Archive for November, 2015

THE MAGIC STRINGS OF FRANKIE PRESTO Hits Bestseller Lists

Monday, November 23rd, 2015

9780062294418_b5b5cJohn Grisham, Stephen King, and Michael Connelly take the top three spots on the current NYT’s Hardcover Fiction list but Mitch Albom’s The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto (Harper; OverDrive Sample) has opened in the number four spot, showing surprising strength when measured against the less than strong demand in libraries (holds are well within a 3:1 ratio where we checked).

Others are clearly enthused and USA Today selected it as one of their “Weekend Picks for Book Lovers.” They also 9781400067657_373ddselected the title currently holding down the top spot on the NYT’s Hardcover Nonfiction list, Jon Meacham’s Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush (Random House; BOT; OverDrive Sample).

It opens at #1 after continuing its rise following the juicy revelations that the senior President Bush called Dick Cheney an “iron ass” and had more to say about George W. Bush’s presidency.

9781591848066_5ff809781627792417_f19de Two other books about presidents fill the number two and three spots on the nonfiction list, Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger’s Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History (Penguin/Sentinel; Penguin Audio; OverDrive Sample) and Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s Killing ReganThe Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency (Macmillian/Henry Holt; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Holds Alert: SPQR

Monday, November 23rd, 2015

9780871404237_71430Featured on the cover of the NYT’s Sunday Book Review, Mary Beard’s SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (Norton/Liveright; OverDrive Sample) is racing ahead of copies ordered, with holds ratios raging from 6:1 on the low end to over 16:1 on the high end in libraries we checked.

Beard, perhaps better known in the UK where she is a classics professor at Cambridge University, is similar to Neil deGrasse Tyson here – a noted expert in a field many people are interested in but don’t know as much about as they would like.

Beard does for ancient Rome what Tyson does for space, offering an accessible and fascinating history that grips readers through stories, arguments, and contrary opinions (Cleopatra likely did not commit suicide via snake bite).

In the NYT’s author Ferdinand Mount heaps praise on Beard and explains the title, saying:

In SPQR, her wonderful concise history, Mary Beard unpacks the secrets of the city’s success with a crisp and merciless clarity that I have not seen equaled anywhere else. (The title comes from the Roman catchphrase Senatus Populusque Romanus — the Senate and People of Rome.)

The Guardian reviews it as well, under a headline that calls it “vastly engaging,” and The Atlantic says it is “magisterial.” Dwight Garner, reviewing for the daily NYT‘s said Beard is “charming company” and suggested this book might be her breakout moment in the US.

Both Time and Smithsonian offer interviews. Beard, rather a gadfly in the UK, answers a question from Time about in which era she would most like to live throughout history with this:

“I would not pick any. I’m a woman! It’s just about conceivable to me that a man might be able to find someplace, but it would all be a hell! There’s no political rights, death in childbirth, and no aspirin! Never. I like now.”

Titles to Know and Recommend, Week of Nov. 23, 2015

Friday, November 20th, 2015

9780316407045_0e272  9780316301046_f0c29  Thing Explainer

Next week is a big Patterson week, with the arrival of the next in his Alex Cross series, Cross Justice (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample) as well as book 2 in his middle grade series, House of Robots. (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample). In nonfiction, Randall Munroe releases the next in his popular series, Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words (HMH; OverDrive Sample).

The titles highlighted here, and several other notable titles arriving next week, are listed with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of Nov. 16, 2015

Media Magnet

9781476752952_f7772The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters by Karl Rove (S&S; Simon & Schuster Audio).

From CBS Face the Nation to NPR’s Morning Edition and, of course, Fox News Fox & Friends, we’ll be hearing a lot from Karl Rove next week on a seemingly incongruous topic.

 

Peer Picks

9781250095893_9739eBoys in the Trees: A Memoir by Carly Simon (Macmillan/Flatiron Books; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Not only a peer pick, Simon’s memoir is getting heavy media attention and is already rising on Amazon’s sales rankings.

For the December 2015 Indie Next pick, Ed Conklin, Chaucer’s Books, Santa Barbara, CA said:

“Boys in the Trees is a surprising and delightful read and more than a guilty pleasure derived from a crass and exploitative celebrity culture. Carly Simon has always been an appealing and alluring personality, and her memoir presents an honest — yet crafty — look at her life, beautifully and elegantly voiced. At times captivating, touching, and occasionally embarrassing, it is unfailingly entertaining — a sexy and romantic book with a sweet heart and soul.”

Tie-ins

MV5BNjQzNDI2NTU1Ml5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNTAyMDQ5NjE@._V1_SX214_AL_The big book-to-move adaptation hitting theaters today is the final in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games series, Mockingjay Part 2. As we reported when the full trailer was released, the frenzy over the film even extends to an Entertainment Weekly “deep dive” into the preview itself.

MV5BMjA3MDIyMTE5OF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMTE3OTUyNzE@._V1_SX214_AL_Also arriving is the Oscar-buzzy Carol, based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel, The Price Of Salt. As we previously noted, it was a hit at the Cannes Film Festival.

MV5BMjE0MjkyODQ3NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNDM1OTk1NjE@._V1_SY317_CR0,0,214,317_AL_Bursting on screen as well is the story of the Kray twins, Legend,  based on The Profession of Violence by John Pearson, a 1972 nonfiction account of the brothers who ran the organized crime scene of London’s East End during the 50s and 60s.

MV5BMjEwNTgxODcyOV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMzI5ODUyNzE@._V1_SX214_AL_And on TV, Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle begins streaming today; female superhero Jessica Jones begins on Netflix; and Murder, She Baked: A Plum Pudding Mystery is on Hallmark.

For our full list of upcoming adaptations, download our Books to Movies and TV and link to our catalog of tie-ins.

Tie-ins scheduled for publication this week are:

9780812989267_9e2e2Concussion (Movie Tie-in Edition) by Jeanne Marie Laskas (Random House Trade Paperbacks).

The movie, starring Will Smith, is based on the 2009 GQ article by Laskas. It opens on Christmas Day.

CBS’s 60 Minutes featured the topic, but not the film, last Sunday (time mark 26:46).

9780399576645_c2490The Magicians (TV Tie-In Edition) by Lev Grossman (Penguin/Plume).

The series stars Jason Ralph (he has appeared on TV series Madam Secretary and Gossip Girl and in films such as A Most Violent Year) as Quentin Coldwater, a new recruit at the Brakebills College, a school of magic.

The show begins Jan. 15, 2016.

9781455538393_3a2ba13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff with the Annex Security Team (Hachette/Twelve; OverDrive Sample) – also in trade paperback.

As we noted earlier, the success of Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, has turned Hollywood mad for military movies based on books. One of Tinsel Town’s next hopes in the genre opens January 15, 2016, the same weekend that its predecessor opened last year.

Retitled 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, it is directed by Michael Bay and stars John Krasinski and James Badge Dale.

 

Best of the Best Fiction

Friday, November 20th, 2015

Several best books lists arrived this week, including the Washington Post‘s and Kirkus’s best 100 fiction list .

Now that there is a critical mass in fiction, we’ve collated the lists into one downloadable spreadsheet.Best Books, Fiction, 2015, V. 1 Use it to test your book knowledge, remind yourself of titles you wanted to read, create displays, and for end-of-the-year buying.

As we’ve learned to expect, there’s little agreement among critics. This year’s National Book Award winner in fiction, Adam Johnson’s Fortune Smiles, was picked by only two of the six other sources.

Watch for our upcoming collations of Nonfiction and Childrens picks and updates as more best books selections arrive. Links to the lists are on the right, under “Best Books.”

ME BEFORE YOU Release Date Moves, Again

Friday, November 20th, 2015

9780670026609-1Fans of Jojo Moyes can celebrate. The release date for the film adaptation of her novel Me Before You (Penguin/Pamela Dorman) is being moved –  once again.

This time, however, the film sill arrive in theaters earlier than expected, on March 4 rather than the previously announced June 3.

Deadline reports the change is designed to “hook women, particularly those off from college and high school on spring break.”

Starring Emilia Clarke (Game of Thrones) and Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games), it is directed by Thea Sharrock. This will be her first feature film, after directing the BBC miniseries The Hollow Crown and Call The Midwife. Moyes wrote the screenplay.

As we wrote in May, this is the not the first release date adjustment for the film. The June 3 date was major delay from its original Aug. 21, 2015 release date.

According to Deadline, the move puts the film into direct competition with several other anticipated movies, including Tina Fey’s untitled war comedy based on Kim Barker’s memoir The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan (in her review of this “darkly funny” war reporter’s memoir, the NYT‘s Michiko Kakutani presciently called the author a “sort of Tina Fey character, who unexpectedly finds herself addicted to the adrenaline rush of war.”)

A movie-tie in edition of Me Before You is scheduled for Jan. 26, 2016:

Me Before You: A Novel (Movie Tie-In) by Jojo Moyes
Penguin Books
On Sale Date: January 26, 2016
ISBN 9780143109464
$16.00 USD, $21.00 CAD

National Book Awards Coverage

Thursday, November 19th, 2015

Last night’s National Book Awards ceremony was filled with speeches giving generous praise to other writers. It lacked the challenges to the establishment offered last year by Ursula LeGuin (including a jab at her publisher for their ebook pricing to libraries). Happily, it also lacked the painful moment of casual racism by last year’s host (but why do hosts feel compelled to make fun of the proceedings, as did Andy Horowitz this year, who opened the evening by remarking that most people would say of the Awards’ sponsor, “What the fuck is the National Book Foundation?”).

The day-after reporting stresses the surprise win in fiction as well as diversity of authors.

9780812993547_85eb49780812997477_f06dd While most stories focus on Ta-Nehisi Coates’s expected honor in nonfiction for Between the World and Me (PRH/Spiegel & Grau), almost all highlight Adam Johnson’s less expected win for fiction with his short story collection Fortune Smiles: Stories (PRH/Random House).

Reporters such as Meredith Blake of the LA Times writes,

In a completely surprising outcome, Adam Johnson claimed the award for fiction with his short story collection, Fortune Smiles. Johnson, who beat out such favorites as Hanya Yanagihara for A Little Life and Lauren Groff for Fates and Furies, appeared as stunned as anyone by the victory. “I told my wife and my kids, ‘Don’t come across America because this is not going to happen,’” said Johnson, who teaches at Stanford.

Johnson is no stranger to awards, however, having won a Pulitzer in 2013 for  The Orphan Master’s Son.

The second major theme of the reporting is the diversity of authors. Bustle offers this take:

In a world when we still (still!) have to call out award committees for having largely white, male longlists and shortlists, it was positively thrilling to see three out of the four awards handed out to black writers. Not only that, but the winners tackled issues like mental illness, racism in modern America, and the black female experience through history.

In summing up the night of bookish celebration, many reports quoted Don DeLillo’s acceptance speech for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters medal (basically, the National Book Foundation’s lifetime achievement award), in which he proclaimed, “Here, I’m not the writer at all, I’m the grateful reader.”

Below is a sample of the reporting. For those who have more of the NBA titles in their TBR piles than not, the VOX story is a particularly good resource, providing a librarian-friendly summary of  every nominee’s story line, appeal, and highlights.

The Empathetic Evison

Thursday, November 19th, 2015

9781616202613_bd83cOn Well READ TV this week Jonathan Evison discusses his newest book, This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! (Workman/Algonquin, Aug.), the film version of The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, and his empathetic writing process.

Calling This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! a “coming of old age novel,” Evison reveals that he spent some of his teen years as the only person under 70 in an old folks trailer park, taking care of his grandmother and watching widows reinvent their lives.

That experience helped him craft Harriet and is an example of his empathetic writing process. He explains that as he writes he seeks to get out of his own way and inhabit the character in front of him, “jumping through an empathetic window” so their actions feel inevitable.

He also talks about the film version of The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, which is now in post-production and expected to open in 2016, with a script by Rob Burnett, the former executive producer of the Late Show with David Letterman, and starring Paul Rudd and Selena Gomez.

A movie version of This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! might also make it to the screen. Deadline reported last month that Focus Features has optioned film rights.

The conversation is followed with further book suggestions to pair with Harriet, offered by Mary Ann Gwinn, the Seattle Times book editor.

This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! was a September LibraryReads pick:

“Harriet Chance receives word that her recently deceased husband, Bernard, has won an Alaskan cruise. Deciding to go on the trip, she is given a letter from her close friend Mildred, with instructions not to open it until she is on the cruise. The contents of this letter shatter Harriet and she begins to reevaluate her life and her relationships.” — Arleen Talley, Anne Arundel County Public Library Foundation, Annapolis, MD

It is also an Indie Next pick.

National Book Awards, Live Stream

Wednesday, November 18th, 2015

And the winners are:

Young People’s Literature:
Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep (HarperCollins/HarperTeen)

Poetry:
Robin Coste Lewis, Voyage of the Sable Venus (PRH/Knopf)

Nonfiction:
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (PRH/Spiegel & Grau)

Fiction:
Adam Johnson, Fortune Smiles: Stories (PRH/Random House)

National Book Awards, Tonight

Wednesday, November 18th, 2015

ustream_dinner_banner

Dress in your best and join the National Book Awards this evening, via live stream.

UPDATE: The site now says that live stream will begin at 7:40 p.m.

Yesterday, Jacqueline Woodson hosted the National Book Award Teen Press Conference (livestream, below, Woodson begins speaking at time stamp 16:35)

And at another event last night the finalists in all categories read from their books.

There’s been little speculation in the press on which books will win. We have to look to the U.K. for a look at the odds on the fiction and nonfiction categories. In a story today, The Guardian asks,”how obscure can the judges go?

The Washington Post examines the finalists in poetry and in Young People’s Literature.

Julianne Moore is WONDERSTRUCK

Tuesday, November 17th, 2015

9780545027892Director Todd Haynes’s film Carol, based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel, The Price of Salt, about a Lesbian love affair (more on the novel from the NYT), debuts in limited release this Friday and is expected to generate Oscar nominations for stars Cate Blanchett  and Rooney Mara.

The director turns to different material for his next adaptation, Brian Selznick’s Wonderstruck (Scholastic, 2011). When the project was announced in May, Haynes already had several other projects in the works and it wasn’t clear which he would do next. Today, it was announced that Julianne Moore will star, indicating Wonderstruck may be next on his list.

9780545448680_e1f05This will be Selznick’s second book adapted by a celebrated director, after Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning Hugo, based on  The Invention Of Hugo Cabret.

Selznick’s most recent book,  The Marvels (Scholastic), published in September, has been on the NYT Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover  best seller list for 6 weeks.

Holds Alert: DESTINY AND POWER

Tuesday, November 17th, 2015

9781400067657_373ddAn embargo prevented pre-pub reviews for Jon Meacham’s newest Presidential biography, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush (Random House; BOT; OverDrive Sample).The media managed to get their hands on the book, however, and the story that the elder President Bush called Dick Cheney an “iron-ass” became the talking point of last week’s 24-hour news shows. As a result, holds are generally topping 5:1 in places we checked, with local spikes running much higher.

Now that the book has been released, reviews have begun to appear. The newest daily NYT reviewer, Jennifer Senior, calls the biography “absorbing” and “artful” and says that Meacham is “clearly possessed of the same judiciousness and diplomatic skills as his subject.”

But Senior pulls no punches when Meacham “turns a blind eye to unflattering events,” offering a number of examples including the following about  the fallout after Katrina:

“Forget whether this blistering attack was justified. What’s interesting here is the incident Mr. Meacham does not mention: that the former first lady Barbara Bush, after touring the Houston Astrodome and seeing thousands of evacuees living in squalor, told NPR, “So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them.” How could he have left that out?”

Jim Kelly reviews the book for the NYT’s Sunday Book Review saying:

“Meacham’s access and lack of ideological fervor allow him to paint Bush the man in unusually subtle colors … Destiny and Power reflects the qualities of both subject and biographer: judicious, balanced, deliberative, with a deep appreciation of history and the personalities who shape it. If Meacham is sometimes polite to a fault, Destiny and Power does not suffer for it. His kinder, gentler approach succeeds in making George H. W. Bush a more sympathetic — and more complex — figure.”

We highlighted the title in Books to Know and Recommend the week of Nov. 9.

Holds Alert: DEAR MR. YOU

Tuesday, November 17th, 2015

9781501107832_b8888Mary-Louise Parker’s debut, Dear Mr. You (S&S/Scribner; Simon & Schuster Audio), a memoir in letters addressed to the men of her life, is generating large hold queues, with some libraries we checked spiking as high as 8:1.

No surprise,Parker has been getting a great deal of media attention. From a New York Time’s profile to a glowing review in both that paper and on NPR, under the headline “Dear Mary-Louise Parker, You’ve Written A Great Book.”

In the NYT’s review Janet Maslin wrote:

“The book is written in a smart, beguiling voice that is inextricably entwined with qualities that Ms. Parker radiates as an actress. There’s as much flintiness as reckless charm. Flirtation and mischief are big parts of her arsenal. So is the honest soul-searching that gives this slight-looking book much more heft than might be expected.”

We highlighted it in Books to Know and Recommend the week before last and it is a November Indie Next Pick and a LibraryReads selection:

“Parker has created a unique and poetic memoir through a series of letters–some of appreciation, some of apology, some simply of acknowledgement–to the men in her life. Ranging from a taxi driver to a grandfather she never knew, each man has left an imprint and shaped her into the person she has become. Full of feeling, growth, and self-discovery, Parker’s book has left me longing to write my own letters.”
 PJ Gardiner, Wake County Public Libraries, Raleigh, NC.

Parisian Street Life

Tuesday, November 17th, 2015

9780393242379_471a9The celebrated outdoor life in Paris, in its cafes and markets, is just one of the many victims of the recent attacks. A book about one of the quintessential areas for such activity, The Only Street in Paris: Life on the Rue des Martyrs (Norton; Tantor Audio; OverDrive Sample), is moving up Amazon’s sales rankings, jumping from #3,339 to #255, spurred by the author’s interview on NPR’s Fresh Air and perhaps by a sense that buying the book is a way of showing solidarity with the people of Paris.

In what amounts to an enlightening social studies lesson, author Elaine Sciolino, the former Paris bureau chief for The New York Times, talks with Terry Gross about Paris and the terrorists’ attacks of last week, sharing insights about the political, cultural, religious, and historical landscape of her adopted city.

In her view, there are several reasons the city was attacked:

“First, [Paris] is home to the largest Muslim population and the largest Jewish population of any country in Europe. It has been very forward-leaning in terms of using military to attack Islamic extremists in Iraq, now in Syria, before that in Mali… Also, physically it is very easy to get from France to Syria. You just go to the edge of Paris, and you take a bus to Istanbul and then cross over land into Syria, so it’s like kind of like summer camp for terrorism training.”

Gross and Sciolino do not spend a great deal of time on her book. For more on it, The Miami Herald reviewed it earlier this month and Sciolino adapted part of the book for a story in Travel and Leisure, complete with wonderful photographs.

It’s touching that it’s not a book about politics that is rising as a result of the attacks, but a book that celebrates daily life in Paris. Holds are strong in libraries we checked.

Holds Alert: RBG on the Rise

Monday, November 16th, 2015

A book with an unlikely beginning, as a Tumbler blog about an unlikely subject, a Supreme Court Justice, is now an unlikely hit.

9780062415837_589bf Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik (Harper/Dey Street Books; OverDrive Sample), is on the rise, reaching #52 on the Amazon rankings.

Holds are well beyond a 3:1 ratio in many libraries we checked as well, with at least one spiking over 7:1.

A collection of images of Ginsberg, The New York Times describes it as “cheery curio, as if a scrapbook and the Talmud decided to have a baby,” but one with a serious start and a serious heart:

Notorious RBG began in 2013 as a saucy Tumblr blog by Shana Knizhnik, then a law student, shortly after the Supreme Court decided Shelby County v. Holder, which discarded a crucial provision of the Voting Rights Act. (For the hip-hop unlettered, Notorious RBG is a play on the Notorious B.I.G., the rapper who was murdered in 1997.) Justice Ginsburg read her dissent from the bench, which in the genteel, marbled universe of the Supreme Court, is most unusual — the equivalent of shaming your spouse in front of dinner guests.”

Coverage of the title was widespread upon release and is still going strong. Sunday’s NYT featured Ginsburg and Gloria Steinem in an interview about women’s rights, starting the conversation with the book (curiouslyhe piece leads the “Fashion & Style” section) and New York Magazine listed it as one of the “9 Books We’re Reading Right Now.”

Titles to Know and Recommend, Week of Nov. 16, 2015

Friday, November 13th, 2015

9780345542960_b007a  9781455586424_4c0e4  9781501108556_6aa30

Edging up into the John Grisham stratosphere, Janet Evanovich’s next Stephanie Plum novel, Tricky Twenty-Two,is the holds leader among the books coming out next week. She is closely followed by David Baldacci’s The Guilty (Hachette/Grand Central). Somewhat further behind, but still strong, is Mary Higgins Clark’s All Dressed in White: An Under Suspicion Novel, written with Alafair Burke (S&S)

The titles covered here, and several other notable titles arriving next week, are listed with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of Nov. 16, 2015

Media Attention

9781501116292_dac5b438 Days: An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea, Jonathan Franklin (S&S/Atria).

Outside magazine recently called this “The best survival book in a decade.” It will be the subject of a CNN Special, scheduled for November 17 as well as a Univision-TV two-part story, November 17 and 18.

9780385541138_7f67fThis Old Man: All in Pieces, Roger Angell, (PRH/Doubleday)

Don’t worry, Roger Angell may be old (he’s 93), but he’s not in pieces. Instead, this is a collection of pieces he has written over the years. On Entertainment Weekly‘s Must List at #9, it is described as having “something for everyone, from profiles to haikus: the work of an inspiring life” and the author is set to be featured on:

NPR – Weekend Edition Saturday – 11/14
NPR Fresh Air – 11/17

Consumer Media Picks

9781501111679_b50bb   9780385539463_85083  9781501107832_b8888

People magazine’s picks for the week have all been released earlier.

At #1 is Stephen King’s short story collection, Bazaar of Bad Dreams. The other two picks are Little Victories: Perfect Rules for Imperfect Living by Jason Gay (see our coverage here) and Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise Parker.

The latter has received fairly heavy media attention this week (check your holds) and gets a strong B+ from Entertainment Weekly (not yet online). EW also features the audio, which Parker reads, of course. Summing up the book they say, “she tells her story through a series of letters to the men in her life. Everyone from her father to her onetime cab driver. Reading between the lines, a portrait of the author emerges.” The New York Times also praises it, saying it “is written in a smart, beguiling voice.”

Tie-ins

9781250088949_070c2Hitting theaters today is The 33, adapted from Héctor Tobar’s Deep Down Dark (released last month as a tie-in using the movie’s title). Saying, “Antonio Banderas jumps into the awards race in this account of the 2010 mine collapse,” it is the #1 People Pick of things to do this week.

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

Tie-ins scheduled for publication this week are:

9780393353150_28589The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis (Norton).

As we wrote when the news broke, Deadline calls this a “Surprise Oscar Entry” saying it “adds another film to what is shaping up to be the most competitive year-end movie market in recent memory.”

Talk about your moneyball. With Brad Pitt, Christian Bale, Steve Carell, and Ryan Gosling. The movie opens in limited release on Dec. 12, and nationwide on Christmas Day. The trailer is here. Below is a recently released video with the actors and directors talking about making the movie.

9780544817289_23384The Man in the High Castle (Tie-In) by Philip K. Dick (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Mariner Books).

From Amazon Studios, this is their next big bet after their success with Transparent (the show’s creators says it would have been  too “expensive and dangerous” for regular networks). It begins streaming on Nov. 20.

As we noted, the series is directed by Ridley Scott, known for the 1982 movie Blade Runner based, if somewhat loosely, on another iconic book by Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?