Alan Furst continues on the path to becoming a household name (see our earlier story, Break Out the Alan Furst Backlist).

The Hollywood Reporter recommends his new book Mission to Paris, (Random House; Thorndike Large Print; S&S Audio) as their “Beach Read of the Week” and notes that BBC Four has commissioned a series of two 90-minute films based on an earlier title in the series, The Spies of Warsaw. It’s the first of his books to be adapted.

Starring David Tennant, the former Dr. Who in the long-running UK TV series, it is scheduled for release in the UK in October and could arrive in U.S. soon after.

Libraries show growing holds for Maggie Shipstead’s debut, Seating Arrangements (RH/Knopf). Cuyahoga has been steadily adding copies to keep up with demand and now has 199 copies with 40 holds. Libraries that have ordered more modestly are showing holds as high as 10:1.

It debuts at #15 on the new Indie Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list after three weeks on sale. It was reviewed in the Sunday, June 24th NYT Book Review, which calls it a “smart and frothy debut … set on a perfect John Cheever island — the kind where old-money families gather to drink gin and nurture loyalties.” Ron Charles, in the Washington Post, agrees, calling it a “sophisticated summer romp.. [a] weave of wit and observation continually delights.”

After all the praise and media attention, it’s no surprise that the debut novel The Age of Miracles (Random House, 6/26; RH Audio; Thorndike Large Print, Aug) debuts on the new Indie Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list at #4. Expect to see it in the top ten on the upcoming NYT list. Libraries show growing holds; several have ordered additional copies.

The book has enjoyed a string of enthusiastic reviews (with one notable exception, Ron Charles in The Washington Post) and was chosen as #9 on Amazon’s Ten Best Books of the Year So Far. The latest comes from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which says,

This debut novel is itself testimony to the power of well-chosen words. It begins: “We didn’t notice right away. We couldn’t feel it. We did not sense at first the extra time, bulging from the smooth edge of each day like a tumor blooming beneath skin.” Its first chapter — a mere 45 lines — is the most exquisite opening I have read in years.

Lots of librarian favorites and buzz titles to look out for next week, starting with Francine Matthews‘s alternate history featuring JFK, and Dianne Warren‘s prize-winning tale of small town lives. Little Bee author Chris Cleaves returns with a much-praised third novel, along with fellow Brit Louise Millar’s look into the lives of two London mothers, while Swedish author Lars Kepler is back with another creepy thriller. Usual suspects include Karin Slaughter, Jennifer Weiner and Taylor Anderson. And Cheryl Strayed delivers a collection of her tangy “Dear Sugar” advice columns from The Rumpus.

Watch List

Jack 1939 by Francine Mathews (Penguin/Riverhead; Thorndike Large Print) explores the premise that President Franklin Roosevelt enlisted a young John F. Kennedy – the son of the ambassador to Britain – to investigate a conspiracy to fix the 1940 U.S. election. Wendy Bartlett at Cuyahoga is betting big on this one, as an easy hand-sell across a busy reference desk. As she puts it, “all you need to say is: ‘There was no CIA in 1939.  JFK travels to Europe to research his Harvard senior thesis (which he actually did); Franklin Roosevelt asks him to gather intelligence on what the Nazis are up to.’ ” She believes both men and women will love it, and that it’s a perfect airplane read.

Juliet in August by Dianne Warren (Putnam/Amy Einhorn; Tantor Audio) is a debut novel that follows the residents of a small town on the edge of the vast grassland of Saskatchewan on a single day. The winner of Canada’s highly regarded Governor General’s Award, it was also an ALA Shout ‘n’ Share title, where librarian Wendy Bartlett compared the author to Alice Munro and Jaimy Gordon, saying, “Juliet, it turns out, is a place, not a person… Warren’s description of horses reminds me of Wrobeleski’s wonderful descriptions of dogs in Edgar Sawtelle… Surprise and delight your customers with this one. They’ll thank you, and when it ends up on prize lists, you’ll look smart!”

Gold by Chris Cleave (Simon & Schuster; Thorndike Large Print; S&S Audio) is the story of two friends and close rivals as they train for their last Olympic bike race together and confront the challenges of love, friendship, ambition and parenthood, written by the British author of the runaway hit Little Bee. It’s the #1 Indie Next pick for July and is getting strong early reviews, like this one from PW: “Cleave pulls out all the stops, getting inside the hearts and minds of his engagingly complex characters. The race scenes have true visceral intensity, leaving the reader feeling as breathless as a cyclist. From start to finish, this is a truly Olympic-level literary achievement.”  It’s most summer reading lists, including People magazine’s, with lots of reviews coming, and coverage on NPR’s Weekend Edition expected.

The Nightmare by Lars Kepler (Macmillan/FSG/Sarah Crichton; Thorndike Large Print) is the sequel to last year’s creepy yet excellent Swedish thriller The Hypnotist, again featuring detective Joona Linna as she looks into an arms dealing case. Booklist says, ” While the plot is overstuffed and the pacing is stiff, Kepler (a pseudonym for husband-and-wife team Alexander and Alexandra Ahndoril) creates a terrific, almost palpable atmosphere, which is sure to please fans of Swedish crime fiction.”

The Playdate by Louise Millar (S&S/Atria/Emily Bestler Trade Pbk Original) is the story of a friendship between two London women who live on the same street, one affluent and the other a struggling single mother whose child has a heart condition. PW says it begins as a “quiet story about neighbors [and] soon builds into a gripping psychological thriller.” 75,000-copy first printing.

Usual Suspects

Criminal by Karin Slaughter (RH/Delacorte Press; Center Point Large Print; AudioGO) is the fourth installment in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation series, with two disturbingly similar rape cases that take place 40 years apart. PW says, “Slaughter seamlessly shifts between past and present, while her usual attentive eye for character and carefully metered violence is on full display.”

The Next Best Thing by Jennifer Weiner (S&S/Atria Books; Center Point Large Print; Simon & Schuster Audio) is the story of Ruth Saunders, who moves in with her grandma in Hollywood and gets a sitcom accepted for production.

Iron Gray Sea: Destroyerman by Taylor Anderson (Penguin/NAL/Roc; Tantor Audio) is the seventh novel in the Destroyerman series about a parallel universe in which the drama of World War II plays out, with Lieutenant Commander Matthew Reddy and the crew of USS “Walker” and their allies pursuing a Japanese destroyer in Allied seas.

Nonfiction

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed (Random House) is a collection of columns that appeared on the online publication The Rumpus. Formerly anonymous, the columnist recently revealed herself to be the author of the memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, the first in the Oprah 2.0 Book Club. Kirkus says this collection “demonstrates that wisdom doesn’t come only from age, but also from learning from the experiences of others. A realistic and poignant compilation of the intricacies of relationships.”

Charlaine Harris and Janet Evanovich have fun picking some “sizzling summer reads” on the Today Show this morning.

Most are already best sellers, but Harris picked a few lesser-known titles.

Wicked Autumn, G.M. Malliet, (Macmillan/Minotaur, 9/13/11)

Reaching back to last fall, Harris picks this “reimagining of the basic English village mystery with an Episcopal priest who is a former M15 agent. It’s fun, it’s not too serious and it’s wonderful to read.”

The Rook, Daniel O’Malley (Hachette/Little Brown, 1/11/12)

“It opens with a woman standing in a circle of corpses and she has no idea who she is but she knows she’s the one who has killed all these people…Incredibly complex and weirdly funny.”

Once Burned, Jeaniene Frost, HarperCollins/Avon original paperback, 6/26

Commenting on the cover, Harris says that Frost “ripples pecks with the best of them” and that she is “an intelligent witty writer who has picked romance as her genre and supernatural romance at that.”

Those Across The River, Christopher Buehlman, (Penguin/Berkley/Ace, 9/6/11)

Another title from last fall, Harris simply says, it’s “Scary, scary, scary.” Her online annotation gives more detail, “One of the scariest books I’ve read in years, this is a depression-era novel about an illicit couple who seek solitude at a cabin in a remote area. Across the river, there are some strange people, people with whom the local townsfolk have a strange relationship. Suspenseful and shocking.”

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Praise continues to roll in for Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles (Random House, 6/26; RH Audio; Thorndike Large Print, Aug), a novel that imagines what would happen if the earth’s rotation slowed. It’s a People Pick in new issue of the magazine (7/9). The reviewer says the author, “matches the fierce creativity of her imagination with a lyrical and portentous understanding of the present” but  “the tender heart — and hope — of the story is its narrator, Julia, a lonely, wise 11-year-old grappling with the normal challenges of growing up while the world is literally disintegrating around her.”

There is one nay-sayer, however. Ron Charles in the Washington Post, calls The Age of Miracles “Too dull for the YA market, it’s been dressed up as an affecting literary novel for adults, one of the more depressing trends in modern publishing.”

Library holds are heavy in many areas, similar to the number that were on Defending Jacob, William Landay (RH/Delacorte; 1/31) when it was first released. It debuted on the NYT best seller list at #4. Most libraries are still showing holds on that title, despite increasing the number of copies.

After the jump, a look at People‘s Picks so far this year:

(more…)

Random House’s major debut of the season, The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker (Random House; RH Audio; Thorndike Large Print, Aug) already received a rave from the difficult-to-please Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times. Its release this week is being greeted with even more attention. As a result, it broke into Amazon’s Top 100 and is currently at #51.

NPR’s Melissa Block interviewed the author last night, focusing on the book’s Twilight-Zone worthy premise; the earth’s rotation gradually slows, resulting in scary changes that turn people against each other. Walker tells Block that she came up with the idea when she heard that the 2004 Indonesian earthquake resulted in the day being shortened by a fraction of a second. The details of the physical effects of a slowing earth are based on science and were vetted by an astrophysicist.

Entertainment Weekly warns readers not to listen to the hype around the book, because it, “sets up the wrong expectations, since this is meant to be a small book, one that’s lovely because of its simple writing and quiet moments. You might not love it immediately. But it will grow on you. Slowly. Definitively.”

It’s #9 on Amazon just-released list of  “The Best Books of the Year So Far,” with the annotation, “Speculative fiction and a girl’s coming-of-age story meet in this gripping debut.”

With the overwhelming success of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy (still in the top spots of the USA Today best seller list after 19 weeks), it should be no surprise that publishers are looking for lightning to hit twice.

USA Today writes that Fifty Shades read-a-likes are on their way. The first successor, Bared to You, by Sylvia Day, Penguin/Berkley’s contribution to the genre, is already a hit. It arrived at #36 on USA Today‘s best seller list and rose to #10 last week. Like Fifty Shades, it was originally self-published. The cover gives a nod to its predecessor, featuring cuff links and the words, “He possessed me, and obsessed me.” It is, of course, the first in a trilogy.

USA Today also comments that Fifty Shades was not the first in the genre; they cite Zane, who was a self-published author before she was picked up by Atria in 2001. Coming this summer is Z-Rated: Chocolate Flava III (S&S/Atria, 8/28), an anthology of erotic fiction, edited by Zane.

Bared to You: A Crossfire Novel Sylvia Day Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 352 pages Publisher: Berkley Trade – (2012-06-12) ISBN / EAN: 0425263908 / 9780425263907

Brilliance Audio

The Sunday NYT Book Review carries a rave review for Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace, by Kate Summerscale, (Bloomsbury, 6/19; Tantor Audio), the story of a real-life Victorian scandal. The author’s earlier book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, also examined a forgotten slice of history. Says the NYT BR,

Just as she used the killing of a child in her previous book to provide insight into mid-19th-century domestic life and the rise of detective novels, Summerscale now uses Isabella and Henry Robinson’s scandalous divorce case to explore such diverse subjects as the era’s romantic novels, peculiar health fads and views of marriage.

The book has a growing number of fans:

The Daily Beast

What is particularly interesting about the book is the way that Summerscale engages with her material in such a psychologically rich manner, an added bonus feature, as it were, given that the original story is already so fascinating in itself.

Reviewed on NPR

Isabella emerges, regardless of the verdict, as the most fascinating of characters…[Summerscale] is perfectly at home in the 19th century, as evidenced in 2008’s The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, her grisly but addictively readable tale of an 1860 murder investigation

Entertainment Weekly give it an A and says,

Summerscale unspools the Robinsons’ tale with flair in Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace, but it’s her social history of marriage that’s really riveting.

Audio sample (Tantor Audio):

We’ve heard raves on GalleyChat about a debut with one of the season’s most memorable titles, Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt, (RH/Dial, 6/19).

The new issue of People magazine (7/2, not available online) backs that up with a four-star lead review, saying the book “takes us under the skin and inside the tumultuous head of  June,” the book’s 14-year-old narrator, who is not only dealing with the usual torments of becoming a teenager, but also with her love for her uncle, who is dying of AIDS.

Concludes People, “Distracted parents, tussling adolescents, the awful ghost-world of the AiDS-afflicted before AZT — all of it springs to life in Brunt’s touching and ultimately hopeful book.”

Next week brings some books we’ve hearing about it for months, including former S&S editor Karen Thompson Walker‘s dystopian debut, along with Glen Duncan’s second literary werewolf adventure. Usual suspects include Elin Hilderbrand, Karen Kingsbury, James Rollins and Douglas Adams and Gareth Roberts. Jodi Picoult also delivers her first YA romance, with daughter Samantha van Leer. And it’s a big week for nonfiction, with Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s look at the 2009 Afghanistan surge, Christian Broadcasting Network newsman David Brody’s account of the Tea Party, and memoirs by the highly rated New York City chef Marcus Samuelsson and former New Yorker staffer Janet Groth. Making headlines in advance of its Tuesday publication is a memoir by Rielle Hunter, who had a baby with presidential contender John Edwards.

Watch List

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker (Random House; RH Audio; Thorndike Large Print, Aug) is a dystopian fantasy by a former Simon & Schuster editor, set in the future after the Earth’s rotation has started to slow down, making the days and nights twice as long as normal. It has already received a positive early review by Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times (she praises it as “a genuinely moving tale that mixes the real and surreal, the ordinary and the extraordinary with impressive fluency and flair,” as we noted earlier this week).

Talulla Rising by Glen Duncan (Knopf; BOT) is the sequel to Duncan’s breakout debut, The Last Werewolf, which brought a literate yet raunchy sensibility to the the tale of the conflicted werewolf Jake. This time, the star is Talulla, a female werewolf carrying Jake’s child, who tries to elude Jake’s enemies. LJ calls it “a bone-crunchingly, page-plungingly good book (necessary reading just for the language) that limns the primal darkness within us but is ultimately about love.” 100,000-copy printing.

Usual Suspects

Summerland by Elin Hilderbrand (Hachette/Little Brown/Reagan Arthur; Hachette Large Print; Hachette Audio) is the story of four teens who grapple with the aftermath of a fatal accident on the night of their high school graduation in Nantucket. LJ says, “Hilderbrand has a gift for building tension, and the reader will be willing to do just about anything to discover the real reason why Penny would drive herself, her brother, and her boyfriend over an embankment into oblivion.” 250,000-copy first printing.

Coming Home: A Story of Undying Hope by Karen Kingsbury (Zondervan; Thorndike Large Print; Zondervan Audio) is a stand-alone novel that can either introduce readers to the saga of the Baxter Family, or work as its conclusion, by “The Queen of Christian Romance.”

Bloodline: A SIGMA Force Novel by James Rollins (Harper/Morrow; Thorndike Large Print, Aug) finds the Sigma Force team trying to rescue the president’s pregnant daughter, after she is kidnapped from a yacht by Somali pirates and hidden in the jungles of coastal Africa.

Doctor Who: Shada: The Lost Adventure by Douglas Adams & Roberts Gareth (Penguin/Ace Books, Audiogo) is a novelization of the lost final episodes of the long-running Dr. Who TV series. Originally written by Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but never produced, they were reworked in book form by veteran Doctor Who writer Roberts. Here, the Fourth Doctor faces off with a megalomaniac named Skagra.

Young Adult

Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult and Samantha van Leer (S&S/Atria/Emily Bestler; Recorded Books) is bestseller Picoult’s first foray into young adult lit, undertaken with her daughter, who pitched the premise to her. It’s about a loner girl who discovers a fairy tale prince in a book in her school library, and  that he can see her and talk to her, and sets about liberating him from his two-dimensional world into her three-dimensional one. Booklist says, “younger readers and their parents will appreciate the gentle, wholesome romance, with nary a shred of paranormal action. The tender, positive tone and effective pacing that builds to a satisfying finish will inspire readers to pass the book to a friend or reread it themselves.”

Nonfiction

Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Knopf) is an indictment of President Barack Obama’s 2009 Afghanistan surge, by the Washington Post correspondent who wrote the Imperial Life in the Emerald City, an award-winning analysis of post-invasion Iraq. 100,000-copy printing.

Yes, Chef: A Memoir by Marcus Samuelsson (Random House; BOT) is a memoir by the youngest chef to receive three stars from the New York Times. Orphaned in Ethiopia, he was raised by an adoptive family in Sweden, and later sought out his roots in multiple visits to his birth country, while making his way in New York’s elite food world and establishing his own restaurant in Harlem. LJ says, “This distinctive and compelling memoir has all the elements of a good story: humor, travel, and a young individual overcoming obstacles via a passionate calling.” This one is also on several summer reading lists (including CNN’s) and has sparked interest among librarians on EarlyWord‘s GalleyChat.

The Receptionist: An Education at the New Yorker by Janet Groth (Workman/Algonquin; Highbridge Audio) is a memoir by a woman who worked at the storied literary magazine from 1957 to 1978, which has already received some strong early reviews, as we noted earlier this week.

The Teavangelicals: The Inside Story of How the Evangelicals and the Tea Party Are Taking Back America by David Brody (Zondervan) is an account of the relationship between the Tea Party movement and evangelical Christianity by the chief political correspondent for Pat Robertson on CBN News. Reviewing a partially embargoed galley from which one third of the book was missing, PW says, “This volume repeats the trite slogan that fiscal responsibility is a moral issue; hence Tea Party enthusiasts and evangelicals are a natural match… There is little original reporting here.”

What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter, and Me by Rielle Hunter (Benbella Books) is the book Hunter shopped around to several publishers last year, ending up with small “boutique” Dallas publisher Benbella Books. The NYT reports that New York publishers passed on it, with one of them saying that ” he doubted that many women would buy the book, considering that Ms. Hunter was having an affair with Mr. Edwards while he was married to Elizabeth Edwards, a popular figure among women.” The book is generating some headlines based on online excerpts. ABC News is scheduled to air an interview with Hunter on 20/20 tonight. Bonnie Fuller cues the backlash in the Huffington Post.

Called the master of the historical spy thriller, Alan Furst has written 12 novels in the Night Soldiers series (or, as he puts it on his Web site, the series is “really one very long book with, to date, twelve chapters”). The books have gradually gathered acclaim (in 2008, a profile by Chip McGrath in the NYT signaled that Furst had arrived. In 2010, Spies of the Balkans appeared on several best books list and debuted on the NYT Best Seller list at #10).

He’s about to become a household name. His new book, Mission to Paris, (Random House; Thorndike Large Print; S&S Audio) arrives on the new USA Today list at the highest spot ever for the series and at #2 on the Indie list, making it poised to arrive in the top three on the upcoming NYT list (UPDATE: the book debuted at #2 on the list). Libraries are showing heavy holds.

In the Huffington Post, fan Jesse Kornbluth tries to nail down why Furst’s books are addictive; “although these novels are about Europe in the years before World War II, they’re also exquisite little morality plays about right now, right here.”

Furst himself explains why he writes what he writes:

Random House’s major debut of the season, The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker, arrives this coming Tuesday and is already getting the love from the Mikey of book reviewers. In today’s New York Times, Michiko Kaktutani says that the voice of the main character, an 11-year-old girl,

turns what might have been just a clever mash-up of disaster epic with sensitive young-adult, coming-of-age story into a genuinely moving tale that mixes the real and surreal, the ordinary and the extraordinary with impressive fluency and flair.

While Kakutani notes that it has a few flaws, “they certainly will not stop this novel from becoming one of this summer’s hot literary reads.” Others have predicted this, too. It is on many summer reading lists and is the #3 Indie Next Pick for July.

This is likely to be only the beginning. Holds are heavy in some areas.

The Age of Miracles Karen Thompson Walker Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Random House – (2012-06-26) ISBN / EAN: 0812992970 / 9780812992977

BOT Audio; ebook and audio, OverDrive

As we noted earlier this year, film rights have been sold.

The Receptionist, Janet Groth’s memoir of working at the New Yorker in the William Shawn era (also the era of Mad Men, leading USA Today to recommend it to fans of the show) has appeared on several summer reading lists. Entertainment Weekly provides an irresistible annotation on their  “Summer Must List”; Groth has “collected the sort of gossipy anecdotes that would have you hanging on her every word at a literary cocktail party.”

It’s also an audio from Highbridge (15 minute clip on the site).

The Receptionist: An Education at The New Yorker Janet Groth Retail Price: $19.95 Hardcover: 241 pages Publisher: Workman/Algonquin – (2012-06-26) ISBN / EAN: 9781616201319

Next week brings two buzzed-about debuts: a thriller by Jean Zimmerman set in 1663 New Amsterdam and Carol Rifka Brunt‘s tale of two sisters in the age of AIDS. Plus two authors with growing followings are back: Leila Meacham with a sprawling Texas soap opera, and Linda Castillo with the fourth installment in her Amish series. Usual suspects include Janet Evanovich, Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, and Ridley Pearson. In nonfiction, Rachel Swarns delves into First Lady Michelle Obama’s ancestry and David Maraniss explores President Obama’s background and character development.

Watch List

The Orphanmaster by Jean Zimmerman (Penguin/Viking Books; Penguin Audiobooks; Thorndike Large Print) is a debut historical thriller set in New Amsterdam in 1663, in which a young Dutch woman and an English spy investigate the disappearances of a handful of orphans. Booklist calls it a “compulsively readable, heartbreaking, and grisly mystery set in a wild, colonial America will appeal to fans of Robert McCammon’s fast-paced and tautly suspenseful Mister Slaughter and Eliot Pattison’s Bone Rattler.” USA Today listed it as the top summer reading pick for the mystery/suspense category. Zimmerman was the first author in our Penguin Debut Authors program (read the chat & hear a podcast Q&A with the author here). She will also be featured on the ALTAFF Historical Fiction panel at ALA (Sat., 10:30 to noon)

Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt (RH/Dial Press) is a debut novel about two sisters who lose their uncle in the mid-’80s as AIDS is on the rise, and must come to terms with “love that’s too big to stay in a tiny bucket. Splashing out in the most embarrassing way possible.” On our GalleyChat, one librarian called it the “best book I’ve ever read.” Like the previous titles, it is one of BookPage‘s Most-Buzzed About Debuts. The Minneapolis Star Tribune lists it among their eight books for summer: “Carol Rifka Brunt establishes herself as an emerging author to watch.  Tell the Wolves I’m Home will undoubtedly be this summer’s literary sleeper hit.”

Tumbleweeds by Leila Meacham (Hachette/Grand Central; Hachette Audio; Thorndike Large Print) is the sprawling story of a love triangle between two high school football heroes and the orphan girl they befriend, who are separated by a teenage prank gone awry and an accidental pregnancy, with far-reaching consequences. LJ says, “Readers who love epic sagas that span a couple of generations will enjoy this soap opera tale of young love, betrayal, and living a life that might not have a happy ending.” 125,000-copy first-printing. One-day laydown.

Gone Missing: A Thriller by Linda Castillo (Macmillan/Minotaur) is the fourth Amish mystery featuring Chief of Police Kate Burkholder, and is set during Rumspringa — when Amish teens are allowed to experience life outside the community, a practice that always fascinates outsiders. PW says, “Castillo ratchets up the tension nicely before the disconcerting ending.” Castillo’s previous titles have hit the NYT hardcover list, but only the extended (highest, #21). Holds are heavy in some libraries. The publisher is putting extra marketing push behind this one.

Usual Suspects

Wicked Business: A Lizzy and Diesel Novel by Janet Evanovich (RH/Bantam; RH Audio; Thorndike Large Print) finds Salem, Massachusetts pastry chef Lizzy Tucker once again drawn into solving a mystery with her sexy but off-limits partner Diesel – this time involving an ancient Stone believed by some to be infused with the power of lust.

The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter (Harper) is the Discworld creator’s first novel in 30 years to be set in a new universe – this time comprised of an infinite number of parallel Earths, all devoid of humans, which will be explored by the gifted Joshua Valiente, employee of the Black Corporation. PW says, “the slow-burning plot plays second fiddle to the fascinating premise, and the authors seem to have more fun developing backstory and concepts than any real tension. An abrupt conclusion comes as an unwelcome end to this tale of exploration.”

The Risk Agent by Ridley Pearson (Putnam Adult; Brilliance Audio) is a thriller about a Chinese National who runs into intrigue while working for an American-owned in Shanghai (where the author lived with his family in 2008-2009). LJ says, “Famous for his plotting and attention to details, Pearson is off to a great start with his compelling and multilayered new protagonists. His many fans as well as readers who love international thrillers won’t be disappointed.”

Nonfiction

American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama by Rachel L. Swarns (HarperCollins/Amistad) is the story of the First Lady’s lineage, starting with slave girl Melvinia in the mid 1800s in Jonesboro, Georgia, the mother of Dolphus Shields, Michelle Obama’s maternal great-great-grandfather.  Kirkus says, “Swarns provides numerous tales of heartbreak and achievement, many of which essentially make up the American story. Elegantly woven strands in a not-so-easy-to-follow whole, but tremendously moving.” 100,000-copy first printing.

Barack Obama: The Story by David Maraniss (Simon & Schuster; S&S Audio) is a multi-generational biography of Barack Obama and his family, based on hundreds of interviews, including with President Obama – written by the author and associate editor of the Washington Post.  PW says, “Obama’s story here is interior and un-charismatic, but it makes for a revealing study in character-formation as destiny. The book ends as Obama prepares to enter Harvard Law.” One-day laydown.