After the flurry of releases timed to the awards season cut-off, only one movie based on a book premieres in the upcoming week (The Revenant, which debuted in a very few theaters last month, opens wide today amid buzz for Sunday’s Golden Globes). TV takes up the slack with one movie and a new series.

Opening next Friday, January 15, is 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi based on 13 Hours: The Inside Account Of What Really Happened In Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff (Hachette/Twelve trade paperback tie-in; also mass-market). Opening the same weekend that American Sniper did last year, the producers are hoping for similar magic.

The movie revisits an event with heavy political implications, explored by the New York Times although director Michael Bey and the producers, “shared the conviction … that partisan politics should generally be avoided,” focusing instead on “an unabashed celebration of the armed operatives, who were defying orders when they moved to defend the diplomatic compound.”

Starring John Krasinski and James Badge Dale, the release of the trailer, as we previously reported, was enough to send the book moving up Amazon’s sales rankings. This week it hit the NYT Nonfiction paperback list at #8.

On TV, the Hallmark channel debuts the next in the Murder She Baked series, The Peach Cobbler Murder this Sunday, January 10.

Also airing back-to-back on Sunday are the previous two titles in the series based on Joanna Fluke’s Hannah Swensen series.

Tie-ins have been published for all three:

Peach Cobbler Murder, Joanne Fluke, (Kensingon, trade pbk and mass market)

Plum Pudding Mystery,  Joanne Fluke, (Kensingon, trade pbk and mass market. Sept 2015)

Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder, Joanne Fluke, (Kensington, April, 2015)

As a result of the success of the series,  Kensington is re-releasing Fluke’s backlist. The next book in the Hannah Swensen series, Wedding Cake Murder is coming in February.

The seven-episode Shadowhunters series premiers on Jan. 12.

Based on Cassandra Clare’s YA series, The Mortal Instruments, it airs at 9 p.m. on the Freeform network (formerly ABC Family). A tie-in edition came out in late December, City of Bones: TV Tie-In (S&S/Margaret K. McElderry).

This is not the first time Clare’s book has been adapted. As we reported earlier, it was made into a movie in 2013. After it flopped at the box office, the producers changed their plans of creating a film franchise and turned to TV, with a new cast of actors, all of whom are fairly new to the screen.

For those not familiar with the story, E! Online offers a  Shadowhunters 101.

Published as a young adult title,  Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys, (Penguin Young Readers/Philomel; Listening Library; OverDrive Sample) crosses over to adult as the #1 LibraryReads selection of the top ten titles for February.

Jennifer Asimakopoulos, Indian Prairie Public Library, Darien, IL provides the annotation:

“Titanic. Lusitania. Wilhelm Gustloff. All major maritime disasters, yet the last is virtually unknown. Ruta Sepetys changes that in her gripping historical novel. Told in short snippets, Salt to the Sea rotates between four narrators attempting to escape various tragedies in 1945 Europe. Powerful and haunting, heartbreaking and hopeful–a must read.”

Also on the list are several debuts, including two that have been featured on our Penguin Debut Authors program, First Flights.

Black Rabbit Hall, Eve Chase, (PRH/Putnam; BOT and Penguin Audio) — see chat archive here

“Young Amber Alton and her family adore Black Rabbit Hall, and the joy and peace it brings to them all. That is, until a tragic accident changes everything. Three decades later, Lorna decides her wedding must be celebrated at the crumbling hall. As the book moves between these two time periods, secrets slowly unfold. Perfectly twisty with interesting characters and a compelling story that kept me up too late.” — Deborah Margeson, Douglas County Libraries, Parker, CO

13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl,  Mona Awad, (PRH/ Penguin Pbk Original)  — see chat archive here

“Everyone loves Lizzie–she is the confidant, the late night go-to, and she is always there and hungry for attention. Lizzie becomes even more obsessed and needy when she no longer feels insecure about being overweight and it becomes painfully obvious that she will always feel bad about herself. It is a candid and sad look at how we mistreat people with different body types.” — Kimberly McGee, Lake Travis Community Library, Austin, TX

The Winds of Winter may not be coming in book form soon, but spring, the most interesting season in book publishing, is. With the pressure over to get titles by big name authors into the hands of desperate gift-givers, the way is cleared for debuts, potential breakouts and follow ups to earlier breakouts

In their “First Look” issue on stands now, Entertainment Weekly picks the “25 books we can’t wait to read in 2016,” starting with February titles and running all the way in to September. A few are far enough out that they don’t have listings yet, like Tony Bennett’s untitled memoir coming in August.

For those who want to check their orders, we’ve put together a downloadable spreadsheet, Entertainment. Weekly — 25 books we can’t wait to read in 2016

Among the debuts is a title that received several thumbs up during yesterday’s GalleyChat, Sweetbitter, by Stephanie Danler (PRH/Knopf; May 24; DRC available), with the annotation,  “Danler, working as a waitress, stunned the publishing world with her exquisite manuscript for Sweetbitter, the coming-of-age story of — wait for it — a Manhattan waitress.” GalleyChatter Jen Dayton, Darien P.L. describes it more succinctly, “Puts Danny Meyer [major NYC restaurateur]  in The Devil Wears Prada hot seat.”

Called “one of 2016’s most talked-about debuts,” Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s The Nest (HarperCollins/Ecco; DRC available) features “adult siblings [who] squabble over their joint trust fund after their reckless brother Leo threatens to drain it.” One GalleyChatter commented, “Nothing says family like fighting over money …Sharp, funny debut.”

A note to those going to the AAP Library Reads Breakfast this coming Monday at ALA MidWinter, watch for Adam Haslett whose Imagine Me Gone, (Hachette/ Little, Brown; May 3) is called “one of spring’s biggest books — a heartbreaking, hilarious chronicle of one family struggling to love one another amid anxiety and depression.”

Also listed is Liane Moriarty’s as-yet-untitled novel coming this summer(Macmillan/Flatiron; July 26). There’s no description, but Entertainment Weekly doesn’t need one;  “We’ll read anything the author of Big Little Lies and The Husband’s Secret writes.” We agree, as does Hollywood.

Coming in memoirs is a new book that sounds like the real-life version of We Need to Talk about Kevin. Sue Klebold, the mother of Columbine shooter Dylan, publishes A Mother’s Reckoning  (PRH/Crown) described as “her utterly devastating side of the 1999 Columbine tragedy.”

For those looking for books arriving this month, Entertainment Weekly also lists “11 books you have to read in January.”

Below is a transcript of today’s chat.

Join us for the next chat, on Tuesday, Feb. 2nd, 4 to 5 p.m. Eastern. #ewgc

“THE WINDS OF WINTER is not finished.”

With those stark words, George R.R. Martin sums up his lowest point of 2015, confessing on his blog that he failed to complete The Winds of Winter before the new season of HBO’s adaptation, Game of Thrones, begins airing again in mid-April.

In what amounts to a baring of the authorial soul in the sad grip of “bad writing days,” Martin says to his fans that it gave him:

“… no pleasure to type those words. You’re disappointed, and you’re not alone. My editors and publishers are disappointed, HBO is disappointed, my agents and foreign publishers and translators are disappointed … but no one could possibly be more disappointed than me. For months now I have wanted nothing so much as to be able to say, ‘I have completed and delivered THE WINDS OF WINTER’ on or before the last day of 2015 … But the book’s not done…. I am months away still… and that’s if the writing goes well.”

Martin goes on to confesse he has no idea when the book will be done, asserts that deadlines simply “stress him out,” and says the book will “be done when it’s done. And it will be as good as I can possibly make it.”

Addressing the concerns of fans worried that the HBO series will reveal spoilers he says “Some of the ‘spoilers’ you may encounter in season six may not be spoilers at all… because the show and the books have diverged, and will continue to do so.”

He goes on to point out that people read books and watch adaptations of those books in various orders all the time so the question of the series spoiling the novels is really “Maybe. Yes and no.”

It is a your-mileage-may-vary answer and he defensively supports it with a list of dozens of characters who have already had different fates in his books than on the HBO series.

It’s the first Monday of the New Year and, like us, you may have woken with the sinking feeling that you are already running behind. Those going to ALA MidWinter face the additional reality that it’s right around the corner.

Here’s a quick tip —  TODAY is the last day to sign up for two important author events (and if you’re not attending MidWinter, you can play along by downloading the DRC’s):

AAP LibraryReads Best In Debut Authors
Sat. Jan 9, 3 to 4 p.m.
Boston Convention Center, Room 102B
Request an invitation here
Authors featured:

Kaitlyn Greenidge,  We Love You, Charlie Freeman (Workman/Algonquin; March; DRC available now)

Shobha Rao, An Unrestored Woman (Macmillan/Flatiron; March)

Trudy Nan Boyce, Out of the Blues (PRH/Putnam; Feb; DRC available now)

Steve Toutonghi, Join (Soho Press; April; DRC available now)

Victoria Kelly, Mrs. Houdini (S&S/Atria; March; DRC available now)

Steven Rowley, Lily & The Octopus (Simon & Schuster, June)

AAP LibraryReads BookTalk Breakfast
Mon. Jan 11, 8:30 a.m.
Seaport Hotel, Lighthouse I
Request an invitation here
Authors featured:

Adam Haslette, Imagine Me Gone (May; Hachette/ Little, Brown & Co.)

Ann Leary, The Children (Macmillan/St. Martin’s)

Simon Van Booy, Father’s Day, (HarperCollins; April; DRC available now)

Helen Simonson, The Summer Before the War,  (PRH/Random House; March; DRC available now)

Lawrence Hill, The Illegal: A Novel (W. W. Norton; Jan; DRC available now)

Chris Cleave,  Everyone Brave is Forgiven (Simon & Schuster; May; DRC available now)

There’s also several book buzz and author signing opportunities — check the ads here on EarlyWord for more.

For more to add to your schedule, check Library Journal’s preview and Brian Kenney’s delightfully contrarian picks in Publishers Weekly.

Whether it’s chicken or egg, the year kicks off with a raft of diet and health books as well as People magazine’s annual issue on humans (and, frighteningly this year, pets) who have lost half their body weight. Even the NYT Book Review explores self-help books in its first cover feature of the year, also offering a rare review of several diet books.

Some other voices are breaking through, however. As noted in the NYT BR podcast, there is a counter-trend of people admitting to their failures. Even People attests to this; one  of their “Picks of the Week” is Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life, Kelsey Miller (Hachette/Grand Central). The NYT BR also covers the very flawed and human Michael Ian Black’s satiric Navel Gazing: True Tales of Bodies, Mostly Mine (but also my mom’s, which I know sounds weird).

Entertainment Weekly also attests to the trend. The first issue of the new year offers “First Looks” at the major upcoming events in entertainment for 2016. Just one book gets the treatment, one by a woman who has never conquered the issue of weight, feminist Roxane Gay’s Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, set to be published in June (Harper).

The titles covered here, and several other notable titles arriving in the upcoming week, are listed with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of Jan. 4 2016.

Holds Leaders

Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up, Marie Kondo (Ten Speed, RH Large Print; OverDrive Sample).

Holds are growing on this followup to the continually popular book on the life-changing magic of tidying up. Take note that a rival book arrives next week, one that comes with a strong recommendation from our GalleyChatter columnist, Robin Beerbower, New Order: A Decluttering Handbook for Creative Folks (and Everyone Else), Fay Wolf (PRH/Ballantine).

Forty Thieves, Thomas Perry (Mysterious Press).

Perry’s standalone thriller is getting acclaim, from a starred Booklist review to LJ‘s verdict that it “presents two intriguing couples whose relationships are as compelling as the action that drives them. The novel speeds to a surprising conclusion that will satisfy Perry’s many followers and generate new fans.”

Media Attention

Been There, Done That: Family Wisdom For Modern Times, Al Roker and Deborah Roberts (PRH/NAL; Penguin Audio).

By the Today Show‘s Roker and his wife Deborah Roberts, a 20/20 correspondent, this is poised to get media attention.

NFL Confidential: True Confessions from the Gutter of Football, Johnny Anonymous  (HarperCollins/Dey Street).

Billed as a book that will deliver “fun stuff, scary stuff, controversial stuff” on the NFL by a lineman writing anonymously, the NYT‘s daily reviewer Dwight Garner says it doesn’t deliver the goods and that “The N.F.L. has nothing to fear from this mild book.” The New York Daily News sees it differently quite differently, however.

Peer Picks

The first full week of January ushers in a bevy of IndieNext Picks. All nine are listed below with annotations by booksellers.

The Past, Tessa Hadley (Harper; Dreamscape Media; OverDrive Sample).

“A novel about a family vacation is often used as a device to bring out the worst flaws of the characters; here, it is used to bring out the best of Hadley’s writing talent. She brings the family together, introducing them one by one: Harriet, the outdoorsy one; Alice, the dramatic one; Fran, the motherly one; Roland, the scholarly brother. The siblings, along with assorted children, spouses, and a young friend, spend three weeks in the crumbling house that belonged to their grandparents, trying to decide what must be done with it. Readers who enjoy character-driven novels, such as ones by Kate Atkinson, Margaret Drabble, or Jane Gardam, will welcome this novel.” – Yvette Olson, Magnolia’s Bookstore, Seattle, WA.

This is also People magazine’s “Book of the Week.” The reviewer agrees with the above assessment, that the set up is familiar, but that “Hadley is so insightful, such a lovely writer that she … makes you feel for these imperfect people, want to scold them and ultimately accept them as they are.”

The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir, Ruth Wariner (Macmillan/Flatiron Books; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample).

“This is a memoir made extraordinary simply by the fact that the author lived to tell the tale. Wariner grew up in a polygamist cult across the Mexican border, the 39th of her father’s 41 children. Surrounded by crushing poverty and repeated tragedy, little Ruth was taught that girls are born to be used by callous men and an angry God. However, she had just enough contact with her maternal grandparents and the outside world to realize the bizarre practices at home didn’t match up with the rest of civilization. With quiet persistence, she grew into an adolescent and began to consider the possibility of escape. Riveting and reminiscent of Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle.” – Mary Laura Philpott, Parnassus Books, Nashville, TN.

Also gets a resounding A from Entertainment Weekly.

After the Crash, Michel Bussi (Hachette Books; Hachette Audio and Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample).

“This old-fashioned crime novel by a French geography professor considers the miraculous survival of a three-month-old infant girl in an airplane crash in the Jura Mountains in which all perished — including a second three-month-old baby. An 18-year struggle is unleashed between two rival sets of grandparents on opposite ends of the economic scale, one of which is accorded custody of the child. Does she really belong to that family? Is her brother really her brother? As the age of majority of the survivor approaches, the questions become more urgent and the private detective who has been on the case for 18 years tries to bring some closure.” – Darwin Ellis, Books on the Common, Ridgefield, CT.

The Guest Room, Chris Bohjalian (PRH/Doubleday; Random House Audio; OverDrive Sample).

“From the explosive beginning all the way to the adrenaline rush of its conclusion, The Guest Room packs an emotional punch that will leave the reader gasping. When a bachelor party goes terribly wrong and two Russian mobsters wind up dead in his home, financier Richard Chapman finds himself struggling to save his job and marriage. Intertwined with Richard’s story is the tale of Alexandra, a young sex slave with a narrative voice that will break your heart. Nobody does domestic drama quite like Bohjalian. Once again he proves himself a master of page-turning literary fiction.” – Pamela Klinger-Horn, Excelsior Bay Books, Excelsior, MN.

Mr. Splitfoot, Samantha Hunt (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

“When Cora’s Aunt Ruth, whom she hasn’t seen since childhood, shows up on her doorstep, mute yet demanding Cora follow her, Cora makes a split-second decision to do that to escape her dead-end job and the father of the baby she is carrying. The tale of the road trip that follows and the details of Ruth’s past are told in alternating chapters until they merge. The cast of characters and settings are mysterious and creepy, like something out of a David Lynch movie. Readers will be compelled to keep the pages turning until the secrets are revealed.” – Kelley Drahushuk, The Spotty Dog Books & Ale in Hudson, NY.

The book also earned starred reviews from Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly.

The Children’s Home, Charles Lambert (Simon & Schuster/Scribner; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample).

“Tragically disfigured and reclusive, Morgan lives in a secluded country estate with only his housekeeper, Engel, to keep him company — until the children start to arrive. The first, an infant named Moira, is left in a basket on the doorstep; others soon follow — including the oddly precocious David — the eldest at five years old. But what does the children’s enigmatic presence portend for Morgan and the world in which he lives? Through lyrical prose, Lambert creates an absorbing and dream-like narrative that recalls both the pastoral gothic of Shirley Jackson and the dystopic vision of John Wyndham.” – Dan Doody, University Book Store, Seattle, WA.

The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World’s Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley, Eric Weiner (Simon & Schuster; Simon & Schuster Audio).

“In his latest quest, acclaimed travel writer Weiner takes readers on a journey to discover creative places that inspire and cultivate geniuses. Time-traveling from ancient Athens to modern Silicon Valley with Hangzhou, Florence, Edinburgh, Calcutta, and Vienna as stops along the way, Weiner conducts a grand tour of those places thought to be conducive to ingenuity. He asks, What was in the air, and can we bottle it? A fascinating and entertaining literary treat connecting culture and creativity.” – Kathleen Dixon, Fair Isle Books, Washington Island, WI.

Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Ed Tarkington (Workman/Algonquin Books; HighBridge Audio).

“Tarkington’s debut novel feels positively Shakespearean in its sense of family dynamics and the sometimes destructive power of love, but it speaks with the deceptively plain, poignant language of a Neil Young song. Set in the 1980s in a small Virginia town, the book tells the coming-of-age story of Rocky Askew as he copes with fraternal abandonment, dangerous liaisons, caregiving, and one town scandal after another with little help other than his brother Paul’s old vinyl collection. Only Love Can Break Your Heart speaks to anybody working to function, however imperfectly, in any type of family.” – Andrew Hedglin, Lemuria Bookshop, Jackson, MS.

The Gun, Fuminori Nakamura, translated by Allison Markin Powell (Soho Crime; OverDrive Sample).

“Alienation and obsession are dissected in this unsettling, spare novel. Nishikawa, a listless college student, happens upon a dead man during a nighttime walk. He inexplicably picks up the pistol lying by the body and brings it to his apartment. From this precipitous moment, the weapon becomes an obsession. Nishikawa finds his tedious reality taking on new meaning through the possibilities of an object that was designed to kill, and yet he must conceal his fetish from his classmates, lovers, and — most importantly — the police, who suspect that he has the gun. This award-winning noir novel, translated from Japanese, is an unflinching, dark story of one man’s expanding consciousness — and threat.”  – Cindy Pauldine, the river’s end bookstore, Oswego, NY.

Tie-ins

The big tie-in news of the week is that finally, after delaying its release date for weeks to prevent leaks about the story line, the publishers of the Star Wars novelization are allowing print readers access to the physical book (the ebook has been out since the movie opened).

As we reported, the book is by the same author who wrote the first Star Wars novelization decades ago, although the credit went to George Lucas.

The Force Awakens (Star Wars), Alan Dean Foster (PRH/Del Rey/LucasBooks; Random House Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

On Feb. 3, ABC will begin airing a miniseries detailing the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme with Richard Dreyfuss playing Madoff and Blythe Danner playing his wife, Ruth.

The show is based on the 2009 book by ABC News’s chief investigative correspondent, Brian Ross, The Madoff Chronicles (Inside the Secret World of Bernie and Ruth) (Kingswell; OverDrive Sample).

A tie-in edition will be published this week.

Also in the works is an HBO movie about Madoff, Wizard of Lies, directed by Barry Levinson and starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer. It is expected to air some time this year.

Debuting on Monday on the cable channel VH1 is a fictional movie about the origins of hip hop, The Breaks, inspired by the nearly 700-page nonfiction title, The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop.  Examining the journey from book to TV movie, Forbes magazine suggests tit may be the beginning of a series. There is no tie-in, however.

Sister station MTV begins its big gamble (the most expensive original production in the network’s history) in trying to attract new audiences on Tuesday, Jan. 5th with the 10-part series Shannara Chronicles.

The L.A. Times notes, “Yes, the network of Real World and Jersey Shore is now channeling Tolkien.” Switching to another comparison, reporter Steve Zeitchik (formerly of Publishers Weekly) adds, “Shannara is a counterpart of sorts to HBO’s Game of Thrones and seeks both to ride that wave and set itself apart from it, though whether it can do both simultaneously is among the more interesting questions of the winter television window.”

Reviewing it under the to-die-for headline “The Next Game of Thrones Is Great On MTV, But It’s Really The Next Star Wars,” Forbes does not equivocate on that question,

“…while Shannara appears like another small screen Lord of the Rings in its marketing, its premise and actual presentation make it much more akin to the likes of Star Wars … From the first scene of its pilot, The Shannara Chronicles sets itself apart from the pack and makes it clear that this is going to be unlike any magical fantasy series we’ve seen before. The ways it does this are vast and supremely accessible to audiences that may not typically find much enjoyment in the genre, and that’s wonderful. Even if the series is nothing more than a gateway drug to the likes of heavier fantasy, it will still go down as one of the first great new shows of 2016 and one of the best new shows of the 2015/2016 television season.”

As we noted earlier, tie-in editions of the first two titles in the book series have been released (although the TV series is actually based on the second volume):

The Elfstones of Shannara (The Shannara Chronicles) (TV Tie-in Edition) by Terry Brooks (PRH/Del Rey; OverDrive Sample), released in both a trade edition and a mass market version and

The Wishsong of Shannara (The Shannara Chronicles) (TV Tie-in Edition) by Terry Brooks (PRH/Del Rey; OverDrive Sample).

The heavily promoted movie The Revenant opens wide this coming Friday, after it Oscar-qualifying debut in December. The trade paperback hit the NYT best seller list this week at #6. Released to little fanfare over ten years ago, LJ reviewed the new tie-in edition last week, calling it “A must-read for fans of Westerns and frontier fiction.” More on the book in our earlier story.

Debuting on Friday is the indie movie Lamb, based on a novel of the same title by Bonnie Nadzam (Other Press, 2011). About the friendship of an 11-year-old girl and a 47-year-old man,  it was featured at film festivals earlier this year, called “beautiful and troubling” and “dangerously unclassifiable” by Variety and “difficult to market” by the the Hollywood Reporter. Likewise, the book was called “daring and disturbing” (The Telegraph). The movie receives a lackluster C+ in the current issue of Entertainment Weekly; “about as strange as it sounds: a Lolita story almost more unsettling for the lines it doesn’t explicitly cross.”

Nadzam’s next novel Lions, is scheduled for publication in July (Grove Press).