Two heavily promoted titles debut on the USA Today best seller list. Night Film, by Marisha Pessl, (Random House; RH Audio) arrives at #13, with Samantha Shannon’s  The Bone Season, (Macmillan/Bloomsbury), the first title in the reinvented Today Show Book Club, close behind at #18.

Filming began in Shreveport, Louisiana, this week for the adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s second novel, Dark Places (RH/Crown). Photos of Charlize Theron on set were published in the U.K.’s Mail Online. Theron plays the lead role, Libby Day, a character that, says the publication, “shares a chilling similarity [with] her own childhood,” since both witnessed the murders of family members when they were children.

Christina Hendricks recently joined the cast and will play a stripper [UPDATE: Hendricks has been given a larger role, as the murdered mother of the main character, played by Charlize Theron]. The film is currently scheduled for release on Sept. 1 of next year.

Work is also beginning on Gillian Flynn’s more famous third novel, Gone Girl (RH/Crown). Rumors that sites are being scouted in the southeast Missouri town of Cape Girardeau created local excitement this week. David Fincher directs the movie which stars Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike.

The second trailer for the new adaptation of Stephen King’s classic horror story, Carrie, debuted online this week. Directed by Kimberly Peirce, it stars Chloë Grace Moretz in the title role and Julianne Moore as her fanatically religious mother. The movie arrives in theaters on Oct. 18.

Brian De Palma directed the original adaptation in 1976, with Sissy Spacek as Carrie and Piper Laurie as her mother.

Tie-ins to Carrie from RH/Vintage will be released on Sept. 24 in mass market, audio (Sissy Spacek narrates) and Spanish-language editions.

Director Kimberley Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) has said on her Facebook page that her Carrie will not be a remake of De Palma’s version:

… I have gone back to the wonderful STEPHEN KING Book CARRIE; I am also modernizing the story as one has to in order to bring any great piece of work written in one era into the next and especially given how very relevant this material is right now.

That explains the presence of cell phones in the trailer (for more insight on Peirce’s approach to the novel, see MovieWeb‘s on-set interview with the director).

Official Movie Site: Carrie-Movie.com

Below is the trailer:

Neil Gaiman’s next book Fortunately, the Milk, (HarperCollins) is written for middle-grade kids and is scheduled for publication on Sept. 17 (shipping today). It is about the many obstacles a father encounters while trying to buy milk for his childrens’ cereal (which, fortunately, he finally manages to bring home).

Videos of Gaiman introducing the book have already appeared. The official book trailer has just been released and it’s being featured in several publications, including USA Today and The Hollywood Reporter.

The U.S. edition (above, left) is illustrated by Marvel comics’ Scottie Young (the UK edition is by Chris Riddell, who illustrated The Graveyard Book).

View the official trailer here.

The first trailer for the film adaptation of Veronica Roth’s YA novel Divergent debuted at MYV’s Video Music Awards last night.

Unfortunately, it arrives just as another YA adaptation is being called a flop. City of Bones, which opened this weekend, was called a “disappointment” by  many sources, including the Wall Street Journal. Nevertheless, filmmakers say a sequel is still in the works.

This is viewed as a trend, since the adaptation of Beautiful Creatues, released in the spring, was also considered a box office failure.

Bloomberg Business Week quotes YA marketing consultant MaryLeigh Bliss of YPulse, who says that these movies didn’t connect because they are based on books that don’t have “an organized and impassioned fandom that could match something like Harry Potter or Twilight” or a large crossover audience. She expects the second Hunger Games film, opening in November, to do well, but doesn’t hold out much hope for Divergent, coming in March, or The Maze Runner which arrives in February.

The trailer is below:

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As the summer draws to a close, the consumer fall book previews begin to arrive. The first two are New York magazine’s  Fall Books Preview and Entertainment Weekly’s 14 Hot Books For Fall; we will post the links to all of them as they arrive, on the right, under “Season Previews.”

Also check our new “Editor’s Spotlight” feature, from Penguin.

Two titles on these lists, and likely to be featured on all upcoming lists, are Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, (Hachette/Little, Brown) and Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep,(S&S/Scribner).

Many shows have already covered Mark Leibovich’s take-down of politics in D.C. in This Town, (Penguin/Blue Rider). Bill Moyers gave it powerful new attention this weekend, introducing his interview with the author by saying, “Whatever you’re doing these last days of summer. Stop. Take some time, and read this book. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and by the last page I think you’ll be ready for the revolution.”

The book, which had been sliding down Amazon’s sales rankings from a high of #3 in late July, rose to #15.

Below is the video of the interview.

Several news sources, including today’s New York Times, reveal that an embargoed biography of J.D. Salinger claims there are at least five more books in the author’s vault, and that Salinger left instructions to begin publishing them in 2015.

The assertions are in the 720-page Salinger by David Shields and Shane Salerno (S&S; S&S Audio), which is being published on Sept. 3. A related documentary, also titled Salinger, directed by Salerno, will be released a few days later and will be featured in January on American Masters on PBS.

Speaking for the estate, the author’s son refused to comment for the story.

As a result of the coverage, the book rose on Amazon ales rankings to #156, from #2,614.

Below is the trailer for the documentary, More details on the book are in a story in The Guardian.

Holds are  outpacing the number of copies in libraries for Amanda Ripley’s critique of American education, The Smartest Kids in the World (S&S), but that’s not saying much, since library ordering was minimal. Holds may rise now that it is featured on the cover of this week’s NYT Book Review, and is called a “masterly book [that] can also generate the will to make changes.”

This issue also features a “Back to School Children’s Books” section.

The trailer for the movie based on Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, (RH/Knopf) starring Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson and Sophie Nélisse in the lead, arrived online yesterday and already the book is rising on Amazon.

For those who are concerned that the novel’s narrator, Death, is missing from the trailer, the author himself assures readers on his blog that Death will be featured in the movie.

The movie debuts on Nov. 15.

Official Movie Site: TheBookThief.com

Standing in the library that served as a “safe haven” to her and her four siblings (Middle Country Public Library on Long Island, NY) when they were the homeless children of a mentally ill and abusive mother, Regina Calcaterra talks to Inside Edition (video here) about her memoir of that time, Etched in Sand (HarperCollins/Morrow original trade pbk).

Amazingly, Calcaterra managed to not only survive, but to also put herself through law school and help her siblings who are now all doing well. She says she is very moved by “just the thought that my book may be in this library where I came as a kid who was impoverished and that one day one of these kids are going to be reading it too and figuring out how … they are going to be able to pull themselves up out and out.”

In the new issue of People magazine reviewer Caroline Leavitt writes, “Her book reminds us that it’s possible to suffer the unimaginable and still grow up to make a difference.”

Arriving next week are new titles by several favorite mystery authors, led by Louise Penny, whose previous Inspector Gamache title, The Beautiful Mystery, hit new highs for her on best seller lists, debuting at #2 on the NYT  list. The new novel, How the Light Gets In receives 4 of 4 stars in the new issue of People, saying. “Penny delivers a masterful, nuanced suspense novel in which tone and setting are just as riveting as the murder’s who and why.” It is featured on the inaugural LibraryReads list. Also arriving are new titles by Diane Mott Davidson, Kathy Reichs, and the mother/son writing team of Charles Todd.

Below are several titles to keep your eye on; all the titles highlighted here and more coming next week are listed on our downloadable spreadsheet, with ordering information and alternate formats, New Title Radar, Week of 8/26/13.

Watch List

The Returned, Jason Mott, (Harlequin/MIRA; Brilliance; Thorndike)

Book trailers are so yesterday. This debut has one, but it also arrives with a trailer for an ABC series based on it. Inexplicably renamed Resurrection, it begins in March.

This debut engendered  big buzz at BEA this year and was a favorite among librarians on the Shout ‘n’ Share panel. It’s on the inaugural LibraryReads list, with this compelling annotation:

Around the world, people are coming back from the dead and trying to reunite with their loved ones. In a tiny Southern town, Harold and Lucille Hargrave are astonished to have their son Jacob come back to them fifty years after he died. A global government agency at first works to reunite “The Returned” with their families, then later confines them as more and more people come back from the dead. A beautifully written exploration of love and family, community and responsibility, and a perfect book group selection. – Vicki Nesting, St. Charles Parish Library, Destrehan, LA

It’s received 4 starred reviews from the pre-pub sources and Entertainment Weekly gives it a B+.

ABC series trailer:

The Affairs of Others, Amy Grace Loyd, (Picador)

This debut gets an A- from Entertainment Weekly, which calls it mesmerizing. It is also an IndieNext pick for September;

“With elements of both Alfred Hitchcock and Ian McEwan, this gorgeously written novel seduces the reader into a fascinating world with its own vortex. Celia, the young widow who keeps careful tabs on her Brooklyn apartment building, is drawn deeply into her tenants’ lives after the sensuous Hope takes a sublet. Peopled with intriguing characters — the elderly ferry boat captain who doesn’t mind climbing four flights to his room with a water view, the disappearing cleaning woman — and infused with the sights and sounds of the perpetually mysterious New York City, this book unfolds with stunning momentum and reverberates long after the reader has turned the final page.” —Jaime Clarke, Newtonville Books, Newton Centre, MA

Early Decision, Lacy Crawford, (HarperCollins/Morrow)

Entertainment Weekly gives this a B+, but it may rate an A+ among certain audiences, based on the following; “Overbearing moms and dads scheming to secure their kid a place at Harvard will find this novel more helpful than any nonfiction book on the market. But everyone else can enjoy Early Decision for what it is: a sweetly sharp modern-day comedy of manners about the brutally competitive college-admissions ordeal.”

Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, Sarah Weinman, (Penguin Books)

As the NYT noted last week, “readers looking for ‘the next Gillian Flynn’ would be smart to consider her predecessors,“ featured in this anthology by the most insightful writer on mysteries today, Sarah Weinmen. The intro alone should be required reading for all reader’s advisors (and Penguin is offering a chance to win a copy).

Nonfiction

War Dogs, Rebecca Frankel, (S&S/Atria)

Rebecca Frankel is the “Chief Canine Correspondent” for “Best Defense,” on Foreign Policy‘s web site. Her column, “War Dog of the Week” gets millions of hits (unsurprisingly, it’s the most popular section of Foreign Policy‘s site). Other books on dogs at war, such as Maria Goodavage’s Soldier Dogs (Penguin/Dutton; 2012) and Trident K9 Warriors (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; April, 2013) have hit best seller lists. You don’t need to know all that to bet this will be popular; just look at that cover.

In The Rolling Stone Daniel Schechter describes the lengths he went to in his effort to get the rights to Elmore Leonard’s book, The Switch (HarperCollins/Morrow, part of a series of recent rereleases in trade paperback of Leonard’s classic backlist) and how hopeful he was that the author would like the resulting movie, titled Life of Crime.

He had reason to be nervous. With the exceptions of Jackie Brown, Get Shorty, and the FX series, Justified, Leonard wasn’t a fan of the majority of the many adaptations of his work. With the author’s death on Tuesday, first-time director Schecter will never know which category his film would have fallen into.

Starring Jennifer Aniston, the movie was renamed Life of Crime, presumably to separate it from a very different movie Aniston starred in earlier, The Switch, based on a Jeffrey Eugenides’ short story The Baster.

Life of Crime, which also stars John Hawkes, Isla Fisher and Tim Robbins, will premiere next month at the Toronto International Film Festival’s closing gala, which, notes The Rolling Stone is “an unprecedented honor for a relatively new filmmaker” and will be dedicated to Leonard’s memory.

On Inside Edition, Jane Velez-Mitchell discusses her book, Exposed: The Secret Life Of Jodi Arias (Harrper/Morrow; download the EXPOSED_PRESS release with more information on the book here). The book was embargoed, so there were no prepub reviews.

It was also excerpted in the New York Post over the weekend.

Many more appearances are in the works on CNN (the author has a nightly show on CNN/HLN).

Today marks the arrival of two major launches. In addition to Night Film (see previous post), Samantha Shannon’s  The Bone Season, (Macmillan/Bloomsbury) also arrives. The first title in the Today Show’s  reincarnated Book Club,  announced today, is this debut by a  21-year-old novelist, the first in a planned seven-part series (yes there is talk of a movie).

The launch of the Club received a remarkable amount of press, including a feature in  the New York Times, “Today Is Starting Oprah-like Book Club.” The author was also profiled in today’s USA Today, and, over the weekend, NPR asked an often-repeated question, “Could This Be The Next Harry Pottter?”

Libraries report that demand is rising.

The Today Show announcement is below:

The official book trailer: