If your image of Dicken’s Miss Havisham is one of an ancient crone, you are in the majority. When Helena Bonham Carter, who is 46, was approached to play the role in the new adaptation of Great Expectations, she tells the Telegraph, it was “like a slap in the face.”

But the film’s director, Mike Newell (who has led dozens of films, including Four Weddings and a Funeral and the fourth Harry Potter), explained, “if you read the book she’s actually in her 40’s.” She took the role.

Released last fall in the UK, it was recently announced that it will debut in the US this coming October 11th.

Shortly after, another U.K. import, a novel that imagines Havisham’s early life will be released. It’s a fall pick by Kansas City P.L.’s Kaite Stover, who described it at the recent BEA as,

Blending two of the human race’s greatest cultural productions—Dickens and beer—Ronald Frame’s Havisham, (Macmillan/Picador) explores Catherine Havisham’s privileged upbringing as the daughter of a brewer, her jilting at the altar, and her devolution into the bitter, love-scorned woman generations of readers have grown both to loath and ultimately pity. Frame successfully transforms Catherine from simply a bitch into a lover, a child, a mother (of sorts), a sinner, and possibly a saint.

Reviewing it, The Times of London said,

Dickens provided a perfectly adequate backstory for Miss Havisham, but this re-imagining will delight readers who (like another Dickens icon) have always wanted more. You might think you know how it ends, but Frame has a talent for thrilling Victorian melodrama, and he tackles the controversial ending (Dickens wrote two versions) with superb assurance. Best of all, he’ll send you back to the original.

Great Expectations has inspired other spin-offs, most notably, Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs and Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip (which was also made into a movie), but this is the first to be based on Havisham.

The following “featurette” includes a comment by Carter that in Dickens’ novel, “the older generation uses the younger generation to heal their own heart.”

The major roles have been cast for HBO’s pilot based on Tom Perrotta’s best selling 2011 novel The Leftovers, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s), according to the Hollywood Reporter. The novel, which examines what happens to those left behind after a rapture-like event, “The Sudden Departure,” is being adapted by Damon Lindelof, co-creator of the TV series Lost.

Stephen King was a fan of the book, reviewing it in the New York Times Book Review.

Justin Theroux will play the books main character, Kevin Garvey. Theroux has appeared in two films by David Lynch, Mulholland Drive, 2001 and Inland Empire, 2006. The public may know him best as Jennifer Aniston’s fiance.

Christopher Eccleston played Doctor Who for 13 episodes in 2005 and will play Matt Jamison, a reverend who, unable to believe that he was left behind, becomes a rapture denier and writes a newsletter revealing dark secrets about the Sudden Departed.

Two of Perrotta’s earlier novels Election (Penguin/Putnam) and Little Children (Macmillan/St. Martin’s) were made into successful movies.

Diana Gabaldon revealed during a talk at the recently-concluded Book Expo that she had just signed the final contract with the Starz network for the long-gestating project to bring her Outlander series (RH/Delacorte) to the TV screen. Shooting will begin in September, she said, and if all goes well, it will begin airing in spring of 2014.

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

Below is a video of the BEA Book and Author Breakfast during which Gabaldon revealed the news. She is featured along with Helen Fielding (Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, RH/Knopf, 10/29), Congressman John Lewis (March: Book One, a graphic novel from Top Shelf Productions, 8/13) and Chris Matthews (Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked, Simon & Schuster, 11/12). Gabaldon’s segment  begins just after the 52:00 time stamp.

Gabaldon spoke about the challenge of writing books in series and her goal to treat each new title as a standalone in a BEA interview:

The book “positioned to be the big literary read of the summer,” according to the Wall Street Journal, Philipp Meyer’s second novel, The Son (HarperCollins/Ecco; HarperAudio; HarperLuxe) has been a big success with critics and now arrives at #10 on the 6/16 NYT hardcover best seller list during its first week on sale. Some libraries are showing heavy holds on modest orders.

The book has been praised by national newspaper critics Ron Charles at The Washington Post and Bob Minzesheimer USA Today (the NYT hasn’t weighed in yet) as well as by many of their colleagues at local newspapers:

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Kansas City Star

The author was profiled in Texas Monthly recently (the Baltimore native now lives in Texas, the setting for The Son), in a story with an attention-getting headline, “Hog Hunting With Texas’s Next Literary Giant” (Meyer tells the article’s author that hunting and writing are the two most important activities in his life). The article quotes “one of the foremost scholars of Texas literature,” calling The Son, “the most ambitious Texas novel in thirty years—since at least Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.”

Called an “often breathtakingly dark and crazy satire on modern American life ” by The Guardian, AM Homes’ novel, May We Be Forgiven won the Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly  The Orange Prize), announced in London yesterday, confounding the bookmakers (the favorite was Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel), winning against a group of  finalists that also included Zadie Smith and Kate Atkinson.

The Prize has secured a new sponsor and will soon be called the Bailey’s Prize for Fiction. Perhaps Bailey’s is courting reading groups.

Our Summer Beach Read Challenge, asks whether you agree that Lauren Beukes’s The Shining Girls, (Hachette/Mulholland), is, as the NYT‘s Janet Maslin says, “a strong contender for the role of this summer’s universal beach read.”

USA Today is not so sure, saying that Beukes needs to hone her craft before, like Gillian Flynn, she achieves “universal beach read” status. This book, says reviewer Charles Finch author of six mysteries, the latest, A Death in the Small Hours, “feels as if it’s the book before The Book. It is not entirely successful in its execution, but its author is so profusely talented – capable of wit, darkness, and emotion on a single page – that a blockbuster seems inevitable. Here’s your chance to get in on the ground floor.”

The book was released today. One large library system has a holds ratio of 6:1 on modest ordering.

Meanwhile, Hollywood has given its accolade. Leonardo Dicaprio has bought the rights and may adapt it as a TV series.

If you’ve read The Shining Girls, be sure to let fellow librarians know if it’s time to order more, or if they should hold off, in the comments section of the earlier post. Opinions are fifty-fifty at this point.

The often hard-to-please NYT book reviewer, Michiko Kakutani, is won over by debut novelist Anton DiSclafani’s The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls (Penguin/Riverhead), released today. About a teenaged girl who is sent away to a riding camp for mysterious reasons, Kakutani says, “By cutting back and forth between the events that took Thea to Yonahlossee and her experiences in school, Ms. DiSclafani methodically builds suspense … Some of these developments may feel like plot twists from a sepia-toned soap opera, but the reader’s attention rarely wavers, thanks to Ms. DiSclafani’s knowledge of how to keep her foot on her story’s gas pedal, and her sympathy for her spirited, unbridled heroine.”

The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is part of First Flights, the Penguin Debut Author program for librarians (read the author’s chat with librarians here and learn more about the program here).

Underscoring the title, the remake of Endless Love, based on the 1979 best seller by Scott Spencer (HarperCollins), has been scheduled to open on 2/14/14.

The original movie was directed by Franco Zeffrelli in 1981 and starred Brooke Shields and Martin Hewitt. The new version stars Alex Pettyfer, who starred in two  movies based on teen novels, I Am Number Four and Beastly. and Gabriella Wilde appeared in The Three Musketeers.

The book is also available in e-book from Open Road Media, through library e-book vendors.

It will be a big weekend for book-related movies. Also opening on that date are The Maze Runner and Vampire Academy: Blood Sister.

The NYT‘s Janet Maslin has declared The Shining Girls, (Hachette/Mulholland) by Lauren Beukes “a strong contender for the role of this summer’s universal beach read” (i.e., the next Gone Girl). Cuyahoga P.L. buyer Wendy Bartlett is a bit skeptical. Cautioning that she’s not yet read it, she says, “as cool as the plot sounds, it involves a killer who time travels and for most of our customers, time travel is an acquired taste.”

She’s issued a challenge to the Cuyahoga staff to read the galley and let her know whether she’s right or she needs to buy additional copies (she’s ordered a modest 19 copies for Cuyahoga’s 28 branches; most libraries around the country have also placed modest orders).

We’re inviting you to join in. E-galleys are on Edelweiss and NetGalley. Request the book (but hurry, e-galleys will only be available through Monday), read it and tell Wendy what you think in the comments section below.

If you’re not convinced that this is the Book of the Summer, which one are you betting on?’

The BBC is about to begin filming a three-part adaptation of P.D. James’s Death Comes to Pemberley  (RH/Knopf), a murder mystery featuring some of Jane Austen’s most beloved characters, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, who began married life in a house named Pemberley.

When the book was released in 2011, USA Today praised it saying, “Countless authors writing in a plethora of genres have tried to re-create Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but James’ new novel is incomparably perfect.”  NPR’s Fresh Air called it “a glorious plum pudding of a whodunit.”

Matthew Rhys plays Darcy, Anna Maxwell Martin is Elizabeth and Matthew Goode is Wickham [Sorry for the earlier mistake — we said the actors are Americans, but they are all British. Thanks for the corrections!].

Deadline reports that filming starts next month in Yorkshire, with the series expected to begin at the end of the year in the UK (no word yet on when it may appear here).

Interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday, Stephen King explained why he chose a small independent publisher for his next book, Joyland, arriving on Tuesday,

Hard Case Crime is a throwback to the books that I loved as a kid. We lived way out in the country, and my mother would go once a week shopping, and she would go to the Red & White or the A&P to pick up her groceries. And I would immediately beat feet to Robert’s Drugstore, where they had a couple of those turn-around wire racks with the hard-boiled paperbacks that usually featured a girl with scanty clothing on the front. … The teaser line that I always loved the most was for a novel called Liz where it said, “She hit the gutter and bounced lower.” … I loved that, and the one on the front of Joyland says, “Who dares enter the funhouse of fear?”

This is the second book King has published with Hard Case Crime, after 2005’s The Colorado Kid. In addition to original titles, Hard Case is known for bringing back to print crime novels from the ’40’s and ’50’s, with the kind of covers King remembers so fondly.

Reviewing Joyland in the new issue, Entertainment Weekly gives it a B+, marking it down for  being “really an overgrown short story,” but adding that it “features some of King’s most graceful writing … a relatively straightforward story of a young man’s adventure … it’s written in the complicated voice of a much older man’s memory: ruminative, amused, digressive, marvelously unaffected, and finally, devastatingly sad.”

Coming this fall is King’s Doctor Sleep, (S&S/Scribner), the sequel to The Shining.

Philippa Gregory’s novels in The Cousins’ War series, set during Great Britain’s War of the Roses, have been adapted into a ten-part tv series that will premiere on STARZ cable network on Saturday, August 10th at 9pm ET/PT. Titled The White Queen, the BBC/STARZ production is actually based on the first three books [UPDATE: the fourth title, The Kingmaker’s Daughter is also being released as a tie-in], which are being released as trade paperback tie-ins in early July by S&S/Touchstone.

The White Queen,9781476735481

The Red Queen, 9781476746302

Lady of the Rivers, 9781476746319

The Kingmaker’s Daughter, 9781476746326

It stars Max Irons (son of Jeremy Irons, he appeared in the movie Red Riding Hood), Amanda Hale (The Crimson Petal & The White), James Frain (The Tudors). Newcomer Rebecca Ferguson plays the Elizabeth Woodville, the White Queen. Amanda Hale is Margaret Beufort, the Red Queen and Faye Marsay is Anne Neville, the Lady of the Rivers. Gregory is an executive producer on the project.

The two teasers give quite different impressions of what to expect (see if you can guess which is the STARZ promo and which the BBC without looking at the credits).

First:

Second:

The next book in the series, The White Princess, (S&S/Touchstone; S&S Audio) will be published on July 23.

Janet Maslin declares Lauren Beukes’s The Shining Girls, (Hachette/Mulholland), “a strong contender for the role of this summer’s universal beach read,” in Tuesday’s NYT, narrowly avoiding the cliche of  “this summer’s Gone Girl.”

On the Salon site Laura Miller, has no such compunction, counting it as one of seven titles worthy of that mantle, occupying the “sweet spot where literary quality mingles freely with crackerjack storytelling.” She notes that Beukes has brought together two favorite fictional themes, time travel and serial killers into “a soulful puzzle novel with an evocative final twist.”

Beukes’s earlier books have ben have been “closer to hard-core science fiction” says Maslin (Zoo City won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2011), but this one is a “pure thriller …an expert hair-raiser.”

Readers will have to wait a bit, however. The book isn’t due to be published until June 4. Librarians can get a jump on it by requesting e-galleys through Edelweiss and NetGalley.

A debut novel set in Nazi Germany, City of Women, by David R. Gillham (Penguin /Putnam /Einhorn) was published in August.

After it was released in trade paperback and was chosen as a Book of the Month by COSTCO’s book buyer, the author went on a 17-city tour, which is just winding down.

It makes its first appearance on the NYT best seller list, at #15 on the 6/2 trade paperback list.

It was part of our Penguin First Flights program; read the online interview and listen to a podcast interview with the author here.

The strategy of introducing a new author in less-expensive trade paperback, rather than hardcover, has paid off  for the Maggie Hope series about a British code breaker in WW II. The third novel, His Majesty’s Hope, (RH/Bantam; BOT Audio) hits the NYT best seller list at #18 (tied with #17) this week.

The author, Susan Elia MacNeal was nominated for an Edgar for Best First Novel by an American, with the first in the series, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary. The second,  Princess Elizabeth’s Spy was selected by Oprah.com as one of  seven “Compulsively Readable Mysteries (for the Crazy-Smart Reader).”