EarlyWord

You can’t help but wonder if the debut novel, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Doubleday, 9/13; Audio, RH Audio and Books on Tape; Large Print, Center Point), will be swamped by the weight of its expectations. Last month, USA Today reported that booksellers are expecting it to be bigger than either The Help or The Da Vinci Code. On Friday, Wall Street Journal reported that the fates of  no less than two businesses rest on its success.

The studio behind the planned movie adaptation hopes it will fill the hole left by the Twilight movie franchise, which it also produced. To help ensure that, Summit has promoted the book on the Twilight Facebook page.

Comparisons are also being made to Harry Potter (Summit is in talks with HP producer David Heyman to take it on). There is one definite similarity to Harry Potter; Jim Dale, beloved for his HP readings, narrates the audio version (RH Audio and Books on Tape).

The WSJ also reports that booksellers see the book as no less than a cure for the recession, with some planning publication-day parties featuring magicians, contortionists and Tarot-card readers. For balance, the story adds a few caveats; crossover fantasy is a crowded marketplace, this book was written as a stand-alone rather than a series, and, since it’s published as an adult title, it won’t be displayed in YA.

Library holds are beginning to build, but not yet to levels that indicate a blockbuster.

If you haven’t received a print ARC, digital copies are available through both Edelweiss (click on green “Download Review Copy” on the right) and NetGalley.

This week, novels to watch include a new thriller by Danish bestseller Jussi Adler-Olsen and a bittersweet story of committed love from comedy writer Patricia Marx. Usual suspects in fiction include Laura Lippman, Kathy Reichs and Terry Brooks. Nonfiction highlights include a memoir by Erica Heller, the daughter of Joseph Heller, and a parable by Buddhist bestseller Thich Nhat Hanh.

Watch List

Keeper of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen (Dutton; Penguin Audio; Thorndike Large Print; audio & eBook, OverDrive) is a thriller by the bestselling Danish author, about former homicide detective Carl Morck in charge of handling Copenhagen’s cold cases, including one about a missing politician. As we noted in an earlier roundup of Nordic Noir coming this summer, PW gave this this one a starred review, saying “Stieg Larsson fans will be delighted.”

Starting from Happy by Patricia Marx (Scribner) is a comical exploration of romance through the unlikely match up of a lingerie designer and a scientist, written in 618 “chaplettes.” The author has written comedy for Saturday Night Live and the New Yorker, as well as the 2007 novel Him Her Him Again The End of Him. Booklist says, “Readers who enjoy the sly observations of Nora Ephron and the smart silliness of Woody Allen and Steve Martin should try it.”

We Others: New and Selected Stories by Steven Millhauser (Knopf) ranges across three decadesof the Pulitzer Prize winner’s stories. The Wall St. Journal says the best stories are “two concerning magicians, ‘Eisenheim the Illusionist’ (the basis of the very good 2006 film The Illusionist) and ‘The Knife Thrower,’ about a performer who may or may not be killing audience volunteers as part of his show. In these shimmering tales, the author deals directly with wonder and uncertainty rather than attempting to conjure those qualities through heavy-handed metaphors.”

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh (Ballantine; Audio, Random House Audio and Books on Tape and OverDrive; Large Print, Thorndike) is a debut about 18-year-old Victoria, who has placed out of the foster care system with perilously few resources, and finds an unlikely path to stabilty in her understanding of flowers, by an author who has fostered many children and also adopted one. The San Francisco Chronicle calls it “Jane Eyre for 2011” and “a cautionary tale about what happens to kids who’ve grown without families, one that strives to be honest but still hopeful.”

Usual Suspects

The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman (Morrow; Harper Audio; Large Print, HarperLuxe ) follows a circle of Baltimore friends who harbor a deadly secret. The Los Angeles Times say it “occupies the unlikely middle ground between thriller and coming-of-age saga… [but] doesn’t always measure up. On the one hand, [Lippman] effectively evokes the wildness of kids alone in a landscape of their own making… yet there is also something a bit headlong, a bit unformed about [her] writing.”

Flash and Bones by Kathy Reichs (Scribner; S&S Audio; Large Print, Wheeler/Thorndike) is the 14th thriller with forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Library Journal says, “Although devoted Reichs fans will miss the clever repartee and nonstop action of her previous novels, they will still plod through this one. Series newcomers will find earlier titles, such as 206 Bones and Bare Bones, far more interesting.”

Young Adult and Children’s

Bloodlines (Razorbill/Penguin) by Richelle Mead is a new teen fiction series, set in the same world as the Vampire Academy series. Fans rose to the author’s challenge  to pre-order 10,000 copies. The second book in the series, The Golden Lily is scheduled for spring 2012.

Torn by Margaret Peterson Haddix (Simon & Schuster; Large Print, Thorndike) is book four of the children’s time traveling Missing series.

Nonfiction

Yossarian Slept Here: When Joseph Heller Was Dad, the Apthorp Was Home, and Life Was a Catch-22 by Erica Heller (Simon & Schuster; Tantor Audio) recalls the tumultuous and eccentric childhood of Joseph Heller’s daughter. PW says, “The total effect is akin to leafing through a bulging family scrapbook where one finds a few blurry images among many snapshots in sharp focus. Erica Heller has inherited her father’s finely tuned flair with words.” And in a review that compares Heller’s memoir with a new biography by Tracy Daugherty called Just One Catch, The Los Angeles Times adds that Yossarian Slept Here is “much deeper and feels like all a reader needs to get the feel for the man who wrote, and lived with having written, “Catch-22.”

The Novice: A Story of True Love by Thich Nhat Hanh (HarperOne) is a parable about a Vietnamese woman who dresses like a man in order to become a Buddhist monk, by the second bestselling Buddhist author in the U.S.

The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse That Inspired a Nation by Elizabeth Letts (Ballantine) chronicles the surprise success of Harry de Leyer and his horse Snowman in the late 1950s. Kirkus calls it “aheartwarming story begging for the Disney treatment.” USA Today gave it early attention on Friday.

Author Connie Willis won her third Hugo for best novel (in total, she’s won eleven Hugo’s) for the time travel two-book title, Blackout / All Clear (Spectra/Random House; Audio, Blackout and All Clear, Brilliance; audio and ebook for both titles on OverDrive) at the awards ceremony in Reno, Nevada on Saturday. Earlier, the book also picked up both the Nebula and the Locus Award for Best Novel.

The other winners in the best writing categories are below (the full list of the 2011 Hugo Award is here):

CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER — Lev Grossman

Surprised that Time magazine’s book critic, Grossman, who just released his second book, The Magician King, (Viking, 8/9/11) is considered a “new writer”? You’re not the only one; according to io9, Grossman acknowledged in his acceptance that he’s “not a very new person — but it took him some time to figure out what he wanted to do and who he wanted to be.”

BEST NOVELLA

The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang (Subterranean) — Several libraries own the hardcover edition of this book, which is now out of print. The full text is available on Subterranean’s Web Site. It was also a nominee for the Nebula in this category.

BEST NOVELETTE

The Emperor of Mars by Allen M. Steele (Asimov’s, June 2010) – Available on the author’s Web site. This is the author’s third Hugo. Steele has written several novels; the latest is Hex (Ace, 6/7/11), the eighth in the Coyote space opera series.

BEST SHORT STORY

For Want of a Nail by Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s, September 2010) – Read on the author’s Web site. Author’s debut novel is Shades of Milk and Honey (Tor/Macmillan, 2010; audio, Macmillan Audio and on OverDrive).

BEST GRAPHIC STORY

Girl Genius, Volume 10: Agatha Heterodyne and the Guardian Muse, written by Phil and Kaja Foglio; art by Phil F — this is the third year for the category. Girl Genius has won it each year (EarlyWord’s Graphic Novel columnist, Robin Brenner, is also fan of the series, but warns that it’s difficult to buy any but the most recent volumes in the series from library vendors and the bindings don’t hold up to library use).

Called a “surprise summer hit” by USA Today, the film version of Kathryn Stockett’s The Help has brought in an estimated total of $71.8 million since it’s opening two weeks ago, which is “a rare success story for a modestly budgeted drama in summer.”

It rose to #1 at the box office, easily trouncing the weekend’s two book-to-movie debuts, both considered flops. Coming in at a lowly #9, One Day (based on last summer’s best selling original trade paperback by David Nicholls, Knopf) is the second film, and the second disappointment (after Reservation Road, based on the novel by John Burnham Schwartz), from Random House’s joint venture with Focus Films.

Based on a series of short stories, (although more closely associated with an earlier film starring a former California governor) Conan the Barbarian came in at #4. Not only was it considered a bust, but also a sign that star Jason Momoa should forget about a sequel and that audiences are falling out of love with 3-D films. The NYT says a variety of factors hurt the film, including “…a lack of interest by women in the subject matter, terrible reviews and a release date when consumers were distracted with vacations or back-to-school preparations.”

Below are the estimates of this weekend’s top-grossing movies, as reported by Box Office Mojo. Titles in bold are based on books; for tie-in information, see our “Movies Based on Books, Upcoming — with Tie-ins”

1. The Help, $20.5 million; $71.8 million, second week 
2. Rise of the Planet of the Apes, $16.3 million; $133.8 million, third week
3. Spy Kids 4D, $12 million, first weekend
4. Conan the Barbarian, $10 million, first weekend 
5. The Smurfs, $8 million; $117.8 million, fourth week
6. Fright Night, $7.9 million, first weekend
7. Final Destination 5, $7.7 million; $32.3 million, second week
8. 30:Minutes or Less, $6.3 million; $25.8 million, second week
9. One Day, $5.1 million, first weekend 
10. Crazy, Stupid, Love., $4.95 million; $64.4 million, fourth week

The movie The Help had a solid box office debut last week, edged out only by Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Kathryn Stockett, author of the novel the book is based on, has another reason to celebrate. The AP reports that on Tuesday, a Mississippi judge threw out a lawsuit in which Stockett’s brother’s African American maid, Ablene Cooper alleged the author used her likeness without permission.

The case was dismissed because it was brought after the one-year statue of limitations had expired between when Cooper received a copy of the book and the lawsuit was filed.

Delaware Tea Party politician Christine O’Donnell, is disproving the adage that any media attention is good media attention, reports The Christian Science Monitor.

Last night, she abruptly terminated her interview about her book, Trouble Maker, (St. Martin’s Press, 8/16) with CNN’s Piers Morgan after he asked about her views on gay marriage.

Despite more than 550 articles this morning, her book still only rose to a high of #1,524 on Amazon sales rankings and libraries are showing minimal holds.

Entertainment Weekly is one of the “lucky few” (one million) beta users of J.K. Rowling’s new site, Pottermore.com. They take it for a test drive and report on the experience.

Local attention for Yannick Murphy’s The Call (HarperPerennial, 8/2; ebook on OverDrive) has sent holds skyrocketing at Cuyahoga Public Library (thanks to Ben Wlodarczak for the tip). Cleveland Plain Dealer reviewer Karen R. Long, noting the sameness of titles on best seller lists, says,

If I had one plink of the magic wand this week, I’d inject Yannick Murphy’s jaunty, original novel The Call into the best-seller mix. Here is a book to break the formula, both edgy and moving.

Written in the first person, the novel is in the form of short pieces by a small town veterinarian.

Word is spreading; an equally laudatory piece from The Barnes and Noble Review was republished on Salon on Tuesday; “The portrait of family life that emerges in The Call — at once ironic and warm — is ‘as layered as something in nature.’ Wonderful.” The Boston Globe ran an enthusiastic review on Sunday. UPDATE: People magazine has also discovered it. In the 8/22 issue, they give it 4 of a possible 4 stars, and say it displays “an almost magical economy.”

The Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s Long urges readers to explore the author’s backlist:

Murphy, who lives in Vermont and wrote the astutely sensuous novel Signed, Mata Hari in 2007, creates a different book on every outing, each a reverie and a joy. She is that rarity: a sharp writer unafraid to be tender.

The book is a paperback original, making it easier to buy extra copies for readers advisory and browsing.

The Call: A Novel Yannick Murphy Retail Price: $12.99 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Harper Perennial – (2011-08-02) ISBN / EAN: 9780062023148 / 0062023144

Below is the harrowing trailer for one of the sensations of the Cannes Film Festival, We Need to Talk about Kevin, based on the book by Lionel Shriver. The movie, directed by Lynne Ramsay, stars Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly as the parents of the disturbed teenager Kevin, played by Ezra Miller.

It opens in a limited, Oscar-qualifying run in the US on Dec. 2 (the date at the end of the trailer is the British release date).

In today’s New York Times, Michiko Kakutani calls Amy Waldman’s The Submission, (FSG; Audio, AudioGo; Large Type, Thorndike) released yesterday, a “nervy and absorbing new novel.”

“Nervy” is a good description. Waldman writes about the blind submission to an architectural panel of  plans for a 9/11-like memorial. It turns out that the winner is a Muslim-American. Kakutani says,

Though this may sound, in summary, like a contrived, high-concept premise, Ms. Waldman not only captures the political furor and media storm that ensue, but also gives us an intimate, immediate sense of the fallout that these events have on the individuals involved… [giving] the reader a visceral understanding of how New York City and the country at large reacted to 9/11.

Waldman knows intimately the many issues an event like this would raise. As a New York Times reporter, she covered the Sept. 11 attacks and interviewed victims’ family members. She also reported on the international response to the attacks.

Listen to the author talk about the book on NPR’s Leonard Lopate Show here.

The Jewish Week calls the book is “much discussed.” We haven’t heard those discussions, but given the moral issues The Submission raises, it is certain to continue being much discussed and therefore, sounds ideal for book clubs. Clearly, there is anticipation, it is showing heavy holds on light ordering in many libraries.

Chris Cleave, the author of Little Bee, reviewing the book in the Washington Post, gave this analysis of significant post-9/11 novels, which is useful as we come up on the 10th anniversary:

[The form came] to prominence in 2003 with Frederic Beigbeder’s Windows on the World, by 2005 [it] had evolved through the twin strands of Jonathan Safran Foer’s urgent and heartfelt Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Ian McEwan’s universalized and reflective Saturday. By 2006, distance permitted the satire of Jess Walter’s The Zero and the subversion of Jay McInerney’s The Good Life, and the next year brought Don DeLillo’s definitive and artful Falling Man. It is by her clever shift of focus from the events of 9/11 to their commemoration that Amy Waldman takes this literary line forward, and it is through her respect for history — her own act of submission in choosing a humbler stage — that her novel stands so proudly within it.

USA Today recently rounded up the forthcoming nonfiction that will be published around the anniversary.

On Monday’s Fresh Air, Maureen Corrigan warned, “Make sure you start Helen Schulman’s new novel, This Beautiful Life, on a Friday night, so that when you find yourself compelled to stay up all hours reading it, you can take the rest of the weekend…to recover.”

This novel about a teenager whose life is ruined after a sexting incident is building steam. Two weeks ago, we issued a heavy holds alert. Holds have grown quickly since, with some libraries showing them as high as 14:1.

This Beautiful Life by Helen Schulman, (Harper, 8/2; Blackstone Audio; audio and ebook from OverDrive)

Tom Perotta’s forthcoming novel, The Leftovers, about what happens to those left behind after the Rapture, is being developed into a series by HBO, reports Variety. Perotta is writing the script and will co-produce. Two of his earlier books, Election and Little Children were made into film.

The Leftovers Tom Perrotta Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: St. Martin’s Press – (2011-08-30) ISBN / EAN: 9780312358341/ 031235834

Macmillan Audio

As the NYT reported last week, sales of poet Philip Levine’s books soared after his appointment as Poet Laureate was announced on Wednesday.

A Knopf spokeswoman told the NYT that they are doing a rush reprint of Levine’s books and expect to meet all of the demand by early next week.

For those who want access to Levine’s poetry immediately, his most recent collection, News of the World is available on OverDrive.

News of the World Philip Levine Retail Price: $16.00 Hardcover: 80 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2011-02-15) ISBN / EAN: 9780375711909 / 0375711902

Levine won the 1991 National Book Award for his collection What Work Is, (Knopf, 9780679740582) and the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for The Simple Truth, (Knopf, 9780679765844). He was interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered last night.

Kevin Mitnick was one of the top computer hackers during the 70’s and 80’s. Eventually caught and jailed, he now works as a security consultant. As his new memoir, Ghost in the Wires (written with William L. Simon) shows, his ability to con people into giving him information was even more important to his hacking career than his computer skills.

The author will appear on The Colbert Report on Thursday. On Sunday, the book was reviewed in both the NYT BR (which says it “reads like a contemporary über-geeky thriller”) and the Boston Globe. Holds are already heavy where ordering is light.

Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker Kevin Mitnick Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 432 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2011-08-15) ISBN / EAN: 0316037702 / 9780316037709

Audio, Blackstone Audio

The 8/11 New York Time Book Review calls Nicholson Baker’s House of Holes (S&S, 8/9; 9781439189511) “hilarious and extremely dirty.”

Unsurprisingly, that review sent the book up Amazon’s sales rankings, to #65 (from #130), where it is as of this morning. Holds are running as high as 5:1 in libraries.

But serious science trumps literary smut, at least this time. The book that got the biggest boost is The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World, David Deutsch (Viking, 7/21; 9780670022755) which went to #48 from #173. Library orders are light with holds as high as 3:1. The review calls it,

…a brilliant and exhilarating and profoundly eccentric book. It’s about everything: art, science, philosophy, history, politics, evil, death, the future, infinity, bugs, thumbs, what have you…[author Deutsch] is so smart, and so strange, and so creative, and so inexhaustibly curious, and so vividly intellectually alive, that it is a distinct privilege… to spend time in his head.

After a series of laudatory reviews and strong word of mouth, the NYT BR sent Rules of Civility by Amor Towles to #61 from #124. Library holds continue to be heavy.

It also debuted on the 8/14 NYT Print Fiction best seller list at #16 (it’s tied with #15, so it’s on the main list rather than the extended).