An adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods (HarperCollins/Morrow; a tenth anniversary edition is coming in August) has been inching towards the screen for five years and is now set to begin shooting next month, with expectations that the series will debut next year on the Starz network.

In the lead-up to production, a string of casting announcements have been released, including the leads, Emily Browning as Laura Moon and Ian McShane as Mr. Wednesday.

Meanwhile, some other Gaiman adaptations are in limbo. A film version of the Sandman graphic novel series (Vertigo) was set to be directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt who would also star, but he recently left the project, over “creative differences.”

In 2013, it was announced that Ron Howard was in talks to direct The Graveyard Book and that Joe Wright was set to direct an adaptation of Gaiman’s adult novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane, but there has been no news on either since.

Gaiman is publishing a collection of nonfiction in May, The View from the Cheap Seats (HarperCollins/Morrow). According to the publisher, “the title piece, at turns touching and self-deprecating … recounts the author’s experiences at the 2010 Academy Awards in Hollywood,” when the adaptation of his childrens novel Coraline was nominated for Best Animated Feature.

Coming in June is a graphic novel version of Gaiman’s short story, How to Talk to Girls at Parties (Dark Horse).

A film version began shooting in December starring Elle Fanning, Nicole Kidman, and Alex Sharp. Expected for release in the UK this year, no US release date has yet been announced.

Author Helen Oyeyemi is in the NPR spotlight.

Yesterday Maureen Corrigan reviewed her newest collection of short stories, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours (PRH/Riverhead; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample), on NPR’s Fresh Air, praising the author’s “nouveau Gothic stories” as so memorable that they “leave a deep impression — like a scar that stubbornly refuses to fade.”

NPR’s Steve Inskeep interviewed Oyeyemi earlier in the week for Morning Edition. He asks her about her use of fairy tales and the way her imagination works.

Of fairy tales she says:

“I am trying to find out what endures — because these stories are so old, and have been retold by so many tellers, in so many different forms. There’s a way in which, when you retell a story, you’re testing what in it is relevant to all times and places. Bits of it hold up, and bits of it crumble and then new perspectives come through, and I like that the fairy tale is one of the only stories that can bear the weight of all that.”

When asked if books are more real than the actual world she replies:

“I think everything is equally real. … It’s just a question of different categories of reality, I guess, and not giving one greater precedence than the other.”

Earlier in the month reviewer Michael Schaub offered his take on the collection for NPR book reviews (web only). In his glowing appraisal he says:

“What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is a lot of things: dreamy, spellbinding, and unlike just about anything you can imagine. It’s a book that resists comparisons; Oyeyemi’s talent is as unique as it is formidable. It’s another masterpiece from an author who seems incapable of writing anything that’s less than brilliant.”

Holds are high at several libraries we checked and even where systems have gotten on top of holds, circulation is brisk.

The film adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Live By Night, directed by Ben Affleck, has been set for release on Oct. 20, 2017. Affleck also stars, along with Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana and Chris Messina. Deadline calls the date a “prime fall spot.

This is Affleck’s fourth time directing. His first effort as a director was also an adaptation of a Lehane novel, 2007’s Gone Baby Gone.

Live by Night (Harper/ Morrow) is a crime novel set in the Prohibition era about the rise of an Irish-American gangster. Prophetically, when it came out, Entertainment Weekly, called it a “ripping, movie-ready yarn that jumps from a Boston prison to Tampa speakeasies to a Cuban tobacco farm.

Lehane is no stranger to Hollywood. In addition to Gone Baby Gone, films have been made of his novels Mystic River (2003) and Shutter Island (2010). He has also written for the TV series The Wire and Boardwalk Empire.

Affleck appears in theaters this week as Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Among the many books cited as a worthy successor to Gone Girl, including The Girl on the Train, was a title that considered as better than either by several librarians on  GalleyChat, The Kind Worth Killing, by Peter Swanson (HarperCollins/Morrow; HarperLuxe; OverDrive Sample).

It did not quite become a household name, but the rights were picked up for a film, which now has a director, Agnieszka Holland, according to Deadline.

Of the book, Holland says she was,

 “ … really intrigued by this story. It’s full of paradoxes and I love paradoxes. The main heroine is tough as steel, but also as fragile as glass. Is she a victim? A psychopath? An avenger? What a great role for a talented actress! The story line is unpredictable, the genre feels fresh. A psychological thriller, which sometimes veers off towards black comedy, mixing humor with gore, genuine emotions with a detective mystery. The Kind Worth Killing will be fun to shoot, but even more fun to watch!”

The world’s most prolific author has just figured out a way to publish even more titles. As reported by the New York Times, James Patterson plans to publish 3 to 4 “BookShots,” described as “short and propulsive novels” that are less than 150 pages long and sell for less than $5 each. He will write some himself, use co-authors on others and release some “James Patterson Presents” romances by other authors.

The first two will be published in June, reports the NYT, Cross Kill, featuring Alex Cross and  Zoo II, an SF novel with co-author Max DiLallo. Neither are yet listed on wholesaler or retailer catalogs.

The people who found TV series gold in the YA Gossip Girl books have turned their attention to books aimed at an older audience, the erotic romance series Calendar Girl.

About a woman who raises money to pay her father’s medical bills by becoming a high-priced escort, the twelve-book series is named for each month of the year. Each chronicles main character Mia’s relationship with a different client.

ABC Studio’s cable division has grabbed the rights to the series. reports  Deadline.

Several of the books hit the USA Today best seller list earlier this year, bringing attention to  author Audrey Carlan, who was profiled on the Today Show, with expectations that the series would follow in the footsteps of the Fifty Shades series.

The novels have been a boon for small independent publisher, Waterhouse Press, which currently has just three authors in its stable. In a Publishers Weekly profile of the company, CEO David Grishman attributes the success to his “heavily mathematical” approach to creating best sellers but declined to explain further. It might have to do with releasing the previously self-published titles very close together as $2.99 eBooks to seed combined best seller lists. The first, January, hit USA Today‘s list at #5, at the same time that four other in the series arrived in the top 50. The books have also been released in paperback, in four collected volumes.

The series has not followed the Fifty Shades of Grey continuous growth pattern, however. The titles have slid down the list since their initial success.

The Berlin International Film Festival does not get as much attention in the U.S. as does Cannes, but one of this year’s featured films, adapted from a book, is getting a bevy of press coverage.

Alone In Berlin stars Brendan Gleeson and Emma Thompson and is directed by Vincent Perez. For all accounts, it is a somber, quiet film with deft acting, not the kind of film that creates buzz.

But buzzy it is and one of the reasons it has become such a juicy topic is the book story behind it.

Alone in Berlin is an adaptation of Hans Fallada’s novel Every Man Dies Alone (Melville House, 2010; OverDrive Sample). Depicting the domestic resistance in Germany to Hitler, it was written just after the end of WWII and was based on Gestapo files kept on the real-life couple Otto and Elise Hampel. Deeply affected by the death of their son during the war, the Hampel’s began handwriting postcards with subversive messages such as “Mothers, Hitler Will Kill Your Son Too” and leaving them in public places around Berlin.

As NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday reports, Fallada was a best selling author between WWI and II, with his books picked as book-of-the-month-club selections and adapted into Hollywood films (which got him blacklisted by the Nazis).

However, Every Man Dies Alone wasn’t published in English until 2009, after Melville House publisher Dennis Johnson heard about the book from the fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg and tracked it down.

When it finally did come out here, it was a best seller and became a NYT‘s Notable Book and one of The New Yorker‘s Favorite Fiction Books of the year.

The film version does not yet have a U.S. distributor but check your copies. Circulation in strong in libraries we checked, with holds lists at many locations.

Charlie Rose featured the book previously:

Remember the novel Dark Debts by Karen Hall? It came out in 1996 and was a Book of the Month Club main selection. Called by the publisher as a cult hit that “wildly original theological thriller ” that “masterfully combines southern gothic, romantic comedy, and mystery.” Entertainment Weekly gave it an unimpressive C-. Paramount optioned it for a project that never took off.

As The New York Times reports, Ms. Hall, once a TV writer and now an indie bookstore owner, was never completely happy with it either and spent twenty years obsessing over her one and only novel,

“I never stopped thinking about it … I always knew I would never write another book until I got this one right … everything I didn’t like about it made me cringe.”

In a unique publishing path, she is getting a do-over. The audio producer, Audible approached Ms. Hall about doing an adaptation, which made her editor at Simon & Schuster think that would make a good launching pad for a 20th anniversary edition (S&S; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample). Ms. Hall agreed on the condition that she could revise it.

After twenty years of thinking about the novel, her alterations are “dramatic and subtle” says the NYT. She changed the story’s ending, added and cut characters, took out the profanity, and toned down the violence.

Time will tell if the second shot grabs readers. Currently the novel, which published yesterday, is pretty low on Amazon’s rankings and orders are low to nonexistent in libraries we checked (a few of which still have the 1996 edition). But just think of the book club possibilities!

The familiar mass market paperback edition of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird will no longer be available, as a result of what the New Republic calls a “baffling decision” by Lee’s estate.

The mass market edition is published by Hachette’s Grand Central imprint. The trade paperback, published by HarperCollins is not affected. The New Republic notes that “the more accessible mass-market paperback, particularly favored by students,  sells significantly more copies than the trade paperback.”

In an email to booksellers Hachette states that the paperback will no longer be available after April 25th.

That decisions  does not affect the $10.99 HarperCollins eBook edition, finally made available in 2014, after Lee reversed her opposition to it, saying she was “old-fashioned.”

The New Republic story, confirmed by the New York Times, is being reported widely. The NYT adds that “It is possible, though, that the estate may relicense the mass market rights for a new advance, most likely with HarperCollins.”

The interest in the hidden identity of Elena Ferrante, author of the Neapolitan novels that have swept through the best seller lists, hit a boil this weekend, sending her titles soaring again on Amazon.

The real author behind the Ferrante pseudonym has rigorously kept her (or his) true identity private. She grants email interviews only and those exchanges pass through her publisher.

That only fuels speculation, and the latest, reports The New York Times, comes from an Italian author and professor who has conducted an historical and literary study of the books. He sets his eyes on a fellow professor from Naples named Marcella Marmo. Both Ms. Marmo and Ferrante’s publishers flatly deny it.

“It’s nonsense,” said the publishers and “I’m not Elena Ferrante,” said Ms. Marmo. Those predictable responses have not quelled speculation.

Holds and circulation remain high across the series that includes My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of The Lost Child (all published by Europa Editions)

Just last week, it was announced that Ferrante is on the longlist for the Man Booker International Prize, adding even more interest to this long-running literary parlor game.

Called one of the “most anticipated” novels of this season, with that status further cemented by an author profile in the NYT‘s Sunday Magazine, Dana Spiotta’s Innocents and Others (S&S/Scribner; Simon & Schuster Audio; OverDrive Sample) is the book that all the critics want to weigh in on.

The Washington Post ‘s influential critic Ron Charles is a fan, calling it a “quiet miracle,”

“If you enter the theater of this novel, get set to weather some disorientation as soon as the lights dim … but stay in your seat and pay attention. Soon enough, all [Spiotta’s] literary chicanery comes into focus, creating a brilliant split-screen view of women working within and without the world of Hollywood.”

But the daily NYT‘s formidable Michiko Kakutani couldn’t disagree more:

“Unfortunately, Innocents does not deliver on its ambitions … [it] turns out to be a lumpy, unpersuasive novel — enlivened by some arresting moments and thoughtful riffs, but ultimately a sort of hodgepodge of derivative scenes and ideas that have been cut together into a meaning-heavy montage.”

Few are on Kakutani’s side. This week’s NYT Book Review devotes an entire page to an  appreciative review saying, “Highbrow and lowbrow have cohabitated before, of course, but rarely with this ease or this empathy.” Also strongly positive are the Los Angeles Times, New York magazine, and Vogue.

Entertainment Weekly, however, having listed it as one of “25 books we can’t wait to read in 2016,” follows with a review that gives it just a “B,”  saying the “taught modernist” writing is ultimately “chilly emotionally.”

So far, all the attention isn’t grabbing reader interest. Holds queues are modest, but since libraries ordered very few copies, the ratios are high.

As the award-winning musical Hamilton has proved, Broadway shows based on books can be a good bet. Two drastically different book adaptations try their odds this spring.

Opening on April 26th is Tuck Everlasting: The Musical, based on the modern classic children’s novel by Natalie Babbitt in which a young girl meets the immortal Tuck family. Tuck has already been adapted into two films. It comes to Broadway under the leadership of Tony winner Casey Nicholaw (Aladdin, The Book of Mormon).

On the other end of the spectrum is American Psycho: The Musical based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis. It was also previously adapted as a film (starring Christian Bale as the wealthy investment banker serial killer).

To those familiar with the book, the concept of it as a musical may be tough to imagine. According to NewYork.com, “after Sweeney Todd, American Psycho is probably the first Broadway musical with a serial killer as the main character.” It opens in previews March 24.

Beyond the pure adaptions, there is at least one other book hook as well. Danai Gurira, who plays Michonne on The Walking Dead, is a playwright. Her play, Eclipsed, opened on Broadway at the start of this month. Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o (Twelve Years a Slave) makes her Broadway debut in the play, set in a Liberian army camp in 2003.

For those who were disappointed that Fifty Shades of Grey wasn’t about “old people getting it on,” a new book takes on the topic. Scary Old Sex: Stories  (Macmillan/Bloomsbury; OverDrive Sample), a debut short story collection by Arlene Heyman, a practicing psychiatrist  is soaring up the Amazon charts, jumping from #6,527 to #303.

In his recent NYT’s review, Dwight Garner praises the collection of stories largely concerned with sex and love past a certain age, saying it is “rueful and funny and observant” and that a few of the stories “take startling turns and have edges made from razor wire.”

While acknowledging that some of the stories are not completely successful, Garner says “Ms. Heyman is never an uninteresting writer … These men and women are busily and blissfully humanizing themselves, the kind of bliss that lifts right off the page.”

Heyman, 73, has been writing privately for decades. Once a student of Bernard Malamud’s, she put that career on the back burner to train as a pyschiatrist. Garner says that readers “can be glad she didn’t abandon it completely, and has been slowly composing these mature and soulful stories.”

HBO has released a full-length trailer for the sixth season of Game of Thrones, premiering April 24.

As we reported earlier, this is the first season without a tie-in book. The first four seasons were fairly faithful to George R.R. Martin’s novels and all were released as tie-ins. Season five deviated from the book, but nonetheless A Dance with Dragons was released in mass market and trade paperback tie-in editions.

As Martin has famously not written beyond the current point of the HBO show, this season carries the story line beyond what readers know. That does not mean, however, that there are no book connections. The show runners are turning back to previous story lines in the books for at least some of this season’s events.

Both Vanity Fair and The Atlantic have snooped out the threads based on scenes unveiled in the trailer.

It seems parts of the known story surrounding the Greyjoy’s will play out. Vanity Fair spots trailer scenes depicting “the Kingsmoot, an epic-length event for the Ironborn, that sees them try to find a replacement king of the Iron Islands.”

The magazine also notes Ned Stark’s return via flashbacks that tell the story of Robert’s Rebellion and Ned’s battle to free his sister from the Tower of Joy.

The Atlantic picks up on the “power struggle among the Iron Islanders” as well as pointing out that a lot of book material supports “Arya’s continued life in the guild of assassins.” The magazine also reminds readers that Martin has supplied story outlines to showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. So while they are definitely working without a net, they are not totally without guidance.

The PEN America Center offers so many awards that they can begin to blur, especially since many of the finalists have already appeared on end-of-the year best books lists, or have won other major national awards.

The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction shortlist offers two correctives this year, bringing attention to a pair of titles that have slipped under most radars.

Despite glowing praise in the NYT comparing her work to George Eliot, Elizabeth Tallent’s short story collection, Mendocino Fire (Harper, Sept. 2015), received scant additional attention. The same holds for Julie Iromuanya’s debut novel, Mr. and Mrs. Doctor (Coffee House Press, May 2015), which received little notice beyond a mention in the NYT Sunday Book Review’s debut title round-up. As previously announced, it is also a finalist for the PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction.

The other PEN/Faulkner finalists fared better in the PR stakes.

Luis Alberto Urrea’s short story collection The Water Museum (Hachette/Little, Brown. April 2015) was on both the Washington Post ‘s and NPR’s best of the year lists. Urrea is well-known for his many other works, including Into the Beautiful North, one of 34 titles on NEA’s Big Read list. Showing particular relevance to today’s political discussions, as the Cleveland Plain Dealer says, The Water Museum “mines the tragedy, the dark comedy and the ultimate futility of erecting walls between cultures.”

The other two books on the short list are true literary darlings. James Hannaham’s Delicious Foods (Hachette/Little, Brown, March 2015) and The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Press, April 2015).

Both won major awards, or were on award short lists, and were on many end-of-year “best” lists. Showing remarkable range, The Sympathizer, called a “cerebral thriller about Vietnam and its aftermath” by the Washington Post, is also a nominee for a 2016 Edgar for Best First Novel as well as on the shortlist for the PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. Earlier this year, it won ALA’s Carnegie Medal for Fiction.

The winners of the PEN/Faulkner Awards will be announced on April 5th.