The first trailer for the film adaptation of Vince Flynn’s thriller American Assassin carries some extra interest. It’s the first on-screen appearance of Dylan O’Brien since he suffered injuries while filming another adaptation, The Maze Runner: Death Cure. He plays the lead character, CIA operative Mitch Rapp. Michael Keaton plays the man assigned to train him as a killer.

The film is set for release on Sept. 15.

American Assassin is the eleventh title in the series, chosen because it moves back in time to depict Rapp’s first assignment. A tie-in has yet to be announced. The paperback (S&S/Pocket) experienced a bump on Amazon’s sales rankings as a result of the trailer’s release.

Todd Haynes’s adaptation of Brian Selznick’s middle grade novel Wonderstruck (Scholastic, 2011) has been selected to enter the competition at the Cannes Film Festival to be held May 17-28.

Haynes, whose films to date have been for adults, won the Queer Palm at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, for Carol based on Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt. This is Haynes’s first film based on a children’s book.

Starring Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams and Okes Fergley Wonderstruck is produced by Amazon studios. A section of the novel is set in 1927 and features a deaf child, Rose, to be played by newcomer Millicent Simmonds, a 13-year-old deaf actress. Haynes has chosen to film her section as a silent movie, using what Deadline calls “an unprecedented number of deaf actors in roles that would normally go to hearing actors.”

This will be the second Selznick book adapted by a celebrated director, after Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning Hugo, based on The Invention Of Hugo Cabret.

Wonderstruck spent 25 weeks on the NYT Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover best seller list, won the 2012 Schneider Family Book Award and was named an ALA Notable Children’s Book.

No news yet on a release date or a tie-in.

The chilling trailer for the series adaptation of Stephen King’s novella, The Mist, has been released. The 10-episode series is set to debut on Spike TV on June 22. No tie-ins have been announced.

The pace of King adaptations is picking up. Last year brought the generally well-received J.J. Abrams’ mini-series adaptation of 11.22.63 on Hulu in February, followed by the much less successful film adaptation of Cell, released in July.

Several more will follow The Mist this year.

The Dark Tower — After many delays, the film, starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey is now firmly set for release on August 4th.  Fans are clamoring for the trailer, but so far, have had to content themselves with reports about the footage shown at CinemaCon in March.

It  — Starring Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise, this film debuts on September 28th. A teaser arrived late last month. CORRECTION: As pointed out in the comments below, we incorrectly identified the actor playing Pennywise as ALEXANDER Skarsgård from Big Little Lies.

Mr. Mercedes (TV Series) — Currently filming, the release is expected this year. After visiting the set, Stephen King tweeted that it looks “awesome,” adding the same accolade for The Mist and The Dark Tower, as well as two titles in post-production, but with no release dates yet, 1922, based on his short story, and Gerald’s Game, based on his novel.

Fulfilling predictions, Colson Whitehead has won this year’s Pulitzer prize in fiction for The Underground Railroad (PRH/Doubleday; RH Audio; BOT).

it’s been quite a year for Whitehead, who went from doubting that anyone would read the book to its becoming a surprise Oprah pick, landing on nearly every best books list, as well as on the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list where it still remains after 33 weeks.

The other books winning Pulitzers this year, below.

History — Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, Heather Ann Thompson, (PRH/PantheonRandom).
EarlyWord coverage here.

Biography or Autobiography — The Return, Hisham Matar, (PRH/Random House, just released in trade paperback). Note: Whitehead lost out to Matar earlier this year for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award

EarlyWord, NYT Critic’s Top Books of 2016

Poetry — Olio, Tyehimba Jess, (Wave Books, distributed by Consortium).
EarlyWord, NYT Critic’s Top Books of 2016

General Nonfiction –– Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond (PRH/Crown; recently released in trade paperback). Note: this title also won the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award For Nonfiction

EarlyWord, Titles to Know and Recommend, Week of February 29, 2016

Click her for the full list of winners as well as finalists in all categories.

The final episode of HBO’s Big Little Lies, which aired on Sunday, has left fans clamoring for more.

Liane Moriarty, who wrote both the novel and its screen adaptation, tells Elle magazine today that she hasn’t ruled out the possibility of a sequel.

Meanwhile, Witherspoon and her co-producer Nicole Kidman also have the rights to Moriarty’s 2016 novel, Truly Madly Guilty. The author says, “That is still going ahead, though it’s not yet decided whether it will be a movie or a series.”

There’s been little news on other Moriarty adaptations. Rights were sold some time ago to both The Husband’s Secret and to What Alice Forgot. but there has been no recent news on either. In an article titled “Enjoyed Big Little lies? The best Liane Moriarty books to read next,” The Telegraph indicates both may still be in development.

Despite its headline, the story “How Nan Talese Blazed Her Pioneering Path through the Publishing Boys’ Club,” in the new issue of Vanity Fair, is as much about her marriage to the author Gay Talese, as it is about her career (the cover line, left, indicates the article’s true slant) and it gives little insight into how she became one of the first women in publishing to run an imprint that bears her own name, Nan A. Talese.

Still, it includes some great bits of publishing lore, like the time Talese stood up to her boss, the tyrannical Dick Snyder, head of S&S at the time (notably, that company is now run by a woman, CEO Carolyn Reidy) and insisted on publishing Schindler’s List.

She also fought off Ernest Hemingway’s widow who went to court to demand changes to a book she edited early in her career, A.E. Hotchner’s Papa Hemingway. As the author remarks admiringly, “Nan just stood there the whole time with her battle garments on and fought them off.”

It’s no surprise that the story focuses on the marriage. Many have found that subject intriguing, even Gay Talese himself, who is currently working on a book about it. The story ends with a typically Nan Talese response to a question about whether that worries her. “She smiles sweetly and [says] …’He doesn’t know anything about marriage, so I’m not concerned.'”

It’s not a headline one might expect to see on the Nobel site, but yesterday a post appeared titled, “Good news about Dylan.”

In a few days Bob Dylan will visit Stockholm and give two concerts. The Swedish Academy is very much looking forward to the weekend and will show up at one of the performances. Please note that no Nobel Lecture will be held. The Academy has reason to believe that a taped version will be sent at a later point. (Taped Nobel lectures are presented now and then, the latest of which was that of Nobel Laureate Alice Munro in 2013.) At this point no further details are known.

The good news is that the Swedish Academy and Bob Dylan have decided to meet this weekend. The Academy will then hand over Dylan’s Nobel diploma and the Nobel medal, and congratulate him on the Nobel Prize in Literature. The setting will be small and intimate, and no media will be present; only Bob Dylan and members of the Academy will attend, all according to Dylan’s wishes.

Why has Dylan remained silent so long? NPR Music Editor Andrew Flanagan theorizes, on somewhat thin evidence, that the singer has been “revisiting his own development.”

UPDATE: Several news sources, including Vanity Fair  report that the “small private gathering” took place on Saturday, April 1.

Read our chat with Gail below.

Join us for our next chat on May 10th, when we will talk to Gin Phillips about her new novel, FIERCE KINGDOM, to be published by Viking on July 11th.

To join the program, sign up here

Called a “Downton Abbey Reunion,” the adaptation of Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (PRH/Random House, 2008), currently filming in Australia, features four actors from the popular BBC series. Lily James, who played Downton‘s Lady Rose, is the movie’s lead. Recently joining the cast are Jessica Brown Findlay (Downton‘s Lady Sybil), Matthew Goode (Henry Talbot), and Penelope Wilton (Isobel Crawley).

Also recently added are Glen Powell (Hidden Figures), Michiel Huisman (The Age of Adeline, Game of Thrones), as well as Tom Courtenay (45 Years).

Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Four Weddings and a Funeral) directs the re-titled Guernsey. Release is expected in 2018.

The epistolary novel set during WW II received strong reviews and was a long running best seller. No tie-in has been announced

The first trailer for a new animated adaptation of Leaf Munro‘s 1936 classic The Story of Ferdinand made its “exclusive” debut on the Today Show this morning. It opens on December 15. CORRECTION: As Donna points out in the comments, we transposed the author’s first and last names.

A tie-in has not been announced.

The original is still available in both hardcover and paperback (Penguin Young Readers/Puffin).

A Board Book edition is coming in August.

On Monday, Seth Meyers hosted George Saunders on Late Night, a return of sorts.

As a result, Saunders’ novel, Lincoln in the Bardo (PRH/RH; RH Audio/BOT; Overdrive Sample), having already been a #1 on the NYT best seller, is moving up Amazon’s sales rankings this morning.

The two-part interview is a remarkable contrast to usual late-night celebrity fare.

Meyers introduces the second part of the interview with a phrase that may never have been uttered by a late night network host before, “the common architecture between writer and reader.”

Meyers has had experience with the author. He interviewed Saunders in February when he served as  the substitute host on the Charlie Rose Show.

The first trailer for DreamWorks Animation’s Captain Underpants, based on the best selling Dav Pilkey series (Scholastic), was released yesterday, arriving in time to be featured before the kids movies set to dominate theaters for the next two weekends, Power Rangers and The Boss Baby.

Dropping a hint that this may be the first of series, Dreamworks adds the words The First Epic Movie to the title. It opens in theaters on June 2.

A tie-in is being released, Official Handbook (Captain Underpants Movie) by Kate Howard on April 25, 2017 (Scholastic), but libraries may prefer to spend their money on additional copies of the original twelve-volume series.

MARLENA is the Electric Debut Novel of 2017!

With FOUR phenomenal starred reviews and tons of acclaim, Julie Buntin’s MARLENA is the electric debut novel you need in your collection!

It’s also been selected for the the following:
B & N Spring 2017 Discover Picks
PW Most Anticipated Spring 2017 Debuts
April 2017 Indie Next List

“In Buntin’s vivid debut, Cath, now a New York City public librarian in her thirties, tells the story of the friendship that changed her forever. Though Cath tells her story in flashbacks, Buntin’s prose is emotional and immediate, and the interior lives she draws of young women and obsessive best friends are Ferrante-esque.”— Booklist, starred review

Read our chat with Betsy, below.

Join us for our next live chat on April 26, 5 to 6 p.m., ET with Pablo Cartaya, to discuss his upcoming book, The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora.

To join the program, sign up here.

Nearly two years after Disney acquired film rights to Julie Murphy’s YA novel Dumplin’ (HC/Balzer + Bray; HaperAudio; OverDrive Sample), the first star had been announced. Jennifer Aniston, is set to play Rosie, a former beauty queen who now runs a pageant and gave her overweight teenaged daughter the not-so-endearing nickname of the title.

Entertainment Weekly reports that Anne Fletcher (The Proposal, Hot Pursuit) will direct, “working from a script by Aniston’s longtime friend and collaborator Kristin Hahn [The Departed, The Time Traveler’s Wife].”

It is early days yet and no other casting choices have been made. Refinery29 writes, “Aniston’s casting gives the film some A-list weight, but we’re more excited to see who lands the role of Will. Please don’t screw this up, Hollywood.”

Production will begin this summer.

Kirkus approvingly wrote the novel’s “plot arc, amazingly, avoids the all-too-common pitfall of having its fat protagonist lose weight.” It was named to the Amelia Bloomer List of recommended feminist literature and appeared on a number of end of year best lists.