The political clout of a large and growing segment of women voters is analyzed by Rebecca Traister in All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation (Simon & Schuster).

A writer at large for New York Magazine and a noted figure in journalism and historical/political research related to women, Traiter’s newest book is getting a wide coverage. The author appears today on CBS This Morning:

This book has been heavily anticipated. In 2014, Traister appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition, when it was still  in progress, giving an overview of her findings.

Thus far, library orders are very light but media attention may fuel demand .

Ironically, for a year in which most of the Oscar categories were dominated by literary adaptations, the Best Picture winner, Spotlight was one of the few not based on a novel. The film does, however, have a book connection. Based on the story of the Boston Globe‘s Pulitzer Prize winning investigation into charges of sexual abuse in the Catholic church, the articles were published in book form in 2003 and re-released as a tie-in, Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church: The findings of the investigation that inspired the major motion picture Spotlight, The Investigative Staff of the Boston Globe, (Hachette/Back Bay).

If the Oscars had a category for Book That Benefited Most from Film Adaptation, the winner this year would be Michael Punke’s The Revenant (Macmillian/Picador), which propelled the 2002 novel from obscurity to best seller lists. It also won in three official Oscar categories, Best Actor, Director and Cinematography.

The author, while able to attend the Oscars, is prohibited by his day job from appearing on the red carpet, the New York Times reports in a profile. As the United States ambassador to the World Trade Organization, he is not allowed to do any publicity for the movie, or even his own book.

Also benefiting from its film incarnation is Andy Weir’s The Martian (PRH/Broadway), which made its own unlikely journey from a series Weir offered for free on his web site to a best selling book, with the film adaptation bringing it to even wider readership. Despite its being nominated in six categories, the Academy passed over the movie, denying it a single win.

Both movies got special attention from Oscars host Chris Rock in the show’s opening parody.

The second season of Outlander, debuting, April 9 on Starz, is featured with a steamy photo on the cover of this week’s Entertainment Weekly, (and an even steamier one on the interior pages. Sorry, it’s not online yet), which belies the network’s reluctance to call the series a romance.

According to the story, Outlander has made Starz the second-most popular premium network behind HBO. It has also helped sell 5 million more copies of Diana Gabaldon’s books, raising the total to 27 million worldwide.

In a sidebar, Gabaldon says she is at work on book 9 in the series, which may be titled A Stubborn Mind. Refusing to say how close she is to finishing it, she notes it takes her three years to write a new book (the most recent in the series, Written in My Own Heart’s Blood was published in hardcover in 2014). Success takes a toll on writing time and “the more popular your books get, the mor popular you get.”

She also addresses how long the series will continue,  “I think 10 is probably as many as will take me to the end of Jamie and Claire’s lifetimes, because it’s their story. It ends when they do.”

Season two is based on the second novel in the book series, Dragonfly In Amber (PRH/Delacorte, 1992; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample), which creates challenges for the show creators, says Entertainment Weekly, because it is “far more complicated structurally. It also alternates points of view and begins in the 1960’s with the introduction of Jamie and Claire’s adult daughter, Brianna,”

The first full-length trailer was released earlier this month.

Tie-ins (cover not final):

Dragonfly in Amber (Starz Tie-in Edition)
Diana Gabaldon
PRH/Delta, March 8, 2016
Trade Paperback

As predicted by library holds, Fiona Barton’s The Widow (PRH/NAL; BOT; OverDrive Sample) hits best seller lists this week. It’s #12 on the 3/6/16 NYT Hardcover Fiction list. It’s also #12 on the USA Today list. That list combines all formats and categories and The Widow is the sixth hardcover fiction title.

At number one on both lists is Jeffrey Archer’s Cometh
the Hour, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Macmillan Audio), the sixth in the Clifton Chronicles. USA Today notes this is a step up for the author, “Archer’s previous peak was No. 5 in May 2013, with Best Kept Secret, the third book
in the series. All the Chronicles titles have hit the Top 25, with four now making the Top 10.”

Next week is blessedly free of titles arriving with long holds queues, but fans are anticipating several titles from repeat authors, including Clive Cussler’s 9th in the Isaac Bell historical detective series, The Gangster, a posthumous collection of Maeve Binchy short stories, A Few Of The Girls, and a new thriller by James Grippando, Gone Again.

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 Feb. 28

Media Magnets

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond (PRH/Crown; BOT).

Focusing on one of the most heartbreaking aspects of poverty, the loss of a home, Evicted has already struck a chord with the media. Following four starred prepub reviews, the New York Times gave it an unusually early review on Monday, and also profiled the author. Earlier, The New Yorker published an excerpt. Coverage is also coming in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. [UPFATE: Featured on the cover of the NYT Book Review, Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed credits Desmond with having “set a new standard for reporting on poverty.”]

The first paragraph of the daily NYT review is a grabber:

“One of the most heartbreaking moments in Matthew Desmond’s Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City — and there’s a shameful assortment to choose from — is when 13-year-old Ruby Hinkston takes refuge in the public library. She’s come to use the computer. It turns out that she’s been slowly building her dream house with a free online game, and she wants to visit it again.”

The review goes on to describe the horrible conditions Ruby faces at home.

All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, Rebecca Traister (S&S; S&S Audio).

In their list of “Don’t-miss nonfiction,” Entertainment Weekly wrote, “The literary world is already buzzing about journalist Traister’s history of the unmarried American woman.” Highlights of the media attention below:

• New York Times Sunday Review, 2/28
• CBS This Morning, 2/29
• NPR Fresh Air with Terry Gross, 3/1
• Daily New York Times review, 3/6

Above the Line: My Wild Oats Adventure, Shirley MacLaine, (S&S; S&S Audio).

Of course MacLaine will be getting attention, including appearances on the Today show and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, both scheduled for March 15. The next day, she will step across the aisle to Fox & Friends. Reviewed in the Washington Post.

Peer Picks

The return of a favorite author and the debut of a new one are the highlights this week from the March LibraryReads picks.

Proving her ability to write across genres and make readers and librarians take note, Lisa Lutz turns to thrillers in The Passenger (Simon & Schuster; S&S Audio).

Beth DeGeer, of Bartlesville Public Library, Bartlesville, OK offers this annotation:

“This is a compulsively readable story of a young woman who has to keep switching identities and stay on the run. Is she a reliable narrator or not? What was the original event that sent her on the run? There is a lot of action and suspense as she tries to survive and evade the law while trying to keep her moral center intact. Unlike Lutz’s Spellman books, this reads more like a Charles Portis road novel, though considerably more serious and dangerous. Highly recommended.”

It is also a March Indie Next selection and was hit with our GalleyChatters.

Debut novelist Catherine Lowell offers a new take on the ongoing interest in all things Jane Eyre in The Madwoman Upstairs (S&S/Touchstone).

Kristen McCallum, of the Algonquin Area Public Library, Algonquin, IL invites readers to:

“Meet Samantha Whipple, a descendant of the Bronte family, who arrives at Oxford to study literature, as her father did before her. She receives a copy of Jane Eyre – a volume that she thought was destroyed in the fire that took her father’s life. When a second Bronte novel belonging to her father turns up, she is convinced he has staged an elaborate treasure hunt for her promised inheritance. Enlisting the help of her sexy, young professor, Samantha sets out on a quest to find buried treasure and learns the value of friendship and courage along the way.”

It too is an Indie Next selection for March and a GalleyChat hit.

Three additional Indie Next picks pub this week as well, among them a book on physics that is getting compared to poetry.

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rovelli (PRH/Riverhead Books; BOT; OverDrive Sample).

“With a deft sensibility associated more often with poetry than theoretical physics, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics not only makes understandable the transcendent physical discoveries of the past century, but also reveals their powerful relevance to the human spirit. A revelatory and concise account of quantum mechanics, relativity, and the delight in both finding answers and seeking new questions, this jewel of a book lyrically demystifies the extraordinary realities of the cosmos.” —Robin J. Dunn, St. John’s College Bookstore, Annapolis, MD

Bottomland, Michelle Hoover (Grove Press/Black Cat; Blackstone Audio).

“In the years following World War I, the Hess family settles on Iowa farmland hoping to escape anti-German sentiment. Two of their girls disappear as the U.S. marches towards World War II, and relationships both within and outside of the family suffer. Based loosely on an unearthed family secret, Hoover has written an atmospheric novel evocative of both a time and place.” —Kris Kleindienst, Left Bank Books, St. Louis, MO

Blackass, A. Igoni Barrett (Graywolf Press; OverDrive Sample).

“We have seen transformation handled masterfully in literature, and Blackass, with its black, Nigerian protagonist waking up in the body of a white man, immediately calls to mind Kafka’s Metamorphosis. But this is something more, something different. There is a willingness here to confront how we create our identities — racially, politically, and even on social media. Barrett does this with intelligence and a playful humor that is by turns bright and biting. There is an edge to Blackass, a fire, the beginning of trouble. This is Kafka for the Kanye generation.” —Kenny Coble, King’s Books, Tacoma, WA

All Star

At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others, Sarah Bakewell (PRH/Other Press; OverDrive Sample).

Bakewell introduced many readers to the 16th century philosopher Michel de Montaigne in How To Live: Or A Life Of Montaigne In One Question And Twenty Attempts At An Answer (2010). In her follow up, she moves ahead to the 20th century in a book starred by all four pre-pub sources. Booklist points out that it’s not all arcane philosophy, “With coverage of friendship, travel, argument, tragedy, drugs, Paris, and, of course, lots of sex, Bakewell’s biographical approach pays off.”

Tie-ins

There are three official tie-ins this week.

Rudyard Kipling’s beloved story collection gets a second Disney adaption on April 15th, this time as a live action film (the animated Disney version came out in 1967 and was the last film Walt himself worked on).

As we reported earlier, Disney is pushing the film hard, running the trailer during the Super Bowl.

The Jungle Book: The Strength of the Wolf is the Pack, Scott Peterson, Joshua Pruett (Hachette/Disney Press) is an illustrated novel based on the movie.

In support of the new Syfy 13-episode series Hunters, starting April 11, Alien Hunter comes out in a tie-in edition entitled Hunters, Whitley Strieber (Macmillan/Tor Books).

It is the first novel in an ongoing series. The second is Alien Hunter: Underworld. A third, Alien Hunter: The White House, is due in April.

The show combines thriller and SF in an alien conspiracy story, where the aliens are terrorists.

Another tie-in for Sundance’s Hap and Leonard series comes out this week as well. This time it is the complete collection of the previous Lansdale short stories augmented with one new story and an introduction written by Michael Koryta.

Hap and Leonard, Joe R. Lansdale (Perseus/PGW/Tachyon Publications).

As we reported when the first tie-in came out, the series debuts on March 2.

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

Martian tie-in

Steve Jobs

Carol Tie-in

Brooklyn tie-in

Room tie-in

45 Years

The Revenant

Spotlight tie-in

Jobs Trade Pbk

Danish Girl Tie-in

TRUMBO tie-in

Big Short Te-in

Do you have your ballots ready for this Sunday’s Oscars?

If not, check out our look at the many book adaptations that are in the running.

Tye Sheridan is now “near the top of young actors to watch,” according to Deadine as a result of being selected by Steven Spielberg for the lead in his adaptation of Ernest Cline’s debut Ready Player One, (RH/Crown; Random House Audio/BOT). Deadline adds, “For Sheridan, it’s the latest in a short career full of landing showy roles.”

It’s been a fairly long search for the lead. According to the Hollywood Reporter “Sheridan’s casting comes after numerous waves of searches dating back to fall 2015. Spielberg read and tested across several continents but was never quite happy. In an unusual situation, the romantic interest [Olivia Cooke] and the villain [Ben Mendelsohn] were picked even as the lead role remained vacant.”

Spielberg is currently at work on Roald Dahl’s The BFG, set to open July 1, and is expected to follow up with Player One.

To date, Sheridan has received the most acclaim for his role in Mud, with Matthew McConaughey. He is featured in the trailer, below (he’s the boy with the longer brown hair). An extended 10minute preview is here.

Sheridan will next appear as Cyclops in the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse and in the adaptation of The Yellow Birds, also set to be released this year.

Ready Play One was recently bumped from its original fall 2017 slot to March 30, 2018, so it won’t be overpowered by  Star Wars Episode VIII.

Taking another step closer to the small screen, Netflix announces that Tom McCarthy will direct the first two episodes of the series adaptation of Jay Asher’s 2007 YA novel TH1RTEEN R3ASONS WHY, (Penguin/RazorBill; Listening Library; OverDrive Sample). McCarthy directed Spotlight, currently in the running for six Oscars. Bringing an additional level of cachet, Selena Gomez is an executive producer.

About a high school student who commits suicide and leaves behind several tapes, each addressed to one of her classmates, explaining how they contributed to her decision, the novel is a YALSA Best Books of 2008, and  was a NYT best seller  in hardcover for over two years.

The first trailer has just been released for the film adaptation of The Light Between Oceans, based on the long-running best seller by M.L. Stedman (S&S/ Scribner).

The movie’s stars are up for Oscars this weekend for their roles in other movies, Michael Fassbender for   Steve Jobs and Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl.

Light opens on Labor Day weekend, having been held back from release last year, a move was probably made, as Deadline suggests, to save it for next year’s awards season.

Released in trade paperback in 2013, tie-ins will be published in late August:

The Light Between Oceans
M.L. Stedman, 8/30/16
Trade Paperback, (S&S/Scribner)
Mass Market, (S&S/Pocket Books)

On Late Night Wednesday, Seth Meyers delved into the science of health with Dr. David Agus

Angus’s latest book is
The Lucky Years : How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health, (S&S; S&S Audio)

Each month, our GalleyChatter columnist Robin Beerbower rounds up the favorites from our most recent Twitter chat (#ewgc). Below is her post for February.

Below are links to Robin’s most recent columns, which include other current and forthcoming titles:

January

December

November

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Librarians (and one intrepid bookseller) managed to talk about  125 books during the February chat. Below are a few you may want to move to the top of your TBR piles (all are available as eGalleys). We’ve also noted those that can still be nominated for LibraryReads..

For the complete list of titles, check here .

New Girls

It won’t be available until June, but Emma Cline’s The Girls (PRH/Random House) has already advance attention (see our roundup of titles On Most of 2016’s Most Anticipated Lists) and GalleyChat librarians attest it lives up to the excitement.

Set in Northern California during the late 1960s, the novel is about a lonely teen-ager who becomes obsessed with the older girls surrounding a charismatic cult leader. Collection development librarian Jennifer Dayton (Darien Library, CT) tweeted during GalleyChat, “I liked The Girls a lot. Great examination of how easily a young girl can get caught in a web of evil.” Janet Lockhart (Wake County Library, NC) added, “Cline uses a Manson-like cult to examine the experience of being female. Unsettling, brilliant writing.” LibraryReads deadline: April 20

Another book receiving over-the-top librarian reviews is Martha Hall Kelly’s Lilac Girls (PRH/Ballantine, April). Alene Moroni, Information Services Librarian (Forbes Library, MA) said, “I was so engaged with the based-on-real-events story of three women during and after World War II, I found myself calling it unputdownable on Twitter! Well researched, it illuminated details I had never considered and made me want to learn more.” Try this for fans of Kristin Hannah’s book club favorite, The Nightingale. The LibraryReads deadline has passed for this one, but we’re seeing “Much Love” for it from librarians on Edelweiss.

Unsettling Suspense

Readers never get enough of thrillers and February’s chat offered more than enough to keep fans busy. Here are a few titles guaranteed to create a gripping roller coaster ride.

In Gina Wohlsdorf’s Security (Workman/Algonquin, June), readers will experience a creeping sense of dread after reaching the realization that something is terribly wrong in Santa Barbara’s new luxury hotel, Manderley. Chapel Hill’s (SC) Tracy Babiasz said this “amazing” thriller is “clever, all-consuming, and gory. Readers who appreciate a unique point of view and love a race against time to solve the puzzle before the characters do will eat up this fast-paced take on a slasher novel.“  LibraryReads deadline: April 20

Known for the word-of-mouth bestseller, The Girl With All the Gifts, M. R. Carey’s new book, Fellside (Hachette/Orbit, April), has pleased many Edelweiss readers, including Joseph Jones of Cuyahoga County Public Library. After burning down a house  while under the influence of heroin, Jess is sent to a brutal female prison on the Yorkshire Moors but is haunted by the ghost of the little boy who was killed in that fire. Joseph said, “I loved Jess as a character and how the creepiness factor kept rising as the story unfolded. Carey continues to grow as a writer and each book is a new joy to read.”

The plot device of a hit-and-run accident involving a child is not new, but Clare Mackintosh takes it a few notches further in I Let You Go (PRH/Berkley, May), adding a heinous villain, twists galore, and an edge-of-the-couch pace that kept me reading nonstop. Because of the well-drawn characters and the multiple viewpoints, this is perfect for those who liked What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan. LibraryReads deadline: March 20.  NOTE: This title is part of the EarlyWord/Penguin Debut author program. Join a chat with the author on April 20th, 4 to 5 p.m., ET, here on EarlyWord.

“Crazy, racy, and just demented!” was how Andrienne Cruz (Azusa, CA, City Library) brought our attention to L. S. Hilton’s first in a trilogy, Maestra (PRH/Putnam, April). Andrienne goes on to say, “Judith, recently fired for doing the right thing, decides to go on a trip where she transforms into Lauren and hobnobs with the rich and glamorous. The main character is like a Talented Mr. Ripley [Patricia Highsmith] but much more unabashedly carnal.”

Enchanting and Delightful

To counteract the above chilling novels, The Decent Proposal by Kemper Donovan (HarperCollins/Harper, April), offers an appealing read. Tigard Public Library’s (OR) Ann-Marie Anderson, adult services librarian, wrote, “Lively and entertaining and an ode to the charms of Los Angeles. The lives of a hard-partying, struggling 29-year-old white screenwriter and a buttoned up, high powered, somber 33-year-old lawyer are thrown out of whack when they’re offered the opportunity to split a million dollars from an anonymous benefactor if they meet for conversation for two hours each week, for one year.”

The True Tails of Baker and Taylor: The Library Cats Who Left Their Pawprints on a Small Town (Macmillan/Thomas Dunne, May) by librarian Jan Louch, the felines’ main caregiver, is sure to please anyone who has a B&T shopping bag tucked under their desk or a poster of the Scottish Folds on the wall.

NOTE:  The cats are featured on a poster for the book. Talia and Anne at Macmillan Library Marketing are making them available to EarlyWord readers. Just
email them and don’t forget to include your mailing address.

Louch tells the complete story of the famous feline library residents that became the B&T mascots. I was smiling the entire time (as you can tell from the photo of me with Baker, at right. I am a fan of the subjects) except when I had to mop a few tears because, well, animals don’t live forever. It is a delightful read for any cat fan and is perfect for readers of Dewey by Vicki Myron and The Cat Who Went to Paris by Peter Gethers.  LibraryReads deadline: March 20

Please join us for another rousing GalleyChat this coming Tuesday, March 1, from 4:00-5:00 ET, with virtual cocktails from 3:30-4:00. To learn what I’m anticipating, “friend me” on Edelweiss, and for email notifications and reminders for anything related to GalleyChat, please contact me at galleychatter@earlyword.com to be added to the notification list.

Head of the National Security Agency and the CIA during some of the most tense and controversial years of American history, Michael V. Hayden surveys his tenure in the Bush administration, detailing what occurred and why from his point of view, in Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror (PRH/Penguin; Penguin Audio; BOT; OverDrive Sample – embargoed until yesterday’s pub date).

The book is currently #10 on Amazon’s Top Sellers. Library holds thus far are in keeping with fairly low level of ordering. Holds may still grow, as word about this embargoed title spreads.

Author Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down) reviewing the book for The New York Times is not impressed:

“Mr. Hayden seems oblivious … He has written an occasionally engaging book about matters — moral, legal and technological — that are very complex, but he shows little interest in examining them. Throughout he is breezy and unapologetic. And why not? At the same time his efforts were being met by public criticism, they led to steady praise and promotion. He ended his Air Force career a four-star general.”

While not passing judgment on the book itself, NPR’s Robert Siegel conducted a probing interview with Hayden for All Things Considered earlier this week. In one key moment Siegel asks: “What did you tell Leon Panetta, your successor as CIA director, to say about waterboarding?”

Hayden replies:

“Do not use the word ‘torture’ and ‘CIA’ in the same sentence ever again. You can object to some of the enhanced interrogation techniques. You can, in your heart of hearts, believe they meet some legal definition of torture. But Leon, you’re taking over a workforce that did these things in good faith. They did these things with the assurance of the attorney general that they indeed were not torture. Do not accuse them of felonies.”

He also says that it was the US intelligence agencies that got the facts about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction wrong, not the Bush administration. “We were wrong. It was a clean swing and a miss. It was our fault.”

MSNBC’s Morning Joe featured Hayden in a long segment yesterday.

President Obama nominates Dr. Carla Hayden, director of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore since 1993, as the new Librarian of Congress, as announced in a White House press release today.

News stories report that if she is confirmed by Congress, she will be the first African-American and the first woman in that position. None so far note that she will  be only the second professional librarian appointed to that post (after Lawrence Quincy Mumford, who served from 1954–1974, once the director of the Cleveland Public Library as well as President of the ALA, a position Hayden also held). CORRECTION: Two librarians have held the post. Herbert Putnam, who held the post the longest, 1899 to 1930, was head of the Minneapolis Public Library as well as  Librarian of the Boston Public Library. He did not, however, have a library degree.

In a statement on Facebook, President Obama attests to the role Pratt plays in the community,”Last year, during the unrest in Baltimore, Dr. Hayden kept the doors of the Pratt open as a beacon for the community,”

He adds that she will bring an important skill to LC, “Her understanding of the pivotal role that emerging technologies play in libraries will be essential in leading the Library of Congress as it continues to modernize its infrastructure and promote open access and full participation in today’s digital world.”

The White House announcement also includes a video introduction to the nominee.

One of the few black female film directors working today, Ava DuVernay (Selma) has been chosen to direct a new Disney’s adaptation of the 1963 Newbery Award winner, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (Macmillan/FSG BYR). Breaking the news, Deadline also notes this marks “a big step up in scale for DuVernay, a former publicist who proved her mettle by making Selma.”

L’Engle didn’t think much of a previous Disney adaption of her book. When asked by Newseek if it met her expectations, she replied, “Yes, I expected it to be bad, and it is.”

We can hope L’Engle, who died in 2007, would have had better expectations for this new version.

Once fans got over the fact that the new Harry Potter 8 is not a book per se, but the script of a play, titled Harry Potter and the Cursed Child:Parts I & II (Scholastic) set to debut London’s Palace Theatre on July 30th, they woke up to a new reality. The play isn’t actually being written by J.K. Rowling, but by scriptwriter Jack Thorne.

Headlines like the Washington Post‘s “J.K. Rowling announces an eighth Harry Potter book” obscure the wording in the press release that it is  “based on an original new story by JK Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany. It is officially the eighth story in Harry Potter canon and a new play by Jack Thorne.”

The Guardian goes into detail about the collaboration, concluding it is”unlikely that Amazon will seeing a slew of cancelled orders” after fans understand who is real writer, but “Not many people read play scripts for fun, for the very good reason that they are created to be performed. For the Potter fans who queue up for the latest midnight release, this realisation may be a rude awakening.”