Actress Andie MacDowell, whose first hit was Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Videotape, transitions to the heartwarming, as Judge Olivia Lockhart in the upcoming Hallmark series, Debbie Macomber’s Cedar Cove, based on the  series of best sellers set in a small town in Washington state. The two-hour premiere airs July 20

Three titles were re-released as tie-ins by Harlequin/MIRA in late May; three more are coming in the next months (for a full list, see our Movie Tie-ins — Upcoming or download our spreadsheet Debbie Macomber’s Cedar Cove — Tie-ins).

Scottish actor Sam Heughan has  officially been cast as Jamie Fraser, the male lead in the upcoming Outlander series on cable network STARZ, based on Diana Gabaldon’s novels. The news was leaked via Twitter last week.

Outlander begins shooting this fall in Scotland and is expected to debut on STARZ next spring, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The next title in the series, Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, has been moved from a December publication date to March 25, 2014, when it will tie in to the publicity for the STARZ series.

The first official trailer for Austenland, produced by Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, was just released online, only a month before the movie begins a limited run in New York and Los Angeles on Aug. 16.

Based on Shannon Hale’s first adult novel Austenland, (Bloomsbury USA, 2007; a sequel, Midnight in Austenland, was published last year), it stars Keri Russell as a Jane Austen fan who tries to overcome her debilitating infatuation with Mr. Darcy (specifically, Colin Firth’s version in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice) by going to “the world’s only immersive Austen experience,” run by Jane Seymour. Jennifer Coolidge provides ample comic relief in some astounding costumes.

The trade paperback tie-in was released last week.

Calling Ivy Pochoda’s  mystery, Visitation Street, (HarperCollins/Ecco, releasing tomorrow), “utterly transporting,” the new issue of People designates it a “People Pick.”

Set in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood, described by  reviewer Ellen Shapiro, as “a onetime longshoremen’s enclave that’s now a mishmash of abandoned warehouses, hipster renovations and housing projects … [that] emerges as a captivating small town,” it is about the disappearance of a 15-year-old girl, who, with a friend, launched a raft into the New York harbor to try to beat the Brooklyn heat.

On the Saturday of BEA, a dozen GalleyChatters, who had been talking the book up since March, got to soak in the Red Hook atmosphere (not to mention the heat and humidity), during a tour arranged by EarlyWord and the HarperCollins Library Marketing team (Virginia Stanley, Annie Mazes and Kayleigh George who recently left to join the RH/Hogarth imprint). We experienced the starkly contrasting neighborhood elements; within blocks of a large housing project are an upscale chocolate factory, fancy bakeries and even a winery. They all come together in a bar that features prominently in the book. We went there, of course (research demands sacrifice). Once we told the bar owner that we were fans of the book, he said, “Oh, right! Ivy lived across the street. I have a copy of the book I’m giving people on two-week loans. I’ll let you know if anyone come in who appears in the book.”

UPDATE: One of the participants, Robin Beerbower, posted her photos of the trip , complete with quotes from the book.

True enough, we witnessed a woman bring in the precious copy to hand it off to the next reader and, yes, the model for one of the book’s characters dropped by for an afternoon beer.

Visitation Street is the second under the “Dennis Lehane Books” imprint and no wonder. As Kaite Stover, Kansas City P.L, said when she highlighted it during the “Librarian’s Shout ‘n’ Share,” at BEA, “Ivy Pochoda does for Brooklyn’s Red Hook what Dennis Lehane does for South Boston.”

A psychological thriller that was just declared “Better Than Gone Girl” by the Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s insightful reviewer Laura DeMarco, The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison, (Penguin Trade Pbk original) is showing heavy holds on modest ordering in libraries.

Like the surprise hit it’s compared to, The Silent Wife is the story of a marriage gone wrong, but says DeMarco, in this case, “both members of the couple are a lot more human, more fully fleshed — albeit badly damaged — individuals … Like Gone Girl, The Silent Wife is told in alternating chapters from ‘Him’ and ‘Her.’ But while Flynn’s book almost redefined ‘unreliable narrator,’ Harrison’s narrators come across as more personally deluded than manipulative.”

The Silent Wife is an original trade paperback, which makes it not only easier to buy additional copies but also an immediate book club candidate.

Continuing the “Beach Read Challenge,” the staff at Cuyahoga Public Library are reading ARC’s (both e-ARC’s and print) to identify new titles for summer reading. Supporting the effort, Wendy Bartlett, Collection Development Manager, orders more non-reservable copies of each selected title to make it  available for browsing and recommending. The first pick was The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, Anton DiSclafani, (Penguin/Riverhead). The second arrives next week. The following is from Wendy’s weekly “hot title alert” to the staff:

Letters from Skye by Jessica Brockmole, (RH/Ballantine) [Ed note: Digital ARC’s available from Edelweiss, but hurry, they won’t be available after the book is published next Tuesday].

Here’s another good book to hand customers this summer, one that is a more poignant Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society. Just prior to World War I, a young American writes a fan letter to his favorite poet. Little does he know that the poet is a lovely young woman. As the letters go back and forth, we learn more about Elspeth and David, and their unfolding, very complicated love story.

Elspeth lives an isolated life on the Isle of Skye, and years later, Elspeth’s daughter Margaret, in the midst of her own love story, tries to piece together what really happened and where her scattered family might be. The mystery keeps the romance from being overly sentimental. You  want to see if it all works out for these likable characters.

If your customers like historical fiction and don’t mind epistolary novels, they’ll enjoy Letters from Skye.

Thanks to Sue Levinsohn and Barb Wilson, who also gave this one a test drive and came back with positive reports!

Amazon’s Editors have selected their choices of the Best Books of The Year So Far.

The #1 Pick is Kate Atkinson’s acclaimed and NYT best selling novel, Life After Life, (Hachette/Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print), which is still showing heavy holds in many libraries and is also selected as a best audio title.

Among the top 20 is a YA title, Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Griffin), which has been a continuing word-of-mouth success. The author’s next book, Fangirl, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Griffin, 9/10/13) is a favorite on both adult and YA GalleyChat and has 24 “featured peer reviews” on Edelweiss. Macmillan’s Ali Fisher notes that they will have copies at ALA Annual, booth #2103. For those who aren’t able to nab a copy, it is available as a digital ARC on Edelweiss (if you aren’t already, request to be white-listed to get access).

Most of the other top 20 titles have already hit best seller lists. Two relative sleepers are:

Helene Wecker’s first novel, The Golem and the Jinni, received a 3.5 star review in USA Today that invited readers to “dive in and happily immerse yourself, forgetting the troubles of daily life for a while.” The Huffington Post called it “The Book We’re Talking About,” saying it shows similarities to The Night Circus, “a stirring, magical debut. Its intertwining of mythology and historical fiction is very engagingly written.”

The New York Times put the icing on the cake:

… this impressive first novel manages to combine the narrative magic of The Arabian Nights with the kind of emotional depth, philosophical seriousness and good, old-fashioned storytelling found in the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer.

It spent one week on the NYT Hardcover Fiction extended list at #30.

Schroder, Amity Gaige, (Hachette/Twelve)

A People Pick, this novel about a man who kidnaps his daughter, was also reviewed  by the perceptive Ron Charles in theWashington Post, who said, “The entire book is a testimony, written in prison, by a divorced dad to his ex-wife. Equal parts plea, apology and defense, this enthralling letter rises up from a fog of narcissism that will cloud your vision and put you under his spell.”

Who would guess that a movie called The Family starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer about a Brooklyn Mob family in the witness protection program, is based on a French novel, a black comedy called Malavita (or “underworld,” the name of the family dog)?

The trailer for this cultural mashup was recently released. The movie is scheduled for September 20.

The book by Tonino Benacquista, a 2004 French best seller, makes its first appearance in the U.S. today as an original trade paperback (Penguin).

Which is better, the book or the movie? That question takes on new intensity with the opening today of World War Z, starring Brad Pitt and based on the long-running best seller by Max Brooks. The author himself has said that the only thing the movie shares with book is the title, since it completely abandons the beloved faux-oral history style of the novel.

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Disappointed fans can console themselves with a new audio version, released as a movie tie-in, but much more true to the book. Five hours longer than the original 2006 edition, it is titled World War Z: The Complete Edition and features dozens of new narrators, including director Martin Scorsese, Spiderman star Alfred Molina, The Walking Dead creator Frank Darabont, rapper Common, Firefly star Nathan Fillion, and  Shaun of the Dead’s Simon Pegg, with Brooks serving as The Interviewer as he did in the first audio edition (more details are on the author’s web site).

This just in from Wendy Bartlett, Collection Development Manager, Cuyahoga P.L. from her weekly “Hot Title” alert:

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, Anton DiSclafani. (Penguin/Riverhead)

Not only is this the most fun title to say this summer, it’s also the most fun author’s name. DiSclafani? Sounds like the newest “Defense Against the Dark Arts“  teacher, doesn’t it? And her first name  is actually pronounced “Antin” (yes, she is a she). [Ed. Note: for more background on the author and her name, see our Penguin First Flights online chat].

The book is  getting a lot of buzz as a good summer read [Ed Note: see the great review from one of our favorite sources, Ron Charles in the Washington Post, this week, Even the NYT‘s Michiko Kakutani is a fan] and deservedly so; you can hand sell this one to customers with confidence as the perfect vacation read. It’s doing so well for us in Cuyahoga — we bought a several for each branch and they’re flying — that we’re ordering more to make it available for browsing and hand selling.

The story is set in the Depression. Thea, who is fifteen, is banished from her wealthy parents home to an exclusive riding school in the mountains of North Carolina. You can’t stop reading until you figure out why she was sent away. The dissonance of the idea of spending the Depression among wealthy young ladies gives this novel a fresh angle. I’m loving it  and I think you and your customers will too.

Let us know what is hot in your library in the comments section below.

Author of the Mitch Rapp counterterrorism thrillers, Vince Flynn, died yesterday of prostate cancer. He was 47.

Flynn’s best selling books were particularly popular with conservatives (George Bush was a fan and Rush Limbaugh a close friend). In an interview with USA Today in 2012, Flynn said that was probably because of the ” the pro-military, CIA and law enforcement theme of the books … And the idea that the United States is not the problem.””

Flynn’s next novel, The Survivor was originally scheduled to be released in October. USA Today reports that the  publisher, S&S/Atria, does not yet have information on how much of the book was completed.

His most recent book, The Last Man, was published last November.

Calling her a “surprise choice,” Deadline announces that Sam Taylor-Johnson has signed on to direct a film based on the mega bestseller, Fifty Shades of Grey, saying, “In addition to [her directorial debut, a movie about the early life of John Lennon] Nowhere Boy, which garnered her a pair of BAFTA nominations … she had only directed the short film Love You More which was in Cannes in 2008.” The article  notes that she is also developing a film based on Robert Goolrick’s A Reliable Wife.

No cast has been announced.

Library holds are growing on The Shining Girls, (Hachette/Mulholland) by Lauren Beukes after it was reviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered by Alan Cheuse on Friday,  applauding it for its “heroine, the smart and spunky Kirby Mizrachi, [who] is as exciting to follow as any in recent genre fiction” and the “sharply described murder scenes — some of which read as much like starkly rendered battlefield deaths out of Homer as forensic reconstructions of terrible crimes.”

The novel is also moving up Amazon’s sales rankings, although it hasn’t cracked the Top 100 (it’s currently at #222).

The NYT‘s critic Janet Maslin declared it earlier to be ”a strong contender for the role of this summer’s universal beach read.”  Movie rights have been acquired by Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company, Appian Way.

Librarians responding to our Beach Read Challenge, were only partially won over. Joseph Jones of Cuyahoga P.L. says,

Short chapters and a fast pace makes this a definite beach read. The subject matter may turn off some readers who are not into serial killers, violence against women or just the casualness of the violence. Normally time travel is not an issue for me in books, but the way the author switches back and forth in time EVERY chapter does get a bit annoying. Having the date listed at the beginning of each chapter seemed to mock me more than help me figure out where the story was in the timeline. Also, when the author would try to throw in some cultural history for the different time periods I thought it had a tendency to drag the story down without really adding anything. The saving grace of the book though is Kirby. Broken, flawed and a survivor in every sense of the word, she burns with an intensity that for me defines “shining girl.”

Harry Potter producer David Heyman is reteaming with Emma Watson for an adaptation of a debut novel Queen of the Tearling, Variety reports. The first in a projected trilogy, it is described as a “female-oriented Game of Thrones.”

If that sounds familiar, another production company made a similar comparison when they bought the rights to Kristin Cashore’s Graceling, in April.

HarperCollins announced in February that they had acquired the novel from 35-year-old Iowa Writer’s Workshop graduate, Erika Johansen, for publication in 2014. The press release describes the plot,

Set three centuries after a small portion of the human race has populated a landmass that mysteriously emerged in the wake of an environmental catastrophe, the series follows nineteen-year-old princess Kelsea Glynn, who must reclaim her deceased mother’s throne and redeem her kingdom, the Tearling, from forces of corruption and dark magic of The Red Queen, the sorceress-tyrant of the neighboring country, Mortmesne.

Publication information is not available yet.

Every year, reviewers tell us which title they think will be THE book of the summer. In some cases, they have been right (e.g., Gone Girl, and Girl With the Dragon Tattoo).

This year, when Janet Maslin declared The Shining Girls, (Hachette/Mulholland) by Lauren Beukes “a strong contender for the role of this summer’s universal beach read,” Cuyahoga P.L. buyer Wendy Bartlett, who was a bit skeptical, asked the library staff to get involved, read the galley and let her know if she should increase the library’s order. We asked you to join in with our The Summer Beach Read Challenge.

The upshot? Cuyahoga is sticking with their original order for the book, which came out this week. Staff reviews and the comments on EarlyWord have been mixed. Most like the main character, but think that this book, which involves both time travel and serial killers would have been better if the author had focused on one or the other.

Check your holds, however. Libraries we checked had waiting list of 10:1 on light ordering.

What is the Cuyahoga staff excited about? It’s a fall title, that has also recevied strong response on GalleyChat, The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, (S&S, Oct). Below is Wendy’s annotation:

Need a laugh? Here’s the funniest book of the year. Don is a professor who thinks dating is a colossal waste of his time. (Think Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory, and you understand the kind of guy Don is.) So with the help of his friends, he devises a questionnaire to find the perfect wife, and ends up helping someone completely unexpected. You’ll love this main character. Customers who liked The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time or Temple Grandin’s books will enjoy this light-hearted look at living with Asperger’s. It also reminded me of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, last year’s big Brit import. This book was released in the U.K. first and was a big hit (read the review in The Guardian).  I think it’ll be a big hit here too; this will be a great reader’s advisory title.