EarlyWord

Holds are  outpacing the number of copies in libraries for Amanda Ripley’s critique of American education, The Smartest Kids in the World (S&S), but that’s not saying much, since library ordering was minimal. Holds may rise now that it is featured on the cover of this week’s NYT Book Review, and is called a “masterly book [that] can also generate the will to make changes.”

This issue also features a “Back to School Children’s Books” section.

The trailer for the movie based on Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, (RH/Knopf) starring Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson and Sophie Nélisse in the lead, arrived online yesterday and already the book is rising on Amazon.

For those who are concerned that the novel’s narrator, Death, is missing from the trailer, the author himself assures readers on his blog that Death will be featured in the movie.

The movie debuts on Nov. 15.

Official Movie Site: TheBookThief.com

Standing in the library that served as a “safe haven” to her and her four siblings (Middle Country Public Library on Long Island, NY) when they were the homeless children of a mentally ill and abusive mother, Regina Calcaterra talks to Inside Edition (video here) about her memoir of that time, Etched in Sand (HarperCollins/Morrow original trade pbk).

Amazingly, Calcaterra managed to not only survive, but to also put herself through law school and help her siblings who are now all doing well. She says she is very moved by “just the thought that my book may be in this library where I came as a kid who was impoverished and that one day one of these kids are going to be reading it too and figuring out how … they are going to be able to pull themselves up out and out.”

In the new issue of People magazine reviewer Caroline Leavitt writes, “Her book reminds us that it’s possible to suffer the unimaginable and still grow up to make a difference.”

Arriving next week are new titles by several favorite mystery authors, led by Louise Penny, whose previous Inspector Gamache title, The Beautiful Mystery, hit new highs for her on best seller lists, debuting at #2 on the NYT  list. The new novel, How the Light Gets In receives 4 of 4 stars in the new issue of People, saying. “Penny delivers a masterful, nuanced suspense novel in which tone and setting are just as riveting as the murder’s who and why.” It is featured on the inaugural LibraryReads list. Also arriving are new titles by Diane Mott Davidson, Kathy Reichs, and the mother/son writing team of Charles Todd.

Below are several titles to keep your eye on; all the titles highlighted here and more coming next week are listed on our downloadable spreadsheet, with ordering information and alternate formats, New Title Radar, Week of 8/26/13.

Watch List

The Returned, Jason Mott, (Harlequin/MIRA; Brilliance; Thorndike)

Book trailers are so yesterday. This debut has one, but it also arrives with a trailer for an ABC series based on it. Inexplicably renamed Resurrection, it begins in March.

This debut engendered  big buzz at BEA this year and was a favorite among librarians on the Shout ‘n’ Share panel. It’s on the inaugural LibraryReads list, with this compelling annotation:

Around the world, people are coming back from the dead and trying to reunite with their loved ones. In a tiny Southern town, Harold and Lucille Hargrave are astonished to have their son Jacob come back to them fifty years after he died. A global government agency at first works to reunite “The Returned” with their families, then later confines them as more and more people come back from the dead. A beautifully written exploration of love and family, community and responsibility, and a perfect book group selection. – Vicki Nesting, St. Charles Parish Library, Destrehan, LA

It’s received 4 starred reviews from the pre-pub sources and Entertainment Weekly gives it a B+.

ABC series trailer:

The Affairs of Others, Amy Grace Loyd, (Picador)

This debut gets an A- from Entertainment Weekly, which calls it mesmerizing. It is also an IndieNext pick for September;

“With elements of both Alfred Hitchcock and Ian McEwan, this gorgeously written novel seduces the reader into a fascinating world with its own vortex. Celia, the young widow who keeps careful tabs on her Brooklyn apartment building, is drawn deeply into her tenants’ lives after the sensuous Hope takes a sublet. Peopled with intriguing characters — the elderly ferry boat captain who doesn’t mind climbing four flights to his room with a water view, the disappearing cleaning woman — and infused with the sights and sounds of the perpetually mysterious New York City, this book unfolds with stunning momentum and reverberates long after the reader has turned the final page.” —Jaime Clarke, Newtonville Books, Newton Centre, MA

Early Decision, Lacy Crawford, (HarperCollins/Morrow)

Entertainment Weekly gives this a B+, but it may rate an A+ among certain audiences, based on the following; “Overbearing moms and dads scheming to secure their kid a place at Harvard will find this novel more helpful than any nonfiction book on the market. But everyone else can enjoy Early Decision for what it is: a sweetly sharp modern-day comedy of manners about the brutally competitive college-admissions ordeal.”

Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, Sarah Weinman, (Penguin Books)

As the NYT noted last week, “readers looking for ‘the next Gillian Flynn’ would be smart to consider her predecessors,“ featured in this anthology by the most insightful writer on mysteries today, Sarah Weinmen. The intro alone should be required reading for all reader’s advisors (and Penguin is offering a chance to win a copy).

Nonfiction

War Dogs, Rebecca Frankel, (S&S/Atria)

Rebecca Frankel is the “Chief Canine Correspondent” for “Best Defense,” on Foreign Policy‘s web site. Her column, “War Dog of the Week” gets millions of hits (unsurprisingly, it’s the most popular section of Foreign Policy‘s site). Other books on dogs at war, such as Maria Goodavage’s Soldier Dogs (Penguin/Dutton; 2012) and Trident K9 Warriors (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; April, 2013) have hit best seller lists. You don’t need to know all that to bet this will be popular; just look at that cover.

In The Rolling Stone Daniel Schechter describes the lengths he went to in his effort to get the rights to Elmore Leonard’s book, The Switch (HarperCollins/Morrow, part of a series of recent rereleases in trade paperback of Leonard’s classic backlist) and how hopeful he was that the author would like the resulting movie, titled Life of Crime.

He had reason to be nervous. With the exceptions of Jackie Brown, Get Shorty, and the FX series, Justified, Leonard wasn’t a fan of the majority of the many adaptations of his work. With the author’s death on Tuesday, first-time director Schecter will never know which category his film would have fallen into.

Starring Jennifer Aniston, the movie was renamed Life of Crime, presumably to separate it from a very different movie Aniston starred in earlier, The Switch, based on a Jeffrey Eugenides’ short story The Baster.

Life of Crime, which also stars John Hawkes, Isla Fisher and Tim Robbins, will premiere next month at the Toronto International Film Festival’s closing gala, which, notes The Rolling Stone is “an unprecedented honor for a relatively new filmmaker” and will be dedicated to Leonard’s memory.

On Inside Edition, Jane Velez-Mitchell discusses her book, Exposed: The Secret Life Of Jodi Arias (Harrper/Morrow; download the EXPOSED_PRESS release with more information on the book here). The book was embargoed, so there were no prepub reviews.

It was also excerpted in the New York Post over the weekend.

Many more appearances are in the works on CNN (the author has a nightly show on CNN/HLN).

Today marks the arrival of two major launches. In addition to Night Film (see previous post), Samantha Shannon’s  The Bone Season, (Macmillan/Bloomsbury) also arrives. The first title in the Today Show’s  reincarnated Book Club,  announced today, is this debut by a  21-year-old novelist, the first in a planned seven-part series (yes there is talk of a movie).

The launch of the Club received a remarkable amount of press, including a feature in  the New York Times, “Today Is Starting Oprah-like Book Club.” The author was also profiled in today’s USA Today, and, over the weekend, NPR asked an often-repeated question, “Could This Be The Next Harry Pottter?”

Libraries report that demand is rising.

The Today Show announcement is below:

The official book trailer:

We just learned the sad news that Elmore Leonard, who was hospitalized three weeks ago with a stroke, died at 87 at his home this morning. The news was announced on his Web site.

The most recent of his 45 novels was Raylan, published last fall (Harper/Morrow; Blackstone Audio) the third crime novel featuring U.S. marshal Raylan Givens. The character was the basis for FX series,  Justified. According to the NYT obituary, he approved of the series, which was unusual for him, since he “candidly and comically disdainful of the treatment his books generally received from Hollywood,” and even wrote this book with the series in mind.

Today is the release day for Marisha Pessl’s heavily-anticipated second novel, Night Film, (Random House; RH Audio). Random House pulled out all the publicity stops, liberally greasing anticipation with advance readers copies. That worked. It was listed in many of the summer previews, from The Millions to USA Today and was reviewed in advance of publication by several consumer sources.

As a result, libraries are showing a respectable number of holds on cautious ordering (275 on 50 copies in one large system), about the level of prepublication demand for another title Random House pulled out the stops for, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, (RH/Doubleday, 9/13/11).

The latest review, from USA Today is much more intriguing than their 3 out of 4 star rating would indicate. Says the reviewer, “In her haunting 600-page novel, Pessl fashions an indelible character, a deeply enigmatic master of terrifying cinema,” also noting, “There’s even a Night Film app. If this all sounds too multi-media gimmicky, it actually adds to the urgency of a thoroughly spooky story.”

The other reviews have been mixed, but we’re betting that readers will continue to want to know what the fuss is about.

Scott Anderson’s appearance on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday to discuss his new book Lawrence in Arabia, (RH/Doubleday; Blackstone Audio) caused the book to soar to #16 on Amazon’s sales rankings (from #96).

Holds continue to grow in libraries on minimal ordering (we issued a Holds Alert on it last week).

Jeremy Irvine, who played the lead in 2011’s War Horse, is set to star in an adaptation of the first book in Lauren Kate’s best selling YA novels featuring fallen angels, Fallen, (RH/Delacorte, 2009) reports Deadline. Starring opposite him will be Addison Timlin, who appeared in the decidedly non-YA Showtime series, Californication

Kirkus praised the book’s Southern Gothic atmosphere, as “so well crafted that readers can easily picture Luce walking among the marshes and crumbling buildings.”

No news yet on who is going to play the book’s “evil school librarian.”

Fallen, was followed by Torment (2010), Passion (2011) and the final title in the series, Rapture (2012). Kate begins a new supernatural YA trilogy this fall with Teardrop (RH/Delacorte, 10/22/13; Listening Library).

In other supernatural-YA-romance-to-movie news, the first trailer for Vampire Academy has just appeared online. Based on the first book in Richelle Mead’s series (Penguin/Razorbill), it is expected to be the beginning of a franchise (there’s plenty more material; the series consists of six books with more in the on-going spinoff series Bloodlines). Directed by Mark Waters (Mean Girls), it stars Zoey Deutch and Lucy Fry and opens Feb. 14, 2014.

With titles that make them sound like the odd couple of fiction, the word-of-mouth hits of the summer are steadily climbing the best seller lists. The Husband’s Secret, by Liane Moriarty, (Penguin/Putnam/Amy Einhorn; Thorndike) is now at #10 on USA Today‘s list, up from #32 last week, after 2 weeks. The Silent Wife by A. S. A. Harrison (Penguin; Blackstone Audio), a trade paperback original, is a few spots behind, at #17, up from #26, after 5 weeks (no doubt helped along by the fact that it is now stocked at Walmart).

Both have been compared to Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, (RH/Crown), now at #24 after an amazing 62 weeks.

The new attention to the “domestic suspense” genre is perfect timing for mystery critic Sarah Weinman’s new book, Troubled Daughters. Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense, (Penguin) coming next week. The NYT Book Review‘s “Inside the List” notes that readers looking for more in the genre should explore the authors in Weinman’s book, who, as she says in her introduction, use the genre to “take a scalpel to contemporary society and slice away until its dark essence reveals itself.” Salon‘s Laura Miller also features Weinman’s book in “The Grandmothers of Gone Girl.”

Watch for an opportunity to win Troubled Daughters. Twisted Wives in Penguin’s giveaway on EarlyWord tomorrow.

Among the titles we’re watching next week is a book that has had so much attention it seems to be causing a backlash among reviewers, Night Film by Marisha Pessl (Random House). Author James McBride publishes his first book in four years, a novel with a surprising twist and newly minted best seller JoJo Moyes follows up last year’s word of mouth hit.

All of the books highlighted here and more coming next week, are also listed on our downloadable spreadsheet with ordering information and alternate formats, New Title Radar, Week of Aug 19

Best Selling Authors

After publishing ten novels, British romance author Jojo Moyes became a best seller last year with Me Before You, a book that added a Jodi Picoult type poignancy to the author’s usual style, featuring the relationship between a quadriplegic and  his caregiver. This step away from the romance genre was signaled by a distinctive all-type cover. The Girl You Left Behind (Penguin/Pamela Dorman; Thorndike) continues that cover style (now that Moyes is a best selling author, her name migrates into large letters above the title). The novel follows two love stories, 90 years apart linked by a painting. This is more familiar territory for Moyes; Last Letter From Your Lover, 2011, also features a double love story, set years apart and linked by a letter. Entertainment Weekly gives the new book an A-.

The Good Lord Bird, James McBride, (Penguin/Riverhead; Dreamscape audio; Thorndike)

Speaking of covers, at first glance, does the one at the left look like a novel by James McBride, or a new book by Alexander McCall Smith?

Clearly something is afoot. McBride, author of the memoir, The Color of Water, a NYT bestseller for over two years, and two novels based on events in African American history, Miracle at St. Anna (2002) and Song Yet Sung (2009) again turns to history . This time, it’s the abolitionist John Brown. The twist signaled by the cover is that this one, amazingly, is a comedy. It is featured on the cover of the upcoming NYT Sunday Book Review, which applauds the book for its “countless uproarious moments,” and says McBride is “like a modern-day Mark Twain: evoking sheer glee with every page.”

Watch List 

 Night Film, Marisha Pessl, (Random House; RH Audio)

After a remarkable amount of prepub attention, including a feature on last week’s CBS Sunday Morning, which included the book’s eerie trailer, Marisha Pessl’s novel broke in to the top 100 on Amazon sales rankings with growing holds in libraries.

Now come the backlash. Janet Maslin reviews it in the NYT on Thursday and is definitely not a fan. Author Joe Hill, reviewing it in the upcoming NYT BR also rains on the parade and the L.A. Times critic, David Ulin finds it problematic, saying the book held him “hostage” (and not in a good way). Even Entertainment Weekly, for all the attention the “Shelf Life” blog lavished on the book, gives it just a B. Several librarians on GalleyChat reported they were grabbed by the first half, but let down by the second. All said they were enthralled by the integration of images and text (the Wall Street Journal looks at the lengths the author went to in creating the visual elements. A free app is included in the book to explore more).

The book is on the inaugural LibraryReads list, with this convincing annotation:

Scott McGrath has it all — a successful career in journalism, a beautiful wife, and an adorable daughter — until his impulsive, possibly libelous comment about the mysterious film director Stanislav Cordova causes everything to fall apart. Five years later, Cordova’s talented daughter, Ashley, dies from an apparent suicide — or is it? A giant, delicious, juicy read in the noir tradition that cuts across genres.

Elizabeth Olesh, Nassau Library System, Uniondale, NY

The Bone Season, Samantha Shannon, (Macmillan/Bloomsbury)

The 21-year-old novelist is profiled in New York magazine ahead of publication, noting that the author has been ” lauded as ‘the next J. K. Rowling, a comparison that both thrills and rankles,” the author who was six years old when the first Harry Potter was published and a big fan. But, she says her story about a clairvoyant who is shipped off to a penal colony in a future Great Britain which outlaws such powers, is “much darker.” It is an Indie Next title for Sept:  “Shannon has created a world that will set your imagination on fire and lure you in so absolutely that you will forget your surroundings.” The book is also considered a strong YA crossover title.

Media Magnet 

Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong – and What You Really Need to Know (Penguin Press, 8/20; Blackstone Audio)

We’ve had our eye on the controversy this book has been getting, expecting it to take off a la Tiger Mom. We’re surprised to find, however, in spite of all  the attention, holds are still low in libraries.

On the new USA Today best seller list (download it here), the latest title by James Patterson, Mistress,  lands at #2, behind Maya Banks’ Burn (Penguin/Berkley; Brilliance Audio), the final book in her erotic trilogy, Breathless. This is the author’s  first time at #1 on the list.

Banks’s deal with Penguin/Berkley for the Breathless series was big news when it was announced, so big that it got covered by the Hollywood trade site, Deadline, even though no movie deal was attached.

This series makes use of less explicity erotic covers than some of Banks’s previous titles, featuring closeup photos of water, ice, and smoke.

The previous books in the series arrived in quick succession and both hit the USA Today list. Rush, published in February, arrived at No. 4 , and the second, Fever, hit No. 2 in April.

Letting Go (9780425272947), the first title in Banks’ next series, the Surrender Trilogy, (a spinoff of her earlier series, Sweet Surrender) will be published by Penguin/Berkley in February, 2014.

Life After Life, British author Kate Atkinson’s eighth title was published to critical acclaim in the spring and became the author’s biggest seller, debuting at #3 on the  NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Seller. It remained on the main list for 8 weeks.

Lionsgate has just acquired the film rights according to Deadline.

The book’s involved plot about woman who is reborn multiple times will represent an interesting challenge for screenwriters Semi Chellas, who has written for Mad Men, and Esta Spalding, (The Bridge).