The title of the third and final Hobbit movie was changed in April from the rather passive There and Back Again to one that promises more action, The Battle of the Five Armies.

The first trailer was released yesterday and already has nearly 3 million views on YouTube. The movie opens on Dec. 17

The first Man Booker longlist to include American authors has been released. Of the 13 novels, 4 are by Americans. As The Economist wryly observes, the list “has divided headline writers into those who prefer ‘Commonwealth writers edged out’ and those who have chosen ‘Donna Tartt snubbed’.”

But the Guardian gets to one of the most pressing issues,   exploring, “Why The Longlist Has Bewildered The Bookies,“ while taking a familiar swipe at American writers (similar to the Nobel Awards jurist’s claim that Americans are “too insular” to be able to win that prize), by saying, “American novelists tend to write about the US, and none of the four – Joshua Ferris, Karen Joy Fowler, Siri Hustvedt, Richard Powers – set their selected books abroad. So … there’s a marked sense of restricted horizons …”

The Economist, on the other hand, picks American Richard Powers’ Orfeo as one of the two most interesting books on the list. The other is The Narrow Road to the Deep North, by Australian Richard Flanagan.

It happens that just before this announcement, we heard Seattle Public Library’s David Wright describe his excitement about that book, calling the author, “a consummate stylist, but with a style that is in service to the realities he’s writing about, which are often deeply painful and tragic. That is certainly true in The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which depicts with a fair amount of detail the horrific experience of POWs in WWII (Flanagan’s father was a survivor of the Thai-Burma death railway) … He is so skillful in showing how these events affect mens’ lives … his writing is devastating, generous, and deeply caring.”

Flanagan is also modest. He tells the Guardian that he was “stunned” to learn he was on the list.

The author who may be the most surprised to make the list is Paul Kingsnorth. Not only is The Wake his first novel, he had so much trouble getting it published, that he finally turned to crowd-funding it via the U.K. website Unbound. The author describes the novel as “a strange and left-field book,” written in its own language, a version of Anglo-Saxon English.

A taste of it below:

The longlist, with American publishing information, below:

Available now:

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, Joshua Ferris (Hachette/Little,Brown, 5/13/14)

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler (Penguin/Putnam/Marian Wood; 5/30/13; also in trade pbk)

The Blazing World, Siri Hustvedt (S&S; 3/11/14; Thorndike)

The Wake, Paul Kingsnorth (Unbound) — published via the crowd-funded site Unbound; available as an ebook on Axis 360

Orfeo, Richard Powers (Norton, 1/20/14; Thorndike; Recorded Books)

History of the Rain, Niall Williams (Macmillan/Bloomsbury, 5/6/14)

Forthcoming:

The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan (RH/Knopf. 8/12/14)

J, Howard Jacobson, (RH/Crown/Hogarth (3/10/15)

The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell (Random House, 9/2/14; Recorded Books)

Us, David Nicholls (Harper, 10/8/14; HarperAudio)

The Dog, Joseph O’Neill (RH/)Pantheon, 10/9/14; RH Audio)

Not Yet Published in the U.S.:

The Lives of Others, Neel Mukherjee (Chatto & Windus)

How to be Both, Ali Smith (Hamish Hamilton)

Among the titles eagerly awaited next week, as evidenced by holds, is Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies (Penguin/Putnam/Einhorn; Penguin Audio; Recorded Books; Thorndike), the author’s next tile after last year’s The Husband’s Secret, which is still on best seller lists and still on hold in many libraries.

The NYT’s Janet Maslin included it in her summer reading roundup and reviewed it yesterday, saying it may have “even more staying power than The Husband’s Secret” and adds “‘a low-level bitchiness thrums throughout the narrative, becoming one of its indispensable pleasures.”

Hollywood has also discovered Moriarty. Both The Husband’s Secret and her 2011 title, What Alice Forgot are in development (The Devil Wears Prada’ director David Frankel, is attached to the latter). This is not to be confused with another adaptation of a book about an Alice with memory issues. Still Alice, adapted from the book by Lisa Genova, starring Kristen Stewart, Julianne Moore and Kate Bosworth is completed and set to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

For readers who can’t get their hands on Big Little Lies, you can recommend the debut domestic thriller, Dear Daughter by Elizabeth Little, (Penguin; Recorded Books). About a  former celebrity, accused of killing her mother, a crime she does not remember committing, LJ says “Fans of Tana French and Gillian Flynn are going to enjoy the smart narrator and the twists and turns in the case” and PW approves of the “entertainingly caustic first-person narrative.”

LibraryReads

Lucky Us, Amy Bloom, (Random House)

LibraryReads recommendation:

“Is a family the people you are born to, or the people who you find along the way? That’s what Bloom explores in this novel set in pre- and post-WWII Ohio, Los Angeles, New York and Germany. The story follows resourceful Eva, who was abandoned by her mother at an early age, and her sister Iris, an aspiring actress who tries to find love at a time when her kind of love must be secretive. Every character is beautifully drawn, warm, and believable.” — Kathryn Hassert, Henrietta Hankin Branch Library, Chester Springs, PA

In the Media

The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It, John W. Dean, (Penguin/Viking)

The Nixon Tapes: 1971-1972   by Douglas Brinkley, Luke Nichter, (HMH)

President Richard Nixon is in the media again, 40 years after he resigned over the Watergate scandal. Two new books timed for the anniversary will receive media attention. John Dean, his White House Counsel and mastermind of the Watergate coverup, later became a key witness for the prosecution, He is publishing The Nixon Defense, in which he reflects on what he learned from the tapes of Watergate conversations that Nixon secretly recorded. Time magazine begins their interview with Dean with the provocative question, “You recruited G. Gordon Liddy to run President Nixon’s dirty-tricks campaign and were intimately involved in the cover-up. Why should a reader pay for your judgment on Watergate?” His convincing response is that he may be the one person most qualified to shed light on what motivated that perplexing person. Dean is scheduled for appearances on CBS Sunday Morning, MSNBC Morning Joe and the NPR Diane Rehm show.

For readers who want to experience the tapes first hand, historians Douglas Brinkley and Luke Nichter have transcribed them for The Nixon Tapes: 1971-1972.

For more titles arriving next week, check our downloadable spreadsheet, New Title Radar, Week of 7:28:14

Now that Stephen Colbert has achieved his goal of making Edan Lepucki’s California a best seller, he is applying the Colbert Nation magic to another upcoming title by a debut author published by Hachette, Sweetness No. 9 by Stephan Eirik Clark, (Hachette/Little, Brown, 8/19/14)

Lepucki appeared on the show on Monday. Colbert asked her to pay it foreword by recommending a book. She replied, “I’m reading Stephan Eirik Clark’s Sweetness #9, (It’s) so good.”

The novel is a satire called by Library Journal, “a hilarious take down of an industry more interested in getting us to buy its products than in selling us good food. Essential for fans of Christopher Buckley’s Thank You for Smoking.”

The trailer for the film version of Fifty Shades of Grey was set to debut on the Today Show this morning, but the network has decided to air just a portion of it, saying that the full trailer is not appropriate for morning television (somewhere, the movie’s marketing firm is smiling).

The full trailer, however, will be available on NBC.com following this morning’s broadcast, which will include an interview with the stars, Jamie Dornan, (Christian Grey) and Dakota Johnson’s (Anastasia Steele). Tomorrow morning, the show will feature a behind-the-scenes tour if the film set.

The movie is still seven months away, scheduled to debut in theaters on February 13, 2015.

UPDATE: below is the full trailer.

A truncated version was shown on the Today Show, along with a giddy interview with the stars conducted by a pregnant woman:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Book adaptations are not only hot in the film industry, they’ve also become a major source for TV, as evidenced by the nominations for the upcoming Emmy Awards (there’s so many this year that Word & Film created a  Book Lover’s Look at the 2014 Emmy Nominations. led, of course, by Game of Thrones).

Many more are in the pipeline. Outlander begins August 9. Upcoming is Olive Kitteridge (HBO, November), Fresh Off the Boat (ABC) and Astronaut Wives Club (also ABC).

In total, we are tracking 35 titles that have been announced for TV adaptation.  We know because we recently organized our adaptation information into a spreadsheet, EarlyWord’s Upcoming Book Adaptations,

Here are a few highlights:

Wolf Hall — The BBC series based on Hilary Mantel’s bestseller and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, is currently filming (see photos from the set).

American Gods — Neil Gaiman — After HBO announced they has passed on their planned adaptation of Gaiman’s book, Starz picked it up earlier this month. Gaiman gave fans hope when he told the Guardian, “It already looks like it’s going to be a smoother run developing it than it had at HBO.” New York magazine, however, dumped rain on the parade with, “Why Adapting Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for TV Is a Bad Idea.The companion novel, Anansi Boys, is being developed by BBC, but there’s been no news since the February announcement. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. is moving along with its adaptation of Gaiman’s graphic novel, The Sandman, as a feature film, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt set to play Morpheus The Lord of Dreams. It is expected for release in 2016.

The Clan Of The Cave Bear  — based on Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series — Although it was  made into a disastrous movie in 1986, starring Daryl Hannah, Ron Howard seems to think he can do better. Lifetime has set him up to executive produce a pilot.

The Magicians  — Syfy has greenlighted a pilot for  an adaptation of Lev Grossman’s fantasy trilogy.

The Last Kingdom  — Bernard Cornwell —  The Saxon Stories series — Named after the first book in the series, it is set to begin filming this fall, BBC America has hired the producers of Downton Abbey to run the production.

Stephen Colbert’s call to make California by Edan Lepucki (Hachette/Little, Brown) a NYT best seller has worked. It debuted on the July 27 Hardcover Fiction list at #3.

Colbert urged his audience to buy the book through independent booksellers, rather than Amazon, as a protest against the company’s strong-arming publisher Hachette as part of their terms negotiations.

But now that the book is on best seller lists, it is also rising on Amazon, hitting #208 this morning. Before it was published, when Amazon was not making pre-orders available, it was at #1,610,422 (how it had any ranking a tall when it couldn’t be ordered is a puzzle). After publication on July 8, it rose to #686.

The novel, which was a LibraryReads pick before Colbert made it the centerpiece of his protest, has also been receiving strong reviews in the consumer press:

The New York Times Book Review, Edan Lepucki’s California

San Francisco Chronicle, California, by Edan Lepucki

The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Secrets divide and destroy in Edan Lepucki’s dystopian novel, California

The Los Angeles Times — A grave new world awaits in Edan Lepucki’s California

Reviwer love is growing for Michael Koryta’s. latest thriller, Those Who Wish Me Dead, (Hachette/Little, Brown, 6/3/14).

Featured yesterday as one of of NPR.org’s “You Must Read This” picks, it gets this strong recommendation, “If you want an elegantly written, taut thriller with an amazing sense of place, then look no further.” It’s on the Amazon’s editors’ list of the Best Books of the Year So Far (even though it is published by Hachette, the company Amazon is famously feuding with), and  Janet Maslin praised it last week in the New York Times.

The NPR reviewer ends by saying, “Koryta, I might add, is only 31 years old. I mention this not to be ageist — but to delight in the fact that he’s got a lot of time to keep on telling us stories. That, dear readers, is great news for us.”

We can add that Koryta already has a considerable body of work, having published ten novels.

Several of Koryta’s books, including Those Who Wish Me Dead, are in development for films or television.

The flow of  big titles slows down a bit next week. Two of the author’s names may make you feel like you’ve been listening to the 70’s soundtrack for Guardians of the Galaxy. Danielle Steel’s A Perfect Life (RH/Doubeday; RH large print; Brilliance Audio) leads in holds, although many fewer than one would have expected earlier in her career. Even Tom Clancy returns posthumously, in the third in the Campus series with co-author mark Greany, Tom Clancy Support and Defend, (Penguin/Putnam; RH Auido; Thorndike). Also drawing holds is Elizabeth Adler’s suspense novel, Last to Know (Macmillan/Minotaur).

As a result, reviewers have some breathing space to cover earlier releases.The New York Times gave Michael Kortya’s Those Who Wish Me Dead, (Hachette/Little, Brown), published early last month, a stellar review on Thursday (unlike sister publication, the NYT Book Review, the daily NYT generally covers new or forthcoming books).

Below are four other titles to be aware of next week.

NOTE: We’re experiencing technical difficulties in creating our usual downloadable spreadsheet of notable titles arriving next week. We’ll post it as soon as we can work them out.

In the Media

Clinton, Inc: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine, Daniel Halper, (HarperCollins/Broadside Books)

By the online editor of The Weekly Standard, this is, unsurprisingly, deeply critical of the Clintons. Also unsurprisingly, the book was embargoed and was mysteriously leaked last weekend, which is only adding to the media attention.

Eye On

Prototype, M. D. Waters. (Penguin/Dutton)

Librarians had an early peek at this first title in the two-part series, including a chat with the author, in our Penguin Debut Authors program, It came out in February, setting the stage for fans to eagerly anticipate the quick conclusion. A mashup of recently poplar genres, dystopian science fiction and domestic thriller, it’s received large amount of “much love” on Edelweiss, plus several peer reviews that indicate a passion these books (much stronger than the lackluster pre-pub reviews would indicate).

Travels With Casey, Benoit Denizet-Lewis, (S&S; Thorndike)

Who can resist a dog memoir? Not the L.A. Times, which runs down a brief history of them in their revies this book about the author’s unusual attempt to bond with his dog by taking a road trip across the country with him (it seems his is an unusual dog. The book’s opening line is. “I don’t think my dog likes me very much.”)

Tomlinson Hill: The Remarkable Story of Two Families who Share the Tomlinson Name – One White, One Black, Chris Tomlinson, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Tantor Audio)

Tomlinson, an AP foreign correspondent, went back to his home town in Texas and discovered the truth about his slave-owning ancestors. Some PBS stations ran a filmed version of the story earlier this year and others are doing so now. Below is the book trailer.

Jojo Moyes’s 2012 best seller, Me Before You, (Viking/Pamela Dorman) is being adapted as a film that has just been set for release next year, on August 21.

In April, it was announced that Thea Sharrock, who directed the BBC’s series, Call the Midwife, as well as several Broadway plays, would take it on as her first time directing a film. Moyes wrote the script. No stars have been announced.

British author Moyes broke on to U.S. best seller lists with this, her ninth title, a novel about the relationship between a quadriplegic and his caregiver that also looks at the issue of assisted suicide. It was such a departure for the author, known for more traditional romances, that she worried it would be a tough sell. Instead, it brought her a wider readership.

The author’s most recent book, One Plus One, (Viking/Pamela Dorman), a contemporary, romance, was published in May.

Yesterday’s YA GalleyChat give us even more reason to tackle our TBR piles (just a few of the covers, above).

We were also introduced to the Librarian Rap by  Kirby Heybourne, the audiobook narrator for Scowler audiobook (RH/BOT), which he performed at ALA’s Odyssey Awards ceremony (we’ve seen people pandering to the crowd, but this takes it to a new level — watch out, John Green):

We also discovered that there is a new trend among library marketers, book jacket nail art:

Left — Books on Tape nail art for the upcoming The Fourteenth Goldfish, Jennifer Holmm (RH Young Readers; RH.Listening Library; 8/26). Right —  Macmillan Library Marketing’s tribute to Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell.

The Fourteenth Goldfish was one of the favorites of the book chat, with readers urging other librarians to download it from Netgalley or Edelweiss, calling this middle grade title, “both complex and easy to read.”

Another middle grade title getting raves, available as an e-galley, was Kat Yeh’s The Truth About Twinkie Pie.

The star among the YA titles was Mortal Heart, (HMH Young Readers, 11/4/14), the conclusion to Robin LaFevers’ His Fair Assassin trilogy, which is showing “much love” from 35 peers, 22 of them librarian, on Edelweiss. one of the highest ratings we’ve seen, especially for a book that won’t be published for another four months. One librarian said that a teen boy begged her for it on hands and knees yesterday. It’s coming in November, but you can request eGalleys now.

To read about the other titles that were hits with the group, check our downloadable spreadsheet — EarlyWord YA GalleyChat, 7/15/14  — click on the links to check for eGalleys.

Please join us for the next YA GalleyChat on August 19, 5:00 to 6:00 p.m., ET (4:30 for virtual cocktails). More details here.

A bio cum memoir about Harper Lee and her sister,  Marja Mills’ The Mockingbird Next Door: Life With Harper Lee, (Penguin Press; Thorndike), published today, is piling up some great reviews. The Washington Post calls is “engrossing” and Maureen Corrigan on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday, said it gives a “rich sense of the daily texture of the Lee sisters’ lives.” She goes on to say that, “Fortunately, in Mills, the sisters found a genteel family chronicler knocking at their door at the eleventh hour.”

But the famously reclusive and litigious 88-year-old Harper Lee is not a genteel subject. She has written a letter, reprinted in Entertainment Weekly‘s online column, “Shelf Life,” saying that the book was written on false pretenses, “Miss Mills befriended my elderly sister, Alice. It did not take long to discover Marja’s true mission; another book about Harper Lee. I was hurt, angry and saddened, but not surprised. I immediately cut off all contact with Miss Mills, leaving town whenever she headed this way.”

Remembrances and appreciations are pouring in for Nadine Gordimer, whose books help expose the effects of South Africa’s Apartheid policies and won her a Nobel Prize for literature in 1991. She died on Sunday at 90.

Below is a selection:

NPR — Writer Nadine Gordimer Captured Apartheid’s Contradictions

New York Times — Nadine Gordimer, Novelist Who Took On Apartheid, Is Dead

The Guardian — Nadine Gordimer: five must-read books — American editions listed below:

The Conservationist, Penguin Books

Burger’s Daughter, Penguin Books

July’s People, Penguin Books

Life Times: Stories, Penguin Books

No Time Like the Present, Macmillan/Picador

Today’s release of the LibraryReads list of the ten books librarians love the most for the month of August, is a reminder to get your nominations in for the upcoming months (you can nominate titles to be published from September on. Nominations close on the first of each month for titles published in that month —more how-to specifics here).

The new list offers many titles that provide an answer to the eternal question, “What’s coming out that’s good?” Many of these titles will be available as eGalleys on Edelweiss and/or NetGalley until their pub dates, so grab them now.

The number one pick is Chelsea Cain’s thriller, One Kick (S&S;
S&S Audio; Wheeler Large Print; eGalley available), the beginning of a new series for Cain (she still plans to continue the popular and scary Gretchen Lowell series, alternating between the two). NBC announced in October that it is developing a series based on the new titles about a woman who, having been abducted herself as a child, works to rescue other kidnapped kids.

Most of the titles come from well-known names, but this list also includes a debut, the historical novel The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton (HarperCollins/Ecco; HarperLuxe; eGalley available) which was featured at the BEA Editor’s buzz Panel. Set in 17th C Amsterdam, it is compared to the best of Sarah Waters and Emma Donoghue.

Also resonating from BEA, Lucky Us by Amy Bloom (Random House; RH Audio, eGalley available on request), who won over the crowd at the  Random House Librarians Breakfast with her tales of growing up in a library (with a very understanding librarian) and her description of the sources for the female friendship at the center of her new book.

The full list offers suggestions for a wide range of tastes, from historical to romance, science fiction, and literary titles.

Also, check our compilation of all the lists since LibraryReads began last September, LibraryReads-All-Lists-Through-Aug-2014, Sort it by category and you’ll have an instant list to use when you’re stuck trying to recommend a recent book in a particular category, or for creating displays.