The September LibraryReads pick, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, by Sheri Fink, (RH/Crown; RH Audio/BOT; excerpts of both the book and the audio are on the NPR Web site), releasing tomorrow, is building holds in libraries.

It was reviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered yesterday (listen here), in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, and gets a solid A from Entertainmend Weekly. The author is scheduled to appear tonight on Comedy Central’s Daily Show and on NPR’s Morning Edition this week.

Below is the LibraryReads annotation:

“Through exhaustive interviews and extensive research, Fink offers a spellbinding account of Hurricane Katrina, a disaster which held the staff, patients and families of a New Orleans hospital captive and left thousands of others marooned by rising flood waters in the heart of city. Filled with unforgettable life and death stories, Fink’s fine work of investigative journalism reads like a novel. The book causes you to rethink your opinions about end of life, do-not-resuscitate orders and medical ethics.” — Marilyn Sieb, L.D. Fargo Public Library, Lake Mills, WI

Asking why, given our country’s history in the Middle East, the president would “…think that initiating yet another war in this protracted enterprise is going to produce a different outcome,” Andrew Bacevich, author of Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country, (Macmillan/Metropolitan Books; released last week), spoke with guest host Phil Donahue on Friday’s Bill Moyers and Company about the U.S. role in Syria.

Bacevich’s book, which is rising on Amazon’s sales rankings, was also featured in Sunday’s NYT Book Review.

Below is the video: 

Actor/comedian Billy Crystal releases his new book, which is part memoir, part comedy, Still Foolin’ ‘Em, (Macmillan/Holt; Macmillan Audio) tomorrow. He and the book have received plenty of pre-pub attention,  featured on yesterday’s CBS Sunday Morning (video not yet posted), on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday (listen here), in the NYT and USA Today. He is scheduled to appear on Comedy Central’s Daily Show on Thursday.

Needless to say, the book is  rising on Amazon’s sales rankings, now at  #32. The audio, recorded by Crystal, is also rising, and is currently at #349 (from #4,577).

Leading the pack in holds next week is Sue Grafton’s 23nd title, W is for Wasted (Penguin/Putnam/Marian Wood; RH/BOT Audio; Thorndike), reminding us that she has only three letters left for this series. It’s always fun to see what dog-related pun Spencer Quinn will come up with for the next in his Chet and Bernie series; the new one is The Sound and the Furry (S&S/Atria). Tom Perrotta uses an attention-getting title for his new collection of short stories, Nine Inches, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Macmillan Audio).

But this week is less about recognizable names than a wide range of intriguing debuts and narrative nonfiction vying for attention; check our downloadable spreadsheet New Title Radar, Week of Sept 9, with notes on why they caught our interest and ordering information. Below are some highlights:

Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Griffin; Listening Library)

This has been THE top favorite on both our adult and YA Galleyhats, so we weren’t surprised when it was chosen as the #1 LibraryReads pick for the inaugural, September LibraryReads list. It gets a two-page centerfold ad, highlighting the selection, in the upcoming 9/8 NYT Book Review. Published as a YA title, it was chosen for it’s strong crossover appeal:

“At turns funny, sweet, smart, and sad, Fangirl traces Cath’s journey to independence as she begins college, struggles to have an identity separate from her twin sister, find her voice and passion as a writer and fall in love, maybe, for the first time. As sharp and emotionally resonant as Rowell’s previous novel, Eleanor & Park.” — Stephanie Chase, Seattle Public Library, Seattle, WA

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, Sheri Fink, (RH/Crown; RH Audio/BOT)

About the heart-wrenching decisions that had to be made after Hurricane Katrina devastated Memorial Hospital in New Orleans, this is another LibraryReads pick and is connecting with the media. It’s reviewed in the 9/8 New York Times Book Review, and will be featured next week on Comedy Central’s Daily Show as well as NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

Cat Sense: How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet, John Bradshaw, (Basic Books)

The author of the best-selling Dog Sense now turns to the world’s most popular pets. This was already featured yesterday on NPR’s Fresh Air.

USA Today‘s Bob Minzesheimer reports on booksellers’ picks for the fall, based on the opinions of three of them — Amazon’s Sara Nelson, Barnes & Noble’s Patricia Bostelman and, representing the indies, Matt Norcross of the charming McLean & Eakin bookstore in Petoskey, Mich. (someday, Bob, we hope you’ll check in with a librarian or two).

Leading up to the major gift-giving holidays, the fall is filled with household names, so the selections won’t be surprising to anyone who follows the book business. Included are Doctor Sleep, (S&S/Scribner; Sept. 24), Stephen King’s long-awaited sequel to The Shining, Jumpa Lahiri’s Lowland, (RH/Knopf; Sept. 24), and Ann Patchett’s This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, (Harper; Oct. 16).

Indie bookseller Norcross picks a slightly lesser known title, Jennifer Dubois’ Cartwheel, (Random House, Sept. 24), a novel that echoes the true crime story of Amanda Knox, but set in Buenos Aires. He says it “will keep you guessing as well as up past your bedtime” (available as digital ARC from Edelweiss and NetGalley). It is also on PW‘s Top Ten Literary Novels of the Fall and is a Millions Most Anticipated pick.  Dubois’ debut, last year’s A Partial History of Lost Causes, was a PEN/Hemingway award finalist.

The so-called “sleeper” picks have also been heralded elsewhere. Hannah Kent’s debut novel, Burial Rites (Little, Brown, Sept. 10), is both a LibraryReads and Indie Next pick (where it is #1) and Help for the Haunted (Morrow, Sept. 17), was a hit at BEA and is on the LibraryReads list.

Also featured in the USA Today section are interviews with three of the seasons “coolest” authors, (curiously, none of them are among the booksellers’ choices)  — Tom Perrotta, for his story collection, Nine Inches, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s, Sept. 10), Veronica Roth for the final book in her YA trilogy, Allegiant, (HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen), and Billy Crystal, for the actor/comedian’s memoir, Still Foolin’ ‘Em, (Macmillan/Holt).

And, finally, the section includes a look at the “Season’s 30 Coolest Books.”

For all the Fall book picks to date, see our links at the right, under “Season Previews.”

Oh, to be in the U.K., where people seem to care about book awards. There, they actually bet on the longlist for the Booker Prize and the recent Hugo Awards caused The Guardian to assert that, “there are few things as entertaining as the ruck that follows the announcement of literary awards, and the Hugos … are no exception.”

The winner for best novel was John Scalzi for Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas (Macmillan/Tor; Brilliance Audio), described as a “sort of a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead for the SF crowd” because it “deconstructs the Star Trek mythos with a nudge-nudge-wink-wink” by focusing on “the ubiquitous disposable crewmen from USS Enterprise on the TV show, usually the first to die on any given mission.”

The controversy appears to be whether the Hugos should be give any credence, since, unlike the Clarkes or the Kitschies, they are voted on by the public (or, at least, those who attend the annual WorldCon); the Guardian thinks there should be room for populism.

Costco’s book buyer, Pennie Clark Ianniciello’s monthly “Buyers Pick” often brings new attention to titles rereleased in trade paperback, such as The Art Forger, The Orchardist and Beautiful Ruins, resulting in each book rising or making its debut on best seller lists.

This month, she changes things up by picking a trade paperback original, released over a year ago, Outside the Lines by Amy Hatvany, (S&S/Washington Sq. Press; Feb, 2012), Ianniciello writes that Hatvany “pulls readers in to the family situations she creates.” This, her fourth novel, is about a daughter who tries to reconnect with  her mentally ill father who has disappeared. In the accompanying interview, Harvany says the idea originated in a dream, in which she found her late father’s “emaciated body unter a tarp on Seattle’s Aliki Beach.”

Libraries that own the book are showing holds on modest orders.

Hatvany’s fourth novel, Heart Like Mine came out  came out last March and Safe with Me arrives next March.

The first image has just been released for the big screen adaptation of Suite Francaise, (RH/Knopf), which has finished filming in France and Belgium. Irène Némirovsky’s book, on which it is based, became a surprise hit when it was published in 2004, more than 60 years after the author’s death in Auschwitz.

The photo shows Michelle Williams as Lucile, from the second novella in the book Dolce. While her husband is in a WWII German prisoner of war camp, she is living with her mother-in-law in rural France. Behind her is Matthias Schoenaerts as the German officer who occupies their house.

The Weinstein Co. bought the U.S. distribution rights in April. It is expected to be released next year, but no specific date has been annnounced.

Directed by Saul Dibb, the film also stars Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Riley and Ruth Wilson.

The debut word-of-mouth best seller, The Light Between Oceans, by M.L. Stedman (S&S/Scribner; Thorndike), first spotted by librarians at last year’s BEA Shout ‘n’ Share panel, went on to become a best seller in hardcover and continue in trade paperback, at #14 after 21 weeks and is a reading group staple.

DreamWorks acquired the film rights and has just named Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines) as the director according to Deadline.

The book trailer outlines the story:

The 2010 surprise best seller, Room by Irish/Canadian author Emma Donoghue (Hachette/Little,Brown), is being adapted as a film, with the book’s author writing the script and Lenny Abrahamson directing, reports Deadline.

The novel features a story that has become familiar from news stories; a woman is kidnapped and forced to live in a small shed. In this case, the woman has a son who she tries to protect from the truth. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and was featured on the majority of the best books lists for that year.

The movie Philomena, based on The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, by UK journalist Martin Sixsmith (Macmillan U.K., 2009), received such great buzz at the Venice Film festival that the Weinstein Co., which has U.S. distribution rights, quickly  set a limited release date of this Christmas, qualifying it and star Judi Dench for Oscar nominations, followed by a wider release in January.

The book recounts Sixsmith’s efforts to help a woman find the son she had  been forced to give up for adoption fifty years earlier. The movie, directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen), stars Dench as the mother, Philomena Lee and Steve Coogan as Sixsmith. 

The book will be published here in September as a trade paperback tie-in, titled Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search  (Penguin), with a foreword by Dench. UPDATE: both the movie release and the pub date for the tie-in has been moved to 11/27/13.

The first trailer has just been released for season 4 of Downton Abbey, which begins in the U.K. on Sept, 22. American audiences will have to wait until Jan. 5, when the series returns to PBS for an eight-week run. Shirley MacLaine and Maggie Smith will be back to trade barbs, but Siobhan Finneran, who played the conniving lady’s maid O’Brien, is not returning. Among the new faces are Paul Giamatti, who will appear in the season finale as Lady Cora’s playboy American brother and the show’s first black character, jazz singer Jack Ross, played by Gary Carr.

For those who can’t wait, the official season 4 tie-in book, Behind the Scenes at Downton Abbey (Macmillan/St. Martin’s) will be published here at the end of October and promises to be “full of images from the new season.”

Also arriving at the end of October is Lady Catherine, the Earl, and the Real Downton Abbey (RH/Broadway) by the current resident of Highclere Castle, where Downton is set, Countess Fiona Carnarvon. It follows the author’s best selling book about the Castle’s earlier resident, Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey (RH/Broadway; Tantor Media).

Below is the trailer:

Author E.L, James announced via Twitter yesterday, the names of the stars for the adaptation of her book, Fifty Shades of Grey.

Dakota Johnson comes from an acting family. She is the daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, and granddaughter of Tippi Hedren. She starred as Kate in the TV comedy series Ben and Kate (more about her in USA Today‘s story, “Who Is Dakota Johnson?“). British actor Hunnam stars in the FX series Sons of Anarchy.and in Guillermo Del Toro’s  Pacific Rim (more about him in USA Today’s companion story “Who Is Charlie Hunnam?“)

The film is being directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, considered a surprising choice since she has directed only one other feature film (Forbes points out it’s really only surprising because she is female; male directors with light resumes are often handed big-ticket projects).

The movie is currently scheduled for release on Aug. 1, 2014.

The leader in library holds for books arriving next week is Lee Child’s Never Go Back, (RH/Delacorte; RH Audio; RH Large Print). It seems readers were able to overcome the shock of Tom Cruise starring in Jack Reacher, the movie based on One Shot (there may actually be a sequel. Although the movie didn’t do well here, it was a success internationally). Child is scheduled to appear on MSNBC ‘s Morning Joe on publication day.

Dystopian trilogies aren’t just for YA authors; Margaret Atwood finishes hers with MaddAddam, (RH/Doubleday/Nan A. Talese; RH Audio; RH Large Print). The Wall Street Journal‘s “Speakeasy” blog has been running a serialization of it all week.

Titles highlighted here, plus several more arriving next week, are on our downloadable spreadsheet, with ordering information and alternate formats, New Title Radar, Week of 9/2/13.

Watch List

Alex, Pierre Lemaitre, trans. by Frank Wynne, (Quercus/MacLehose Press)

Quercus, founded in the U.K. in 2004, has grown into one of the largest independent publishers there, helped in no small part by its acquisition of the English-language rights to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (published here by RH/Knopf). Just launching in the U.S., this is their lead title, a translation of a French best selling crime novel, acquired by Christopher MacLehose, who also acquired Larsson’s books. It’s no  surprise, then, that librarians on GalleyChat saw similarities to Larsson’s twists and turns, with one calling the book “crazy creepy; you don’t know what is REALLY happening until the very end.” Another loaned her ARC to her adult son who “immediately wanted to read something else by the author.” No worries; this is the first in the Commandant Camille Verhoeven Trilogy.

It’s also an IndieNext pick for September:  “A beautiful woman is kidnapped after leaving a Paris shop and is brutally beaten and suspended from the ceiling in a wooden crate in an abandoned warehouse by a man who tells her he wants to watch her die. Police Commander Camille Verhoeven is assigned to the case after eyewitnesses report the abduction. Verhoeven is a detective whose tragic past has crippled him, but he is able to use his extraordinary investigative abilities to understand the victim. Alex is chilling and frequently horrifying as the plot twists catch the reader by surprise at every turn.” —Fran Keilty, The Hickory Stick Bookshop, Washington Depot, CT

Margot, Jillian Cantor, (Penguin/Riverhead trade pbk original)

Librarian interest in this LibraryReads pick, a debut published as a trade paperback original, began building at BEA when Angela Carstensen, SLJ‘s “Adult Books 4 Teens” columnist presented it during the librarian’s Shout ‘n’ Share panel, saying it’s the imagined “story of Anne Frank’s sister who survived the war and moved to Philadelphia. It is 1959, Margot is working as a law secretary, and no one knows she survived the camps. The writing is very readable, and Margot’s situation sympathetic.” That was followed by enthusiasm on GalleyChat, and its selection as one of ten on the LibraryReads inaugural list:

“Can you hide from your past and change who you are? If you try, what do you risk losing? This delicately written novel proposes an alternate fate for Anne Frank’s sister: Margot Frank survives the war, moves to Philadelphia, finds work as a law secretary and assumes the identity ‘Margie Franklin.’ But when the movie version of The Diary of a Young Girl is released and the law firm takes on the case of a Holocaust survivor, Margot’s past and Margie’s carefully constructed present collide. This great book will appeal to reading groups and fans of alternative history, what-if novels and character-centered fiction.” — Janet Lockhart, Wake County Public Libraries, Raleigh, NC

Cain’s Blood,(S&S/Touchstone; Brilliance Audio) and Project Cain (S&S Books for Young Readers), both by Geoffrey Girard

This dystopian story about a deranged geneticist who creates multiple clones of real-life serial killers (Jeffrey Dahmer and others) comes in two versions — the adult thriller and a YA companion, told from the perspective of one of the teenage clones. Booklist gave it a strong assessment; “This must be the highest-concept, most movie-ready idea of the year …  an updated The Boys from Brazil that ably mixes nature-versus-nature dilemmas with horrifying scenes of slasherdom.” On that latter note, Kirkus warns, “With a majority of the horrific acts depicted in gory detail, including thrill murder, rape, torture, necrophilia, etc., committed by and upon teens and young children, this book isn’t for every horror fan.” Reviews of  Project Cain are pretty damning. Says Kirkus, it “pales in comparison to the similarly themed novels of Dan Wells and Barry Lyga. Stick with Wells and Lyga; this muddle is just plain insulting.”

Media Magnet 

Salinger, by David Shields, Shane Salerno, (S&S)

Media coverage for this look at the world’s most reclusive author began this week and will continue next week with appearances on PBS’s Charlie Rose show, Comedy Central’s Colbert Report and NPR’s Weekend Edition. A documentary will also appear in theaters (to be aired on PBS in January). Entertainment Weekly gives the book a B- and a lower grade to the movie, a middling C, saying, “Like the book, it suffers from its creators’ obsessive zeal. Only here, you can’t page ahead to the next chapter. ”

Movie Tie-in

12 Years a Slave, Solomon Northup. (Penguin Books; Tantor Audio)

The movie based on this 1853 memoir has been widely picked as a major Oscar contender.

Official Movie Site: 12YearsASlave.com

See trailer below:
 

Featured on the cover of the upcoming NYT Magazine is an excerpt from A House in the Sky, (S&S/Scribner; S&S Audio), Amanda Lindhout’s memoir of being kidnapped at gunpoint and spending 460 days in captivity in Somalia.

To be  published on Sept. 10., it is one of the ten titles on the Sept. LibraryReads list, with this recommendation:

“Absolutely gripping, harrowing and unforgettable! This well-written memoir is a true testament to the strength of one woman’s spirit and her will to survive in unimaginable circumstances. The family issues that led Amanda Lindhout from her home in Canada to a life of world travel and a career in journalism are as richly detailed and compelling as the brutal account of her fifteen month-long captivity by Somali Islamist rebels in 2008. She tells her story with such vulnerability and honesty that it is a privilege to read it.” — Mary Coe, Fairfield Woods Branch Library, Fairfield, CT

More coverage is coming; the author will be featured on NBC’s Dateline, the Today Show and The Nightly News with Brian Williams on Friday, Sept 6. The following week, she will be on CNN”s Anderson 360 and MSNBC’s Morning Joe.