On the eve of the launch of the fifth season of the HBO series, True Blood, Charlaine Harris announces that her next Sookie Stackhouse book, Dead Ever After, coming next May, will be the last in the series. Appropriately, it’s the 13th installment. The twelfth book in the series, Deadlocked (Penguin/Ace) came out last week.

Harris first mentioned that the series is ending in an interview in the Houston Press and then confirmed it on her Facebook page (May 14).

Earlier this year, Alan Ball, creator of the tv series, announced that he will not return for a sixth season of True Blood. A replacement has not yet been named.

The tie-in to the new season, Dead as a Doornail  (Penguin/Ace) releases next week. The trailer is below.

Two weeks after stories emerged about libraries removing copies of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy from their shelves, the paper of record takes a look at the controversy.

The story also reports that the National Coalition Against Censorship has organized several groups to oppose the decision to ban the books in Brevard County Public Library.  Last week, they sent a letter to the library’s board. The groups who signed the letter are:

American Booksellers Foundation For Free Expression

Association of American Publishers

PEN American Center

American Society of Journalists and Authors

The Independent Book Publishers Association

National Coalition Against Censorship

It wasn’t so long ago that many said Americans wouldn’t sit still for a 560-page novel which requires some knowledge of British history and a 98-person character list just to keep all the players straight. Well, we did, putting Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall on the NYT list for 6 weeks (and on the extended list for 12 more). Not only has the sequel, Bring Up the Bodies (Macmillan/Holt), landed on the NYT list during its first week on sale, but it landed at #3, besting Wolf Hall, which peaked at #7  (it came out during the fall season, however, which it a more competitive period).

The new book has also given the earlier one a boost; the paperback of Wolf Hall is back on to that list at #20.

Reviewers, however, say the second book even more appealing than the first. The Washington Post explains,

One key difference between Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies is that the latter mostly lacks the poetic reveries that Cromwell allows himself in the former. This is largely a product of the sequel’s compressed timeline of barely nine months, in particular the three weeks leading up to Anne’s execution.

Or, as Time magazine’s Lev Grossman puts it,

The rush of Bring Up the Bodies comes on even faster than that of Wolf Hall ­­— there’s none of what Holden Caulfield would have called the ‘David Copperfield crap.’ no childhood traumas and formative life lessons.

Mantel is at work on the third book in the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light. She tells the Washington Post , “I want to combine aspects of both books: the fast turn of events that you have in Bring Up the Bodies, but also the interior voice of Cromwell, the spiritual aspect that you saw more of in Wolf Hall.”

Libraries that ordered the sequel conservatively now face long hold lists.

For those interested in a biography of Anne Boleyn, Hilary Mantel herself recommended Alison Weir’s The Lady in the Tower (2010), in a review in the New York Times.

ABC announced last week that they are canceling the series, GCB.

We will miss it. Back in February, we posted a story titled, What Does GCB Stand For? It seems those were just the right words for a Google search. We received close to 89,000 hits on it.

We’re rooting for the online campaign to bring the show back.

The series was based on a book, originally published by Brown Books in Dallas, reissued by Hyperion in January.

Booklist, reviewed it, saying, “Chick lit tackles the Christian Right, with amusingly predictable results in Gatlin’s solid freshman effort,” but LJ Express said, “The characters are obsessed with labels and bank balances, and the book is a tiresome exercise in unfettered consumption. Of possible interest to Texans who may enjoy identifying the thinly veiled Dallas environs. Other than that, there’s nothing to like here.”

Good Christian Bitches Kim Gatlin Retail Price: $14.99 Trade Pbk: 306 pages Publisher: Hyperion – (2012-01-17) ISBN / EAN: 9781401310707/1401310702

We just got a heads-up that there are a few spaces remaining in a special BEA session aimed at book group leaders (click on the image below to REGISTER). Run by the energetic Carol Fitzgerald of the Book Reporter Network (which includes ReadingGroupGuides.com), it’s sure to be a great program and a chance to pick up some hot galleys.

The author of Friday Night Lights, Buzz Bissinger, was interviewed on the Today Show Tuesday, for his new book about a road trip he took in an effort to bond with his brain-damaged son, Father’s Day (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; S&S Audio). It received this ringing endorsement from interviewer Jamie Gangel, ” I LOVED this book. It is funny, it is painful, it will resonate with every parent.”
 

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A fascinating look at the fascinating topic of breasts was aired on Fresh Air yesterday, propelling Breasts by Florence Williams to #85 (from # 1,144). Science reporter Williams, after reading that toxins has been discovered in breast milk, had her own tested and discovered that it contained flame retardants (from the foam in her couch) and an ingredient in jet fuel.

Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History Florence Williams Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2012-05-07) ISBN / EAN: 0393063186 / 9780393063189

Two movies about Steve Jobs are in the works. Ashton Kutcher is currently filming Jobs: Get Inspired, in which he plays Apple’s co-founder. It is expected to hit theaters later this year.

Rumors that Aaron Sorkin will create a film script from Walter Isaacson’s bio, Steve Jobs (S&S) have been confirmed by Sony Pictures. Sorkin explored the career of another complicated tech mogul, Facebook co-creator Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2010) adapted from Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires (RH/Doubleday, 2009).

The Cannes film festival opens today. With all those Hollywood types hanging out on the Croisette, there’s bound to be a lot of deal making. The Hollywood Reporter has the story on one of the first. Amy Adams is in talks to star in an adaptation of Edgar-finalist Gillian Flynn’s 2009 novel, Dark Places. If negotiations go well, she will play Libby Day who was seven when her family was murdered. She escaped and accused her 15-year old brother Ben of being the killer.  Twenty-five years later a group questions Libby in an effort to get him out of jail. The movie is to be directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, who directed the adaptation of Tatiana De Rosnay’s Sarah’s Key.

Dark Places is Gillian Flynn’s second novel and was on many of the year’s best books lists. Her third book, Gone Girl, is a psychological thriller about a marriage (author Adam Ross’s blurb says “it’s like Scenes from a Marriage remade by Alfred Hitchcock”). It will be published June 5th and has received enthusiasm on GalleyChat. Audio and print excerpts are available on the NPR Web site. Digital ARC’s on Edelweiss and NetGalley.

Author Web site: Gillian-Flynn.com

Gone Girl Gillian Flynn Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 432 pages Publisher: RH/Crown – (2012-06-05) ISBN: 9780307588364

The CW network, well-known for its teen series, several of which are adapted from books (Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries and The Secret Circle) is adding a record five new teen series to their upcoming schedule, according to Deadline. Among them is a series based on The Carrie Diaries and Summer in the City (both HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray), Candace Bushnell’s YA prequels to Sex and the City. It stars AnnaSophia Robb as Carrie the Younger and Austin Butler as her love interest.

Deadline notes that, while it didn’t make the first cut, the network may still approve another adaptation, The Selection, from the recently published book of the same title by Kiera Cass (also HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray). Set 300 years in the future, it’s about a poor girl chosen by lottery to compete to win the heart of a prince and is being billed as The Hunger Games meets The Bachelor. The book appeared on the NYT Chapter Book Best Seller list last week, but dropped off the current one. UPDATE: 5/17, CW president tells the Hollywood Reporter that he is very high on the project and may redevelop it.

Following the bidding wars for Fifty Shades of Grey (which began its life as Master of the Universe on a Twilight fan fiction site) and the sci-fi Wool, Hollywood continues its fascination with self-pubbed titles.

Film rights to Tracey Garvis-Graves’ On the Island, a NYT E-Book Fiction Best Seller (currently at #9 after 4 weeks; down from a high of #7), were just won at auction by Warner Brothers, reports Variety. In addition to the ebook format (available on B&T’s Axis 360), it is available in paperback (Amazon/CreateSpace, 9781466363212, 3/14/12). WorldCat indicates that few libraries own it.

Deadline reports that there has been “something of a stampede of bidders” for the film rights to a self-pubbed science fiction title, Wool, which, because it’s “an internet sensation” that attracted the interest of Hollywood, is being called “the sci-fi version of Fifty Shades of Grey.”

Publishers Weekly reported on the book early last month, pointing out that there has been little press about it, except for Wired.com and a review on BoingBoing.

Wool began life as short story, followed by four more titles, which are collected in Wool – Omnibus Edition (Amazon/CreateSpace; 9781469984209). The five individual titles and the omnibus edition are available through wholesalers as print on demand. According to WorldCat, just a few libraries own any of them.

Despite strong interest from traditional American publishers, Howey has not yet made a deal with any of them, because, he told PW, he doesn’t find their terms attractive. On his blog today, he announces that he struck a deal with Random House in the UK for publication in January. From the sound of it, though, he hasn’t changed his mind about American publishers,

I now have a native-language (mostly) publisher while remaining indie here at home. With feet firmly planted on both sides of the fence, I’ll get a taste of the traditional route without signing over my life. I can still write what I want over here. I won’t lose the sales that allow me to write full-time. And foreign book contracts, let me tell you, are much more progressive and author-friendly than domestic ones.

When asked what she thought of some libraries removing Fifty Shades of Grey from their shelves on The View on Friday, the book’s author, E.L. James responded, “I think people should read what they like, providing it is age appropriate,” bringing applause from the audience.

The studio audience went away with a copy of the book (as well as $100 Marshall’s gift certificate and a copy of Weeknights with Giada — how mainstream can you get?).

Earlier in the week, the co-hosts discussed the “Hot Topic” of whether it’s appropriate for libraries to remove the book. All agreed that it’s not (even though, in another segment, they expressed strong reservations about the book’s theme of female submission). Whoopie Goldberg said, “If people want to see the book for themselves, the library is obligated to provide it.”

The man who led the CIA’s anti-terrorism efforts, Henry Crumpton, said in an interview on CBS Sixty Minutes last night that there are “more foreign spies in the US than ever before.”

Crumpton writes about his experiences in The Art of Intelligence. The embargoed book is being released today.

An excerpt is on The Daily Beast.

The Art of Intelligence: Lessons from a Life in the CIA’s Clandestine Service Henry A. Crumpton Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Penguin Press – (2012-05-14) ISBN / EAN: 1594203342 / 9781594203343

Perhaps the best of all the tributes flowing in for beloved author Maurice Sendak, who died at 83 on Tuesday, is the fact that his books instantly soared up Amazon’s best seller list, with Where the Wild Things Are moving up to #14.

Sendak’s irreverent wit was on full display in an appearance on the Stephen Colbert Report in late February. During the interview, Colbert threatened to “cash in” on the children’s book game, writing one of his own. In an amazing piece of timing, the resulting book, I Am A Pole (And So Can You!), arrived on shelves the very day Sendak died, bearing the blurb, “The Sad Thing is, I Like It, Maurice Sendak.”

Colbert, who clearly developed a rapport with Sendak, ran a previously unaired portion of the interview on Tuesday’s show (see the original interview here).