The new USA Today best seller list confirms what holds in libraries have been indicating; The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison, (Penguin, original trade pbk) is a word-of-mouth success. It debuts at #17 on the list after five weeks on sale.

See our earlier story for more on the book.

Four of the five novelists in Stephen King’s family have books out this year, so the upcoming New York Times Magazine features them in a cover story. Each family member is profiled, including daughter, Naomi, the only one who has not written a book. Although she was big reader growing up, “the power of her father’s books was lost on her,” due to a chronic deficit of adrenaline, making terror “a hard emotion for her to access.”

Son Joe Hill’s third novel,  NOS4A2 came out in April (HarperCollins/Morrow). Younger son Owen’s first novel, Double Feature, (S&S/Scribner) was published in March. Daughter-in-law Kelly Braffet (married to Owen),  publishes her third novel Save Yourself, (RH/Crown) on Aug. 6. Stephen King says it reads as if  “James Cain adapted S.E. Hinton for David Lynch.”

And, of course, father King published Joyland in June (Hard Case Crime) and Doctor Sleep the sequel to The Shining arrives in September (S&S/Scribner).

The August pick by Costco’s book buyer, Pennie Ianniciello, featured in the Costco Connection, is a GalleyChat favorite from last year, The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin (Harper; Thorndike Large Print; trade pbk released in March).

Ianniciello notes, “It would be easy for me to love this month’s book pick because it’s set in the Pacific Northwest or because it’s a fist novel. The truth is, I’m singing the praises of The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin, because it gets everything right.” The issue also features an interview with the author.

Ianniciello has long been recognized in the book business for not only influencing sales, but for also picking debuts and below-the-radar titles, giving them a new life in trade paperback. Her July pick Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt, (RH/Dial, 6/19), also a debut, made its first appearance on the NYT bestseller list after she anointed it.

She’s not the only influential Costco buyer. The company’s wine buyer, Annette Alvarez Peters, rose to #4 on this year’s Decanter Magazine Power List, right behind Eric de Rothschild. Her story “Wine Meets Grill” also appears in the August issue of Costco Connection.

If holds are any indication, and we believe they are, word of mouth is growing for The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison, (Penguin Trade Pbk original).

We issued a holds alert for it a few weeks ago, after he Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s reviewer Laura DeMarco declared it “Better Than Gone Girl,” bringing a surge of holds to area libraries and a ripple effect across the country. In the Huffington Post last week, HeadBulter.com’s Jesse Kornbluth, also makes that comparison, “If You Liked Gone Girl, You’ll Find Fresh Thrills in The Silent Wife.”

Other than that, there hasn’t been much media attention in the U.S. [UPDATE: There was a bit more — one of the most thoughtful writers about mysteries, Sarah Weinman reviewed it in the New Republic as did Laura Miller in Salon]

The book has received attention, however, in the UK, with the The Guardian noting “The slow, murderous disintegration of a marriage is all too believable in ASA Harrison’s first – and final – novel.” The author, who died just before her debut novel was published, was Canadian and her book is reviewed widely in Canadian newspapers — The Globe and Mail, The Winnipeg Free Press, The Vancouver Sun and The National Post.

It is an original trade paperback, making it easier to buy additional copies and an immediate book club candidate.

A new TV series, Witches of East End, based on the book of the same title by Melissa de la Cruz, debuts on Oct. 6 on Lifetime.

The title seems to have confused some TV critics at the Television Critics Association fall preview panel Friday, who remember the ABC series The Witches of Eastwick, which was based on the movie adapted from the John Updike novel of the same title (RH/Knopf, 1984).

For those who know the difference, TV Guide compares the correct book to the adaptation.

The Lifetime series stars Julia Ormond as Joanna Beauchamp. Entertainment Weekly offers a first look, with a photo of her in the role.

The novel, Witches of East End (Hyperion, 2011) is the first in a series that continues with Serpent’s Kiss (Hyperion, 2012) and the forthcoming Winds of Salem (Hyperion, 8/13/13).

Former Bond Girl, Rosamund Pike has accepted the lead role of Amy in David Fincher’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (RH/Crown), opposite Ben Affleck, according to Entertainment Weekly. She most recently starred opposite Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher.

The film is expected to begin production in September, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Meanwhile, production for a film based on the author’s previous title, Dark Places (RH/Crown), starring Chloe Moretz and Nicholas Hoult, is expected to begin in August.

The Washington Post‘s Ron Charles interviewed Flynn last week, who talked about the moment she realized Gone Girl was a hit.

The media has made several stabs at divining what will be the surprise hit of the summer, but a “debut” mystery that was released in April got by everyone, until the author’s true name was revealed.

The ebook version of  The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (aka, J.K. Rowling) (Hachette/Mulholland) shoots to #1 on the new USA Today best seller list.

Meanwhile, some of the hot books of this summer were actually published last year.

The leader, of course, is Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, (RH/Crown), now at #7 after 58 weeks on the NYT hardcover best seller list (a paperback release date still hasn’t been announced). Most libraries have whittled down the wait time for it to just a few weeks and a couple have practically, but not quite, wiped out holds by buying over 650 copies. Holds also continue on Flynn’s earlier titles, Sharp Objects and Dark Places (the movie adaptation of the latter may make it to screens before Gone Girl. Reports say filming is set to begin next month with stars Charlize Theron, Chloe Moretz, and Nicholas Hoult).

Three other surprise hits from last summer have been on the trade paperback list since their spring release in that format  and continue to show holds in libraries.

Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter, (Harper Perennial) — Note that the audio (HarperAudio), which was declared the best of the year by Audible, is also showing holds.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette, (Hachette/Back Bay; Hachette Audio; Thorndike)

The Light Between Oceans, M.L. Stedman (S&S/Scribner; Thorndike)

 And Sons, (RH/Hogarth), is only David Gilbert’s second novel, but it arrives with great anticipation, from Entertainment Weekly’s “Shelf Life” blog, which calls it potentially “the literary novel of the summer” to the NPR reviewer who calls it “seductive and ripe with both comedy and heartbreak” and an instant classic because it “feels deeply familiar, as though it existed for decades and I was just slow to find it.”

In his interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air today, Gilbert gives a sense of what all the fuss is about.

Film rights have just been acquired for A.M. Homes’s novel, May We Be Forgiven, (Penguin/Viking) winner of this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly known as the Orange Prize), reports Deadline.

About a dysfunctional family Thanksgiving and its aftermath, this darkly humorous story, said the L.A. Times critic, “is so fast-moving and pushes its characters to such extremes that it quickly moves into a zone that’s a farcical hyper-realism.”

A few of the earlier  prize winners have been made into movies, most notably Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin, which starred Tilda Swinton. It was a sensation at the 2011 Cannes film festival but did not get the expected Oscar nominations. Filming for the 2007 Prize winner, Half of a Yellow Sun by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been completed. Some footage has appeared online, but  no release date has been set.

Last year’s debut novel, Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt, (RH/Dial, 6/19). was a GalleyChat favorite. Now out in trade paperback, it makes its first appearance on the NYT best seller  list at #18, gaining momentum from COSTCO’S influential book buyer, Pennie Ianniciello, who featured it in the COSTCO Connection as the Book Pick for July.

Told from the point of view of a 14-year-old girl, who is not only dealing with the usual torments of becoming a teenager, but also with the death of her beloved uncle, Tell the Wolves I’m Home, says Ianniciello, “is packed with real emotion and characters that, if they don’t tap into someone you used to be, will at the very least make you think of someone you once knew. “

Good going, Sarah Vowell. She managed to make the American public fall in love with a debut novel, written entirely in rhyming couplets (you gotta love a writer who rhymes “bourgeois” with “Christian Lacroix“), during her appearance on Comedy Central’s Daily Show Thursday night. As an indicator of how well she did, the book is now at #9 on Amazon sales rankings and rising and holds are mounting quickly in libraries. The book was also reviewed the NPR book site last week.

Vowell was on the show to promote her friend, David Rakoff’s novel, Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish, (RH/Doubleday; RH Audio), which was published last week. The author died of cancer last year, just weeks after completing the book.

Libraries are showing 10:1 holds ratios on light ordering.

Below is the first part of the interview — part 2 is on the site.

The movies based on Dan Brown’s series featuring symbolist Robert Langdon do not follow the sequence of the books. The first to be filmed was The Da Vinci Code (RH/Doubleday, 2003), based on the second in the series. The second movie was based on the first book, Angels & Demons (2000). Skipping ahead to the fourth in the series,  the release date for the adaptations of  Inferno (2013), starring Tom Hanks and directed by Ron Howard, was just announced  for Dec. 18, 2015, according to Deadline.

A film of the third book in the series, The Lost Symbol (2009) is now officially in limbo.

The Sunday Times of London revealed this weekend that the true author of the supposed “debut” detective novel by “Robert Galbraith,” The Cuckoo’s Calling is actually J. K Rowling.

The Telegraph followed up by quoting a brave U.K. editor who admitted to rejecting the book, “I thought it was perfectly good – it was certainly well written – but it didn’t stand out. Strange as it might seem, that’s not quite enough. Editors have to fall in love with debuts. It’s very hard to launch new authors and crime is a very crowded market.”

Proving that comment, the Telegraph reports that before the true author’s name was revealed, the book may have sold fewer than 500 copies through British retailers.

Released in the U.S. on April 30 by Hachette’s mystery imprint, Mulholland Books, it received strong reviews from prepub sources; Publishers Weekly said, “In a rare feat, the pseudonymous Galbraith combines a complex and compelling sleuth and an equally well-formed and unlikely assistant with a baffling crime in his stellar debut.”

Holds are now skyrocketing in libraries; one large system now shows 450 holds on 6 copies. Another has already increased their order of 12 copies by 90 more. Those copies are likely to carry J.K. Rowling’s name; the NYT reports that the publisher has a reprint in the works with a revised author bio, “Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym for J. K. Rowling” and that a second book is coming next summer.

The burning question, “Was Sigmund Freud a Ladies’ Man?” was explored today on CBS This Morning with the authors of the novel Freud’s Mistress, Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman, (Penguin/Amy Einhorn; Thorndike Large Print).

The book has another CBS connection, a cover blurb from Katie Couric, “If you liked Loving Frank and The Paris Wife, you’ll love Freud’s Mistress.”

It received a starred review from LJ — “Historical romance fans will speed through the pages and find fodder for book club discussions.” Booklist called it, “A thrilling story of seduction, betrayal, and loss, Freud’s Mistress will titillate fans of Memoirs of a Geisha (1997) and The Other Boleyn Girl (2002),” but Kirkus was not won over, “Freud’s theories about human sexuality and behavior may be considered pretty wild, but his own sex life comes across as dull.”

As you may have guessed, co-author Mack has media connections; she is a TV producer. This is the two authors third collaboration (Literacy and Longing in L.A. and A Version of the Truth). Both were L.A. Times best sellers.

Director David Fincher (The Social Network, Fight Club, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) is known for getting strong performances out of actors. He will have his work cut out for him if Ben Affleck takes on the lead in his adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.

Affleck is currently in negotiations for the role, reports Deadline, also noting that, if he takes it, his work on directing the adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Live by Night will be delayed.

Reese Witherspoon is one of the  producers for Gone Girl, but, says Deadline, she is not expected to star.