Archive for June, 2014

The ORANGE Effect

Wednesday, June 18th, 2014

The second season of Orange Is The New Black was released on NetFlix on June 6th. It may have wandered  from the book, and may not live up to the first season, but it features even more references to other books, so many that Entertainment Weekly was able to create a season 2 reading list of a dozen titles (ranging from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars).

The memoir’s author, Piper Kerman appeared on the Diane Rehm show recently, to talk about her life since the book and the series and her work for prison reform.

With the airing of the new series, Orange Is The New Black has moved back up best seller lists.

BLACK MASS Begins Production

Tuesday, June 17th, 2014

After many delays, the movie Black Mass, starring Johnny Depp and Benedict Cumberbatch, began shooting two weeks ago in Boston (for those in the area, On Location Vacations has scouted out the filming locations). It is now scheduled for release some time in October, 2015.

9781610391092-2The film is based on the life of legendary Boston crime boss, Whitey Bulger. Now in his eighties, he was finally found guilty of multiple murders and other crimes last year. The Hollywood press greeted the verdict as providing an ending for the inevitable biopic.

As his nickname implies, Bulger was called that because of his white blonde hair, which was also balding. As a result, Depp has had to change his look.

There have been many books about Bulger, but this movie credit goes to Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal, by former Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill (PublicAffairs, 2000; paperback, 2012) .

Whitey Bulger

Published last year, Whitey BulgerAmerica’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice by Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy (Norton, 2/11/13) was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air and described as not only a fascinating story, but “just a great read.”

A documentary film about Bulger, Whitey: United States of America V. James J. Bulger  is also on its way, set for a limited theatrical release on June 27, to be broadcast later this year on CNN.

Holds Alert: I AM PILGRIM

Tuesday, June 17th, 2014

I Am PilgrimThe opening line is not promising, “Neither its plot nor its provenance do much to recommend Terry Hayes’s I Am Pilgrim,” (S&S/Atria/ Emily Bestler; S&S Audio; Thorndike), but Janet Maslin’s review in today’s New York Times quickly becomes a rave, describing the book as “the most exciting desert island read of the season … a big, breathless tale of nonstop suspense,”

The Cleveland Plain Dealer spotted it two weeks ago, and called it “one of the strongest thrillers in years, and certainly the best so far of this year.”  Published in the U.K. last year (although set in New York City), it also won over British reviewers. The Guardian went so far as to agree with the publisher’s hype that it is “the only thriller you need to read this year.”

The book is expected to be the first in a series (in fact, Maslin’s only grumble is that “This book doesn’t exactly end; it just stops … At the price of credibility, [Hayes] paves the way for a sequel. It’s not a fair trade.”)

Libraries show growing holds.

HAPPY SMEKDAY (Now HOME) Trailer

Tuesday, June 17th, 2014

Adam Rex’s chapter book, The True Meaning of Smekday, (Disney/Hyperion; Listening Library) has been changed to the more prosaic Home (following an earlier attempt to call it Happy Smekday!) for the animated movie adaptation and its world is very colorful, as shown by the first trailer:

The original received a rapturous review in The New York Times Book Review when it was published in 2007; “a story so original, so absorbing and so laugh-out-loud funny that the minute I read the last page, I want to start at the beginning again … [it] will captivate fans of the wordplay and characters in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld and of the outrageously entertaining satire of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

The True Meaning of SMEKDAY   SMEK For President

Written in the form of an essay for a time capsule by an 11-year-old girl nicknamed Tip (her real name is Gratuity), it begins after aliens called the Boov, have invaded the earth and changed the name Christmas to Smekday (after one of the Boov leaders). It was illustrator Adam Rex’s first novel (the sequel, Smek For President, is coming in Feb, 2015)

It happens that the rave NYT BR review was written by EarlyWord Kids Correspondent, Lisa Von Drasek. As such a fan of the book, we wondered how she’d feel about the trailer. Looks like it scores with her as well:

I LOVE this! The animators really captured how the alien Boov should look. The section of the story featured in the trailer is exactly the one one that I read aloud when I book talk Smekday. I am really looking forward to this one.

The movie is scheduled for release on March 25, 2015.

The main character, Tip,  is voiced by singer Rihanna and the Boov alien, named Oh, by Jim Parsons (star of The Big Bang Theory). Fans of the book will remember that character was originally named J.Lo  In a twist worthy of the wordplay of the book, the real J.Lo, Jennifer Lopez, voices a different character in the movie.

Comedy Central’s Book Bumps

Tuesday, June 17th, 2014

Stephen Colbert continued his public fight against Amazon on Friday, saying the company’s “scorched-earth tactics” against publisher Hachette, have resulted in “more people getting screwed than in Fifty Shades of Grey.”

California BumpCalifornia Bump

In an earlier show, he noted that Amazon’s disabling of the pre-order functions for Hachette titles is particularly hard on first-time authors, so he enlisted viewers to buy Edan Lepucki’s debut novel California (Hachette/Little,Brown), which is also a LibraryReads pick, via Powells. As of Friday, over 6,400 copies had been pre-ordered. Now he is urging viewers to make it a New York Times best-seller by continuing to pre-order copies through Powell’s and other independent booksellers.

Other Titles Getting The Bump

Sons of Wichita  Redeeming the Dream  The Confidence Code

Fellow Comedy Central host, Jon Stewart, who is also published by Hachette/Grand Central, has not formally joined the fight, but he will give a bump to another Hachette title tonight on The Daily Show, by interviewing Daniel Schulman, author of Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty (Hachette/Grand Central).

Also tonight, Colbert will feature a title from Penguin Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality David Boies, Theodore B. Olson, (Penguin/Viking).

And on Wednesday, Colbert will interview Katty Kay and Claire Shipman co-authors of The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance—What Women Should Know, (HarperBusiness).

Closer To Screen, RED SPARROW

Monday, June 16th, 2014

red-sparrow-book-cover-396x600

It seems less and less likely that the sequels to The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo will be adapted in to English language movies.

However, the team that worked on the first Dragon, director David Fincher and star Rooney Mara, are in talks to join forces again for another adaptation, based on Red Sparrow, by Jason Matthews (S&S/ Scribner), which won an Edgar this year for best first novel.

The Washington Post gave the book a particularly strong review, calling it a “sublime and sophisticated debut,” noting that some of the plot points might render it a “hodgepodge of the fantastic [the main character sees emotions] and the prurient [agents are trained in the art of seduction; “an Upper Volga Kama Sutra”] amid a series of spy vs. spy shenanigans. But the novel is far more grounded.”

THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU, Trailer

Monday, June 16th, 2014

We may soon be able to forgive Tina Fey for her part in that awful adaptation of the critically acclaimed novel, Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz, (Hachette/Grand Central, 2009).

This Is Where I Leave YouThe adaptation of Jonathan Tropper’s This Is Where I Leave You, (Penguin/Dutton, 2009) starring Fey, Jason Bateman and just about everyone else, debuts on September 12.

It seems the movie is fairly faithful to the book, but with one major change.  It is not told in the first person, but director Shawn Levy is so enamored with many of the book’s lines, as he told an audience at BookCon, he marked a copy of it with the lines he wanted to incorporate into the script.

A trade paperback tie-in edition will be published on July 29.

Ed Helms In UNDERPANTS

Monday, June 16th, 2014

0590846280Critical reception was strong for How to Train Your Dragon 2, which opened this weekend, but the box office receipts were a disappointment, earning “only” $50 million (predictions had been $65 million).

Just before the opening, Dreamworks announced a release date for How To … 3 , (6/17/18) as well as a raft of other animated sequels and just one original title, an adaptation of Captain Underpants, based on the best selling Dav Pilkey series (Scholastic).

0545504902_494c4Voicing the leads will be Kevin Hart (George Beard) and Ed Helms (the Captain). Directed by Rob Letterman, the movie  is scheduled for release on Jan. 13, 2017.

Captain Underpants first appeared in The Adventures of Captain Underpants (Scholastic,1997). The eleventh volume in the series, Captain Underpants and the Tyrannical Retaliation of the Turbo Toilet 2000 will be released on August 26.

A Slimmer PADDINGTON BEAR

Friday, June 13th, 2014

The first full-length trailer for Paddintgton, features a slimmer Bear than we’ve come to know from Michael Bond’s beloved books. Voiced by Colin Firth although impossible to recognize here (UPDATE: There may be a reason Paddington only grunts in this trailer. It was revealed on 6/17 that Firth is leaving the project). Also in the trailer are Downton Abbey‘s Hugh Bonneville. The movie, which also features Nicole Kidman as the evil taxidermist, opens Dec. 12

Official Movie Site: Paddington.com

Paddington  Paddington Bear, Fortnum

Michael Bond began his series in 1958,  with A Bear Called Paddington, illustrated by Peggy Fortnum (published by Collins in the U.K. and HMCo here in 1960). Paddington has been featured over the years in chapter books, picture books, pop up books, plays, 56 animated episodes of a television series and 3 half-hour televison specials for HBO.

The first was a chapter book, illustrated by Peggy Fortnum. That version will be reissued in July by HarperCollins.

Several picture books feature Paddington. In the 1990’s they were released with illustrations by R.W. Alley, The first in that series, Paddington, is also being reissued.

Other movie tie-ins arrive on Nov. 4.

Titles to Know, Next Week, 6/16 to 6/20/14

Friday, June 13th, 2014

The Silkworm  All Fall Down  Top Secret Twenty One

Amazon’s resolve to discourage customers from buying Hachette titles will be put to the test next week with the arrival of The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (Hachette/Mulholland Books; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print). Libraries have ordered plenty of copies to fill heavy holds on this sequel to The Cuckoo’s Calling, (both actually written by J.K. Rowling, of course). Rivaling The Silkworm in number of holds is Jennifer Weiner’s All Fall Down (S&S/Atria; S&S Audio) a novel about the serious subject of addiction. Watch for Weiner on the Today Show on release day, June 17.

Topping both is Janet Evanovich’s latest in her long running Stephanie Plum series, Top Secret Twenty-One, (RH/Bantam; RH Audio; RH Large Print).

All the titles mentioned here, plus a few more, are listed with ordering information and alternative formats on our downloadable New Title Radar, Week of 6/16/14

To Recommend

Amazon is promoting Summer House with Swimming Pool to people who want The Silkworm. In libraries, it already has fairly strong holds queues, so you may not want to follow suit. The following titles show fewer holds despite great advance excitement, offering good alternatives (and one is from Hachette).

The QuickThe Quick, Lauren Owen, (Random House; BOT)

A debut that has inspired a great deal of passion among librarians on GalleyChat and is a LibraryReads pick for June:

“This book starts out slowly, with an unconventional Victorian-era romance and builds to an unexpected development by the end of part one. Owen continues the slow boil of suspense with a curiously-enticing plot, centering on members of an exclusive London gentleman’s club who are testing the boundaries of their own organization. For those who enjoy historical fiction with a twist.” — Lucy Lockley, St. Charles City-County Library, St. Peters, MO

9780316231053_8f192The Fever, Megan Abbott, (Hachette/Little, Brown)

The seventh novel by an novelist with a growing reputation has inspired comments like this in Slate — “Megan Abbott is the kind of author whose books, once you’ve discovered them, present an immediate dilemma: You want to read them all, one right after the other, in hopes of prolonging the spell, yet you also become consumed with the need to hold one or two titles on her backlist in reserve, so you can be assured there will always be one yet to come.” People magazine described the story in their “Great Summer Reads,” roundup, “In Abbott’s affecting seventh novel, a mysterious affliction suddenly spreading among teenage girls shakes a community to its core.”

That NightThat Night, Chevy Stevens, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s. Macmillan Audio; Thorndike)

GalleyChatter Robin Beerbower calls Stevens her “go-to” author for readers looking for thrillers and adds that her latest is a ” top-notch psychological thriller that was so relentless I had to stop reading a few times to catch my breath.”

 

Media Attention

The Last MagazineThe Last Magazine, Michael Hastings, (Penguin/Blue Rider)

Journalist Michael Hastings was known for his fearlessness. His 2010 Rolling Stone article “The Runaway General” brought down Afghanistan armed forces commander, General Stanley McChrystal. In 2012, he wrote a profile of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for Rolling Stone, newly relevant now that the former POW has been released. Last year, at just 33 years old, Hastings was killed in a single-car crash in Los Angeles, leaving behind a draft of his first novel. New York magazine characterizes it as “a provocative piece of thinly fictionalized nonfiction … a posthumous mission accomplished … [which] tells the story of the run-up to the Iraq War from a perspective that many of his colleagues would like to forget.”

Your Fathers, Where Are They? And The Prophets, Do They Live Forever?, Dave Eggers, (Knopf, RH Audio)

An advance review from the formidable Michiko Kakutani in yesterday’s New York Times, indicates the regard Eggers commands from critics. She is, however, underwhelmed saying this novel, “reads like a skeletal play, written by a journeyman who seems intent on mashing up Samuel Beckett with a straight-to-video thriller about a serial kidnapper.”

Tie-ins

All Together Dead  The Two Faces of January

All Together Dead (TV Tie-In), Charlaine Harris, (Penguin/Ace)

The final 10-episode season of HBO’s True Blood starts a week from Sunday. Some think that’s a good thing (Entertainment Weekly gives the new season a middling B-, even though they see it as an improvement over the previous one). Harris herself has finished with the series, having launched a new one with Midnight Crossroad, (Penguin/Ace). The HBO series has wandered away from the books, so the new series may have little in common with the tie-in.

The Two Faces of January, Patricia Highsmith, (Grove Press)

The latest adaptation of one of Highsmith’s novels opens on August 8, starring Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst. Unfortunately, it will only be in a limited number of theaters, so this may not bring the attention to the author’s work that The Talented Mr. Ripley did, Fortunately, it brings a tie-in of the book that was originally published in 1964, and an opportunity to update your Highsmith collections.

June GalleyChat: Post Book Expo

Friday, June 13th, 2014

[Ed. Note: This post is by EarlyWord’s GalleyChatter, Robin Beerbower]

June 3 found us involved with another rousing GalleyChat session, with many participants abuzz about their Book Expo America encounters with gracious and fascinating authors. Attendees were especially enthused about their suitcases bulging with treasured galleys of forthcoming books. Here is a small sampling of some of the BEA offerings along with a few other recommended titles (those of you going to ALA may want to seek these out).

As usual, it’s impossible to summarize the huge amount of books mentioned, so check here for all of the titles — June 3 GalleyChat. You can also friend me for continual updates on what I’m anticipating.

Book of lifeRising to the top of the list is one of the most anticipated books of the summer, Deborah Harkness’s third (and final) title in the All Souls trilogy, The Book of Life (Penguin/Viking, July). A few GalleyChatters who attended BEA received a print galley and the responses have been very enthusiastic. Lucy Lockley of St. Charles City-County Library said, “Great conclusion to fascinatingly detailed series! Fans of the series will not be disappointed.” Good news; you can request it on NetGalley; approvals begin June 15.

The self-effacing David Mitchell charmed the BEA Random House breakfast audience and many are excited to bone clocksread his forthcoming book that weaves six narratives and covers over forty years, The Bone Clocks (Random House, September). It will clearly be heavily promoted; a huge banner for it hung over the Javits Center. During GalleyChat, Elliott Bay Bookstore staff member Kenny Coble said, “Brilliant. I love it as much as Cloud Atlas. I still think about it constantly.”

Readers were excited about two futuristic thrillers featuring deadly viruses, Jon Scalzi’s Lock In (Macmillan/Tor, August) and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf, September).

lock in   station eleven   

In Lock In, a widespread disease leaves some afflicted in a “locked in” state, unable to move or express emotions but aware of what is happening around them. Librarian Jane Jorgenson (Madison Public Library, Wisconsin) said, “A blending of SF and police procedural that hits every note just right.”  Station Eleven is set in a world where 99% of the population has been obliterated due to a flu and incorporates themes such as art, fame and ambition. It was selected as a BEA Buzz Book, and with four GalleyChat members recommending it (Fairfield, CT, Library’s Susan Balla said, “Yes, another dystopic novel but the characters, not the chaos surrounding them, are the focus of this story”), plus having received “much love” from 13 Edelweiss users, it is sure to be on many fall reading lists.

smoke gets in your eyesThe first of two memoirs mentioned was Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by a young mortician, Caitlin Doughty (W.W. Norton, September). Janet Lockhart, Wake County, N.C., Library collection development librarian and I loved it and agree that the author makes the repellent and scary topic of dealing with human death (with the focus on cremation) comfortable and even humorous. It is clearly perfect, of course, for fans of one of the few other books to take a comedic view of the subject, Mary Roach’s Stiff. 

The other memoir enjoyed was North of Normal: A Memoir of My Wilderness Childhood, My Unusual Family, and How I Survived Both by Cea Sunrise Person (Harper, June). Alison Kastner of Multnomah, County, OR, Library called it a “reverse Wild [by Cheryl Strayed].” I was also fascinated by the author’s story of her highly dysfunctional childhood, living completely off the grid in the wilds of Canada. This is a good recommendation for anyone who liked Jeanette Winters’ The Glass Castle, and for older teens who are looking for something similar to Dave Pelzer’s A Child Called It.

Interest was also high for new titles by favorite authors, including Dennis Lehane’s The Drop (HarperCollins/Morrow, September), with the movie to be released in September. In a twist, the movie is based on Lehane’s short story, Animal Rescue. The book, also by Lehane, is based on his script for the movie.

big little liesIf Liane Moriarty’s The Husband’s Secret continues just a few more weeks on the NYT best seller list, where it has been for 23 weeks, it may be joined by her next book, Big Little Lies (Penguin/Putnam, July). Note the cover art represents an exploding lollipop; a variation of the exploding rose on The Husband’s Secret.

Since Necessary Lies was released last fall, Diane Chamberlain’s emotionally charged novels of family dynamics have steadily increased in popularity and early reports indicate her next book Silent Sister (St. Martin’s Press, October) will also in demand for readers of women’s fiction.

sudden lightGarth Stein, who had an unexpected hit with The Art of Running in the Rain, switches gears with a multigenerational saga cum ghost story,  A Sudden Light (Simon & Schuster, September). This one is not narrated by a dog. 

Please join us for the next GalleyChat on July 8 at 4:00 (EDT) — note, we moved the date a week later than usual, to avoid conflict for those returning from ALA.

Shailene Woodley, Nude in WHITE BIRD

Thursday, June 12th, 2014

Now that Shailene Woodley is a bond fide star, with two hit movies to her credit (The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent), the media is all over her next movie, White Bird in a Blizzard (based on the 1999 novel by Laura Kasischke, Hyperion).

It was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in January, but got scant attention, with The Guardian calling it a “sci-fi sex romp.”

The media took notice last week when Woodley mentioned that it includes nude scenes in an interview with New York magazine, saying, “.. .in real life, when I have sex, I’m naked. I don’t have a bra on, and I don’t usually have panties on. So let’s make a real movie! Let’s bring truth to the scene!”

Perhaps coincidentally, this week a new set of clips focus on the romantic scenes (plenty of making out, but no nudity). If you find it a bit opaque, check the trailer, which was released in January.

The book’s author, who won the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry for Space, In Chains, (Copper Canyon Press) has published 8 novels (White Bird as her second) and was called by PW, ”a bold chronicler of dark obsession.” Her 2007 novel, The Life Before Her Eyes was made into a 2008 movie starring Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood.

Her most recent novel, Mind of Winter (Harper) was published in March.

The movie will be released on demand September 25th and in theaters October 24th.

Thursday, June 12th, 2014

hc_ala14_tb_060614

PEOPLE Magazine’s Book Picks

Thursday, June 12th, 2014

jimmy-fallon-300As we noted last week, People magazine’s redesign under new Editorial Director, Jess Cagle, subsumes book reviews into the new upfront “People Picks” section.

In the second week of the new design, “The Best New Books” rate a bit higher than last — they are now at #6, up from #9, and feature 3 titles that are slightly more below the radar than last week’s, plus three books by “celebrities” (including “Twitter phenom” Jenny Mollen’s book of essays, I Like You Just the Way I Am; former Days of Our Lives star Alison Sweeney’s’ novel, Scared Scriptless and Fox News anchor Bret Aailer’s memoir about dealing with his son’s congenital heart disease, Special Heart).

But you can’t keep books out of popular culture; they sneak into some of the other picks:

#2 MovieHow to Train Your Dragon 2. Book Connection: Based on the kids series by Cressida Cowell, the movie opens this week (see our roundup of tie-ins). Variety calls it, “DreamWorks Animation’s strongest sequel yet — one that breathes fresh fire into the franchise, instead of merely rehashing the original. Braver than Brave, more fun than Frozen and more emotionally satisfying than so many of its live-action counterparts, Dragon delivers.”

#3 TV Drama: PBS Masterpiece Mystery miniseries, The Escape Artist. Book Connection: Show creator David Wolstencroft wrote two spy novels, Good News, Bad News and Contact ZeroWorldCat shows copies are still in many library collections.

#5 Pop Single: Rita Ora I Will Never Let You Down.  Book Connection: This one is admittedly very tenuous. Ora plays Mia, Christian’s sister, in the Fifty Shades of Grey movie.

#8 TV Series: Episode 10 in the new season of Game of Thrones. Book Connection: Obvious.

The actual books, at #6 are:

I'm Having So Much Fun 9780374141042_36437  Euphoria

I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You, Courtney Maum, (S&S/Touchstone) — This debut is a LibraryReads pick for June and People’s “Book of the Week.”

Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We’ve Overlooked, Paul Raeburn, (Macmillan/Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux) — We’re guessing that the answer is “Yes.” This is one of the issue’s many nods (including the cover story) to Father’s Day.

EuphoriaLily King, (Grove/Atlantic, June) —  Librarians have buzzed this one on GalleyChat, recommending it for fans of Horan’s Loving Frank and McLain’s The Paris Wife. It’s loosely based on Margaret Mead’s journals (if a novel based on the anthropologist’s life doesn’t sound like a promising readalike, consider that it involves a love triangle). People calls it “transporting.” Early readers we trust say, “King’s language is as lush as the landscape.”

When GriefBooks also sneak into the features features, in the form of an interview with  Mary Rockefeller Morgan, the twin of Michael Rockefeller, who disappeared in New Guinea in the early sixties. She recently updated her book about the loss, an eBook from a devision of Open Road Media, When Grief Calls Forth the Healing.

Open Road ebooks are available for library lending.

Another book on the story (which Morgan say prompted her to update her book), Savage Harvest by Carl Hoffman, (HarperCollins/Morrow), was published in March.

July LibraryReads List

Wednesday, June 11th, 2014

Landline   Dollbaby   9780316250818_1a106

The just-released LibraryReads list of the ten books arriving in July that librarian love, offers some great readers advisory titles (over half are debuts). It’s also a reminder to nominate titles for upcoming lists (how-to here).

At BEA, the LibraryReads panel gave some helpful tips on how to use these lists:

1) You no longer have to admit “I haven’t read anything great lately,” your colleagues have. Each LibraryReads annotation is a readers advisory handsell you can steal.

2) The lists began in September, so there are now over 100 titles you can recommend. Check out our downloadable list —  LibraryReads-All-Lists-Through-July-2014. sort it by category and you have an instant list for creating displays, or to use when you’re stuck trying to recommend a recent book in a particular category.

2) The lists are handy R.A. training tools which demonstrate how to quickly communicate why you love a title.

On the July list, librarian favorite Rainbow Rowell gets her second #1 LibraryReads pick with Landline, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Macmillan Audio; Thorndike), after her YA novel, Fangirl, was the pick for the inaugural September list. Excitement has spread to booksellers, who also include it on their Indie Next July list.

Among the five debuts on the list, is Dollbaby by Laura Lane McNeal (Penguin/Pamela Dorman Books). You can join us for a live chat with the author next week, as part of our Penguin First Flights Debut Author program.. Below is the LibraryReads annotation:

“In this coming-of-age story set in the Civil Rights era, Ibby is dropped off at the home of her eccentric grandmother in New Orleans after the death of her beloved father. Filled with colorful characters, family secrets and lots of New Orleans tidbits, this book will appeal to fans of Saving Ceecee Honeycutt.” —  Vicki Nesting, St. Charles Parish Library, Destrehan, LA

Also among the debuts is the book Stephen Colbert and fellow Amazon victim Sherman Alexie recently urged people to buy, via Powell’s, rather than Amazon, California by Edan Lepucki (Hachette/Little, Brown, July 8; audio from Dreamscape).

“Driven away from the violence of cities and a crumbling society, Cal and Frida live an isolated existence, struggling to survive on what they grow and forage. When an unplanned pregnancy pushes the couple to search for other people, they discover an unexpected community. This well-written debut is great for apocalyptic fiction fans and fans of realistic, character-driven fiction.” — Sara Kennedy, Delaware County District Library, Delaware, OH