EarlyWord

The Edgar Nominees have been announced. Winners will be announced on April 29th in NYC.

The nominees for Best Novel are below. The full list of all categories, including First Novel, YA and Juvenile, available on the Edgar site.

The Missing Tim Gautreaux Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2009-03-03) ISBN / EAN: 0307270157 / 9780307270153

Coming in trade pbk; 3/9/10; 9780307454683; $15

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The Odds Kathleen George Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Minotaur Books – (2009-06-09) ISBN / EAN: 0312549997 / 9780312549992

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The Last Child John Hart Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Minotaur Books – (2009-05-12) ISBN / EAN: 0312359322 / 9780312359324

Coming in trade pbk.; 3/10/10; 9780312642365; $14.99
UNABR. audio; Macmillan Audio; 9781427206664; $39.95
Audio available from OverDrive

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The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death Charlie Huston Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Ballantine Books – (2009-01-13) ISBN / EAN: 034550111X / 9780345501110

Now available in trade pbk; 9780345501127; $15
Audio and eBook available from OverDrive

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Nemesis (Harry Hole) Jo Nesbo Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Harper – (2009-01-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061655503 / 9780061655500

Now in trade paperback; 9780061655517; $14.99
Audio and eBook available from OverDrive

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A Beautiful Place to Die: (Detective Emmanuel Cooper) Malla Nunn Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Atria – (2009-01-06) ISBN / EAN: 1416586202 / 9781416586203

Also available in trade pbk; 9781416586210; $15

This is clever; Frommer’s is running a photo contest. The winner will have his or her photo featured on the cover of a Frommer’s book and will win $5,000 (contest ends 3/31).

How appropriate it would be if a librarian won, given what great travelers we are and how many Frommer’s titles libraries buy.

I’m no photographer, but just looking at the hundreds of photos that have already been entered serves as a mini-vacation.

This Sunday, Jan. 24th, I’ll be conducting a live interview with the always engaging and hilarious John Scieszka (author of The Time Warp Trio series and the modern classic The Stinky Cheese Man) at Symphony Space in NYC. The event includes a discussion with the audience, a creative writing project, and a book signing. Click here for tickets.

Also coming up is my online course, Children’s Book Publishing 101, offered through the Bank Street School. It runs January 29th through February 12th. Deadline for registration is today.

Kitty Kelley, who looks for people who are “lightning rods” as subjects of her biographies has found her next one; Oprah.

Entertainment Weekly‘s blog Shelf Life reports that Crown is planning a 500,000 copy first printing. The publisher is mum on details other than “[the book] will reveal Oprah as she has never been seen before.”

Years ago, Oprah was set to write her autobiography, but backed out.

Oprah: A Biography Kitty Kelley Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: Publisher: – (2010-04-13) ISBN / EAN: 0307394867 / 9780307394866

Random House Audio; 9780307749246; $50
Crown Large Print; Pbk; 9780739377857; $30

In an effort to “get ahead” of a tell-all book being released the week after next by a former aide, John Edwards has admitted that he is the father of Rielle Hunter’s daughter Quinn.

The aide, Andrew Young, had claimed he was the father to protect his boss. His book, The Politician, due on Feb. 2, rose to #117 on Amazon after the news broke.

The Politician: An Insider’s Account of John Edwards’s Pursuit of the Presidency and the Scandal That Brought Him Down Andrew Young Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books – (2010-02-02) ISBN / EAN: 031264065X / 9780312640651

Unabridged audio will be available from Tantor:

Publisher: Tantor, 2/22/10
Read by: Kevin Foley
Trade: 9781400116508; 10 CD’s; $34.99
Library: 9781400146505; 10 CD’s; $69.99
MP3: 9781400166503; 1 MP3-CD; $24.99

Currently at #11 on Amazon sales rankings after 3 days in the top 100, is a book that argues near-death experiences are proof of an afterlife.

Several libraries that own the book are showing heavy holds; 67 on 6 copies in one instance.

The book was featured on the Today Show and in the new issue of Time magazine.

Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences Jeffrey Long, Paul Perry Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: HarperOne – (2010-01-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061452556 / 9780061452550

eBook available from OverDrive

Two movies based on books open this weekend. Links to the trailers are to the right of the site, under “Books to Movies — Trailers”.

Creation explores how the death of Darwin’s 10-year daughter influenced his view of evolution and religion. It’s based on the book Darwin, His Daughter and Human Evolution by Randal Keynes (the tie-in uses the movie title).

The author was interviewed last night on Fresh Air with Terry Gross (listen to it here).

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JAN 22, 2010

Movie Title: Creation

Director: Jon Amiel

Starring: Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Northam

Based on: Darwin, His Daughter and Human Evolution by Randal Keynes

Official Web Site: CreationTheMovie.com

Tie-in:

Creation (Movie Tie-In): Darwin, His Daughter & Human Evolution Randal Keynes Retail Price: $16.00 Paperback: 448 pages Publisher: Riverhead Trade – (2009-11-25) ISBN / EAN: 1594484740 / 9781594484742

eBook available from OverDrive (under the title Creation)

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Been hearing the phrase “I ALREADY work around the clock!” a lot recently? It’s not just a reflection of how pressured people are feeling; it’s a quote from the new Harrison Ford/ Brendan Fraser movie Extraordinary Measures, based on the book The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million–and Bucked the Medical Establishment–in a Quest to Save His Children.

If you want to drive yourself nuts, listen to it on its own soundboard; if not, you can hear it in context in the movie trailer.

JAN 22, 2010

Movie Title: Extraordinary Measures

Director: Tom Vaughan

Starring: Harrison Ford, Brendan Fraser, Keri Russell

Official Movie Site

Based on: The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million–and Bucked the Medical Establishment–in a Quest to Save His Children, by Geeta Anand

The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million–and Bucked the Medical Establishment–in a Quest to Save His Children Geeta Anand Retail Price: $15.99 Paperback: 368 pages Publisher: Harper Paperbacks – (2010-01-01) ISBN / EAN: 006073440X / 9780060734404

eBook available from OverDrive.

The RUSA Reading List Awards are unusual for ALA; rather than literary fiction, they focus on genres, most of which are overlooked when best books awards are being handed out.

The awards were announced at MidWinter. Adriana Trigiani won in the Women’s Fiction category  and did what any bestselling author would do in her situation; she called her mom (who is a librarian).

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Winners are below, the full lists, with runners-up and readalikes (this is RUSA, after all!)  is available here.

Adrenaline

(Action, Thrillers and Adventure)

Gone Tomorrow (Jack Reacher, No. 13) Lee Child Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 432 pages Publisher: Delacorte Press – (2009-05-19) ISBN / EAN: 0385340575 / 9780385340571

Fantasy

Lamentation (The Psalms of Isaak) Ken Scholes Retail Price: $7.99 Mass Market Paperback: 432 pages Publisher: Tor Fantasy – (2009-09-01) ISBN / EAN: 0765360918 / 9780765360915

Historical Fiction

Agincourt: A Novel Bernard Cornwell Retail Price: $14.99 Paperback: 512 pages Publisher: Harper Paperbacks – (2010-01-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061578908 / 9780061578908

Horror

Last Days Brian Evenson Retail Price: $12.95 Paperback: 256 pages Publisher: Underland Press – (2009-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0980226007 / 9780980226003

Mystery

A Beautiful Place to Die: A Novel Malla Nunn Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 400 pages Publisher: Washington Square Press – (2009-10-20) ISBN / EAN: 1416586210 / 9781416586210

Romance

What Happens in London Julia Quinn Retail Price: $7.99 Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages Publisher: Avon – (2009-07-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061491888 / 9780061491887

Science Fiction

The Windup Girl Paolo Bacigalupi Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 300 pages Publisher: Night Shade Books – (2009-09-15) ISBN / EAN: 1597801577 / 9781597801577

Women’s Fiction

Very Valentine: A Novel Adriana Trigiani Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Harper – (2009-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061257052 / 9780061257056

Fox’s high school musical comedy Glee just won a Golden Globe for best TV musical or comedy series. I just learned that Little Brown Books for Young Readers will be publishing Glee books in the fall; original stories featuring our show favorites. Whoo, hooo!

Also coming is a Ghost Hunters series for middle grade readers, based on the Syfy series.

No bibliographic information yet; we’ll let you know when it’s available.

One of every 17 novels purchased in the US since 2006 was written by James Patterson. Of course, this is due not only to his popularity, but to his prodigious output.

The upcoming NYT Magazine features the author and describes how focused he is on the marketing of his books; not surprising from the former head of a major advertising agency. In the article, Patterson is matter-of-fact about his efforts to woo his audience, saying,

If you want to write for yourself, get a diary. If you want to write for a few friends, get a blog. But if you want to write for a lot of people, think about them a little bit. What do they like? What are their needs? A lot of people in this country go through their days numb. They need to be entertained. They need to feel something.

The article answers the question of why he produces so many books a year (up to seven hardcovers now). It’s because he learned,

Not only did more books mean more sales, they also meant greater visibility, ensuring that Patterson’s name would almost always be at the front of bookstores, with the rest of the new releases.

In fact, he publishes so many titles in so many formats that he keeps a full-time “brand manager” busy trafficking them through the production process.

And he never misses an opportunity:

…last year, after noticing he wasn’t selling in Scandinavia, he invited Sweden’s best-selling crime writer, Liza Marklund, to collaborate with him on an international thriller. Their novel, The Postcard Killers, is just being published in Sweden and will be out in the U.S. this summer.

Last season was about big-name authors; this one is about debuts, so we’re keeping our eyes out for titles that may hit (remember; The Help came out on 2/10 last year; we first highlighted it in a post on 2/12; it debuted on the 3/29 NYT Fiction bestseller list)

This week, Entertainment Weekly goes nuts for the debut Bloodroot by Amy Greene,

Some novels are so powerful, so magical in their sweep and voice, that they leave you feeling drugged. Close the pages and the people in them keep right on talking to you. Amy Greene’s debut novel, Bloodroot, set in the bone-poor hollows of the eastern Tennessee mountains, is such a book.

Needless to say, they give it an unqualified A.

The prepub reviews, however, were divided.

Booklist — starred review — “With a style as elegant as southern novelist Lee Smiths and a story as affecting as The Color Purple, this debut offers stirring testimony to the resilience of the human spirit.”

Kirkus — “…bound to be a big hit”

Library Journal — “Fans of Appalachian culture and/or family chronicles may find something to take pleasure in here; casual popular fiction readers should likely pass.”

PW — “Despite a few vivid moments, this uneven debut, a four-generation Appalachian family epic, loses sight of the intriguing mythology it lays out early on.”

Location: Setting is the author’s native Tennessee Smoky Mountains.

It’s an Indie Next pick for January. Bookseller Janel Feierabend from Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA describes it;

The isolated Appalachian setting in Bloodroot is a powerful, realistic, and truly American stage on which basic human traits emerge under the heavy hand of hardship and poverty. This multi-generational story is a must-read for those who wish to expand their horizons, experience a part of our country often ignored, and face challenges head-on through honest and sparse prose. I’m still reeling.

Bloodroot Amy Greene Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2010-01-12) ISBN / EAN: 0307269868 / 9780307269867

UNABR Simultaneous Audio: Random Audio; 9780307713230; $40
eBook available from OverDrive

Many of you heard Marilyn Johnson speak at MidWinter about her book on the importance of librarians in the digital age.

Good news; the book will also be avaiable in audio from Tantor. Link here to a PDF of the sell sheet. Release date is set for 2/22.

Publisher: Tantor
Read by: Hillary Huber
Running Time: 8 hrs – Unabridged
Trade: 9781400116348; 7 CD’s; $34.99
Library: 9781400146345; 7  CD’s; $69.99
MP3: 9781400166343; 1 MP3-CD; $24.99

This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All Marilyn Johnson Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Harper – (2010-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061431605 / 9780061431609

Wench by Dolan Perkins-Valdez has “sleeper success” written all over it, with a fascinating story line about an Ohio resort where slave masters brought their slave mistresses and rapturous early reviews, including one in People, calling it a “devastating beautiful account of a cruel past.”

The author appeared on NPR’s Tell Me a Story yesterday and added a third element to the list of pros; an author who can sell her book. She tells how she learned the story about the real resort that is the backdrop for her book, in a biography of W.E.B. Du Bois. Images of the actual resort are available on the author’s Web site.

Click here to listen to the story.

Location information: the real resort was in Xenia, in southwest Ohio near Dayton.The author was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee and now splits her time between Washington, DC and Seattle.

Wench Dolen Perkins Valdez Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Amistad – (2010-01-01) ISBN / EAN: 006170654X / 9780061706547 Unabridged Audio: Book on Tape Audio and eBook downloadable from OverDrive

Perkins-Valdez learned about the real resort in this bio of W.E.B. Du Bois, which won a Pulitzer Prize for Biography:

W. E. B. Du Bois, 1868-1919: Biography of a Race David Levering Lewis Retail Price: $24.00 Paperback: 752 pages Publisher: Holt Paperbacks – (1994-12-15) ISBN / EAN: 0805035680 / 9780805035681

Next week’s most-anticipated nonfiction book is bestselling business guru Seth Godin‘s guide to mastering the new economy, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?  Three of the four libraries we checked had it, with holds of close to 2:1 on orders of 8-15 copies

Though the reserves aren’t huge, they appear to be a positive effect of Godin’s gamble on Internet-only publicity campaign, in which he bypassed the traditional media, giving away books at his own expense to the first 3,000 readers who agreed to make a minium $30 donation to the Acumen Fund.

So far, Godin has a page of positive blog reviews and tweets to show for his efforts, and the Acumen Fund has raised more than $100,000.

Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? Seth Godin Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover – (2010-01-26) ISBN / EAN: 1591843162 / 9781591843160

Audio available from Random House on 2/09/10:

• CD: $15; ISBN 9780307704078

Other Major Titles Going on Sale Next Week:

Eternity Soup: Inside the Quest to End Aging by Greg Critser (Harmony) is a journalist’s irreverent look at the anti-aging industry. Kirkus found it “a delightful, politically incorrect view of the life-extension movement, accompanied by the disappointing news that aging is reversible but not in the near future.”

I Am Ozzy by Ozzy Osbourne (Grand Central) is the legendary rocker and reality show star’s memoir, which Kirkus deemed “as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.”

Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made in My Darkest Hour by Gayle Haggard (Tyndale) is a memoir by the wife of evangelical Christian leader Tim Haggard who had liaisons with a male prostitute.

Tea with Hezbollah: Sitting at the Enemies Table, Our Journey Through the Middle East by Ted Dekker and Middle East expert Carl Medearis  (Doubleday Religion) is an account of the Christian novelist’s effort to love his enemies.

As we noted yesterday, Robert Parker, whose recent death is being widely mourned by the reading community, has several more books coming. In addition to the two scheduled for release this year, his agent tells Entertainment Weekly that “a couple more” are in the pipeline and he was “30-40 pages into” a new Spenser novel when he died.

Below are the titles scheduled for this year:

Split Image (Jesse Stone) Robert B. Parker Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Putnam Adult – (2010-02-23) ISBN / EAN: 0399156232 / 9780399156236

Random House Audio; UNABR; 2/23/10; 9780739357484; $32
Thorndike Large Print; 2/1/10; 9781410421876; hdbk; $35.95
Audio available from OverDrive

Coming in May is the fourth in Parker’s Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch western series, following Appoloosa, Resolution and Brimstone.

Blue-Eyed Devil Robert B. Parker Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Putnam Adult – (2010-05-04) ISBN / EAN: 0399156488 / 9780399156489

Random House Audio; UNABR; 5/4/10; 9780307735478; $32