Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is #1 on the Indie Fiction Best Seller list  for the fifth week in a row. Sales are still climbing, as indicated by the USA Today list, where it rises to #4, from #6 last week, breaking through the Hunger Games blockade. Now all that stands between it and #1 on that list are the three Fifty Shades titles.

USA Today‘s Bob Minzesheimer looks into the reason Flynn’s third novel is her breakout, quoting Jackie Blem of  Denver’s revered Tattered Cover bookstore,

What is different about Gone Girl is she creates one story, carefully, with great detail, all very believable, and then turns all of it on its ear. The magic of this book, for the reader, is that there is actually two unreliable narrators and multiple versions of every event.

Holds continue to climb in libraries, with some showing over 1,500. Holds on the audio are also high. Large print coming from Thorndike in September.

Gone Girl Gillian Flynn Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 412 pages Publisher: RH/Crown – (2012-06-05) ISBN: 9780307588364

Audio, BOT; audio and ebook on OverDrive; Thorndike Large Print, Sept.

We’d sworn off writing about Fifty Shades of Grey, but damn USA Today‘s book editor, Dierdre Donahue who writes a smart piece about the “10 reasons Fifty Shades of Grey has shackled readers,” beginning with the observation that, “Despite its scarlet reputation, the series is an old-fashioned love story with some odd sex toys, riding crops and mild bondage tossed in.”

We’re hoping this will be the final word. We’re growing tired of those covers.

And, since it may be (no promises), we’ll make it a twofer, by pointing out that Goodreads has created an infographic of where Fifty Shades readers live, indicating that it is an East Coast phenomenon (click here for full graphic, with analysis).

The Today Show took a skeptical look at a new diet book that just arrived in the US after becoming a big success in the UK. Six Weeks to OMG: Get Skinnier Than All Your Friends by Vince Fulton (yes, it’s a pseudonym) was covered in two segments, each featuring a bathtub.

The hosts of the segments sounded unconvinced by the author’s recommendations, but a significant number of viewers felt otherwise. The book jumped into the Amazon Top Fifty, rising from #5,012 to #44. Library holds, however, are very light.

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Brian Castner, who writes about his three tours in Iraq and his difficult re-entry into life at home, in The Long Walk, was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross yesterday. As a result, the book rose to #261 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows Brian Castner Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: RH/Doubleday – (2012-07-10) ISBN / EAN: 9780385536202/ 0385536208

Audio; RH Audio and Books on Tape

Step two in the process toward the big screen has just been announced for Fifty Shades of Grey.

Michael De Luca and Dana Brunetti, who worked with Scott Rudin on The Social Network, have been chosen as the producers (via The Hollywood Reporter).

We particularly enjoy this statement from Universal co-chairman Donna Langley in the press release: “At its core, Fifty Shades of Grey is a complex love story, requiring a delicate and sophisticated hand to bring it to the big screen.”

New cast members have been signed up for the movie version of City of Bones, the first book in the YA series, Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare, indicating that the project is moving forward after several delays.

Lily Collins, who is the daughter of Phil Collins and plays Snow White in the recent Mirror Mirror, was signed earlier to play the lead character, Clary Fray, with Jaime Campbell Bower as her love interest, Jace Wayland.  Variety reports that Kevin Durand (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and Robert Maillet (Sherlock Holmes) have joined the cast.

The movie is scheduled to release on Aug, 23, 2013.

AMC’s Walking Dead weekend marathon, capped by a preview of season 3 (coming in October) brought renewed attention to the Robert Kirkman comics that the series is based on.

Amazon’s sales rankings reveal that there are still newbies to the series. Compendium One rose to #62 from #180. A larger number of fans are looking for the latest in the series; The Walking Dead, Vol 16 rose from #61 to #44.

For more about Kirkman’s series, see EarlyWord Comics contributor Robin Brenner’s earlier post.

The Walking Dead: Compendium One Robert Kirkman Retail Price: $59.99 Paperback: 1088 pages Publisher: Image Comics – (2009-05-19) ISBN / EAN: 1607060760 / 9781607060765

The Walking Dead, Vol. 16 Robert Kirkman Retail Price: $14.99 Paperback: 136 pages Publisher: Image Comics – (2012-06-19) ISBN / EAN: 1607065592 / 9781607065593

Alan Furst continues on the path to becoming a household name (see our earlier story, Break Out the Alan Furst Backlist).

The Hollywood Reporter recommends his new book Mission to Paris, (Random House; Thorndike Large Print; S&S Audio) as their “Beach Read of the Week” and notes that BBC Four has commissioned a series of two 90-minute films based on an earlier title in the series, The Spies of Warsaw. It’s the first of his books to be adapted.

Starring David Tennant, the former Dr. Who in the long-running UK TV series, it is scheduled for release in the UK in October and could arrive in U.S. soon after.

Libraries show growing holds for Maggie Shipstead’s debut, Seating Arrangements (RH/Knopf). Cuyahoga has been steadily adding copies to keep up with demand and now has 199 copies with 40 holds. Libraries that have ordered more modestly are showing holds as high as 10:1.

It debuts at #15 on the new Indie Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list after three weeks on sale. It was reviewed in the Sunday, June 24th NYT Book Review, which calls it a “smart and frothy debut … set on a perfect John Cheever island — the kind where old-money families gather to drink gin and nurture loyalties.” Ron Charles, in the Washington Post, agrees, calling it a “sophisticated summer romp.. [a] weave of wit and observation continually delights.”

After all the praise and media attention, it’s no surprise that the debut novel The Age of Miracles (Random House, 6/26; RH Audio; Thorndike Large Print, Aug) debuts on the new Indie Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list at #4. Expect to see it in the top ten on the upcoming NYT list. Libraries show growing holds; several have ordered additional copies.

The book has enjoyed a string of enthusiastic reviews (with one notable exception, Ron Charles in The Washington Post) and was chosen as #9 on Amazon’s Ten Best Books of the Year So Far. The latest comes from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which says,

This debut novel is itself testimony to the power of well-chosen words. It begins: “We didn’t notice right away. We couldn’t feel it. We did not sense at first the extra time, bulging from the smooth edge of each day like a tumor blooming beneath skin.” Its first chapter — a mere 45 lines — is the most exquisite opening I have read in years.

Little, Brown unveiled the cover for J.K. Rowling’s adult title, The Casual Vacancy, which releases world wide on 9/27. The NYT gives this analysis,

“Following the aesthetics of recent literary titles like The Marriage Plot and The Art of Fielding [ed. note, also published by Little,Brown], Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s first adult novel will sport swoopy script, solid colors, and minimal design. The checkbox on the cover is likely a nod to the political themes of the book, which takes place in a small England town roiled by controversy.”

In a press release, the publisher describes the 512 page novel, as “a big book about a small town” and gives plot details:

When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock.

Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war.

Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils… Pagford is not what it first seems.

And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity, and unexpected revelations?

After months of debate about whether he can pull it off, we finally get a glimpse of Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher in the film version of Lee Child’s ninth novel, One Shot, (Delacorte, 2005). The movie, which has been renamed Jack Reacher, opens Dec. 21.

Not much to go on here. About the only thing we can say is that Cruise didn’t dye his hair.

The movie is planned as the first in a trilogy.

The tie-in arrives in Nov.

The 17th Jack Reacher novel is coming in Sept.

A Wanted Man: A Reacher Novel (Jack Reacher) Lee Child Retail Price:  $28 Hardcover: 416 pages Publisher: RH/Delacorte Press – (2012-09-11) ISBN / EAN: 9780385344333

Good news, Glee fans. Coming in October is Pitch Perfect, a movie about an a capella female collegiate group that is being described as “Glee meets Bridesmaids.” The trailer, which just arrived is below.

It’s based loosely (very loosely, it seems) on the 2008 nonfiction book of the same title by GQ editor, Mickey Rapkin, an examination of the evolution of the style, capped by a look at three groups and their competition for the 2005 championship.

Rapkin also wrote Theater Geek (S&S/Free Press; 2010), about Stagedoor Manor, a summer theater camp that counts Natalie Portman and Robert Downey, Jr. as former campers.

Official Movie site: PitchperfectMovie.com

Tie-in:

The cover of the new issue of Entertainment Weekly reminds us that An Unexpected Journey, the first of the two Hobbit movies, will land  in theaters on December 14.

Why the early attention? It’s a lead-in to the upcoming Comic-Con (July 12-15 in San Diego), where it will be previewed.

EW notes there will be changes from the book,

To expand the classic J.R.R. Tolkien book so that it could support two feature films, Jackson drew from a range of Tolkien’s writings, adding characters not present in the Hobbit book, including Orlando Bloom’s elf Legolas and Cate Blachett’s elven rule Galadriel.

‘In the movie we want these characters to have story lines and a little more substance than they do in the book,’ Jackson explains. ‘Almost everything we’re doing is from Tolkien somewhere, whether it’s in the book or the subsequent development that wasn’t published in The Hobbit itself.’

That’s the first time we’ve heard that a book didn’t have enough substance for the movies.

Official Movie Web Site: TheHobbit.com

The tie-in is being published in September.

The Hobbit (Movie Tie-In) J.R.R. Tolkien Retail Price: $13.95 Paperback: 320 pages Publisher: HMH/Mariner Books – (2012-09-18) ISBN / EAN: 0547844972 / 9780547844978

HMH/Mariner also lists a behind-the-scenes book for young readers.