Following the teaser trailer for Catching Fire that was released in April, a new trailer debuted  at Comic-Con on Saturday. Reports MTV News, “While the first trailer for Catching Fire focused on Katniss’ pre-Games press tour, the new one introduces much more of the civil unrest rising throughout Panem after Katniss’ inspirational subversion of the Hunger Games rules.” Entertainment Weekly comments, the new trailer “offered up first looks at the Arena (Katniss dives right in!), the action (Johanna especially), and the fashion (looks like Cinna stepped up his game).”

The movie arrives Nov. 22

Tie-ins:

Catching Fire: Movie Tie-in Edition: The Second Book of The Hunger Games
Suzanne Collins
Scholastic
On Sale Date: October 8, 2013
9780545603683, 0545603684
Paperback, $12.99
 

Catching Fire: The Official Illustrated Movie Companion
Kate Egan
Scholastic
On Sale Date: November 22, 2013
9780545599337, 0545599334
Paperback, $18.99

Good going, Sarah Vowell. She managed to make the American public fall in love with a debut novel, written entirely in rhyming couplets (you gotta love a writer who rhymes “bourgeois” with “Christian Lacroix“), during her appearance on Comedy Central’s Daily Show Thursday night. As an indicator of how well she did, the book is now at #9 on Amazon sales rankings and rising and holds are mounting quickly in libraries. The book was also reviewed the NPR book site last week.

Vowell was on the show to promote her friend, David Rakoff’s novel, Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish, (RH/Doubleday; RH Audio), which was published last week. The author died of cancer last year, just weeks after completing the book.

Libraries are showing 10:1 holds ratios on light ordering.

Below is the first part of the interview — part 2 is on the site.

Among the new titles in series arriving next week, is the next in Philippa Gregory’s Cousins War series, The White Princess, (S&S/Touchstone; S&S Audio; Thorndike) which was moved from its original pub. date to arrive closer to the start of the BBC/STARZ White Queen series, based on the first four books, debuting on Aug. 10.

The twentieth Dave Robicheaux novel, Light of the World by James Lee Burke (S&S; S&S Audio; Thorndike) also arrives, but despite the number of books in the series, it seems they  just keep improving. It’s starred by Booklist and  Kirkus adds, “Pruning away the florid subplots that often clutter his heaven-storming blood baths, Burke produces his most sharply focused, and perhaps his most harrowing, study of human evil, refracted through the conventions of the crime novel.”

David Rosenfelt rleases the eleventh in his Andy Carpenter series, Unleashed (Macmillan/Minotaur; Thorndike) as well as a second title, a memoir, about moving from California to Maine with his large crew of rescued golden retrievers, Dogtripping: 25 Rescues, 11 Volunteers, and 3 RVs on Our Canine Cross-Country Adventure, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Thorndike ).

The titles highlighted here, and more coming next week, are listed on our downloadable spreadsheet, New Title Radar, Week of 7/22

Watch List

Shot All to Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid, and the Wild West’s Greatest Escape, Mark Lee Gardner, (HaperCollins/Morrow)

Cuyahoga PL’s Wendy Bartlett promoted this bio, which is also an IndieNext pck for August, on the local NPR station. Below is her annotation:

“If you or your customers are History Channel buffs, this one’s for you! Mark Lee Gardner, who is frequently featured on the History Channel’s shows about Western history, has written a terrific page turner about the James’ gang’s last raid. For years, loyal friends and neighbors the James gang provided them with alibis and Gardner explains why. When the gang headed north to Minnesota, they got a very different reception in a bank robbery that went very wrong. The book is the perfect summer read–relatively short,and totally entertaining. Fans of true crime and historical fiction of this period might also like this very readable account of one of the most recognizable names in the history of the Wild West.”

The Secrets of Lost Cats: One Woman, Twenty Posters, and a New Understanding of Love, Dr. Nancy Davidson, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s)

Who hasn’t wondered about the stories behind lost cat posters? Therapist Davidson decided to do more than wonder  and came up with the 20 true stories that are the core of this book. Says PW, “each of the brief glimpses into cat owners’ lives proves captivating.”

And Sons, David Gilbert, (Random House)
Considered a candidate for “the literary novel of the summer” by  Entertainment Weekly’s “Shelf Life” blog. which also ran  an “exclusive … star-studded trailer” fot this novel about a reclusive writer named A.N. Dyer, this title comes from RH’s tony new Hogarth imprint.  Proving its literary bona fides, a full review is scheduled to run in the New Yorker by the formidable critic James Wood. The author was also profiled in USA Today this week and is scheduled to appear on NPR’s Fresh Air next week.

A Dangerous Fiction: A Mystery, Barbara Rogan, (Penguin/Viking)

This thriller set in the NYC publishing world  offers insidery bits for book fans and gets high praise from Booklist, “Boasting an exciting pace, well-constructed scenes, and inside information about the publishing world, this engaging mystery will attract readers of P. D. James’ similar Original Sin (1995).”

The Panopticon, Jenni Fagan, (RH/Hogarth)

Also from RH’s Hogarth line (see And Sons, above) this debut gets the full treatment from the NYT; it is featured as the cover of this Sunday’s NYT Book Review. and got a mostly positive review in the daily NYT by Michiko Kakutani. The author is also scheduled for an appearance on NPR’s All Things Considered

Media Magnet

Shirley Jones: A Memoir, Shirley Jones and Wendy Leigh, (S&S/Gallery Books; Tantor Audio)

Before she became the mother of The Partridge Family, Shirley Jones had a fairly full  life, starring in Oklahoma!, Carousel, The Music Man, and winning an Oscar for  Elmer Gantry. The publisher promises that her memoir will reveal all — the infidelities, the costar crushes, the sexual experimentation” — but there are no prepub reviews, so we will have to wait to see how forthcoming she actually is. Publicity is lined up; People magazine, the moning shows, Katie Couric, FOX and Friends, and more.

The cover story of the upcoming NYT Magazine, published online last night, already has 100 comments and is one of the most e-mailed articles from the site.

A Life-or-Death Situation is about Margaret Pabst Battin, professor of Medical Ethics at the University of Utah’s School of Medicine, who has written many books about the ethics of dying, including Ending Life: Ethics and the Way We Die, (OUP, 2005), Ethical Issues in Suicide (1982; currently O.P.) and The Least Worst Death: Essays in Bioethics on the End of Life. (OUP, 1994).

These issues are now practical as well as philosophical for Battin. When her husband broke his neck in a bicycling accident, he survived because of the very interventions his living will stated he did not want. Now he is paraplegic and the two struggle with the question of when his life is no longer worth the pain.

Many libraries own Battin’s books.

A new trailer for Catching Fire will debut at Comic-Con this weekend. Another teen dystopian adaptation, Divergent, will also be featured, with many of the stars, as well as the book’s author Veronica Roth, on had to talk with fans, setting off a round of publicity for the movie that doesn’t open until March.

USA Today has the best headline, “On set of Divergent, Kate Winslet is pregnant and mean” (she is actually pregnant but only plays mean as the intimidating Jeanine Matthews).

Shailene Woodley, who plays the lead, Tris, is also featured in the current issue of Interview magazine (the big news? She is topless for the photo shoot).

MTV is promoting their live-stream coverage of the Comic-Con event with a video of their visit to the Divergent set.

Summit Entertainment clearly expects this to be a success; they have signed up a screenwriter for the sequel,

DivergentOfficial.com

Facebook/DivergentSeries

The movie based on Cheryl Strayed’s best selling memoir and Oprah 2.0 pick, Wild (RH/Knopf) took a step closer to reality yesterday when it was announced that Fox Searchlight had acquired distribution rights. Reese Witherspoon will produce and star. Nick Hornby wrote the screenplay.

Witherspoon, who has had good luck with book adaptations (Election, Water for Elephants), has several others in the works, including Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (Random House). Witherspoon is producing and Ben Affleck was recently cast to star. Most sources say she is not planning to co-star.

She may join the all-star cast for Inherent Vice, based on the Thomas Pynchon detective novel (Penguin Press, 2009), with Joaquin Phoenix, Sean Penn, Owen Wilson, Jena Malone, Benicio Del Toro, and Martin Short and is set to star in the adaptation of Three Little Words, based on Ashley Rhodes-Courter’s YA memoir (S&S/Atheneum) about growing up in the foster care system.

Also, prior to its publication last month, she optioned the rights to J. Courtney Sullivan’s The Engagements, (RH/Knopf) .

The movies based on Dan Brown’s series featuring symbolist Robert Langdon do not follow the sequence of the books. The first to be filmed was The Da Vinci Code (RH/Doubleday, 2003), based on the second in the series. The second movie was based on the first book, Angels & Demons (2000). Skipping ahead to the fourth in the series,  the release date for the adaptations of  Inferno (2013), starring Tom Hanks and directed by Ron Howard, was just announced  for Dec. 18, 2015, according to Deadline.

A film of the third book in the series, The Lost Symbol (2009) is now officially in limbo.

The movie based on the 1853 memoir by Solomon Northup, a free black man who was sold into slavery, winning his freedom 12 years later, was recently moved from a Dec. release date to Oct 18 (regarded as a more advantageous time for attracting Oscar attention).

The trailer was released late yesterday:

Official Movie Site: 12YearsASlave.com

Tie-in:
Twelve Years a Slave: (Movie Tie-In), Solomon Northup
Penguin
On Sale Date: September 4, 2013
9780143125419, 0143125419
Trade paperback $16.00 US / $17.00 Can.

– See more at: http://www.earlyword.com/#sthash.thmcet9A.dpuf

EarlyWord Kids Correspondent, Lisa Von Drasek, writes in response to the news of the death last week of children’s book author Barbara Robinson:

Barbara Robinson died. Here’s the thing — if I share what she meant to me, its definitely too much information. But if I don’t then how will you know so… here it goes. We were the Herdmans (featured in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, HarperCollins, 1972 and other titles). The kids who were running wild, the kids who were not “maybe going to get in trouble,” we were trouble. So when I say to another children’s book person, we were the Herdmans, I don’t have to get into the “we were raised by wolves” thing. They get it and I don’t have to say another word. Barbara Robinson did that for me. Thank you just doesn’t say enough but thank you.

The story was covered by several sources, including School Library Journal and The New York Times.

A biopic about Nelson Mandela, based on his 1994  memoir, Long Walk to Freedom
will debut in an Oscar-qualifying limited release in the U.S. on November 29.

The first UK teaser trailer is below (it lists UK release date of January).

Idris Elba plays Mandela and Naomie Harris his former wife, Winnie.

Tie-ins:

Long Walk to Freedom : The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Hachette/Back Bay
On Sale Date: October 8, 2013
9780316323543, 0316323543
Trade Paperback; $18.00 US / $20.00 Can.
Hachette Audio
$30.00 US / $33.00 Can.

Chronicle is also releasing a book about the film:
Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedo : The Book of the Film
Nelson Mandela, Keith Bernstein
Chronicle Books
On Sale Date: November 26, 2013
9781452128412, 1452128413
Hardback; $35.00 US

The Sunday Times of London revealed this weekend that the true author of the supposed “debut” detective novel by “Robert Galbraith,” The Cuckoo’s Calling is actually J. K Rowling.

The Telegraph followed up by quoting a brave U.K. editor who admitted to rejecting the book, “I thought it was perfectly good – it was certainly well written – but it didn’t stand out. Strange as it might seem, that’s not quite enough. Editors have to fall in love with debuts. It’s very hard to launch new authors and crime is a very crowded market.”

Proving that comment, the Telegraph reports that before the true author’s name was revealed, the book may have sold fewer than 500 copies through British retailers.

Released in the U.S. on April 30 by Hachette’s mystery imprint, Mulholland Books, it received strong reviews from prepub sources; Publishers Weekly said, “In a rare feat, the pseudonymous Galbraith combines a complex and compelling sleuth and an equally well-formed and unlikely assistant with a baffling crime in his stellar debut.”

Holds are now skyrocketing in libraries; one large system now shows 450 holds on 6 copies. Another has already increased their order of 12 copies by 90 more. Those copies are likely to carry J.K. Rowling’s name; the NYT reports that the publisher has a reprint in the works with a revised author bio, “Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym for J. K. Rowling” and that a second book is coming next summer.

Two films based on books will be opening earlier than originally planned. Both changes are are regarded as bids for Oscar nominations.

The Book Thief  based on the  2007 Printz Honor novel  by Markus Zusak, originally scheduled for January, will debut in a limited run on Nov. 15, According to Entertainment Weekly, “the earlier date suggests studio confidence and a possible awards-season bid.” In it, French-Canadian actress Sophie Nelisse makes her English-language film debut as Liesel, a young girl growing up in Nazi Germany. Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson  play her foster parents. The film is directed by Brian Percival, who directed Downton Abbey‘s series pilot, and several episodes.

Tie-in:
The Book Thief , Markus Zusak
Knopf Books for Young Readers
On Sale Date: October 22, 2013
9780385754729, 0385754728
Paperback, $12.99 US / $14.99 Can.

Twelve Years a Slave based on Solomon Northup’s 1853 memoir, moves from Dec. 27 to Oct. 18, “putting it smack in the middle of the best time to release movies into the Oscar race,” notes Awards Daily. Directed by Steve McQueen, it stars Chiwetel Ejiofor  as Solomon Northup, Michael Fassbender as a cruel slave owner, with Brad Pitt as a Canadian abolitionist. Also starring are Paul Giamatti, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kenneth Williams and the youngest actress to ever receive an Oscar nomination, Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild).

USA Today offers a “First Look” at  stills from the movie.

Tie-in:
Twelve Years a Slave: (Movie Tie-In), Solomon Northup
Penguin
On Sale Date: September 4, 2013
9780143125419, 0143125419
Trade paperback $16.00 US / $17.00 Can.

The burning question, “Was Sigmund Freud a Ladies’ Man?” was explored today on CBS This Morning with the authors of the novel Freud’s Mistress, Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman, (Penguin/Amy Einhorn; Thorndike Large Print).

The book has another CBS connection, a cover blurb from Katie Couric, “If you liked Loving Frank and The Paris Wife, you’ll love Freud’s Mistress.”

It received a starred review from LJ — “Historical romance fans will speed through the pages and find fodder for book club discussions.” Booklist called it, “A thrilling story of seduction, betrayal, and loss, Freud’s Mistress will titillate fans of Memoirs of a Geisha (1997) and The Other Boleyn Girl (2002),” but Kirkus was not won over, “Freud’s theories about human sexuality and behavior may be considered pretty wild, but his own sex life comes across as dull.”

As you may have guessed, co-author Mack has media connections; she is a TV producer. This is the two authors third collaboration (Literacy and Longing in L.A. and A Version of the Truth). Both were L.A. Times best sellers.

Among the titles destined for bestsellerdom arriving next week are new books by Daniel Silva (The English Girl, Harper), Danielle Steel (First Sight; RH/Delacorte), Alex Kava (Stranded; RH/Doubleday) and Jeff Abbott (Downfall; Hachette/Grand Central).At least one new author is  waiting in the wings; Koethi Zan‘s debut is building buzz.

All the titles listed here, and more, are listed with full ordering information and alternative formats on our downloadable spreadsheet, New Title Radar, Week of 7.15.13.

Watch List

The Never List, Koethi Zan, (Penguin/Pamela Dorman)

GalleyChat has been abuzz for months over this title, calling it “disturbing and well thought out” and “very creepy but not exploitative,” although a few felt the ending was rushed. Independent booksellers are proponents, making it an IndieNext selection for August: “Zan’s debut is a doozy! Part thriller, part mystery, and all spellbinding, The Never List leads the reader into a world of kidnapping, hostages, dank cellars, BDSM, and many wicked characters. Set in the present day, The Never List chronicles Sarah’s attempt to locate Jennifer, who disappeared shortly after their abduction and three-year captivity in a cellar of torture and abuse. Zan keeps the narrative lively with terse dialog, top-notch character development, an occasional red herring, and edge-of-your-seat confrontations. This engrossing book has Hollywood movie written all over it. Treat yourself and read this book!” —Nancy Simpson-Brice, Book Vault, Oskaloosa, IA

Brilliance, Marcus Sakey, (Amazon/Thomas & Mercer; Amazon/Brilliance Audio)

Prepub reviews for this book are over the top. It’s starred by Booklist and PW and called by LJ “one of the more surprising thrillers of the year,” noting it will appeal to both sf and mystery lovers, because the author sets this thriller in a dystopian future. True to that form, it is the first of a projected series and a film is already in the works. That is not unusual for the author, however. The rights to all four of his previous titles have been purchased and filming has begun in London on an adaptation of Good People, (Penguin/Onyx, 2009) with Kate Hudson and James Franco.

Blood & Beauty: The Borgias; A Novel, (Random House; RH Audio)

A librarians’ pick at the BEA Shout ‘n’ Share panel, this title was heralded nearly two weeks before publication, in the Sunday NYT Book Review, with a compelling comparison,

In Blood and Beauty, Dunant follows the path set by Hilary Mantel with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. Just as Mantel humanized and, to an extent, rehabilitated the brilliant, villainous Thomas Cromwell and the court of Henry VIII, Dunant transforms the blackhearted Borgias and the conniving courtiers and cardinals of Renaissance Europe into fully rounded characters.

Media Magnets

This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-In America’s Gilded Capital, Mark Leibovich, (Penguin/Blue Rider)

The embargo has already been broken on this takedown of D.C. insiders, as we wrote earlier. Leibovich, the chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine is an insider himself, guaranteeing him a spot on the political talk shows.

Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan, (Random House)

That title, paired with the subtitle, by an Iranian-American scholar is enough to get attention. No stranger to media (he’s appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart), the author is scheduled for appearances on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday , Fresh Air , Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and HBO’s Real Time with Bill Mahr.

TV Tie-ins

See our earlier story on this BBC/STARZ series, which debuts August 10. Trade paperback tie-ins are published by S&S.

The White Queen,9781476735481

The Red Queen, 9781476746302

Lady of the Rivers, 9781476746319

The Kingmaker’s Daughter, 9781476746326

Director David Fincher (The Social Network, Fight Club, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) is known for getting strong performances out of actors. He will have his work cut out for him if Ben Affleck takes on the lead in his adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.

Affleck is currently in negotiations for the role, reports Deadline, also noting that, if he takes it, his work on directing the adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Live by Night will be delayed.

Reese Witherspoon is one of the  producers for Gone Girl, but, says Deadline, she is not expected to star.