In 2010, Helen Simonson’s debut novel Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand put a modern twist on the tradition of British novels about village life. The gentlemanly Major Pettigrew of the title falls for a lovely Pakistani widow who runs the local tea shop.

Critics were charmed and so were booksellers, making it a #1 Indie Next pick. It hit the lower rungs of the NYT best seller list and spent many more weeks on the paperback list.

Simonson’s new novel, The Summer Before the War (PRH/Random House; Random House Audio; BOT; OverDrive Sample), is taking off more quickly, arriving at #7 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction list in its first week of publication.

The #1 March LibraryReads pick, USA Today sums it up as “Julian Fellowes meets E.M. Forster.” The Washington Post calls it “a delightful story about nontraditional romantic relationships, class snobbery and the everybody-knows-everybody complications of living in a small community” and says “The novel’s amusing dialogue enlivens its compelling storyline and is sure to please fans of Downton.”

Entertainment Weekly gives it a B+ and offers: “within the framework of a wartime love story, Simonson captures the contradictions of small-town life perfectly: the idyllic pastimes, the overly involved neighbors, the hints at secrets and unspoken truths.” The goes on to say the novel is ” thoroughly enjoyable” and “addictively readable.”

The one nay-sayer is Miss Manners, reviewing the book for the NYT Sunday Book Review under her real name Judith Martin, carping over “an annoying caricature of Henry James” and adding that she prefers the Lucia and Mapp series by E.F. Benson, novels that are also set in the British town of Rye during the early 20th C.

Holds are growing at many libraries we checked, with some wait lists topping a 3:1 ratio.

The title arriving with the heaviest holds next week as well as greatest number of copies ordered is Stuart Woods’s Family Jewels, Penguin/Putnam; BOT and Penguin Audio; OverDrive Sample), which is, gasp, the 37th Stone Barrington novel. PW comments, “Tony trappings, colorful characters, and a magnificent McGuffin provide ample distraction from the occasional dangling plot thread and the implausible ease and frequency with which Stone lands lucrative cases and beds beautiful women. Dry-witted dialogue keeps the tone light and drives this glossy, modern take on the classic detective story,” but Kirkus sniffs, “A low-stakes, low-octane thriller that seems to have been cobbled together entirely from dead ends.”

Prolific Mary Higgins Clark adds another title to the genre that has served her so well, suspense. Her fist major success was the  Where are the Children?, published 42 years ago in 1974 (her first book was a fictionalized bio of George and Martha Washington She quickly changed to suspense).

The new novel, As Time Goes By (S&S; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample) is described by the publisher as being about “a news reporter tries to find her birth mother just as she is assigned to cover the high-profile trial of a woman accused of murdering her wealthy husband.”

Further down holds lists is relative newcomer Anna Quindlen’s eighth novel, Miller’s Valley (PRH/Random House, Brilliance Audio; RH Large Print; OverDrive Sample) about a young woman growing up in rural Pennsylvania in the 1960’s, Booklist calls it “vintage Quindlen …a compelling family tale rich in recognizable characters, resplendent storytelling, and reflective observations.”

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 April 4. 2016

Media Magnets

The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son On Life, Love, and Loss, Anderson Cooper, Gloria Vanderbilt, (Harper; HarperAudio; HarperLuxe)

The famous mother and her equally famous son reflect on their relationship in this book and also in the HBO documentary Nothing Left Unsaid, which debuts on April 9,

The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time. Arianna Huffington (PRH/Harmony; BOT and RH Audio)

The founder of the Huffington Post has had many passions in her life, most of them political, but a personal experience with sleep deprivation made her realize that she needed to try to balance work and life, leading to her book Thrive in 2014. Here she continues one of the themes from that book, the importance of sleep

Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul, by James McBride (PRH/Spiegel & Grau; BOT & RH Audio; OverDrive Sample)

Having written a best selling memoir, The Color of Water  (1996) and the 2013 National Book Award winning novel, The Good Lord Bird, McBride turns to biography in a book about the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. A NYT profile of the author describes the book as being, “about entertainment, of course, but also about much more, including poverty, race, ambition and how to behave.”

Author Rick Moody, writing about it in this week’s NYT Sunday Book Review, lauds McBride for “tackling one of the most complex and most fascinating figures in American music over the last 50 years” and managing to elucidate his life, breaking through many barriers erected because  Brown “did not, in fact, much want to be known.”

People Picks

People magazine’s  “Book of the Week” is Peggy Orenstein’s Girls and Sex, (Harper) which has been getting wide coverage, including an interview with the author on NPR’s Fresh Air this week.

The other two picks are Martha Hall Kelly’s Lilac Girls (listed in Peer Picks, below) and John Elder Robison’s memoir, Switched On, which we covered earlier.

Peer Picks

Four April LibraryReads titles make their way into the hands of readers this week starting with Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway (Macmillan/Tor.com; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Jennifer Kelley, of Kershaw County Library, Camden, SC opens her annotation of the Fantasy with an intriguing question:

“What happens to children who find a doorway into a fantasy land, and then come back into the mundane world? It’s certainly not a happily ever after scenario for these children, but those that find their way to Eleanor West’s school are learning to cope. Shortly after Nancy comes to the school, a series of horrific events occur. It’s up to her and others at the school to figure out who is committing these atrocities. This book is so wonderfully written.”

The Murder of Mary Russell: A novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, Laurie R. King (PRH/Bantam; OverDrive Sample) also hits the shelves, causing Deborah Walsh, of the Geneva Public Library District, Geneva, IL to warn:

“Worried about Mary Russell? Well, you should be. She’s opened her door to the wrong man and deeply troubling secrets are set to tumble out, rewriting her history and putting herself and the people she loves in a dangerous spot. Once again, King spins a tantalizing tale of deception and misdirection for her readers’ delight and scores a direct hit in her latest Russell-Holmes mystery.”

The Historical Fiction debut Lilac Girls, Martha Hall Kelly (PRH/Ballantine; BOT; OverDrive Sample), appears as well. It is also a People magazine pick this week as well as an Indie Next pick for April.

Andrea Larson, of Cook Memorial Public Library, Libertyville, IL offers the following annotation:

“This is story of the Ravensbruck Rabbits: seventy-four women prisoners in the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Using alternating first-person narratives, the characters relate their experiences from 1939 through 1959. Drawing upon a decade of research, Hall reconstructs what life was like in Ravensbruck. More than a war story, this is a tale of how the strength of women’s bonds can carry them through even the most difficult situations. Lilac Girls is a solid, compelling historical read.”

Also picked by both LibraryReads and Indie Next is Tuesday Nights in 1980, Molly Prentiss (Simon & Schuster/Gallery/Scout Press; Simon & Schuster Audio).

Diane Scholl, of Batavia Public Library, Batavia, IL shares her take:

“Following the lives of three individuals in New York on the cusp of 1980, this book was structured in such a unique and original way. Lucy is in her early twenties, experiencing life in a big city; James who after college finds himself the reigning critic of the art world and Raul, escaping the post Peron Dirty War in Argentina will find himself the art world’s new favorite; these three will find their lives entwined in many ways. A tragic accident will change all these characters and others close to them. This is a wonderful book that I wasn’t ready to finish.”

Booksellers have plenty of other titles to hand-sell this week with no less than eight titles from the April Indie Next List appearing.

Fellside, M. R. Carey (Hachette/Orbit; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample).

“Let’s say you’ve been convicted of murder and sent to a maximum security prison for the remainder of your life, which should be a while since you are not that old. Then let’s say that not only can you not remember killing anyone, but you can’t remember who you are. Could things get any worse? How about if the ghost of the little boy you supposedly killed visits you in prison to ask for your help. What do you do? From the author of The Girl With All the Gifts comes another gripping and unforgettable story.” —Linda Bond, Auntie’s Bookstore, Spokane, WA

The author’s previous novel has been adapted as a movie that will be released in the UK in September (no US release date yet).

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, Dominic Smith (Macmillan/Sarah Crichton Books; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample).

“Smith’s new novel unfolds slowly, and each moment of illumination offers a glimpse into the true heart of this quiet, captivating tale. Spanning more than three centuries, it is the story of three lives —a female master painter of the Dutch Golden Age, a moneyed New York patent attorney, and an art history student turned one-time art forger — each changed by one haunting painting. Filled with hurt, grief, and deceit, but also layered with love, grace, and regret, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos is a wonderful read, beautifully written.” —Heather Duncan, Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver, CO

The artistic historical also made Entertainment Weekly’s list of “25 books we can’t wait to read in 2016”

The One-in-a-Million Boy, Monica Wood (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Dreamscape Media; OverDrive Sample).

“Despite its themes of loss, love, and aging, The One-in-a-Million Boy is a hopeful novel. Musician and mostly absent dad Quinn Porter honors his dead son’s Boy Scout agreement to help 104-year-old Ona Vitkus. As Quinn and Ona get to know each other, Quinn begins to understand his son — and in some ways, himself — for the first time. Heartfelt and charming!” —Carol Schneck Varner, Schuler Books & Music, Okemos, MI

Lab Girl, Hope Jahren (PRH/Knopf; BOT; OverDrive Sample).

“This book has it all: nature, love, science, drama, heartbreak, joy, and plenty of dirt. Not since Cheryl Strayed’s Wild have I read such a rich and compelling nonfiction narrative. Lab Girl is the story of Jahren’s life in science, and her writing on the wonders of nature will renew your sense of awe. But more than that, it is an exploration of friendship, mental illness, parenthood, and the messiness of life. The only flaw — these pages fly by too quickly, leaving you wondering what you could possibly read next that will be just as good.” —Pete Mulvihill, Green Apple Books, San Francisco, CA

Jahren’s debut is getting plenty of other coverage as well. Michiko Kakutani of the NYT‘s weighs in as does Entertainment Weekly with an A- review. It also made the WSJ‘s “The Hottest Spring Nonfiction Books” (subscription may be required).

Dodgers, Bill Beverly (PRH/Crown; BOT; OverDrive Sample).

“Four young black men, following orders, leave their tightly bound South Central Los Angeles community, and drive across the country to perform a hit to prevent a witness from testifying against their boss. They are ghetto born, raised, and trained, so they have outlaw skills and the resulting respect in their community. In wide-open America, they are profoundly out of their comfort zone. What each young man does with his skills, wits, sense of duty, and — for one in particular — a dawning sense of what the future holds for such a lifestyle, forms the core of this powerful novel. Provocative, gripping, and timely, Dodgers is a riveting read that leaves a lasting impression.” —Sheryl Cotleur, Copperfield’s Books, Sebastopol, CA

The debut is a B&N Discover pick as well.

The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life, Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh (Simon & Schuster; Simon & Schuster Audio).

“What is entailed in living ‘a good life’? Using the writings of a succession of Chinese scholars from 2,000 years ago, the authors explain their ancient teachings through contemporary examples and demonstrate how changing our perspective can change our lives. And ‘the path’ that we are to follow? There is none! Rather, we create the journey moment by moment as we change how we observe and interact with our world and those in it. Challenging and potentially transformative!” —Susan Posch, The Book Shoppe, Boone, IA

The Railwayman’s Wife, Ashley Hay (Simon & Schuster/Atria Books; Simon & Schuster Audio).

“The Railwayman’s Wife is a remarkable story drenched by the wells of sadness, yet it leaves readers marveling at the beauty of it all. Annika Lachlan is grieving her beloved husband and attempting to find solace in books. But the town of Thirroul, Australia, is home to more than one person damaged by grief. Brought together as members of a club no one would choose to join, each begins to move towards healing. The Railwayman’s Wife immerses the reader in Ani’s life, and as one savors the novel’s heartbreaking prose, a world is revealed in which hope and grief are forever intertwined and love may be the strongest current of all.” —Luisa Smith, Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA

The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial, Maggie Nelson (Macmillan/Graywolf Press; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample).

“If I could read the work of only one writer for the rest of my life, I think I would be happy to spend the rest of my days in the staggering beauty of Nelson’s prose. In The Red Parts, what could have merely been a relatively interesting true crime narrative becomes, instead, a wholly original memoir of pain, history, family, and those bright moments of clarity in a world that, for Nelson, had become so dark. This book asks us to wonder, to be angry, and ultimately to become more human. This is an inescapable, utterly compelling read.” —Claire Tobin, Literati Bookstore, Ann Arbor, MI

Tie-ins

A number of tie-ins come out this week, connected to three different films.

National Geographic The Angry Birds Movie: Red’s Big Adventure, Christy Ullrich Barcus (PRH/National Geographic Children’s Books; also in a Hardcover Reinforced Library Binding).

The children’s book supports the animated movie version of the popular video game Angry Birds.

The film releases May 20th and stars Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, and Danny McBride.

Star Wars The Force Awakens Storybook, Elizabeth Schaefer (Hachette/Disney Lucasfilm Press), a tie-in to the already released blockbuster Star Wars film, this time an illustrated picture book by the same author who created an earlier tie-in, Star Wars The Force Awakens: Rey’s Story.

The Jungle Book: Mowgli’s Rainy Day, Disney Book Group (Hachette/Disney Press) comes out in support of the live-action movie hitting screens on April 15.

This is the second time Disney has taken on Rudyard Kipling’s beloved story collection. The first was the animated classic that came out in 1967, the last film Walt worked on.

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

The adaptation news for the week is centered on the second season of Outlander, which is based on book 2 of Diana Gabaldon’s beloved and long running series, Dragonfly In Amber (PRH/Delacorte, 1992; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample).

After waiting almost a year for the return of the show, and after leaving fans divided on how well or horribly season one concluded, all eyes now focus on the politics of warfare as Jamie and Claire travel to Paris in an attempt to stop the coming Jacobite rebellion.

Based on early coverage from EOnline!, the show is set to be a lavish, visual treat with even more gorgeous costumes and sets as the time-crossed lovers enter the Royal Court of France and host their own high-powered dinner parties. The site also reports that the massive and complex plot will be told in 13 continuous episodes rather than the divided 16 of season one (no midseason Droughtlander!).

A new tie-in edition celebrates the show’s long awaited return, complete with a cover shot that would be at home in Game of Thrones if it were set in the 18th century: Dragonfly in Amber (Starz Tie-in Edition), Diana Gabaldon (PRH/Bantam; also in mass market).

There are few reviews yet for the second season, which starts on April 9th but the show is already a proven winner. According to Entertainment Weekly, which pushed the series 2 opener in a cover story a few weeks ago, Outlander has made Starz the second-most popular premium network behind HBO and has also helped sell 5 million more copies of Diana Gabaldon’s books, raising the total to 27 million worldwide.

The reviews that do exist, such as one from TVLine which gives it a B+, explain that “Starz has put a pretty strict gag order on discussion of certain aspects of the upcoming season.”

Below is the official trailer followed by highlights of the new setting of season two.

The Costco Book Club is back with Amy E. Reichert’s The Coincidence of Coconut Cake (S&S/Gallery Books; Tantor Audio; OverDrive Sample), in the April issue of COSTCO Connection, summarizing the plot as “Lou (short for Louella), a fledgling restaurateur, and Al, a restaurant critic who writes under a pseudonym … meet after Al writes a mean-spirited review of Lou’s restaurant. Having agreed not to talk about work, neither realizes who the other is – until romance is already in bloom.” Publisher S&S calls it “You’ve Got Mail meets How to Eat a Cupcake.” Costco also offers recipes by the author.

Based on circulation in libraries we checked, it should be a popular choice.  Holds are still very respectable at several systems, nearly a year after pub. date.

Also in the April issue, is the newest pick from Costco book buyer Pennie Clark Ianniciello. While confessing she does not often highlight a thriller, she has high praise for Harlan Coben’s Fool Me Once (PRH/Dutton; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample), saying, “His writing is sharp, the suspense is palpable and he laces it all with read emotion.”

The book is already a best seller, and as we mentioned earlier in the week, set to be a movie produced by and starring Julia Roberts.

Not only does Robert Kirkman rule the horror/thriller airwaves with his hit AMC series The Wallking Dead, he is about to get more screen exposure as Outcast premieres on Cinemax in a 10 episode run starting June 3.

Based on the comic Kirkman writes and Paul Azaceta illustrates, the supernatural horror tale stars Patrick Fugit (Gone Girl) and Philip Glenister (Life on Mars) as two characters caught in a web of demonic possession.

According to ScreenCrush, before the show even airs it has been renewed for a second season in 2017.

ScreenRant reports that Krikman began working on the TV adaptation before the first print issue of Outcast was published and plans for the series to be an epic horror tale full of scares.

Two collected editions are currently in print with a third to follow on June 15.

Below is the latest trailer for the show, released yesterday:

Outcast news arrives just in time to tease the season end of The Walking Dead on April 3, which AMC is pushing hard with the reveal of Negan, a character Den of Geek calls “a force of nature, unflinching in his cruelty, and the most formidable opponent Rick and his group have ever faced.”

Entertainment Weekly reports that the final episode is very rough and made star “Andrew Lincoln was so distraught, it was the only time he’s ever shown up late for work. Lauren Cohan says she didn’t even want to go to work. Josh McDermitt threw his script across the room [and] Norman Reedus … couldn’t speak after [watching] it.”

Season 7 of The Walking Dead will air sometime this October, as announced back in 2015 by a very confident AMC.

The first black superhero in mainstream American comics, the Black Panther, appeared in 1966 in an issue of Marvel comics Fantastic Four. The character was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Jump ahead decades and he is about to debut again, in a story written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, the best-selling author of the National Book Award winner Between the World and Me.

The first issue of the comic, with art by Brian Stelfreeze, will appear on April 6th. It is the first of eleven that will be releases in paperback complications, beginning with #1-4, Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet Book 1 by Ta-Nehisi Coates, illustrated by Brian Stelfreeze (Hachette/Marvel; Sept. 27, 2016; ISBN: 9781302900533; $16.99).

Coates writes about creating a new vision for Black Panther, writing comics, and the role of comics in his life for the newest issue of The Atlantic, where he is a national correspondent, explaining why he found the opportunity irresistible,

“Some of the best days of my life were spent poring over the back issues of The Uncanny X-Men and The Amazing Spider-Man. As a child of the crack-riddled West Baltimore of the 1980s, I found the tales of comic books to be an escape, another reality where, very often, the weak and mocked could transform their fallibility into fantastic power.”

The story is getting coverage elsewhere as well, with a piece on the NYT‘s Web site today, an illustrated story on the pop culture site The Mary Sue earlier the month, and a Speakeasy interview in the WSJ with the Editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics.

All this comes as the Black Panther set to make his big-screen debut on May 5th in Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War. As we reported earlier, Chadwick Boseman will play the superhero monarch. The most recent movie trailer, below:

For background on the character, SuperHeroHype provides an illustrated look.

Artist Jim Kay, winner of the UK’s Kate Greenaway Medal, is working his way through the Harry Potter canon, illustrating each novel in turn.

Up next is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Illustrated Edition (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books; October 4, 2016; ISBN 9780545791328; $39.99)

J.K. Rowling’s website Pottermore released a set of sample drawings which include the cover image (of Harry and Ron in Mr. Weasley’s flying car), a portrait of Hagrid, an exterior view of Hogwarts, and a “da Vinci-esque study of Mandrakes.” There will be 115 images in all.

Entertainment Weekly and many other sites are reporting the story, and sharing the illustrations.

Kay’s version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone came out last October. This new edition is due on October 4th and is available to pre-order through wholesalers and retailers.

Jessica Knoll’s 2015 debut thriller, Luckiest Girl Alive, is soaring up the Amazon charts once again due to a raw, confessional essay the author wrote for Lenny, a newsletter and website founded by Lena Dunham along with Jenni Konner, the showrunner for Girls.

Knoll discloses in the essay that the horrific rape segments of her novel are based on her own life story, events she first said were entirely fictional.

“The first person to tell me I was gang-raped was a therapist, seven years after the fact. The second was my literary agent, five years later, only she wasn’t talking about me. She was talking about Ani, the protagonist of my novel, Luckiest Girl Alive, which is a work of fiction. What I’ve kept to myself, up until today, is that its inspiration is not.”

The New York Times also reports the story, extending on the essay with an interview with Knoll who told the paper of the aftermath of the rape:

“No one was treating me like a victim; they were treating me like I was a perpetrator, like I was getting what I deserved … The message I internalized was that nothing bad happened; you did something wrong.”

Luckiest Girl Alive remains in high demand in every library we checked with holds queues still present at many. Reese Witherspoon optioned the film rights, and Knoll is hitting the road for a book tour to support the paperback edition of her novel (S&S, April 5).

Last month the release of the teaser trailer for Me Before You caused the novel it’s based on to rise to number one on Amazon’s sales rankings. The extended trailer has just been released, causing both Me Before You and its sequel, After You, to rise again.

The new preview gets extended coverage with Entertainment Weekly counting down the 9 moments of the trailer that made them weep and US Magazine offering a lengthy summary of the 2 minute clip.

Due out June 3, the film stars Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones) and Sam Claflin (Finnick Odair from The Hunger Games) transitioning from worlds of dragons and death matches to life-affirming contemporary romance.

The novel’s author, JoJo Moyes, wrote the screenplay and a movie-tie in edition will be released on April 26: Me Before You: A Novel (Movie Tie-In) by Jojo Moyes (PRH/Penguin Books).

In every library we checked circulation remains very strong with most libraries having a long holds queue yet to be satisfied. Both titles are still on The New York Times Best Sellers list as well. Me Before You tops the Paperback Trade Fiction list and After You is no. 13 on the Hardcover Fiction list.

Beloved children’s author Beverly Cleary celebrates a milestone on April 12th, her 100th birthday.

Interviewed on the Today Show, Cleary says about that achievement that she “didn’t do it on purpose!” and that she remembers “a very earnest conversation my best friend and I had when we were, I guess, freshmen in high school, about how long we wanted to live … and we decided that 80 was the cut-off date.”

Cleary became a school librarian and found that, as was the case when she herself was a reluctant reader, none of her students enjoyed the current crop of books for kids, finding them too foreign to their own lives. She recalls that “books in those days, back in the 1920s, had been published in England, and the children had nannies and pony carts.”

Her career as an author began when one of her students asked where the books were with “kids like us” and she sat down and started writing them.

Julie Blume and Kate DiCamillo both appear in the Today Show story to praise Cleary, remarking on how important and influential her books have been.

Cleary stopped writing years ago but that has not dented her popularity or diminished interest. Last month librarian Julie Roach wrote an essay for The Horn Book reporting on Cleary’s circulation stats:

“Twenty-first-century characters who are often compared to Ramona — such as Sara Pennypacker’s Clementine, Lenore Look’s Alvin Ho, and Megan McDonald’s Judy Moody and Stink — are in high demand at our library, but over the past year the print versions of Ramona held ten to twenty percent higher circulation figures than those other series.”

Eliciting the most holds of book arriving next week is Karen Robards’ romantic suspense novel, Darkness (S&S/Gallery; Brilliance Audio), its neon-colored jacket belying the title. Library ordering is in line with strong holds.

Two titles that libraries may have underbought, based on holds ratios, are Karen Kingsbury’s Brush of Wings (S&S/Howard; S&S Audio) and Jacqueline Winspear’s latest Maisie Hobbs novel, Journey to Munich (Harper; HarperAudio; HarperLuxe).

Kingsbury has gained new readers as a result of the Hallmark series based on her earlier book, The Bridge. More adaptations of her novels are coming. Hallmark is at work on another of her novels, A Time to Dance and Roma Downey recently acquired the rights to produce Kingsbury’s Baxter Family series for TV.

Winspear’s series has been growing in popularity. The last few titles in the have all landed on the NYT best sellers list in the top five

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 March 28, 2016

Advance Attention

Melancholy Accidents: Three Centuries of Stray Bullets and Bad Luck,  Peter Manseau, (Melville House)

Author Manseau has come up with a brilliant and haunting way to examine the history of American gun violence, by reproducing stories from old newspapers, which often used the term a “melancholy accident” for such events.

That clever idea gets equally clever marketing by the book’s indie publisher, Melville House, which has bombarded the NRA and pro-gun politicians like Ted Cruz with images from the book:

All the macabre history of gun accidents that’s fit to print, every day until we publish this tiny beauty. pic.twitter.com/UXvxg27TYJ

— Melville House (@melvillehouse) March 3, 2016

Appropriately, given the political implications, the book received an early review from Ron Charles in the Washington Post, who writes,

“While acknowledging that his compendium of mayhem may read like a political argument against guns, that wasn’t his intention. The people he’d really like to reach are gun owners. Their adaptation of smart guns, which electronically limit who can fire them, is our best chance for progress, he says.”

The author writes in an  opinion piece in the New York Times, Trigger Warnings, “Though often seen as an embodiment of the nation’s freedom-loving swagger, every gun comes loaded with an alternate history: not heroic self-reliance but hapless tragedy.”

Consumer Media Picks

People magazine’s “Book of the Week” is Lee Smith’s memoir Dimestore: A Writer’s Life, Lee Smith (Workman/Algonquin; OverDrive Sample), which came out last week; “With restrained prose and charming humor, she illuminates a way of life that has all but disappeared and explores the impulse to bear witness that underpins the storyteller in all of us.”

It is also an April LibraryReads pick.

Peer Picks

One LibraryReads title hits the shelves this week, the highly anticipated return of the Romance series known as the Bridgertons.

Mary Aileen Buss, of Long Beach Public Library, NY, offers this annotation of Because of Miss Bridgerton, Julia Quinn (HC/Avon; HarperAudio):

“This is the first in a prequel series to Quinn’s popular Bridgerton series, set a generation earlier. Billie Bridgerton spent her childhood running wild with the neighboring Rokesbys, Andrew, Edward, and Mary. Now she runs the family estate for her father and still runs as wild as she can. The eldest Rokesby, George, never really approved of Billie, but when he rescues her from a roof they begin to come to a new understanding.”

Another long awaited return of a fan favorite is an Indie Next pick, Lust & Wonder: A Memoir, by Augusten Burroughs (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press; OverDrive Sample).

“We have read about his crazy childhood, his struggles with alcohol, and his troubled relationships with his father and Christmas. Now, we have Burroughs’ take on love and romance, and what a tale it is! This is a love story as only Burroughs can tell it — the wrong lovers, the long-term relationship that turned out to be toxic, and the love that was staring him in the face all along. Roses and moonlight it is not, but the course of true love never does run smooth. I laughed, I cried — just read it!” —Susan Taylor, Market Block Books, Troy, NY.

It will be issued as a one-day laydown on March 29.

There is also an All Star title with Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, Adam Hochschild (HMH; OverDrive Sample) hitting shelves on the 29th.

It earned starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. It is also reviewed in today’s New York Times.

Tie-ins

This week sees the release of the tie-in to John le Carré’s The Night Manager (TV Tie-in Edition) (PRH/Ballantine Books; OverDrive Sample).

It hits shelves in advance of the AMC limited series (by way of BBC One) that begins airing April 20 and stars Tom Hiddleston (The Avengers) and Hugh Laurie (House). It is directed by Academy Award winner Susanne Bier (In a Better World).

As we reported earlier, the tie-in is particularly notable as the 1993 best seller is no longer in print.

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

It is not a happy week for directors, critics, or, it seems, viewers.

The hoped for blockbuster of the week, Batman v Superman, is not faring well. Variety reports that it is “facing a rocky start … with lukewarm reviews and … a bleak Rotten Tomatoes percentage.” Vox simply says it is “a crime against comic book fans.” UPDATE; Hang on! It seems the box office is improving. with Deadline reporting that the movie is “poised to be Warner Bros. best opening of all-time,” causing industry watchers to scratch their heads because,”rarely do we see a panned movie with OK audience reaction open to $100M-plus.”

The biopic about Hank Williams, I Saw the Light, similarly failed to win over critics, with Indiewire calling it “woefully shallow.”

NBC’s new show Heartbeat also had tough time with USA Today slamming it as a “terrible” and a “weak medical soap.”

With that as background the news does not look that good for next week either.

There is only one book adaptation hitting the screens and based on advanced reviews from its debut during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, it does not seem to be a breakout.

Kill Your Friends opens on April 1 in limited release. It is based on the 2008 debut novel by John Niven, also titled Kill Your Friends (HC/Harper Perennial) and follows the life of a music insider as he does anything to further his bottom line during the heyday of the late 1990s.

It stars Ed Skrein, Nicholas Hoult, Rosanna Arquette and is directed by Owen Harris (The Gamechangers). According to The Hollywood Reporter, Niven wrote the screenplay himself.

It got panned last year upon its initial airing with The Guardian commenting, “TV director Owen Harris has stuffed his maniacally energetic film with so many attempts to shock that it ultimately grows dull and tiresome” Variety chimed in with the same general take, calling it an “initially sharp, increasingly tiresome and violent satire.”

No tie-in edition is being released.

Author Helen Oyeyemi is in the NPR spotlight.

Yesterday Maureen Corrigan reviewed her newest collection of short stories, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours (PRH/Riverhead; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample), on NPR’s Fresh Air, praising the author’s “nouveau Gothic stories” as so memorable that they “leave a deep impression — like a scar that stubbornly refuses to fade.”

NPR’s Steve Inskeep interviewed Oyeyemi earlier in the week for Morning Edition. He asks her about her use of fairy tales and the way her imagination works.

Of fairy tales she says:

“I am trying to find out what endures — because these stories are so old, and have been retold by so many tellers, in so many different forms. There’s a way in which, when you retell a story, you’re testing what in it is relevant to all times and places. Bits of it hold up, and bits of it crumble and then new perspectives come through, and I like that the fairy tale is one of the only stories that can bear the weight of all that.”

When asked if books are more real than the actual world she replies:

“I think everything is equally real. … It’s just a question of different categories of reality, I guess, and not giving one greater precedence than the other.”

Earlier in the month reviewer Michael Schaub offered his take on the collection for NPR book reviews (web only). In his glowing appraisal he says:

“What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is a lot of things: dreamy, spellbinding, and unlike just about anything you can imagine. It’s a book that resists comparisons; Oyeyemi’s talent is as unique as it is formidable. It’s another masterpiece from an author who seems incapable of writing anything that’s less than brilliant.”

Holds are high at several libraries we checked and even where systems have gotten on top of holds, circulation is brisk.

The Berlin International Film Festival does not get as much attention in the U.S. as does Cannes, but one of this year’s featured films, adapted from a book, is getting a bevy of press coverage.

Alone In Berlin stars Brendan Gleeson and Emma Thompson and is directed by Vincent Perez. For all accounts, it is a somber, quiet film with deft acting, not the kind of film that creates buzz.

But buzzy it is and one of the reasons it has become such a juicy topic is the book story behind it.

Alone in Berlin is an adaptation of Hans Fallada’s novel Every Man Dies Alone (Melville House, 2010; OverDrive Sample). Depicting the domestic resistance in Germany to Hitler, it was written just after the end of WWII and was based on Gestapo files kept on the real-life couple Otto and Elise Hampel. Deeply affected by the death of their son during the war, the Hampel’s began handwriting postcards with subversive messages such as “Mothers, Hitler Will Kill Your Son Too” and leaving them in public places around Berlin.

As NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday reports, Fallada was a best selling author between WWI and II, with his books picked as book-of-the-month-club selections and adapted into Hollywood films (which got him blacklisted by the Nazis).

However, Every Man Dies Alone wasn’t published in English until 2009, after Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson heard about the book from the fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg and tracked it down.

When it finally did come out here, it was a best seller and became a NYT‘s Notable Book and one of The New Yorker‘s Favorite Fiction Books of the year.

The film version does not yet have a U.S. distributor but check your copies. Circulation in strong in libraries we checked, with holds lists at many locations.

Charlie Rose featured the book previously:

ALA’s recently re-released David Bowie poster

In a refreshing change from the usual click bait stories, the website Bustle posts “6 Scientific Reasons Reading is Amazing For Your Health.”

We already knew that that reading is good for
our well being, reduces stress, is therapeutic
and increases attention spans. It turns out that
it is also improves memory, brain function, and longevity.

So, stop going to the gym and settle into your favorite reading spot.