Actress Andie MacDowell, whose first hit was Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Videotape, transitions to the heartwarming, as Judge Olivia Lockhart in the upcoming Hallmark series, Debbie Macomber’s Cedar Cove, based on the  series of best sellers set in a small town in Washington state. The two-hour premiere airs July 20

Three titles were re-released as tie-ins by Harlequin/MIRA in late May; three more are coming in the next months (for a full list, see our Movie Tie-ins — Upcoming or download our spreadsheet Debbie Macomber’s Cedar Cove — Tie-ins).

Martin Sheen (West Wing) and Rooney Mara (the English-language version of  The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) are set to star in the adaptation of Andy Mulligan’s 2010 YA novel, Trash (RH/David Fickling).

The book received strong reviews and was on several state awards list that year. Horn Book described it as, “Treasure Island meets Slumdog Millionaire in a rousing and hugely entertaining adventure set in an unnamed third-world country in the not-too-distant future. Fourteen-year-old Raphael Fernandez and his friend Gardo are ‘trash boys’ in rubbish-town, picking through ‘one whole long world of steaming trash,’ never finding anything of interest or value…until one day they do…”

Production is scheduled to begin in Rio de Janeiro early next month, with release scheduled for May next year.

It’s been delayed so many times (from Feb. to Oct. 2013 and then to January next year UPDATE: Delayed again! As of 11/27/13, the new date is 2/6/15 — Variety) that some have wondered if The Seventh Son will ever make it to the theaters, but the release of the first trailer gives new hope.

The movie, based on The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch by Joseph Delaney (HarperCollins/Greenwillow, 2005), stars Julianne Moore as Mother Malkin, “the most evil witch in the world,” Jeff Bridges as the mentor to a young apprentice played by Ben Barnes and is set in the 1700′s.

The next book in the series, the twelfth, The Last Apprentice: I Am Alice, will be released on Sept. 3 of this year.

Series Web site: LastApprenticeBooks.com

True to form, Bridges gets the final, and best, line of the trailer.

Don’t withdraw those copies yet!

As Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken (Random House, 2010) continues to be a best seller (on the NYT Nonfiction list at #8 after 135 weeks), it was just announced that the film adaptation, to be directed by Angelina Jolie, will be released 12/25/14. Production is set to begin in late September (the New York Daily News reports Jolie is scouting locations in Hawaii).

In a statement, the director said about the 96 year-old man who is the focus of the book, “I’ve had the privilege of spending a great deal of time with Louie Zamperini, who is a hero of mine, and now—I am proud to say—a dear friend. I am deeply honored to be telling his extraordinary story, and I will do my absolute best to give him the film he deserves.”

A film about Zamperini was the works long before Hillenbrand began working on her book or Jolie thought about adapting it. Universal bought Zamperini’s “life rights” in the 1950′s, with plans to star Tony Curtis, which were never realized.

Scottish actor Sam Heughan has  officially been cast as Jamie Fraser, the male lead in the upcoming Outlander series on cable network STARZ, based on Diana Gabaldon’s novels. The news was leaked via Twitter last week.

Outlander begins shooting this fall in Scotland and is expected to debut on STARZ next spring, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The next title in the series, Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, has been moved from a December publication date to March 25, 2014, when it will tie in to the publicity for the STARZ series.

The first official trailer for Austenland, produced by Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, was just released online, only a month before the movie begins a limited run in New York and Los Angeles on Aug. 16.

Based on Shannon Hale’s first adult novel Austenland, (Bloomsbury USA, 2007; a sequel, Midnight in Austenland, was published last year), it stars Keri Russell as a Jane Austen fan who tries to overcome her debilitating infatuation with Mr. Darcy (specifically, Colin Firth’s version in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice) by going to “the world’s only immersive Austen experience,” run by Jane Seymour. Jennifer Coolidge provides ample comic relief in some astounding costumes.

The trade paperback tie-in was released last week.

Disney’s live-action movie based on Judith Viorst’s 1972 hit children’s book  Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Atheneum) is moving closer to the screen.  Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right) is directing.  Ed Oxenbould will play Alexander,  Steve Carrell his father, Jennifer Garner his mother. Deadline reports that Dylan Minnette will play the older brother and Kerris Dorsey his sister.

[Note: our earlier story has been corrected; thanks to the reader who caught our error.]

The movie is currently scheduled for release on Oct. 10, 2014.

Calling Ivy Pochoda’s  mystery, Visitation Street, (HarperCollins/Ecco, releasing tomorrow), “utterly transporting,” the new issue of People designates it a “People Pick.”

Set in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood, described by  reviewer Ellen Shapiro, as “a onetime longshoremen’s enclave that’s now a mishmash of abandoned warehouses, hipster renovations and housing projects … [that] emerges as a captivating small town,” it is about the disappearance of a 15-year-old girl, who, with a friend, launched a raft into the New York harbor to try to beat the Brooklyn heat.

On the Saturday of BEA, a dozen GalleyChatters, who had been talking the book up since March, got to soak in the Red Hook atmosphere (not to mention the heat and humidity), during a tour arranged by EarlyWord and the HarperCollins Library Marketing team (Virginia Stanley, Annie Mazes and Kayleigh George who recently left to join the RH/Hogarth imprint). We experienced the starkly contrasting neighborhood elements; within blocks of a large housing project are an upscale chocolate factory, fancy bakeries and even a winery. They all come together in a bar that features prominently in the book. We went there, of course (research demands sacrifice). Once we told the bar owner that we were fans of the book, he said, “Oh, right! Ivy lived across the street. I have a copy of the book I’m giving people on two-week loans. I’ll let you know if anyone come in who appears in the book.”

UPDATE: One of the participants, Robin Beerbower, posted her photos of the trip , complete with quotes from the book.

True enough, we witnessed a woman bring in the precious copy to hand it off to the next reader and, yes, the model for one of the book’s characters dropped by for an afternoon beer.

Visitation Street is the second under the “Dennis Lehane Books” imprint and no wonder. As Kaite Stover, Kansas City P.L, said when she highlighted it during the “Librarian’s Shout ‘n’ Share,” at BEA, “Ivy Pochoda does for Brooklyn’s Red Hook what Dennis Lehane does for South Boston.”

Today’s NYT review of Mark Leibovich’s takedown of D.C. insiders begins with a list of the many things the reviewer finds irritating about the city, including the fact that it is often referred to as “This Town,” which is also the name of the book. From title alone, says the reviewer,  “you know [Leibovich has]  a sharp ear, and a sharp eye to accompany it. You also know that he’s got the sharp knives out.”

This Town, (Penguin/Blue Rider) wasn’t always the book’s title. Many library catalogs are still showing it under an earlier version, The Club.

The book is embargoed until its release a week from Tuesday, but, predictably, the Washington Post already broke it, so the NYT followed suit, even though Leibovich, the chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, is one of their own (the excerpt that is the cover story for the NYT Magazine was probably meant to be the first glimpse of the book).

Highly anticipated, not to mention feared, for months, the cover reportedly carries a frustrating label, “WARNING: This Town does not contain an index. Those players wishing to know how they came out will need to read the book.” The Washington Post overturned this clever marketing ploy by creating an index of their own. Library users seem unimpressd; most libraries are showing few holds on light ordering. The book has broken into the top 100 on Amazon sales rankings, however, reaching a high of #38 on July 4, the day the Washington Post index was released.

It’s a book announcement that caused a molecular biologist blogging on the Scientific American site to go all weak in the knees. Astronaut Chris Hadfield signed a deal with Random House Canada to write two books (Hadfeld is Canadian). The first, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, is scheduled for release on Oct. 29. It will be published in the U.S. on the same date by Hachette/Little, Brown.

Commander of the International Space Station for five months, Hadfield is known his creative use of social media to document his experiences.

At this point, only the Canadian edition is listed on retailer and wholesaler sites. Below is the Random House Canada book trailer.

A psychological thriller that was just declared “Better Than Gone Girl” by the Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s insightful reviewer Laura DeMarco, The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison, (Penguin Trade Pbk original) is showing heavy holds on modest ordering in libraries.

Like the surprise hit it’s compared to, The Silent Wife is the story of a marriage gone wrong, but says DeMarco, in this case, “both members of the couple are a lot more human, more fully fleshed — albeit badly damaged — individuals … Like Gone Girl, The Silent Wife is told in alternating chapters from ‘Him’ and ‘Her.’ But while Flynn’s book almost redefined ‘unreliable narrator,’ Harrison’s narrators come across as more personally deluded than manipulative.”

The Silent Wife is an original trade paperback, which makes it not only easier to buy additional copies but also an immediate book club candidate.

Continuing the “Beach Read Challenge,” the staff at Cuyahoga Public Library are reading ARC’s (both e-ARC’s and print) to identify new titles for summer reading. Supporting the effort, Wendy Bartlett, Collection Development Manager, orders more non-reservable copies of each selected title to make it  available for browsing and recommending. The first pick was The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, Anton DiSclafani, (Penguin/Riverhead). The second arrives next week. The following is from Wendy’s weekly “hot title alert” to the staff:

Letters from Skye by Jessica Brockmole, (RH/Ballantine) [Ed note: Digital ARC’s available from Edelweiss, but hurry, they won’t be available after the book is published next Tuesday].

Here’s another good book to hand customers this summer, one that is a more poignant Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society. Just prior to World War I, a young American writes a fan letter to his favorite poet. Little does he know that the poet is a lovely young woman. As the letters go back and forth, we learn more about Elspeth and David, and their unfolding, very complicated love story.

Elspeth lives an isolated life on the Isle of Skye, and years later, Elspeth’s daughter Margaret, in the midst of her own love story, tries to piece together what really happened and where her scattered family might be. The mystery keeps the romance from being overly sentimental. You  want to see if it all works out for these likable characters.

If your customers like historical fiction and don’t mind epistolary novels, they’ll enjoy Letters from Skye.

Thanks to Sue Levinsohn and Barb Wilson, who also gave this one a test drive and came back with positive reports!

In press releases issued early this morning, the parent companies of Random House and Penguin announced that they have finalized contracts for a merger of the two, creating the largest trade publishing house in the world, named Penguin Random House (interim logo at the left).

The Random House parent company, Bertelsmann, owns 53 percent of the new company and Penguin parent, Pearson, 47 percent. Random House chief executive Markus Dohle becomes CEO of the  new group and Penguin’s CEO John Makinson, the chairman of its board of directors. The CEO of Penguin USA, David Shanks, has stepped down to serve as Senior Executive Advisor to Dohle and the U.S. executive team. Madeline McIntosh, formerly Chief Operating Officer, Random House U.S., becomes the President and Chief Operating Officer of the new U.S. company.

While it is too early to speculate on the composition of the new company’s library marketing teams, it would make sense on the adult side if they combined each group’s expertise in academic and library marketing into two new larger departments. In terms of eBooks libraries will be waiting to hear if the new company follows the Random House or Penguin models.

Press Releases:

Bertelsmann Press Release

Pearson_Press Release

PRH Press Release

A program that brings together and highlights the work of  library staff  to promote books, both in person and online, launches this fall.

Modeled on the ABA’s successful IndieNext program, LibraryReads is a monthly list of the top ten newly-released titles that libraries around the country love and plan to promote to their readers. Developed by a grassroots group of librarians, the program is being announced at the ALA Annual conference in Chicago this weekend.

To make this work, we need you to join the effort. Please go to LibraryReads.org to learn how you can become involved.

Let’s prove how effective libraries are in helping readers discover books.

Amazon’s Editors have selected their choices of the Best Books of The Year So Far.

The #1 Pick is Kate Atkinson’s acclaimed and NYT best selling novel, Life After Life, (Hachette/Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print), which is still showing heavy holds in many libraries and is also selected as a best audio title.

Among the top 20 is a YA title, Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Griffin), which has been a continuing word-of-mouth success. The author’s next book, Fangirl, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Griffin, 9/10/13) is a favorite on both adult and YA GalleyChat and has 24 “featured peer reviews” on Edelweiss. Macmillan’s Ali Fisher notes that they will have copies at ALA Annual, booth #2103. For those who aren’t able to nab a copy, it is available as a digital ARC on Edelweiss (if you aren’t already, request to be white-listed to get access).

Most of the other top 20 titles have already hit best seller lists. Two relative sleepers are:

Helene Wecker’s first novel, The Golem and the Jinni, received a 3.5 star review in USA Today that invited readers to “dive in and happily immerse yourself, forgetting the troubles of daily life for a while.” The Huffington Post called it “The Book We’re Talking About,” saying it shows similarities to The Night Circus, “a stirring, magical debut. Its intertwining of mythology and historical fiction is very engagingly written.”

The New York Times put the icing on the cake:

… this impressive first novel manages to combine the narrative magic of The Arabian Nights with the kind of emotional depth, philosophical seriousness and good, old-fashioned storytelling found in the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer.

It spent one week on the NYT Hardcover Fiction extended list at #30.

Schroder, Amity Gaige, (Hachette/Twelve)

A People Pick, this novel about a man who kidnaps his daughter, was also reviewed  by the perceptive Ron Charles in theWashington Post, who said, “The entire book is a testimony, written in prison, by a divorced dad to his ex-wife. Equal parts plea, apology and defense, this enthralling letter rises up from a fog of narcissism that will cloud your vision and put you under his spell.”