, especially now that there’s a sequel, The 26-Story Treehouse :

Are you a little sick of the refrain, “Boys don’t read … boys stop reading … boys can read but don’t”?

My not-so-secret weapon is Andy Griffiths. Got a third grader who isn’t in to reading yet? Give him Griffiths and Denton’s The Big Fat Cow That Goes Kapow! and The Cat on the Mat is Flat. It can mean the difference between a kid becoming a life-long non-reader or a fluent confident reader who knows there are books out there to be enjoyed.

This new title is a not-so-tongue-in-cheek memoir of Andy and Terry who live in a 13-story-treehouse, with all the fantasy rooms a kid could dream up; a see-through-pool, a basement laboratory, a marshmallow shooting cannon, a shrink ray AND the ability to transform a cat into flying catnary (click on the cover to see treehouse in its full glory). Let’s not be sexist about the appeal of this volume. All genders of third graders will be fighting over it.

Register with SLJ and you can have a class/ library visit with Andy Griffiths live from the Twin Cities Rock Star Supply Co.

Below are three YA titles to add to your pile of kids books to love in early April (see for my picks for younger kids here):

The Here and Now, Ann Brashares, Delacorte Press

The new book by author of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, is a very different kind of novel. Prenna might seem like an ordinary teenager but she is not. She is a member of a community of time travelers who have landed in the present from a devastating plague ridden future. Her movements, her contacts with others, and her very conversations are circumscribed by “the twelve rules” put in place to keep them safe and not disturb the time. Yet, how much can Prenna trust that the leaders have their members best interest in mind when she knows that any misstep could cause a person’s removal or death at the hands of those pledged to keep them safe? A page turner.

The Ring and the Crown, Melissa de la Cruz, Disney-Hyperion 

Sweeping romance, alternative history with Franco/Anglo crown, where there was no American Revolution, and internecine royal conflict threaded with magic construct a compelling and riveting fantasy novel, plus a crazy great book trailer.  Do not miss.

The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy, Kate Hattemer, RH/Knopf Books for Young Readers

Brainy outsiders? “Look at me” theater geeks? Handsome popular guy? Cool English teacher? Villainous administrators? Outsized crushes? Just an ordinary Minneapolis arts high school until a reality show takes residence. It’s all down hill from here, unless the Vigilante Poets can save the day in this outstanding debut novel.

Librarian favorite and Printz honor award winner, Rainbow Rowell has her first movie deal. Entertainment Weekly reports (“exclusively,” followed by MTV News interviewing the author) that DreamWorks has bought the rights to her popular YA romance, Eleanor & Park. (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Griffin; Listening Library; Thorndike Press)

DreamWorks president of production, Holly Bario, tells Entertainment Weekly what librarians already know, “Every girl who has read it says, ‘That was me in high school, or that was me in 7th grade.’” She also says they are trying to figure out how to handle the book’s structure of alternating chapters from each of the main character’s perspectives, “There are all storts of groovy stylistic things you could do with voice over, or words on the screen, but we want something that’s real Rainbow.”

To aid in that process, Rowell has  been hired to write the screenplay. DreamWorks hopes to begin shooting in 2015.

It’s being called “the fight that stopped trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange,” a live debate on CNBC that included Brad Katsuyama who is featured in Michael Lewis’s book, Flash Boys, (Norton; S&S Audio). Highlights below (the full 23 minutes are here).

Lewis tells Bloomberg BusinessWeek that he never anticipated the level of reaction this book is getting, citing Andrew Ross Sorkin’s column in the New York Times, which accuses Lewis of reserving “blame for the wrong villains … hedge funds and investment banks … easy targets,” rather than the “true culprits,” the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and other stock markets. Even though Sorkin calls Flash Boys an “important new book … a make-your-blood-boil read about the abusive way that high-frequency trading works,” Lewis calls Sorkin’s column “an idiotic piece of journalism.”

Time to order more copies; with this level of passion, Flash Boys will be talked about for a long time to come.

Never underestimate the power of an arresting image.

Metal Cats, to be released by indie Brooklyn publisher powerHouse Books in May, is proving irresistible to music sites, design sites, as well as Facebook and Pinterest postings. As a result the book is now rising on Amazon’s sales rankings.

For more, check  the powerhouse Spring 2014 catalog.

Given the star power of the Jennifer Lawrence/Bradley Cooper combo, as evidenced in Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, it’s been surprising that a third film starring the duo, Serena, adapted from Ron Rash’s 2008 novel, has not yet seen the light of day.

It seems Danish director Susanne Bier, whose movie, In A Better World, won the 2011 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, wanted to take her time in the editing room. New images from the film have just been released and are being featured on various web sites (The Playlist offers the largest selection; MTV praises Lawrence’s “retro glam”), indicate that it may soon have a release date.

Rash’s next novel, Above the Waterfall, (HarperCollins/Ecco) is scheduled for publication in 2015.