Step aside, Thug Kitchen, here’s the real deal.

In an affecting interview on NPR’s The Salt, Gustavo “Goose” Alvarez talks about his new cookbook Prison Ramen: Recipes and Stories from Behind Bars (Workman; OverDrive Sample).

Alvarez spent over a decade behind bars and explains that those cheap packs of dehydrated noodles are everything to prisoners seeking some control over their meals, “maybe a guy has a bag of chips — that’s all he has to his name. And this other guy is blessed to have a couple of soups. Well, they get together, they make an interesting meal.”

His book is a mix of recipes and stories. It begins with the basic instructions for cooking the noodles without a pot or open flame. It goes on to offer advice for surviving hard time.

When asked who might use his book, Alvarez replies:

“I know some college kids might attempt to cook some of these. And quite frankly, I’ve had a few of them direct message me and say that they were awesome. They’ll go, ‘Man, these are great. I saved some money. It only cost me a couple dollars.’ Cool. And then I’d like others to read it and be humbled by the stories. And maybe, you know, they’ll have a friend of a friend or a family member — somebody that’s made a mistake and is doing some time. And they can probably share the stories with them, and hope it can teach them something. Maybe learn from my mistakes and others not to make these stupid decisions.”

A TV adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series is in the works by the BBC with New Line cinema producing. Pre-production and casting will not begin until next year and  no date has been set for the series debut.

The first book in the series, The Golden Compass, was made into a movie in 2007, starring Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman, with plans for it to become a franchise.

According to Deadline, “Critical reception was tepid, and it failed to match the box office expectations domestically of New Line and Warner execs hoping for another Lord of the Rings.”

The Guardian, sees it differently, ” It was a success, taking £230m around the world, but some fans were upset about departures from the original storyline and planned sequels never materialised.” They also dismiss claims from cast member Sam Elliot that New Line was scared off by opposition from the Catholic church to its themes of atheism.

In a separate article, the Guardian writes “Why TV could be perfect for Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.”

This is not the first time a movie franchise has switched to TV. The 2013 movie City Of Bones based on Cassandra Clare’s popular YA series made a similar move and will debut on Jan. 12 as a TV series titled Shadowhunters.

Gillian Flynn’s “new book” The Grownup (PRH/Crown; BOT; OverDrive Sample), released this week, is actually a short story that appeared in an earlier anthology. And, as a ghost story, it’s in a different genre from her domestic thriller Gone Girl. Fans, of course, are pressuring for a new full-length novel.

She gave those fans some hope during an interview with Salon, stating “I’m starting it right now. I’m a slow writer. I kind of overwrite and then whittle it down from there. I’m hoping to be done by end of next year. My guess is a 2017 publication.”

She is also suffering the anxiety of trying to live up to expectations after a runaway bestseller,

“I so wish I had one I was working on when Gone Girl came out. It’s a little intimidating to think about sending another thing out there. You’re never, ever going to repeat that thing – it was its own weird lightning in a bottle kind of thing … I think my main battle with the next one is to just do what has served me well so far, which is just write the kind of book I would read personally.”

Whatever the book is about, it will not revisit Amy and Nick. She says, “When people ask if I’m going to do a sequel, I always say ‘never say never.’ But it definitely won’t be the next one up. I feel like I need a break from their voices in my head.”

Flynn has a few other projects in the works that might get in her way. She is working with 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen on a heist thriller and is set to produce the TV series based on her novel Sharp Objects.

The live chat has now ended, Read the transcript below.

Signaling high expectations, AMC debuted the first  trailer for their upcoming series, Preacher, during Sunday’s extended episode of the Walking Dead series, utilizing what Deadline calls “prime preview real estate.”

 It also has some prime talent attached. Developed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the show runner will be Breaking Bad‘s Sam Catlin, who also wrote the script, it stars Dominic Cooper. It is expect to debut midyear 2016.

As the trailer states clearly, the series is “Based on the cult comic series” by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon. Published by DC Comics/Vertigo, it is available in several compilations (no tie-in has been announced yet).

Can a quirky nonfiction book on cleaning sustain a half-hour comedy show? Deadline  reports that NBC is willing to find out.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo, (Ten Speed Press; Tantor Audio) by Marie Kondo will serve as the inspiration for a new show.

The cult hit racked up long holds lists and sat atop bestseller lists for nearly a year. It is currently holding tight to the #2 spot on the NYT Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous list. So popular is Kondo’s message, she was named one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People” of 2015.

Writer Erica Oyama (Burning Love, Schooled) and Greg Malins (Friends, How I Met Your Mother, Will & Grace) will work on the project, which “centers on a young woman in a moment of crisis who attempts to get her messy life in order.” Note to neat freaks, it sounds like the show will be very loosely based on the book, basically just using the title as a launching point.

The group behind the project and is also, as we noted earlier, working on Josh Schwartz’s horror dramedy Horrorstör for Fox TV. It is based on Grady Hendrix’s faux-IKEA catalog/horror story, Horrorstör (Quirk).

This is becoming a thing. Last night on The Late Show, Stephen Colbert had John Irving read him a bedtime story (last week, Jonathan Franzen did the honors). The source of the story is not identified, but it contains some familiar Irving themes, including bears, circuses, blood and endangered children.

Irving also got the opportunity to talk about his writing. He says his books play out worst case scenarios that are not  happily, based on his own life.

Irving’s 14th novel, Avenue of Mysteries (S&S) published yesterday, came under fire from New York Times reviewer Dwight Garner for just those pre-occupations, saying, “The things that for a while were magical in Mr. Irving’s writing long ago came to seem, instead, like tricks.”

Irving was also interviewed on NPR’s Morning Editon yesterday. Avenue of Mysteries rose overnight to #33 on Amazon’s sales ranking.

Tonight, Elizabeth Gilbert is scheduled to appear on The Late Show. She will be followed the next night by Norwegian memoirist Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of the 3,600-page, six-part autobiographical novel, My Struggle. We’re hoping the “modern-day Proust” gets the bed time story challenge.

If you were charmed by Lily James in the trailer for the Weinstein/BBC adaptation of War and Peace, take a look at her in a parody of period dramas, as “Lizzy” Bennet in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

This is the first full trailer. A teaser was released last month.

The movie is scheduled to open on Feb. 5, 2016.

A tie-in is scheduled for December:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Movie Tie-in Edition)
Jane Austen, Seth Grahame-Smith
Quirk Books: December 15, 2015
Trade Paperback; 9781594748899, 1594748896
$14.95 USD, $16.95 CAD

For more books to movies and TV, see our list of upcoming book adaptations, as well as our list of tie-ins.

In news that might overshadow her PR push for the newest Cormoran Strike novel, JK Rowing said during an interview on BBC Radio 2 Book Club that she is going to write another children’s book:

“I’m not going to give you an absolute date because things are busy and I’ve been writing a screenplay as well. But I will definitely write more novels under JK Rowling. I’ve written part of a children’s book, which I really love. I will definitely finish that. I have ideas for other adult books.”

Let the watch begin.

UPDATE: The U.K. trade publication, The Bookseller, followed up with Rowling’s agent. You can almost hear the sigh in his voice as he replies, “J K Rowling has talked previously about writing a children’s book and, as she said to Simon Mayo in the interview, it is on-going, with no plans to publish as yet.”

She is also gamely promoting her latest adult title, Career of Evil (Hachette/Mulholland), the third in the Cormoran Strike mystery series.

She has much to say on that same BBC interview but she also talked with David Greene for NPR’s Morning Edition, discussing how her research into the feelings and motivations of killers gave her nightmares and why she chose to disguise herself as a male author.

“… there was a phenomenal amount of pressure that went with being the writer of Harry Potter, and that aspect of publishing those books I do not particularly miss. So you can probably understand the appeal of going away and creating something very different, and just letting it stand or fall on its own merits.”

The New York Times Magazine features Mary Gaitskill in a lengthy profile written by Parul Sehgal, an editor at The New York Times Book Review. It is online now and set for the Nov. 8 print edition.

Gaitskill just published a new novel, The Mare (PRH/Pantheon; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample), and Sehgal says “she seemed jittery about its reception.”

Perhaps, as Sehgal goes on to point out, that is because:

“at first glance [the novel] feels out of place in her oeuvre … [it] doesn’t have the usual feel of Gaitskill’s fiction, the prickly wit and enveloping sanctuary, the lure of a dark bar on a hot day. It’s earnest and violently of the daylight, stuffed with squalling schoolchildren and focused less on missing connections than surviving them.”

Sehgal says that instead the novel:

“is a more expansive, more elaborately plotted story than we’ve come to expect from Gaitskill, and it’s not a book she ever wanted to write … What, after all, does she know of motherhood or writing from the point of view of a poor child of another race — let alone horses? But Gaitskill has always written from the margins, peering in: Feelings of exclusion and confusion powerfully motor her imagination. And in The Mare, in writing about race, poverty and family life, she has traveled to some of the farthest vistas of her career.”

The novel centers on Velvet, an 11-year-old Dominican-American girl from Crown Heights Brooklyn who is sent to the countryside to spend the summer with a childless white couple. It traces the complications and connections between her family, a horse, and the couple she stays with.

Reviewing for the NYT Dwight Garner was not blown away, saying “The Mare gallops, but on a closed track, not out there in the wild.”

Reviewing for the LA Times, author Elissa Schappell completely disagreed, writing:

“This is a coming-of-age story in the way we are always coming of age, whether we are 13 or 47. What elevates it is the way Gaitskill rides herd on sentimentality, which isn’t to suggest that the work isn’t emotional — it is. It’s just that there are no false notes, no stumbles in the rare moments of tenderness. It’s brave and bold to publish a book like this. Make no mistake: The women in this book, like Gaitskill herself, are mares.”

And booksellers like it, making it an Indie Next Pick for November:

“The Mare is the heart-wrenching story of a young inner-city girl in the Fresh Air Fund program who travels to a host family in upstate New York, where she befriends a frightened and abused racehorse at a nearby stable. Gaitskill navigates the ugly realities of both human and equine abuse, but, ultimately, this is a triumphant novel shaped by authentic characters and in which trust and determination win. Readers will be reminded of how our real-life connections with animals can both guide and heal.” —Nancy Scheemaker, Northshire Bookstore, Saratoga Springs, NY.

Gaitskill gets even more attention in Alexandra Schwartz’s profile for The New Yorker, “Uneasy Rider,”  online now and in print in the Nov.9 issue.

Actress and former Scientologist Leah Remini appeared on ABC’s 20/20 on Friday and reaction to her hour-long interview has skyrocketed her memoir Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology (PRH/Ballantine) to #3 on Amazon.

The LA Times calls her conversation with ABC’s Dan Harris, in which Remini dishes the dirt on Scientologist Tom Cruise and his ex-wife, Katie Holmes, “explosive” and reports on the fallout, which was still going strong yesterday as Remini appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America.

Much of the Good Morning America segment covered the Church-based “reprogramming” of Remini due to Church reports filed against her by Cruise and Holmes after they became displeased with her in the run up to their wedding.

Remini is also featured on the cover of the Nov. 16 issue of People magazine (on newsstands this Friday) and is scheduled  for an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN.

A just-released trailer gives a taste of the lavish new adaptation of Leo Tolstory War and Peace. The result of the first-ever collaboration between the Weinstein Co. and the BBC, it is set to air on the BBC in early 2016 and some time later on A&E in the U.S. (UPDATE: it is now scheduled to premiere on all three A&E networks on Jan, 18).

After seeing previews at the major TV marketplace Mipcom last month, Deadline called it “one of the most ambitious event series ever made for the BBC” The sic-part series stars a familiar face from Downton Abbey, Lily James who co-stars with Paul Dano and James Norton.  Gillian Anderson, Jim Broadbent, Stephen Rea and Rebecca Front are also in the cast.

Harvey Weinstein has a librarian to thank for discovering the source material. Reports Deadline, “As a child undergoing repeated eye-surgery, [Weinstein]  was left with few entertainment options until aproaching a librarian neighbor who handed him the book. ‘It was so beautiful. It captured the lonliness I was feeling and the exuberance.’ ”

The official novelization of the new Star Wars movie will be pushed back until January.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Disney/Lucasfilms is so determined to prevent spoilers that they have asked their publishing partner Del Rey (PRH) to delay publication of The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster (PRH/Del Rey/LucasBooks; Random House Audio/BOT) until January 5, several weeks after the movie hits theaters on Dec. 17.

WSJ quotes a Lucasfilm’s spokeswoman who confirms that the move is “an effort to keep as many surprises as possible for audiences seeing the movie on the big screen.”

The e-book version (9781101965504) will release earlier than the print, on the day the movie opens. According to WSJ, Disney fears that, because of the lead time for publishing a print book, the files could be hacked ahead of the film’s release, but the company doesn’t see that as an issue for e-books.

There are still plenty of books related to the film to keep readers occupied.

Chief among them is Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig (PRH/Del Rey/Lucas Books; OverDrive Sample), a bridge book spanning the years between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. Books for the children’s market such as Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens The Weapon of a Jedi: A Luke Skywalker Adventure by Jason Fry (Hachette/Disney Lucasfilm Press; OverDrive Sample) are also not affected by the delay as they too are set between movies and do not encroach on The Force Awakens story line.

Once the movie debuts, more books will arrive, such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens Visual Dictionary by Pablo Hidalgo (PRH/DK; Dec.) and The Art of Star Wars: The Force Awakens by Phil Szostak (Abrams, Dec).

After that, the floodgates open. The website Outer Places reports that many new titles were announced during last month’s New York Comic Con. Pablo Hidalgo, LucasFilm’s Creative Executive “revealed that fans could expect a host of new Star Wars publishing stories, which would range from e-shorts to Star Wars Insider shorts to full novels…. all part of a huge new wave of Star Wars storytelling, which is scheduled to kick off in Spring of next year.” (See our listing of tie-ins).

As part of this wave Chuck Wendig’s second and third books in the Aftermath trilogy were announced, Aftermath 2: Life Debt (PRH/Del Rey/LucasBooks, 978-1101966938; May 31, 2016) and Aftermath 3: Empire’s End (no bibliographic info. yet).

Also forthcoming is a book by Claudia Gray titled Star Wars: New Republic: Bloodline. PRH/Del Rey/LucasBooks, 978-0345511362; March 29, 2016). According to Outer Places, “whereas Aftermath explores the moments immediately after Return of the Jedi, Gray’s new novel will be set 6 years before Star Wars: The Force Awakens, skipping ahead and hopefully giving some backstory to the characters and worlds that will be core to JJ Abrams upcoming movie.”

Gray’s most recent Star Wars title is Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lost Stars (Hachette/Disney Lucasfilm Press; OverDrive Sample; Sept)

It will not end there. As the WSJ noted in their story, “Del Rey has published more than 150 Star Wars titles, including the first in the series, based on the original 1977 movie.” In a niffty incident of closing a circle, that original novelization says WSJ, was ghostwritten by the author of the new one, Alan Dean Foster, althoughGeorge Lucas was given the credit.

The most recent trailer for The Force Awakens set the Internet ablaze.

Best Books season kicks into gear with Publishers Weekly‘s picks of the top titles of the 2015.

As in years past, the PW editors offer a Top 10 list and divide their remaining picks into 12 categories including Mystery/Thriller, Nonfiction, Picture Books, and YA, with a total of 150 titles.

Maggie Nelson is the cover author this year. PW says that her “vital, shape-shifting memoir … The Argonauts, shook up what we thought nonfiction writing could do.” PW has a good track record in identifying new talent on their Best Books covers. Last year’s cover person was Marlon James, who went on to win the Booker for
A Brief History of Seven Killings. The year before, it was Hanya Yanagihara, for her first novel, The People in the Trees. This year, she is a finalist for the National Book Awards for her second novel, A Little Life.

Arriving in a year when transgender issues have been in the spotlight, Nelson writes about becoming a mother at the same time her partner transitions from female to male. Published by the award-winning indie Minneapolis literary press Greywolf (distributed by Random House), which was described more pointedly as “tiny” in a profile by New York magazine earlier this year, it received strong critical attention this spring. Praising it, the L.A. Times described the book’s unusual style as “a loose yet intricate tapestry of memoir, art criticism and gentle polemic.”

Translated titles have a notoriously difficult time finding an audience in the U.S., but three of the top ten picks were originally published in other languages. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian (Europa), is the final novel in a series that has moved from cult status to best seller. It is joined by two more under-the-radar titiles, the German translation, Imperium by Christian Kracht,(Macmillan/ FSG), and the Indonesian Beauty Is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan (New Directions).

Again this year, we will compile  downloadable spreadsheets of all the Best Books selections, useful for end-of-the year buying, as more lists are released.

Just after the announcement that the film adaptation of The Girl on the Train is set for release a year from now, comes news about two other titles in the genre are taking major steps closer to screens.

Director Adrian Lyne has been selected to head up the film version of The Silent Wife, (Penguin, 2013) with Nicole Kidman starring. Lyne has had experience with stories about relationships gone spectacularly wrong, having directed both Unfaithful and Fatal Attraction.

The debut novel by A.S.A. Harrison, published as an original trade paperback, was a surprise best seller in 2013.

Another domestic thriller, also starring Kidman, this time along with Reese Witherspoon, Big Little Lies (PRH/Putnam, 2013) is in the works as an HBO limited series. It was just announced that Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers Club) is in talks to make his TV directorial debut adapting the novel by Liane Moriarty. Deadline calls this “the highest-profile limited series packages to come together for HBO since True Detective.”

Kidman and Witherspoon will produce the series. The pair clearly love the domestic thriller genre. This is the second title by Morality they have acquired, having optioned the rights last year to The Husband’s Secret  (Penguin/Putnam/Einhorn, 2013). In May, they optioned S.J. Watson’s Second Life (Harper, June 2015). Earlier, Kidman starred in the film version of Watson’s debut, Before I Go to Sleep (Harper, 2011).  Witherspoon was a producer for the movie Gone Girl.

Amazingly, neither of them have anything to do with The Girl on the Train.