After years in development, the adaptation of Eric Larson’s true crime title, The Devil in the White City (RH/Crown, 2003) is set to be directed by Martin Scorsese, with Leonardo DiCaprio starring as the serial killer H.H. Holmes who preyed on single young women drawn to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. This will be the actor and director’s sixth project together.

Paramount won the film rights in a major auction after Warner Bros. let the them lapse last month (DiCaprio bought the rights back in 2010, with plans to star in it. Before that, in 2003, Tom Cruise acquired the rights, also planning to star).

Those who have read the book will agree with Deadline‘s assessment it presents a screen writing challenge because it  “interlac[es] the two main characters, the producer/architect of the World’s Fair and the man who works for him and turns out to be a mass murderer.” However, reports Deadline, the new script writer “[Billy] Ray cracked that, and the town flipped for it.” They don’t explain exactly what they flipped for, however.

Scorsese  is currently wrapping production on Silence, based on the 1996 novel by Japanese writer Shûsaku Endô, expected to release some time next year.

As usual, the director has several other balls in the air. In June, another of his favorite actors, Al Pacino said he’s hoping they will work together on The Irishman, based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brand (Steerforth, 2005).  Late last year, Mark Wahlberg was urging him to do a Boardwalk Empire movie. He has also announced plans direct Sinatra about the singer and to produce The Snowman based on the book by Jo Nesbø. It’s not known which project he will turn to first.

DiCaprio will next be seen in The Revenant, directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu and based on the book by Michael Punke, set for release in December.

With growing word of mouth, Ruth Ware’s In A Dark, Dark Wood (S&S/Gallery/Scout Press; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample) is poised to hit next week’s bestseller lists.

Featured on NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday with the wonderful headline “Scream Meets Agatha Christie,” it is also rising on Amazon, currently at #150.

Entertainment Weekly gave it an A- review, writing that the novel’s “foggy atmosphere and chilling revelations will leave you breathless.” As we noted earlier, it’s a LibraryReads pick for August and was one of GalleyChat’s unexpected BEA gems.

Holds are more than respectable on fairly light ordering.

NPR’s David Greene said that he began reading the book in a secluded park and that that was “a very bad idea. Even the title sends chills up the spine.” Here is the full interview:

Steve Hamilton, the NYT bestselling author with several Edgar wins under his belt, created a bit of a publishing tempest last week when he pulled out of his contract with St. Martin’s just weeks before his new book, The Second Life of Nick Mason was due on the shelves. (Note: cover art, left, is for the now cancelled St. Martin’s/Minotaur edition).

Libraries have solid holds lists for the start of this new series, one Harlan Coben blurbs as “A gamechanger. Nick Mason is one of the best main characters I’ve read in years. An intense, moving, absolutely relentless book — it will grab you from the first line and never let go.”

Within 23 hours of news breaking that Hamilton had walked away from St. Martin’s he was fielding multiple offers from other publishers, according to Entertainment Weekly, but the fate of his forthcoming book seemed murky (you can read the backstory here).

Separately, the AP reports that Hamilton has accepted a 4-book deal with Penguin/Putnam to publish the first two books in his Nick Mason series. The first title is now due out in the middle of 2016.

How is this for the plot of a book: Two kids grow up in the deep South 80 some years ago, making up stories, acting them out in the backyard. Fast forward a few decades and one of them writes what might be the most beloved debut novel of several generations and the other all but invents a new kind of book, one that still rivets readers to this day.

In a nutshell that is the real-life story of Harper Lee and Truman Capote, who were childhood neighbors and friends, continuing their friendship into adulthood until a dispute over the attribution for In Cold Blood drove them apart.

Their youthful friendship is the subject of a forthcoming novel for middle-grade readers, Tru & Nelle (HMH; Mar. 1, 2016; ISBN 9780544699601) by Caldecott Honor winner Greg Neri (Yummy: the Last Days of a Southside Shorty), following the pair on adventures through their small Southern town. It’s the topic of a detailed story in the NYT Books section and is also described on Neri’s own site, with historic photos of his subjects.

Neri’s book comes on the heels of new publications by both authors. Of course Go Set a Watchman is has been the subject of much attention, overshadowing the news that new Capote stories have been found as well, several of them in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library.

The Capote stories were written when he was a teenager and a young man. Most have never been published. That will be corrected in October with the release of The Early Stories of Truman Capote (Random House; Random House Audio; Oct. 27; ISBN 9780812998221).

Librarian Nancy Pearl, who has been a fan and follower of Mary Doria Russell since her debut title, interviews her as part of the Book Lust series airing on the Seattle channel.

They discuss her first novel, The Sparrow (RH/Ballantine; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample), published nearly 25 years ago and still a favorite with book groups.

Russell originally planned The Sparrow as a short story, “It kind of got away from me,” she tells Nancy. Turned downed 31 times by 31 agents, Russell proved the doubters wrong and has gone on to write five more well received novels, including Doc (RH/Ballantine; OverDrive Sample) and A Thread of Grace.(RH/Ballantine; Books on Tape; OverDrive Sample).

Russell has an unusual creative process. She writes two books in the same general universe before she moves on to a different one. Her most recent is Epitaph (Harper/Ecco; OverDrive Sample; March, 2015), her second Western following Doc.

She is currently working on a book about unions and thinks the second book in that pair will be about Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa.

Grady Hendrix’s Horrorstör (Quirk; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample) is now a “put pilot’ for Fox (translation: “one that will definitely air”) with plans to create an hour-long series inspired by the quirky book.

Horrorstör, with a cover resembling an IKEA catalog and a nifty layout replete with furniture ads, was a September 2014 LibraryReads pick. It follows the fate of several workers of a big box home store who discover the company warehouse was built on top of a prison and is now haunted.

The TV show tweeks the haunted house plot to create an ongoing story. Deadline reports that “the store actually preys upon its customers’ desires to a supernatural degree, selling products that make their wishes and fantasies come true in unexpected and insidious ways.”

The O.C. and Gossip Girl creator Josh Schwartz is part of the production team, which also includes Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind). An air date has yet to be set.

Many in the Twittersphere were unhappy when news broke that Sony plans a remake of the 1995 Robin Williams movie Jumanji, so soon after the actor’s death.

I can't be the only one who thinks its WAY too freaking soon to be messing with ANY #RobinWilliams film, can I? #Jumanji

— Ninja Panda (@cherrycokeaf) August 6, 2015

Joining the fray, E Online wrote “not only is the Jumanji remake unnecessary and kind of insulting, but it’s in danger of tarnishing the onscreen legacy of one of the great comedians of our time.”

Sony plans to release the film on Christmas Day 2016. Thus far none of the production team or actors have been announced.

Jumanji (HMH, 1981) by Chris Van Allsburg is one of the few Caldecott books to be made into a full-length movie. The 2015 winner, The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend, will join that short list. It was recently announced that Jason Reitman (Juno) will write/direct the adaption for DreamWorks.

Sony has big plans for the upcoming Goosebumps movie, hoping it will spawn a franchise, reports the L.A. Times. However, that may be a problem. The story notes that the books’s heyday was in the early ’90’s so fans are now too old for the movie and their kids may be too young for the its ten-year-old target audience.

As we reported a few weeks ago, Goosebumps which arrives in theaters Oct. 16 starring Jack Black, is not based on any of the specific titles, but uses the entire series as a jumping-off point. Black plays author R.L. Stine, whose library of Goosebumps manuscripts contain actual monsters, unleashed by local inquisitive kids.

Tie-in editions are on their way (see our listing of Upcoming Movie Tie-ins), but keep your eye on the old Goosebumps titles as well, recently reissued as Classic Goosebumps (with the line “Now a Major Motion Picture” on the covers).

It’s difficult to say which titles may get a bump. In an interview with ComingSoon.net, Stine said that the movie features “All the early monsters that are in the books. They all come out, they’re all there.” He names a few specifically,  “The real evil one is Slappy the Dummy (in the three Night of the Living Dummy titles), he’s there, the Abominable Snowman from Pasadena is there, and lawn gnomes, HUNDREDS of lawn gnomes (Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes). They’re great, they’re really good.” He also mentions  the giant praying mantis from  A Shocker on Shock Street.

Like the fashion industry, the book world has its seasonal cycles. The fall book lists are now upon us and this week Entertainment Weekly debuts their runway favorites.

Highlighting “13 Blockbuster Novels to Look Out For This Fall,” the magazine leads with The Story of the Lost Child (Europa Editions; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample) by Elena Ferrante. An underground literary cult favorite, this is the fourth and final book in her Neapolitan series.

If you need background (and you won’t be alone in that), check our rundown of praise for Ferrante. She has also  been the subject of Slate’s Audio Book Club (by the way, the Audio Book Club has now posted their August episode, featuring Go Set A Watchman – spoiler alert, they think it is a boring and pretty bad book).

Big names such as Franzen, Atwood, and Irving make the list of 13 but so do a few debuts including Knopf’s big investment, City on Fire (RH/Knopf; Random House Audio) by Garth Risk Hallberg, acquired for almost $2 million. Producer Scott Rudin also snapped up the movie rights.

Another buzzy title is Welcome to Night Vale (Harper Perennial; HarperAudio) by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. An expansion of their popular podcast of the same name, it got a boost and much attention after being widely suggested as a “what to listen to next” after the popular Serial. It was also
featured at this summer’s ALA.

The full list of fall titles selected by Entertainment Weekly  currently only available in print, is in the August 14th issue.

Two of HBO’s most successful series feature cities in crisis, The Wire, about the drug wars in West Baltimore and Treme about New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The creator of both, David Simon, next turns his attention to Yonkers, New York in the 1980’s when the racially divided city was further torn apart by a court-ordered public housing project.

Show Me a Hero, a six-part series set to debut this coming Sunday, August 16, is adapted from the book of the same title by journalist Lisa Belkin. The NYT says it “arrives at a particularly relevant moment” as debates over public housing continue to rage.

Oscar Isaac stars as Mayor Wasicsko. The cast also includes Catherine Keener, Jim Belushi, Bob Balaban and Winona Ryder.

Belkin’s book is being released in a new edition, with an afterword that examines Yonkers today.

Show Me A Hero : A Tale of Murder, Suicide, Race, and Redemption
Lisa Belkin
Hachette/Back Bay Books:September 1, 2015
Paperback; $17.00

YouTube stars had their day at the recently wrapped VidCon. A surprising number of them have ventured in the the old media of books. Coming next week, internet star Felicia Day‘s memoir impresses booksellers, who made it one of their Indie Next picks.

The titles covered here, and several more notable titles arriving next week, are listed with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of Aug. 10, 2015

Holds Leaders

Silver Linings: A Rose Harbor Novel, Debbie Macomber, (RH/Ballantine)

Gaining advantage by being published in the midst of season three of the Hallmark series based on Macomber’s Cedar Cove novels starring Andie McDowell, this is the holds leader for the week.

Who Do You Love, Jennifer Weiner, (S&S/Atria)

Kirkus calls this one, “Weiner at her heartstring-tugging best.”

Devil’s Bridge, Linda Fairstein, (Penguin/Dutton)

Featured in a full-page ad in this week;s NYT Sunday Book Review, PW calls it subpar while Booklist says it is “Another solid title … sure to follow its predecessors onto the best-seller lists.”

Media Attention

The tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is coming soon and this week’s NYT Sunday Book Review marks it with a roundup featured on the cover, including Katrina: After the Flood, by Gary Rivlin, (S&S). Closer to the actual anniversary,  the author is set to appear on MSNBC-TV/Hardball with Chris Matthews, August 21 and NPR’s Diane Rehm Show, August 27.

Rivlin presents five surprising facts about the storm in the following video.

Reaching further back in history, the Today Show’s Al Roker is publishing The Storm of the Century: Tragedy, Heroism, Survival, and the Epic True Story of America’s Deadlest Natural Disaster: The Great Gulf Hurricane of 1900, (HarperCollins/Morrow).

Consumer Media Picks

Days of Awe, Lauren Fox, (RH/Knopf)

People “Book of the Week”, Aug 17:

“You can do everything right, yet when tragedy hits, ‘you’re staring at the moonscape that used to be your life.’ Isabel Moore learns this when her best friend, ‘the glorious roller-coaster that was Josie,’ dies on an icy highway. Iz has a loving husband and a good job, but suddenly she’s fact-to-face with dark truths about Josie and herself. As Fox deconstructs the myths of perfect womanhood, her humor and humanity remind us that love’s the only lifeboat through grief.” It’s also reviewed in this week’s NYT Sunday Book Review.

Peer Picks

In the Dark Places: An Inspector Banks Novel, Peter Robinson, (HarperCollins/Morrow)

Indie Next Pick:

“In the Dark Places, Robinson’s 22nd Inspector Banks novel, is still rich in the landscape and culture of Yorkshire. Still populated with characters moving through their lives, reacting to events, reaching for experiences, skills, relationships — and justice for victims. Still ingeniously plotted, challenging even the astute reader to keep up through the nerve-racking suspense. Still flush with the musicality of Robinson’s prose and with the love of music that is so much a part of Banks’ personality. And still shaping the story with local history and landmarks so that In the Dark Places, like each Banks novel before it, is unique, yet contributing to a remarkable portrait of modern Britain in all its insularity and diversity.” —Barbara Peters, The Poisoned Pen, Scottsdale, AZ

The Race for Paris, Meg Waite Clayton, (HarperCollins/Harper)

Indie Next Pick:

“The Race for Paris is an action-packed tale of courage, friendship, and love during the grim, final days of World War II. Clayton’s triumphant new novel brings to life the intrepid female journalists who sought to break the limits of the times. While soldiers faced the brutal reality of war, women had to also overcome sexism and legal obstacles simply to do their jobs. Based on real characters and events, The Race for Paris brings a unique perspective to a little-known aspect of history. Gather your book club and prepare for an intense conversation as these characters will haunt you long after you turn the final page!” —Pamela Klinger-Horn, Excelsior Bay Books, Excelsior, MN

Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal, Wendy S. Walters, (Sarabande Books)

Indie Next Pick:

“In Multiply/Divide, Walters sifts through the weird, quietly horrifying wreckage that structural racism has left behind in everyday American life and presents something like a mythology, but stranger because, of course, it is real, and we have never known life without it. Her prose is as clear as day, her stories are candid, and only a poet could have written a book of essays like this. City by city, over radio waves and under the street, Walters beautifully maps for us what should have been obvious: that nearly all of our heartbreak — and even our joy — is rooted in this mythology.” —Daniel Poppick, BookCourt, Brooklyn, NY

You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost): A Memoir, Felicia Day, (S&S/Touchstone)

A YouTube star featured at this year’s VidCon, this memoir is also an Indie Next Pick:
“Day has penned what is sure to be an instant cult classic. By turns funny, insightful, inspiring, and all-too-familiar, she maps her rise from lonely homeschooled girl to internet darling, along the way revealing her struggles, her insecurities, her stubbornness, and, most transparently, her utterly relatable story of finding her way while not fitting in. For anyone who has woken up to realize they are not where they wanted to be, Day’s honest book is for you!” —Anna Eklund, University Book Store, Seattle, WA

For more on YouTube stars and their books, see our earlier story.

Tie-ins

it’s a big week for adaptations in theaters. Finally debuting today is Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places (reviews are not strong, however) as well as The Diary Of A Teenage Girl and an animated version of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.

Oddly, both of the movie tie-ins coming out next week are for films that don’t yet have a release date.

A Woman in Arabia : The Writings of the Queen of the Desert, Gertrude Bell, Georgina Howell, (Penguin Classics)

Called “the “female Lawrence of Arabia.” Gertrude Bell was a  Middle East expert who lived with Bedouin tribes and helped the British army find their way in the desert during the World War I. This is the latest of several collections of Bell’s writings is published to coincide with Werner Herzog movie Queen of the Desert, starring Nicole Kidman as Bell with James Franco, Robert Pattinson and Damian Lewis. The U.S. release date has not yet been announced.

The Dressmaker, Rosalie Ham, (Penguin Books)

Called a “revenge comedy,” the movie stars Kate Winslet, Judy Davis and Liam Hemsworth. It is adapted from a best selling Australian novel which is getting its first U.S. release. The film’s U.S. release date has not yet been set, however.

For our full list of upcoming adaptations, see our Books to Movies and TV and our listing of tie-ins.

Get ready for the ice and fear (and the requests for books). The new adventure disaster film Everest is coming in September (on the 18^th in IMAX 3-D and the 25^th everywhere else). Click on the film poster, left,  to see the full version, but only if you have no fear of heights (the same applies to the trailer, below).

Based on the events of 1996 when eight people died in a blizzard on Mount Everest, the movie stars Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Robin Wright, Michael Kelly, Sam Worthington, Keira Knightley, Emily Watson and Jake Gyllenhaal. It is directed by Baltasar Kormákur (2 Guns, Contraband).

According to the British film magazine, Empire, the film is not based on any single title but draws from multiple sources as well as interviews with the survivors.

Still, there are plenty of books on the disaster. Best known is Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster. Others include Beck Weathers with Stephen G. Michaud’s Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest and Anatoli Boukreev’s The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest. In the film Brolin plays Weathers, Kelly plays Krakauer, and Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson plays Boukreev.

The only tie-in edition is an unofficial one for Left for Dead (Movie Tie-in Edition): My Journey Home from Everest (RH/Bantam; OverDrive Sample), which according to the publisher “will not feature official tie-in art but will reflect the look and feel of the feature film, and will feature a reading line to make the Everest movie connection.”

“The wizarding world is getting a handsome new addition,” reports Time magazine. Colin Ferrell is joining the cast of the Harry Potter spinoff, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.  Planned as the first in a trilogy, the movie is scheduled for release on November 18, 2016.

Directed by David Yates, who was responsible for 4 of the 7 original Potter films, it stars Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander, the writer of the fictional Hogwarts textbook (a real edition was published in 2001 and rereleased earlier this year). J.K. Rowling has written the script.

The other movies in the series are planned for release in two-year intervals; Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2 (2018) and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 3 (2020).

In his final week hosting the Daily Show, Jon Stewart uncharacteristically did not interview any authors, but he did a shout out to a book coming in October, Do Unto Animals, (Workman, Artisan), by an author he knows well, Tracey Stewart.

As a result the book has been rising on Amazon’s sales rankings and is currently
at #7.

Stewart’s final episode airs tonight. The show resumes on Sept. 28 with Trevor Noah as host.

Charles Frazier’s 1997 novel Cold Mountain, a long-running best seller and National Book Award winner that was made into an equally successful movie, has recently become, wait for it, an opera.

Composed by Jennifer Higdon (who won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in music) with a libretto by Genre Scheer, it premiered last week at the Santa Fe Opera.

Scheer told NPR’s Morning Edition that both he and Higdon “were convinced that [the novel] was really a great idea for an opera. That there was a way of inviting music in to really illuminate the story.”

Frazier was surprised by the request for opera rights, telling NPR “My first reaction was that Inman is such an internal character — that he hardly speaks … To see him on stage singing took a little bit of adjustment.”

That is a common response from authors of print books. But perhaps one that will have to be recalibrated as more and more titles move from the page to the stage. The adaptions are not done, the beloved Tuck Everlasting is coming to Broadway in 2016.

The New York Times reports that interest is so high in Cold Mountain that the Santa Fe Opera mounted an additional a performance and is making plans to release a recording. Until then, here is a sample

The production will move to Opera Philadelphia in Feb. 2016. The Minnesota Opera also has plans to stage it.