EarlyWord

The adaptation news for the week is centered on the second season of Outlander, which is based on book 2 of Diana Gabaldon’s beloved and long running series, Dragonfly In Amber (PRH/Delacorte, 1992; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample).

After waiting almost a year for the return of the show, and after leaving fans divided on how well or horribly season one concluded, all eyes now focus on the politics of warfare as Jamie and Claire travel to Paris in an attempt to stop the coming Jacobite rebellion.

Based on early coverage from EOnline!, the show is set to be a lavish, visual treat with even more gorgeous costumes and sets as the time-crossed lovers enter the Royal Court of France and host their own high-powered dinner parties. The site also reports that the massive and complex plot will be told in 13 continuous episodes rather than the divided 16 of season one (no midseason Droughtlander!).

A new tie-in edition celebrates the show’s long awaited return, complete with a cover shot that would be at home in Game of Thrones if it were set in the 18th century: Dragonfly in Amber (Starz Tie-in Edition), Diana Gabaldon (PRH/Bantam; also in mass market).

There are few reviews yet for the second season, which starts on April 9th but the show is already a proven winner. According to Entertainment Weekly, which pushed the series 2 opener in a cover story a few weeks ago, Outlander has made Starz the second-most popular premium network behind HBO and has also helped sell 5 million more copies of Diana Gabaldon’s books, raising the total to 27 million worldwide.

The reviews that do exist, such as one from TVLine which gives it a B+, explain that “Starz has put a pretty strict gag order on discussion of certain aspects of the upcoming season.”

Below is the official trailer followed by highlights of the new setting of season two.

The popular movie Home from DreamWorks Animation is set for a TV spinoff,  Home: Adventures With Tip & Oh, to debut July 29 on Netflix reports Deadline. The movie was based on Adam Rex’s chapter book, The True Meaning of Smekday, (Disney/Hyperion; Listening Library).

The series will have a new voice cast, with Rachel Crow as Tip, replacing Rihanna and Mark Whitten as Oh, replacing Jim Parsons.

Below, the movie Oh tests out various Earth objects — you WILL love the last one, trust us.

Several tie-ins to the movie were published:

Tip’s Tips on Friendship
Thies Schwarz
S&S/Simon Spotlight: February 10, 2015
Trade Paperback: $3.99 USD, $4.99 CAD
Ages 5 to 7, Grades K to 2

Home : The Chapter Book
Tracey West
S&S/Simon Spotlight: February 10, 2015
Trade Paperback: $5.99 USD, $6.99 CAD
Ages 7 to 10, Grades 2 to 5

The Story of One Super Boov
Ellie O’Ryan, Pierre Collet-Derby
S&S/Simon Spotlight: February 10, 2015
Trade Paperback; $3.99 USD, $4.99 CAD
Ages 3 to 7, Grades P to 2
NOTE: This is a 24-page 8 by 8, but it’s sticker-free

The Costco Book Club is back with Amy E. Reichert’s The Coincidence of Coconut Cake (S&S/Gallery Books; Tantor Audio; OverDrive Sample), in the April issue of COSTCO Connection, summarizing the plot as “Lou (short for Louella), a fledgling restaurateur, and Al, a restaurant critic who writes under a pseudonym … meet after Al writes a mean-spirited review of Lou’s restaurant. Having agreed not to talk about work, neither realizes who the other is – until romance is already in bloom.” Publisher S&S calls it “You’ve Got Mail meets How to Eat a Cupcake.” Costco also offers recipes by the author.

Based on circulation in libraries we checked, it should be a popular choice.  Holds are still very respectable at several systems, nearly a year after pub. date.

Also in the April issue, is the newest pick from Costco book buyer Pennie Clark Ianniciello. While confessing she does not often highlight a thriller, she has high praise for Harlan Coben’s Fool Me Once (PRH/Dutton; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample), saying, “His writing is sharp, the suspense is palpable and he laces it all with read emotion.”

The book is already a best seller, and as we mentioned earlier in the week, set to be a movie produced by and starring Julia Roberts.

Not only does Robert Kirkman rule the horror/thriller airwaves with his hit AMC series The Wallking Dead, he is about to get more screen exposure as Outcast premieres on Cinemax in a 10 episode run starting June 3.

Based on the comic Kirkman writes and Paul Azaceta illustrates, the supernatural horror tale stars Patrick Fugit (Gone Girl) and Philip Glenister (Life on Mars) as two characters caught in a web of demonic possession.

According to ScreenCrush, before the show even airs it has been renewed for a second season in 2017.

ScreenRant reports that Krikman began working on the TV adaptation before the first print issue of Outcast was published and plans for the series to be an epic horror tale full of scares.

Two collected editions are currently in print with a third to follow on June 15.

Below is the latest trailer for the show, released yesterday:

Outcast news arrives just in time to tease the season end of The Walking Dead on April 3, which AMC is pushing hard with the reveal of Negan, a character Den of Geek calls “a force of nature, unflinching in his cruelty, and the most formidable opponent Rick and his group have ever faced.”

Entertainment Weekly reports that the final episode is very rough and made star “Andrew Lincoln was so distraught, it was the only time he’s ever shown up late for work. Lauren Cohan says she didn’t even want to go to work. Josh McDermitt threw his script across the room [and] Norman Reedus … couldn’t speak after [watching] it.”

Season 7 of The Walking Dead will air sometime this October, as announced back in 2015 by a very confident AMC.

The heavily-anticipated debut novel The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney (HarperCollins/Ecco; HarperAudio) fulfills expectations by hitting the number 2 spot on USA Today ‘s best seller list.

It has also landed a movie deal with Amazon Films. Deadline‘s story notes that it will hit the NYT Best Seller list, to be released tomorrow, at #3.

The movie will be produced by Jill Soloway who also produced Amazn’s hit series, Transparent. The author will write the script.

The first black superhero in mainstream American comics, the Black Panther, appeared in 1966 in an issue of Marvel comics Fantastic Four. The character was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Jump ahead decades and he is about to debut again, in a story written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, the best-selling author of the National Book Award winner Between the World and Me.

The first issue of the comic, with art by Brian Stelfreeze, will appear on April 6th. It is the first of eleven that will be releases in paperback complications, beginning with #1-4, Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet Book 1 by Ta-Nehisi Coates, illustrated by Brian Stelfreeze (Hachette/Marvel; Sept. 27, 2016; ISBN: 9781302900533; $16.99).

Coates writes about creating a new vision for Black Panther, writing comics, and the role of comics in his life for the newest issue of The Atlantic, where he is a national correspondent, explaining why he found the opportunity irresistible,

“Some of the best days of my life were spent poring over the back issues of The Uncanny X-Men and The Amazing Spider-Man. As a child of the crack-riddled West Baltimore of the 1980s, I found the tales of comic books to be an escape, another reality where, very often, the weak and mocked could transform their fallibility into fantastic power.”

The story is getting coverage elsewhere as well, with a piece on the NYT‘s Web site today, an illustrated story on the pop culture site The Mary Sue earlier the month, and a Speakeasy interview in the WSJ with the Editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics.

All this comes as the Black Panther set to make his big-screen debut on May 5th in Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War. As we reported earlier, Chadwick Boseman will play the superhero monarch. The most recent movie trailer, below:

For background on the character, SuperHeroHype provides an illustrated look.

Artist Jim Kay, winner of the UK’s Kate Greenaway Medal, is working his way through the Harry Potter canon, illustrating each novel in turn.

Up next is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Illustrated Edition (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books; October 4, 2016; ISBN 9780545791328; $39.99)

J.K. Rowling’s website Pottermore released a set of sample drawings which include the cover image (of Harry and Ron in Mr. Weasley’s flying car), a portrait of Hagrid, an exterior view of Hogwarts, and a “da Vinci-esque study of Mandrakes.” There will be 115 images in all.

Entertainment Weekly and many other sites are reporting the story, and sharing the illustrations.

Kay’s version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone came out last October. This new edition is due on October 4th and is available to pre-order through wholesalers and retailers.

Oscar Isaac has joined the cast of the film adaptation of the Nebula Award-winning novel, Annihilation (Macmillan/FSG; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample), which already includes Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, and Tessa Thompson.

Alex Garland will direct. This project reunites Garland with Isaac, who starred in the director’s Ex Machina. Vanity Fair enthusiastically endorses the project, saying,  it “was already shaping up to be another incredible bit of original, cerebral sci-fi long before Oscar Isaac joined the cast.”

Annihilation tells the story of Area X, an isolated landscape cut off from human occupation which nature has taken back. Previous expeditions to the area have been resulted in tragedy. A new all-female group, each is known not by name, but only by her profession, is set to try again. Natalie Portman plays the biologist, the story’s narrator, and Isaac will play the ghost of her dead husband, who was a member of a previous expedition.

Annihilation is the first book in The Southern Reach trilogy, completed by Authority and Acceptance, The news sent the book rising on Amazon’s sales rankings

The movie is expected to be released in 2017.

Jessica Knoll’s 2015 debut thriller, Luckiest Girl Alive, is soaring up the Amazon charts once again due to a raw, confessional essay the author wrote for Lenny, a newsletter and website founded by Lena Dunham along with Jenni Konner, the showrunner for Girls.

Knoll discloses in the essay that the horrific rape segments of her novel are based on her own life story, events she first said were entirely fictional.

“The first person to tell me I was gang-raped was a therapist, seven years after the fact. The second was my literary agent, five years later, only she wasn’t talking about me. She was talking about Ani, the protagonist of my novel, Luckiest Girl Alive, which is a work of fiction. What I’ve kept to myself, up until today, is that its inspiration is not.”

The New York Times also reports the story, extending on the essay with an interview with Knoll who told the paper of the aftermath of the rape:

“No one was treating me like a victim; they were treating me like I was a perpetrator, like I was getting what I deserved … The message I internalized was that nothing bad happened; you did something wrong.”

Luckiest Girl Alive remains in high demand in every library we checked with holds queues still present at many. Reese Witherspoon optioned the film rights, and Knoll is hitting the road for a book tour to support the paperback edition of her novel (S&S, April 5).

Jane Austen fans, feast your eyes on the recently released trailer for the movie Love & Friendship.

Although it is based on an untitled novella published after Austen’s death as Lady Susan (available in several editions, including one from Penguin Classics), the movie uses the title of a different work by Austen, an early short story.

As we wrote earlier, the film is directed by Whit Stillman, described in an interview with Vanity Fair as “The cult director of contemporary and contemporary-ish Austen-inflected fare,” such as Metropolitan and The Last Days of Disco. It stars  Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny, with Xavier Samuel and Stephen Fry and is set for release in theaters on May 13. followed by streaming via Amazon Prime.

The tie-in is written by the director:

Love & Friendship: In Which Jane Austen’s Lady Susan Vernon Is Entirely Vindicated by Whit Stillman, (Hachette/Little, Brown).

The reviews of the screening at the Sundance Film Festival this year were warm, as exemplified by those from Vanity Fair, “Love & Friendship: A Cream Puff of a Movie” and the Guardian, “Kate Beckinsale is a devious delight.”

Just one week after it was published, Harlan Coben’s novel, Fool Me Once, Harlan Coben (PRH/Dutton; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample) is on the way to the big screen with Julia Roberts set to produce, according to Deadline,  and star as a former Army helicopter pilot who discovers something unsettling on her two-year old daughter’s nanny cam, images of her recently mudered husband.

Despite their cinematic qualities, only one of Coben’s novels has been adapted, the 2006 French film, Ne le dis à person (Tell No One). The rights to several others have been acquired, but are still listed as in development.

What would you do after the above hits?

Underwater Cats?

Don’t be silly. That would just be cruel (not to mention, not pretty).

No, you would have to change it up, featuring what cats do best …

Pounce, Seth Casteel, (Havhette/Little, Brown).

Sorry, it’s not coming until October. Entertainment Weekly claims to have the “exclusive cover reveal” on their site.

Last month the release of the teaser trailer for Me Before You caused the novel it’s based on to rise to number one on Amazon’s sales rankings. The extended trailer has just been released, causing both Me Before You and its sequel, After You, to rise again.

The new preview gets extended coverage with Entertainment Weekly counting down the 9 moments of the trailer that made them weep and US Magazine offering a lengthy summary of the 2 minute clip.

Due out June 3, the film stars Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones) and Sam Claflin (Finnick Odair from The Hunger Games) transitioning from worlds of dragons and death matches to life-affirming contemporary romance.

The novel’s author, JoJo Moyes, wrote the screenplay and a movie-tie in edition will be released on April 26: Me Before You: A Novel (Movie Tie-In) by Jojo Moyes (PRH/Penguin Books).

In every library we checked circulation remains very strong with most libraries having a long holds queue yet to be satisfied. Both titles are still on The New York Times Best Sellers list as well. Me Before You tops the Paperback Trade Fiction list and After You is no. 13 on the Hardcover Fiction list.

Coming a little late to the party, the daily New York Times reviews the heavily-anticipated debut novel The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney(HarperCollins/Ecco; HarperAudio). In an uncharacteristically non-committal review, Janet Maslin seems to find the book entertaining, while also resenting it for being exactly that.

In his review in the Washington Post, Ron Charles writes what could be a rejoinder, “Sweeney’s debut arrives on a velvet cushion of pre-pub praise (Amy Poehler! Elizabeth Gilbert!) and reports of at least a $1 million advance. But that’s no reason to turn up your nose.”

Published last week, it is rising on Amazon, indicating it is likely to appear on this week’s best seller list. Holds  at libraries we checked have doubled in the last week in cautious ordering.

The New York Times is well know for their stirring obituaries, but the one for writer Jim Harrison, who died Saturday at 78, is one of their most moving.

Just last week, the NYT Book Review featured Harrison in one of their “By the Book” profiles and reviewed his most recent book, The Ancient Minstrel, (Grove Press, 2/6/16) saying, “No one writes more persuasively about the natural world, the ways of animals both wild and domestic, rural roughneck mores, hunting and fishing, food, drinking, the writing life and, of course, male lust: reflexive, resistless, defiantly unfashionable.”

In January, he published a book of poetry, Dead Man’s Float (Copper Canyon Press). One of the poems from that collection is now particularly poignant,

My work piles up,
I falter with disease.
Time rushes toward me —it has no brakes. Still,
the radishes are good this year.
Run them through butter,
add a little salt.