Back in 2010, when Bernard Cornwell’s bestselling novel, Agincourt (Harper, 2009), about the battle that was also the basis for Shakespeare’s Henry V, was signed for a film, we warned you not to hold your breath. Filmmaker Michael Mann had several other projects in the works. Since then, he has completed two TV series for HBO (Luck and the documentary Witness).

Agincourt is now back in the news; Deadline reports that the script is being rewritten. There is some excitement about Mann’s renewed interest based on his handling of 1992’s The Last of the Mohicans, starring Daniel Day-Lewis (Roger Ebert called it,  “quite an improvement on Cooper’s all but unreadable book”). One more  project stands in the way, however. Mann begins production in June on another feature film.

USA Today’s headline, “Stephen King’s 11/22/63 headed to TV,” makes it sound like a a done deal, but the Deadline story it’s based on is less definitive, stating that rights to the novel are being negotiated and that they “hear” the plan is to turn it into ” a TV series or miniseries, likely for cable.”

What is certain is that a series based on another King novel, Under the Dome, begins on CBS on June 24.

The cable channel FX’s adaptation of the first novel in Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s vampire trilogy, The Strain, (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2009) now has a lead, Corey Stoll (who played a character in the Netflix original series, House of Cards).

Del Toro will direct the pilot. According to Deadline, the network is likely to pick it up as a series.

Ouch! In a review that will surely be a candidate for the next “Hatchet Job of the Year Award,” Michiko Kakutani excoriates John  le Carré’s 23rd novel, A Delicate Truth, (Penguin/Viking; Penguin Audio; Thorndike Large Print), which releases next week.

Earlier, one of Kakutani’s colleagues, Dwight Garner, wrote glowingly about the author in  New York Times Magazine, under the headline, “John le Carré Has Not Mellowed With Age,” calling A Delicate Truth, “an elegant yet embittered indictment of extraordinary rendition, American right-wing evangelical excess and the corporatization of warfare. It has a gently flickering love story and a jangling ending. And le Carré has not lost his ability to sketch, in a line or two, an entire character.” And, in the UK, The Guardian reports that, with this book, the author returns in “top form.”

Kakutani admits that the book offers one worthwhile bit, in the form of its “atmospheric, movielike opening.” Hollywood sees a movie in it; film rights were sold before publication. It was announced last week that screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed ) has been hired to write the adaptation.

The book already has a movie-like trailer.

It seems that some in Hollywood who should know better have claimed that Alex Pettyfer has been signed to play Christian Grey in the film adaptation of E.L. James’ Fifty Shades Of Grey.

Deadline says it isn’t so. Is anything happening? Deadline states that, “A lot of major directors have been discreetly approached, but everyone is waiting on a script by Kelly Marcel. They would not set any cast without input from a filmmaker.”

Last year, after many attempts to bring Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series to the screen, Sony Pictures TV acquired the rights according to Deadline.

Now, nearly a year later, Deadline writes that the project is “slowly inching to the screen” as a the producers have opened a “writers room” for four writers who will be working on the adaptation.

The eighth installment of the series, Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, (RH/Delacorte) is coming in December. Gabaldon answered questions about the book earlier this month on Entertainment Weekly‘s “Shelf Life” blog.

One of the early titles in our Penguin First Flights Program was David Gillham’s novel set in WW II Germany, City of Women (Penguin/ Putnam/ Einhorn). Arriving in paperback this month (Penguin/Berkley Trade), it is COSTCO Book Buyer Pennie Iannicello’s pick for May. She praises Gillham for “an unforgettable job of taking readers to 1943 Berlin. The city is filled with women who, although left behind, are forging ahead with their lives and wrestling with decisions that are heavy with life-changing implications.”

A COSTCO Pick often insures a long life on best seller lists for paperback re-releases. Previous picks include, The Paris Wife, The Language of Flowers, and Rules of Civility.

Read our online chat with Gillham here. You can sign up for the First Flights program here.

Our next debut author chat, with Anton DiSclafani, author of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, is on Monday, May 13, 4 to 5 p.m ET.

Quick! Grab your galleys for Anthony Marra’s A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (RH/ Hogarth). If you don’t have a print copy, digital ARC’s are available on Edelweiss and on NetGalley.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this debut novel set in Chechnya and arriving next week, is the hot new accessory. Sarah Jessica Parker is a huge supporter and has been working to help get the word out it.

The WSJ sits in on a book discussion, organized by the publisher and featuring the actress with a group of women in New York’s Tribeca nieghborhood,

…the conversation moved from the surprise that despite the lucidity with which Mr. Marra describes the environment in the novel, he had actually never visited Chechnya; to how people responded to the book’s leaps back and forth in time; to the pockets of humor, warmth and charm in this seemingly bleak fictional canvas; to whether the recent events in Boston would bring more people to the novel.

There’s more enthusiasm, it’s

• the number one IndieNext pick for May
• an NPR “First Read“
• on PW‘s list of  books  “Most Anticipated for Spring,” which mentions yet another supporter, “Ann Patchett [who] came on board early, calling the book ‘simply spectacular. Not since Everything Is Illuminated have I read a first novel so ambitious and fully realized.'”
• received three starred prepub reviews (the only holdout being Kirkus, which gave it a strong review, but complained that some plot elements were contrived.)

Good news for author Kimberly McCreight, appearing at the Texas Library Assoc. Annual Conference this weekend (on the YA Crossover Panel on Saturday), holds are rising on her debut novel, Reconstructing Amelia (Harper, released 4/2/13) and are heavy in several libraries.

Librarians have been enthusiastic about it on EarlyWord‘s GalleyChat, saying they couldn’t stop reading it and that it is a great choice  for book clubs as well as a readalike for Jodi Picoult fans.  Booksellers made it an IndieNext Pick for April — “Throw out all the cliched superlatives! McCreight’s remarkable debut novel is about Kate Baron, a high-powered lawyer who believes that her daughter Amelia has committed suicide — until she receives the anonymous text — ‘She didn’t jump.’”

It hasn’t been widely  reviewed in the consumer press, but Entertainment Weekly gave it an “A,” saying, “Like Gone Girl, Reconstructing Amelia seamlessly marries a crime story with a relationship drama. And like Gone Girl, it should be hailed as one of the best books of the year.”

The first adaptation of a novel by Laura Lippman, Every Secret Thing is filming this month in New York City and on Long Island, which is a bit surprising, since, like Lippman’s other novels, this one is set in Baltimore (in reviewing it, the Baltimore Sun said that “Baltimoreans will relish insiderish elements of the story”).

The novel is Lippman’s first standalone, after having already achieved success with seven mysteries featuring private investigator and former Baltimore reporter, Tess Monaghan. Turning from mysteries to much darker psychological suspense, she writes about two young women who return to their Baltimore neighborhood after seven years in juvenile detention, sentenced for kidnapping a baby who died in their care. Perhaps coincidentally, other children begin to disappear. Lippman builds suspense as the reader tries to figure out who is responsible.

Lippman has continued writing both Tess Monaghan mysteries and standalones. In a review of her most recent title, And When She Was Good, (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2012), the NYT‘s Janet Maslin pronounced that “Ms. Lippman’s stand-alone novels have been much more nuanced and interesting than her Monaghan books.”

Directed by Amy Berg, the film stars Dakota Fanning and Danielle Macdonald as the two young women. Also in the cast are Elizabeth Banks and Diane Lane.

Deadline reports today that film rights to the self-published inspirational 2007 blockbuster (later picked up by Hachette/Grand Central) The Shack have been acquired f by Summit Entertainment.

Gill Netter has signed on as the producer. He most recently produced the Ocsar-winning adaptation of Yan Martel’s Life Of Pi, a project he worked on for over a decade before it became a reality.
 

The Weinstein Company has picked up distribution rights to a movie based on Suite Francaise (Random House), the novel by Irène Némirovsky, which became a surprise hit when it was published in 2004, more than 60 years after the author’s death in Auschwitz.

The film, which is about to begin production, is directed by Saul Dibb. Set during the Occupation of France, it stars Michelle Williams as Lucille, a young French woman who has an affair with a German officer, played by Matthias Schoenaerts. Kristin Scott Thomas will play Lucille’s mother-in-law. Shooting is set to begin in France in late June.

Self-publishing reaches a new milestone this week. The number one title on the 4/28 NYT Combined Print & E-Book Fiction Best Seller list is a self-published novel, The Bet, by Rachel Van Dyken (read excerpts on the author’s blog).

This is the first time since the NYT began publishing separate ebook best seller lists in February of 2011 that a self-pubbed title has topped the combined list (Wait For You by J. Lynn and Hopeless by Colleen Hoover both hit #1 on the ebook only list, but didn’t break through on the combined list, where they appeared at #2. Both authors subsequently signed with traditional publishers. Fifty Shades of Grey did not appear on the NYT lists until after it was picked up by Random House).

A total of three self-published titles are on the current combined list of fifteen, two of them in the top ten, an evolving shift from the first lists, which had none.

Idaho author Van Dyken has published several historical romances with Astraea Press. She tells Forbes in an interview that Astraea was uncomfortable with The Bet because it falls into the “New Adult/Contemp” category and it “only does sweet romance,” so she decided to self-publish through Amazon’s CreateSpace.

While many of the author’s previous e-books are available via OverDrive, this one is not. It is also published in mass market paperback (ISBN: 978-1483918778), but it is not currently listed on wholesaler databases.

The adaptation of  Joseph Finder’s thriller, Paranoia (Macmillan/St. Martin’s, 2004), originally scheduled for release in October has been moved up to Aug. 16. Below is more background on the novel from our earlier post.

Described as a “high-tech corporate espionage thriller,” the movie features an impressive cast, including Liam Hemsworth (The Hunger Games), Gary Oldman, Harrison Ford, Amber Heard (The Rum Diary), and Richard Dreyfuss.

The plot concerns an ambitious young technologist, Adam (Hemsworth), who, after making a major misstep is blackmailed by his ruthless CEO (Gary Oldman) into spying on the company’s top rival, run by a character played by Harrison Ford. Adam finds himself living the life of his dreams, as a rich, successful young Manhattan bachelor but eventually has to find a way out from under his boss, “who will stop at nothing, even murder, to gain a multi-billion dollar advantage.”

After four spy thrillers, (including High Crimes, which was made into a movie in 2002, starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman), Joseph Finder began specializing in corporate espionage with the release of Paranoia, which was his breakout book. His most recent novels are the first two in a series, featuring Nick Heller; Vanished (Macmillan/St. Martin’s, 2009) and Buried Secrets (Macmillan/St. Martin’s, 2011).

The author notes on his blog that he doesn’t plan to write a sequel to Paranoia, but tells readers (take note, Hollywood) that if they like that book’s main character, they will like his new series character.

The pub date for Dan Brown’s next book, Inferno, (RH/Doubleday; RH Large Print; Vintage Espanol; RH Audio) is May 14. It turns out that is no accident. RH/Doubleday’s Suzanne Herz tells the Wall Street Journal‘s “Speakeasy” blog, that if you write the date backwards, it become 3.1415, which is the value of pi.

She  leaves it up to fans to try to piece together why that would be important to the plot, which the publisher describes this way,

In the heart of Italy, Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon is drawn into a harrowing world centered on one of history’s most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces…Dante’s Inferno.

Against this backdrop, Langdon battles a chilling adversary and grapples with an ingenious riddle that pulls him into a landscape of classic art, secret passageways, and futuristic science. Drawing from Dante’s dark epic poem, Langdon races to find answers and decide whom to trust…before the world is irrevocably altered.

The Inferno is the first part of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, which was just released in a  new translation by Clive James (Norton).