One of our “Watch List” titles, The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty, (Penguin/Riverhead; Thorndike Large Print; Blackstone Audio; Penguin Audio) is taking off in most libraries, with holds averaging 10:1 where ordering is modest. Wendy Bartlett at Cuyahoga P.L. is one who ordered it fairly heavily. Nonetheless, she alerts us that she has more than doubled her original order, expecting it to be hot all summer. She credits the book’s popularity to this year’s surprise hit movie, The Artist; “all of a sudden, silent is sexy.”

In the  NYT today, Janet Maslin writes that  “The energy source for Laura Moriarty’s new novel, The Chaperone, is its secondary character: Louise Brooks, at the age of 15,” suggesting fans read Brooks’s own collection of reminiscences, Lulu in Hollywood; “These eight essays are selective, nostalgic, poison-tipped and fearlessly smart.”

Originally published by Knopf in 1982, the collection is currently available in an expanded edition from the University of Minnesota Press.

Lulu In Hollywood: Expanded Edition Louise Brooks Retail Price: $19.95 Paperback: 184 pages Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press – (2000-07-10) ISBN / EAN: 0816637318 / 9780816637317

We’ve heard raves on GalleyChat about a debut with one of the season’s most memorable titles, Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt, (RH/Dial, 6/19).

The new issue of People magazine (7/2, not available online) backs that up with a four-star lead review, saying the book “takes us under the skin and inside the tumultuous head of  June,” the book’s 14-year-old narrator, who is not only dealing with the usual torments of becoming a teenager, but also with her love for her uncle, who is dying of AIDS.

Concludes People, “Distracted parents, tussling adolescents, the awful ghost-world of the AiDS-afflicted before AZT — all of it springs to life in Brunt’s touching and ultimately hopeful book.”

Called the master of the historical spy thriller, Alan Furst has written 12 novels in the Night Soldiers series (or, as he puts it on his Web site, the series is “really one very long book with, to date, twelve chapters”). The books have gradually gathered acclaim (in 2008, a profile by Chip McGrath in the NYT signaled that Furst had arrived. In 2010, Spies of the Balkans appeared on several best books list and debuted on the NYT Best Seller list at #10).

He’s about to become a household name. His new book, Mission to Paris, (Random House; Thorndike Large Print; S&S Audio) arrives on the new USA Today list at the highest spot ever for the series and at #2 on the Indie list, making it poised to arrive in the top three on the upcoming NYT list (UPDATE: the book debuted at #2 on the list). Libraries are showing heavy holds.

In the Huffington Post, fan Jesse Kornbluth tries to nail down why Furst’s books are addictive; “although these novels are about Europe in the years before World War II, they’re also exquisite little morality plays about right now, right here.”

Furst himself explains why he writes what he writes:

Cautiously returning

Penguin announced yesterday that they are working with 3M on a pilot program to again make their e-books available to the New York and  Brooklyn Public Library systems.

The catch? Titles will not be released until six months after they go on sale through retailers and they will expire after a year, with an option to renew. The prices will be “in the same range as prices that retail consumers pay.” (the Wall Street Journal).

Chris Platt of NYPL tells the Wall Street Journal that he hopes Penguin will eventually “agree to make some titles available immediately, while retaining the six-month delay for hot-selling titles. Exposure of first-time authors in libraries, for example, could boost sales.”

The deal was announced just three months after Tony Marx, NYPL President and CEO told publishers that he would be willing to  consider introducing more “friction” into the lending of ebooks to address their fears that library lending would affect the nascent consumer market for ebooks.

It’s a sign of the times that the story of this cautious change was broken by the Wall Sreet Journal (Libraries Cut E-Book Deal With Penguin). The NYT also ran a story in their Media Decoder blog.

The first trailer has just been released for Joe Wright’s film of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, starring Keira Knightly and Jude Law, with screenplay by Tom Stoppard. It arrives in theaters on November 9.

Official Site: FocusFeatures.com/Anna_Karenina

The book was released in a special edition when it was an Oprah pick in 2004.

Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy Retail Price: $17.00 Paperback: 862 pages Publisher: Penguin Classics – (2004-05) ISBN / EAN: 0143035002 / 9780143035008

Warner Bros. officially announced that the film of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas will be released on October 26th. According to the studio, test audiences “have been elated by its powerful and inspiring story, as well as its breathtaking visuals.” The film has three directors, two separate production crews and the actors play multiple roles.

The star-studded cast which includes Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon, Jim Sturgess and Hugo Weaving. Sarandon gushed in a recent interview, “I saw a 10-or 15-minute reel at a party I was at in Berlin and it looked like the trailer for an entire season … it had so many different locales and periods, and it was just gorgeous.”

The movie was originally scheduled for early December, which is the reason the tie-in is listed for Nov. 13; expect that date to change as well.

Someone remarked to me the other day, “This vampire thing is going crazy. Now there’s a movie about Abraham Lincoln as a vampire hunter.”

If you happen to know someone who is new to this, point them to Next Movie‘s “Everything We Know About Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.”

The latest trailer gives more information than the first one did (movie opens on Friday).

Official Movie Site: AbrahamLincolnVampireHunterMovie.com

Tie-ins:

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Seth Grahame-Smith Retail Price: $14.99 Paperback: 384 pages Publisher: Hachette/ Grand Central – (2012-04-03) ISBN / EAN: 1455510173 / 9781455510177

Mass Market Paperback:
Hachette/Grand Central1; $7.99
9781455510184, 145551018

Audio:
Narrated by Scott Holst
Hachette Audio; $17.98
9781611132151, 1611132150

Random House’s major debut of the season, The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker, arrives this coming Tuesday and is already getting the love from the Mikey of book reviewers. In today’s New York Times, Michiko Kaktutani says that the voice of the main character, an 11-year-old girl,

turns what might have been just a clever mash-up of disaster epic with sensitive young-adult, coming-of-age story into a genuinely moving tale that mixes the real and surreal, the ordinary and the extraordinary with impressive fluency and flair.

While Kakutani notes that it has a few flaws, “they certainly will not stop this novel from becoming one of this summer’s hot literary reads.” Others have predicted this, too. It is on many summer reading lists and is the #3 Indie Next Pick for July.

This is likely to be only the beginning. Holds are heavy in some areas.

The Age of Miracles Karen Thompson Walker Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Random House – (2012-06-26) ISBN / EAN: 0812992970 / 9780812992977

BOT Audio; ebook and audio, OverDrive

As we noted earlier this year, film rights have been sold.

How can you get your self-published book noticed on Amazon? First, publish with Amazon Kindle Direct. Next write an essay entitled, “How Amazon Saved My Life.”

That’s what Jessica Park did. As a result, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos featured her book in a letter to customers on Amazon’s home page (he also pointed out that 22 of the top 100 Kindle eBooks were written by self-published authors).

No surprise, the book is now rising on the Kindle best seller list. Despite the heavy promotion, however, it hasn’t yet cracked the top 100 list (currently, it’s at #372).

The book is available to libraries for digital download via OverDrive and B&T’s Axis 360 (ISBN 9781458164407). It is also available in paperback from Amazon’s CreateSpace (ISBN 9781461085973). It is listed as a children’s book for ages 8 to 9.

The Receptionist, Janet Groth’s memoir of working at the New Yorker in the William Shawn era (also the era of Mad Men, leading USA Today to recommend it to fans of the show) has appeared on several summer reading lists. Entertainment Weekly provides an irresistible annotation on their  “Summer Must List”; Groth has “collected the sort of gossipy anecdotes that would have you hanging on her every word at a literary cocktail party.”

It’s also an audio from Highbridge (15 minute clip on the site).

The Receptionist: An Education at The New Yorker Janet Groth Retail Price: $19.95 Hardcover: 241 pages Publisher: Workman/Algonquin – (2012-06-26) ISBN / EAN: 9781616201319

Just in time for the July 6th release of Oliver Stone’s film version of Savages, author Don Winslow’s prequel, The Kings of Cool arrives today.

Reviewing it in today’s NYT, under the headline, “Sexy Drug Dealers Have Parents, Too,” Janet Maslin says Winslow “tantalizingly divides his story between two generations: the original main characters, and the 1960s hippies who spawned them.”

The Kings of Cool Don Winslow Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2012-06-19) ISBN 9781451665321

Maslin was a major fan of Savages, including it in her list of the “Top 10 Books of 2010“; its only Best Books nod that year. About the movie, she is concerned whether it “can sustain Mr. Winslow’s heavenly understatement without drowning in the violence of drug warfare.”

Perhaps she hasn’t seen the trailer.

Movie tie-in:

Savages: A Novel Don Winslow Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 336 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2012-05-29) ISBN / EAN: 1451667159 / 9781451667158

Also mass market pbk (9781451672534)

Following in the footsteps of others who have offered readings lists for summer ’12, the new issue of People magazine selects a dozen titles, most of them by established authors. They also add their voice to two titles that have emerged as a potential breakouts, Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple and the debut Gilded Age by Claire McMillan.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette has appeared on several other lists, despite certain difficulties in selling it (click on image below for a trailer on Entertainment Weekly’s “Shelf Life,” of author Semple trying to get various people, including Elliott Bay’s Rick Simonson, to buy it).

Semple misses the book’s main selling point; herself. She was a writer for the cult favorite TV show, Arrested Development. People describes the book this way, “When her agoraphobic mom disappears, 15-year-old Bee takes matters into her own hands. An uproarious comdy of manners from a former writer for Arrested Development.”

The full list after the jump:

(more…)

We’ve been predicting that  Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl would be the first breakout best seller of the season. The new Indie Best Seller list verifies that prediction; it is at number one on the fiction list. It is also at #7 on the USA Today list, which doesn’t break out titles by format (it would be at number one, if two pesky trilogies weren’t blocking it). They note that this is the first of the author’s three titles to appear on the USA Today list.

Reviews have been stellar.

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

Self Published Edition

Another author has crossed over from self-publishing to a Big Six publisher. Tracey Garvis Graves, whose book On the Island, was bought by Warner for a movie adaptation in mid-May after having been on the NYT eBook best seller list for several weeks, has now landed a two-book deal with Penguin.

Penguin/Plume Edition

The novel, about a 30-year-old teacher shipwrecked with teenage boy she was tutoring, was originally published in paperback through Amazon’s self-publising division (Amazon/CreateSpace, 9781466363212, 3/14/12) and as an ebook (available on B&T’s Axis 360). Penguin will re-release it in paperback on July 17 (97801421967240) with a more glamorized cover. The egalley is available on Edelweiss and on NetGalley.

The author’s second book, Covet, will be released in hardcover by Penguin/Dutton in the spring.

USA Today reports the news today; the author expressed her excitement about the deal on her web site last week.

Since publishers are obviously eager to uncover popular self-published titles, GalleyCat, a publishing industry blog, just announced that it will begin tracking best selling self-published titles on Amazon, B&N and Smashwords.

It’s a long wait until January and season three of Downton Abbey (check here for tidbits on what to expect, including sparks between Maggie Smith and new cast member Shirley MacLaine).

As a result, the magic phrase applied to any new novel set during WWI is “for fans of Downton Abbey.”

The Minneapolis Star Tribune applies it to the paperback original, Park Lane by Frances Osborne (RH/Vintage, 6/12), in their intriguing selection of eight titles for summer reading. The description (and the cover) makes it appear to fill the bill:

Osborne deftly parallels emerging suffragette and erstwhile socialite Bea’s privileged lifestyle with the lowered expectations of reluctant housemaid Grace. While their stations in life may be quite different, by the end of the novel their lives have intersected in ways they could have never foreseen.

The San Francisco Chronicle finds The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones (Harper, 5/1) a good choice for D.A. withdrawal, “It seemed heaven sent; Jones’ third novel is set in 1912, the very year Downton began, on the day and evening of a smallish house party celebrating the 20th birthday of the likable but spoiled eldest daughter of the manor, Emerald Torrington.” The reviewer finds it “sublimely clever.”