EarlyWord

Best Books season kicks into gear with Publishers Weekly‘s picks of the top titles of the 2015.

As in years past, the PW editors offer a Top 10 list and divide their remaining picks into 12 categories including Mystery/Thriller, Nonfiction, Picture Books, and YA, with a total of 150 titles.

Maggie Nelson is the cover author this year. PW says that her “vital, shape-shifting memoir … The Argonauts, shook up what we thought nonfiction writing could do.” PW has a good track record in identifying new talent on their Best Books covers. Last year’s cover person was Marlon James, who went on to win the Booker for
A Brief History of Seven Killings. The year before, it was Hanya Yanagihara, for her first novel, The People in the Trees. This year, she is a finalist for the National Book Awards for her second novel, A Little Life.

Arriving in a year when transgender issues have been in the spotlight, Nelson writes about becoming a mother at the same time her partner transitions from female to male. Published by the award-winning indie Minneapolis literary press Greywolf (distributed by Random House), which was described more pointedly as “tiny” in a profile by New York magazine earlier this year, it received strong critical attention this spring. Praising it, the L.A. Times described the book’s unusual style as “a loose yet intricate tapestry of memoir, art criticism and gentle polemic.”

Translated titles have a notoriously difficult time finding an audience in the U.S., but three of the top ten picks were originally published in other languages. The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian (Europa), is the final novel in a series that has moved from cult status to best seller. It is joined by two more under-the-radar titiles, the German translation, Imperium by Christian Kracht,(Macmillan/ FSG), and the Indonesian Beauty Is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan (New Directions).

Again this year, we will compile  downloadable spreadsheets of all the Best Books selections, useful for end-of-the year buying, as more lists are released.

Just after the announcement that the film adaptation of The Girl on the Train is set for release a year from now, comes news about two other titles in the genre are taking major steps closer to screens.

Director Adrian Lyne has been selected to head up the film version of The Silent Wife, (Penguin, 2013) with Nicole Kidman starring. Lyne has had experience with stories about relationships gone spectacularly wrong, having directed both Unfaithful and Fatal Attraction.

The debut novel by A.S.A. Harrison, published as an original trade paperback, was a surprise best seller in 2013.

Another domestic thriller, also starring Kidman, this time along with Reese Witherspoon, Big Little Lies (PRH/Putnam, 2013) is in the works as an HBO limited series. It was just announced that Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers Club) is in talks to make his TV directorial debut adapting the novel by Liane Moriarty. Deadline calls this “the highest-profile limited series packages to come together for HBO since True Detective.”

Kidman and Witherspoon will produce the series. The pair clearly love the domestic thriller genre. This is the second title by Morality they have acquired, having optioned the rights last year to The Husband’s Secret  (Penguin/Putnam/Einhorn, 2013). In May, they optioned S.J. Watson’s Second Life (Harper, June 2015). Earlier, Kidman starred in the film version of Watson’s debut, Before I Go to Sleep (Harper, 2011).  Witherspoon was a producer for the movie Gone Girl.

Amazingly, neither of them have anything to do with The Girl on the Train.

The holds leader among the titles arriving next week is The Crossing by Michael Connelly (Hachette/Little, Brown), followed very closely by the next title in the favorite middle-school series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School (Abrams/Amulet).  Further behind is Stephen King’s new book of short stories, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (S&S/Scribner).

The week also brings a book with a cheeky title, The Grownup: A Story by the Author of Gone Girl (in case you don’t know who that is, her name appears on the cover). Originally published in George R.R. Martin’s short story anthology Rogues, (PRH/Bantam, 2014), it was then titled “What Do You Do?” The author is set to appear on NPR’s Weekend Edition this Sunday.

The titles covered here, and several more notable titles arriving next week, are listed with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of Nov. 2, 2015

Media Magnets

Strong Looks Better Naked, Khloé Kardashian, (S&S/Regan Arts)

The Kardashians have a genius for timing. Just as headlines have been occupied with stories of Khloé Kardashian sitting vigil next to her husband’s hospital bed and calling off her divorce, her new book is hitting shelves. People features her in a cover story and offers an excerpt.

Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, Donald J. Trump (S&S/Threshold)

Supposedly under a strict embargo, Politico nonetheless managed to find a copy in a bookstore and has released the “13 juiciest quotes” from Trump’s campaign book. Trump is scheduled to appear next week on  Good Morning America and Fox News Fox & Friends.

Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology, Leah Remini, (PRH/Ballantine)

As we wrote earlier, anticipation is building for this tell-all by the most high profile person to leave the Church of Scientology, actress Leah Remini. She is scheduled to appear on ABC-TV’s 20/20 tonight (sample, below), and next week on Good Morning America as well as CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360.

I Should Be Dead: My Life Surviving Politics, TV, and Addiction, (Hachette)

The “token liberal” on Fox News show The Five, Bob Beckel was fired while in rehab. He has now been hired by CNN to give a “blue-collar liberal” perspective.  The media, of course, will be fascinated.

He Killed Them All: Robert Durst and My Quest for Justice, (S&S/Gallery Books; S&S Audio)

Another look at the accused killer by a DA involved in one of his murder cases, is set for strong media attention:

• ABC-TV/ Good Morning America, November 2
• ABC-TV/Nightline, November 2
• Fox-TV/Fox & Friends, November 3
• Nationally Syndicated-TV/Inside Edition, November 3
• Nationally Syndicated-TV/Extra, November 3
• Fox-TV/The O’Reilly Factor, November 4
• ABC-TV/The View, November 6
• Fox News-TV/Robert Durst Special featuring Jeanine Pirro, November 7

Amazing Fantastic Incredible, Stan Lee, Peter David, and Colleen Doran, (S&S/Touchstone)

Stan Lee, the man who created some of the world’s most famous superheroes, is in the Hollywood news this week, announcing a new film that will feature the first Chinese female superhero. Titled Realm, it is currently in development with Li Bingbing set to star.

If you’re Stan Lee, of course your memoir will be in comic book form.

Peer Picks

The Mare by Mary Gaitskill (RH/Pantheon; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample)

Critics are racing to review Gaitskill’s latest. Dwight Garner’s review in the New York Times, is not completely positively, but the L.A. Times is a fan.

Indie Next:

“The Mare is the heart-wrenching story of a young inner-city girl in the Fresh Air Fund program who travels to a host family in upstate New York, where she befriends a frightened and abused racehorse at a nearby stable. Gaitskill navigates the ugly realities of both human and equine abuse, but, ultimately, this is a triumphant novel shaped by authentic characters and in which trust and determination win. Readers will be reminded of how our real-life connections with animals can both guide and heal.” —Nancy Scheemaker, Northshire Bookstore, Saratoga Springs, NY.

Little Victories: Perfect Rules for Imperfect Living by Jason Gay (RH/Doubleday; Random House Audio/BOT)

Gay was one of the speakers who charmed at the PRH Librarian Breakfast during BEA:

Gay’s book is a LibraryReads pick:

“This was a quick, enjoyable read that offers a refreshing perspective on some of the trivialities we all find ourselves caught up in. I enjoyed the tone and humor throughout. A standout for me was Gay’s list of recommendations for his child’s future baseball team. His open letter to this imagined future team envisions a team that can just let kids be kids. My only disappointment with this book was that there wasn’t more of it–it seemed to end all too soon.” —Lindley Homol, Chesterfield County Public Library, Chesterfield, VA.

Along the Infinite Sea by Beatriz Williams (PRH/G.P. Putnam’s Sons; Penguin Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample)

Both an Indie Next and a LibraryReads pick:

“When Pepper Schuyler–on the run from a powerful politician and desperate to protect her unborn child–sells her newly restored classic car to an enigmatic and very wealthy woman, she not only finds unexpected refuge but also tantalizing hints of a mystery. With vivid European settings, colorful characters and intricate plotting that skillfully weaves past and present together, Along The Infinite Sea is a treat for fans of Beatriz Williams.” —Beth Mills, New Rochelle Public Library, New Rochelle, NY.

The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild (RH/Knopf)

The incoming chair of London’s National Art Galley, Rothschild (yes, one of THOSE Rothschilds) is the first woman to hold that position. Naturally, her first novel is inspired by one of her favorite artists, Jean-Antoine Watteau. The author is set to be profiled in The  New York Times and to be interviewed on PBS’s Charlie Rose show.

It is both an Indie Next and a LibraryReads pick:

“The engaging, totally unexpected story of Annie, a lonely young woman who wanders into a junk shop and buys a painting. The painting turns out to have a long and storied past, with powerful people searching high and low for it. Unpredictable and fascinating; I loved the peek into the cutthroat art world and watching Annie blossom as she discovers her true calling.” —Heather Bistyga, Anderson County Library, Anderson, SC.

Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving (S&S; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample)

A People pick for the week — “once again Irving charms by blending the fantastical with what is deeply, affectingly real. ”

Irving will be featured on several TV shows:, including PBS’s Newshour, CBS-TV’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and NPR’s Diane Rehm.

Indie Next:

“With Avenue of Mysteries, Irving introduces readers to brother and sister Diego and Lupe, denizens of the massive garbage dump in Oaxaca, Mexico. Each sibling is remarkable — Lupe can intuit people’s thoughts and Diego, though uneducated, reads everything he can lay his hands on. Their childhood is recalled by the adult Diego as he travels in the Philippines, trying to accomplish a dying request from an acquaintance of his youth. Avenue of Mysteries contains all of the things we love about Irving’s novels: masterful storytelling, unforgettable characters, and a renewed sense of magic in everyday events.” —Mark LaFramboise, Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse, Washington, DC.

The Japanese Lover , Isabel Allende (S&S/Atria Books; S&S Audio)

An Indie Next pick, this is also the #1 LibraryReads title for the month:

“Irina is a young Moldavian immigrant with a troubled past. She works at an assisted living home where she meets Alma, a Holocaust survivor. Alma falls in love with Ichi, a young Japanese gardener, who survived Topaz, the Japanese internment camp. Despite man’s inhumanity to man, love, art and beauty can exist, as evidenced in their beautiful love story.” —Ellen Firer, Merrick Library, Merrick, NY.

The Muralist, B. A. Shapiro (Workman/Algonquin Books; HighBridge Audio)

The #1 Indie Next title for the month, this is also a LibraryReads pick:

“This art-filled story following the young life and disappearance of Alizee Benoit is heartbreaking and thoughtful. Not only does the novel give an entertaining education on the WPA and abstract artists, but it also gives eerily relevant commentary on refugees and the cold-heartedness of government. Alizee’s story will pull you along as you try to grasp how this bright light of the art community vanished.” —Amanda Monson, Bartow County Library System, Cartersville, GA.

Tie-ins

Below are the tie-ins scheduled for publication this week. For our full list of upcoming adaptations, download our Books to Movies and TV and link to our listing of tie-ins.

The 5th Wave Movie Tie-In: The First Book of the 5th Wave by Rick Yancey (Penguin/Putnam Books for Young Readers/Speak; Listening Library; OverDrive Sample; also in trade pbk)

The movie. starring Chloë Grace Moretz and Liev Schreiber opens on 1/15/2016. See trailer here.

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (Hachette/Orbit; OverDrive Sample)

The basis for Syfy’s new space opera series, The Expanse, set 200 years in the future, with zero-gravity sex, debuts Dec. 14.

Jessica Jones: Alias Vol. 2 (Marvel)
Based on the graphic novel, all 13 episodes will begin streaming on Netflix on November 20.

The following post is from our GalleyChatter columnist, Robin Beerbower:

During the October GalleyChat over 400 tweets were exchanged so winnowing the 100 plus titles down to a reasonable number was a challenge, but a few front runners did emerge.

For a complete list of all 110 titles, click here.

Front Runners

The phrases “grand gothic manor” and “Kate Morton readalike” piqued our curiosity about Eve Chase’s Black Rabbit Hall (PRH/Putman, February). Multiple family secrets? Check. Set in England? Check. Full of chilling atmosphere? Check. We can’t wait. Andrienne Cruz (Azusa, CA, City Library) said “Reading this book makes you feel like that intrigued neighbor who stumbles upon the juicy details of a seemingly perfect family next door.” EDITOR’S NOTE: Join us for a chat with the author on Wednesday, Nov. 11.

My Name is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout (PRH/Random House, January), by the author of the unforgettable Olive Kitteridge, was also a popular pick. Vicki Nesting from St. Charles Parish Library (LA) described it best: “Stunning! Lucy ends up in the hospital for an extended period of time which gives her plenty of time to reflect on her life, particularly when the mother she hasn’t seen in years comes to sit with her. Strout’s prose is luminous, almost poetic, and completely unforgettable.”

Already a hit on Edelweiss, fans of Lisa Lutz’s Spellman Files series will flock to her non-series book, The Passenger (Simon & Schuster, March). Janet Lockhart (Wake Country Library, NC) and Booklist’s Rebecca Vnuk enjoyed this dark comedic thriller about a woman going on the lam after her husband is found dead at the foot of the stairs. Rebecca forecasts it will be the smash hit of the spring saying, “Relentless and full of surprises, it’s the story of a woman on the run from her old life. Harlan Coben meets, well, Lisa Lutz!”

Send in the Clones

Poised to follow in the footsteps of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and to become a book group favorite is Jessica Chiarella’s And Again (S&S/Touchstone, January). Cynthia Baskin, discerning reader and devoted GalleyChat participant, echoes my love for this book saying, “Who wouldn’t want a second chance at life with no more terminal illness, no more looming death? Through cloning, four ‘lucky’ people have the opportunity to experience this. The novel’s fascinating concept plays itself out in unexpected ways.”

Tense Suspense

This month’s psychological suspense selection is brought to you by Jane Jorgenson of Madison (WI) Public Library who found the main protagonist of Holly Seddon’s Try Not to Breathe (PRH/Ballantine, February) very appealing. She went on to say “Freelance reporter Alex Dale is doing research on long-term, comatose patients when she comes across Amy Stevenson. Fifteen years ago Amy went missing and was found three days later near death. Alex, who is in denial about her own mess of a life, strives to piece together what went wrong for Amy.”

Historical Characters

While book groups have discovered Melanie Benjamin, she has always flown a little under the radar but watch for Swans of Fifth Avenue (PRH/Delacorte, January) to be her break out book. Jennifer Winberry from Hunterdon County Library (NJ) said, “This delightfully dishy novel perfectly captures the glamour and glitz of mid-20th century New York, breathing life into such characters as Truman Capote and William and Babe Paley making them and their friends seem alive.”

Vicki Nesting loved Dana Chamblee Carpenter’s Bohemian Gospel (Norton/Pegasus, November) so much she volunteered to write the description for this column: “13th century Bohemia is a dangerous place for a young woman, especially one like Mouse, an orphan with a sharp mind and mysterious powers. This is an absorbing historical novel with the pacing of a thriller and it kept me up late nights as I raced through it to see what would happen to Mouse. If you like character-driven historical fiction, don’t miss this one.”

Told from the viewpoint of the only woman to fly on a zeppelin, the tragedy of the Hindenburg disaster is the focus of Ariel Lawhon’s intriguing Flight of Dreams (PRH/Randon Hpuse, February). Beth Mills (New Rochelle Public Library) reported the passengers and crew are brought to vivid life and “…readers will be anxiously turning pages to see who lives and who dies. The historical background is impeccably done, from the looming menace of the Nazi rise to power to the fascinating description of the elegance of the doomed airship.”

Memoir of the Month

In Raising the Barre: Big Dreams, False Starts, and My Midlife Quest to Dance the Nutcracker (Perseus/De Capo, November), Lauren Kessler proved it’s never too late to follow your dreams. She was a devotee of the Nutcracker so despite a busy schedule as a mother, university professor, and writer, Kessler devoted herself to getting in shape to dance in her city’s yearly ballet production. This is a perfect book for those of us in our midlife years yearning to realize our dreams of roller derby participation or of learning to execute a double Axel in figure skating.

Please join us next week on November 3 for another lively and fast-paced chat.

Netflix is adapting Jay Asher’s multi-award winning 2007 YA novel about teen suicide into a 13-episode series. The news caused the book to jump up Amazon’s sales rankings (#355 from #719).

According to Variety, Selena Gomez will serve as an executive producer and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Brian Yorkey will write the pilot. Back in 2011, Universal acquired rights for a big-screen adaptation, but it seems those plans have changed.

Asher’s novel, with the stylized title TH1RTEEN R3ASONS WHY, (Penguin/RazorBill; Listening Library; OverDrive Sample), is about a high school student who commits suicide and leaves behind several tapes, each addressed to one of her classmates, explaining how they contributed to her decision.

Deadline reports that Gomez will not star in the show herself and the leads not been cast. An air date has yet to be set.

A YALSA Best Books of 2008, it was a NYT best seller  in hardcover for over two years and continued as a paperback best seller until two weeks ago.

A release date of Oct. 7, 2016 has been set for the movie adaptation of the runaway best seller, The Girl on the Train, starring Emily Blunt. Also recently announced, Justin Theroux is in talks to play the lead character’s ex-husband after Chris Evans dropped out due to scheduling conflicts.

The movie will be shot in New York, but Emily Blunt will not adopt an American accent for the role. She told the BBC last month that she and director Tate Taylor have decided that she will play the main character the way she was written, as a British woman.

Last night two high profile authors got late night treatment.

Lauren Groff appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers. She is in countdown mode for the Nov. 18 announcement of the National Book Award and is fresh off her Morning Edition Book Club appearance.

Meyers is proving to be a deft interviewer of authors. That may be because, as he revealed last night in a throwaway aside  he thinks of himself as a writer too, having been the head writer for Saturday Night Live.

The pair discuss Groff’s process, her stereoscopic approach to Fates and Furies, and writing sex scenes.

Jonathan Franzen starred in a skit on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and sat down for a conversation as well.

The skit mocks Amazon through a bedtime story entitled “Little Read Reading Hood.” The US Department of Justice stars as the woodsman and there is a typical Colbert twist at the end.

The conversation, in which Colbert’s snark sometimes got the better of Franzen, ranged from Twitter to reading to football. Nevertheless, n the strength of his appearance, Purity rose on Amazon’s sales rankings, from 445 to 356.

A harbinger of the holidays, the New York Times Sunday Book Review‘s selection of the ten Best Illustrated Books of 2015 is available online today. It will appear in print in the upcoming issue.

The titles range  from several that have already received wide acclaim, such as Leo: A Ghost Story, by Mac Barnett, illus. by Christian Robinson (Chronicle), and Sidewalk Flowers, JonArno Lawson illus. by Sydney Smith (Groundwood), to a couple of under-the-radar picks. Both of those are coincidentally, about the same famous Parisian edifice), Tricky Vic: The Impossibly True Story of the Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower, Greg Pizzoli (Penguin/Viking Young Readers) and the only translated title on the list,  Madame Eiffel: The Love Story of the Eiffel Tower, Alice Brière-Haquet, illus. by Csil  (Little Gestalten; 978-3899557558; Nov).

For a list of the titles, with ordering information, download our spreadsheet, NYT BR Best Illus. Books, 2015

We featured Portlandia star and Sleater-Kinney guitarist Carrie Brownstein’s new memoir Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir (Penguin/Riverhead Books; Penguin Audio and BOT) on last week’s look ahead.

Since then Brownstein has captured reader interest in back-to-back appearances on NPR’s Fresh Air and the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

On the strength of both performances her story has risen to #26 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

Perhaps some of the attention is due to her quirky set-piece for Colbert where she sings a somber song:

As we reported on Friday, former ABC News reporter and award-winning journalist Ted Koppel is receiving media attention for his investigation into the potential of a massive cyber attack on the nation’s power grid.

Koppel appeared yesterday on CBS This Morning promoting his book, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath (PRH/Crown; BOT Audio).

He was on yesterday evening PBS’s News Hour as well.

Koppel accuses the Federal government of having no plan in place to cope with the fallout and calls such an assault inevitable, quoting Centcom Commander General Lloyd Austin as saying, “It’s not a question of if, it’s just a question of when.”

Koppel reports that the Russians and Chinese already have the capacity to conduct an attack and that individual groups, such as ISIS, can hire the expertise and run an operation with equipment that can be bought off the shelf.

The book rose to #8 on Amazon sales rankings after yesterday’s appearances.

The second installment of President Obama’s two-part interview with Marilynne Robinson is now online and will appear in the 11/19 issue of the New York Review of Books (also available in audio),

In it, Obama explains why novels are important to him, “when I think about how I understand my role as citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels.”

Robinson’s most recent novel is Lila (Macmillan/FSG; Macmillan Audio, 2014). A book of essays, The Givenness of Things, (Macmillan/FSG; Brilliance Audio) was published yesterday.

Moving up the Amazon sales charts with holds growing in many libraries is Stacy Schiff’s newest history.

The jump in holds and interest is likely due to Schiff’s appearance on NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday. She discussed the events of the Salem witch trials and described the courtroom testimony as sounding like “a low grade acid trip.”

Witches: Salem, 1692 (Hachette/Little, Brown; Little, Brown Audio; OverDrive Sample) offers a detailed account of the hysteria and fear that swept through Salem town and Salem village, highlighting the key figures of the trial and describing the unfolding terror and its aftermath.

Likely to increase demand, it is the November Costco pick with Pennie Clark Ianniciello saying Schiff, “trains her skills on this dark period and shines a light on it as no one has.”

The NYT Sunday Review was posted online today and will be in the upcoming print issue.

In her review Jane Kamensky, Pforzheimer Foundation director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America and a professor of history at Harvard, reads like an academic’s discomfort with history written for a non-academic audience:

“Schiff’s glib, compendious and often maddening account of the events of that fateful year, does a great deal to punch up the story, but little to explore and still less to understand its significance. An acclaimed biographer of subjects as diverse as Cleopatra and Véra Nabokov, Schiff here broadens her lens, like an artist turning from portraits to teeming allegories: Rembrandt taking up the work of Bosch. But a crowded canvas does not a probing history make, as The Witches powerfully demonstrates.”

Kamensky softens the blow by pointing out just how vividly and well Schiff writes history: “Schiff sets scenes brilliantly … The book crackles with sonic detail… Schiff is what the Germans call a Menschenkenner: a knower of human nature, and her book is a tightly plotted character study.”

The third “meeting” of NPR’s Morning Edition Book Club was held today with Lauren Groff the author of  Fates and Furies (Penguin/Riverhead; BOT Audio; Overdrive Sample) fielding inquires about the story’s origins, character construction, her ambivalence about marriage, and female rage.

Author Richard Russo selected the book for the club saying, “The secrets here are character secrets, not plot secrets, and they are revealed in ways that sometimes take your breath away. You have to wait almost until the last page of the book to get to the last of the secrets.”

Groff said the novel was in part a chance to work out her uncertainty about being a wife, but admitted, “a novel does not answer any questions, it just raises a hundred other questions.”

Groff will appear on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Wednesday.

Readers longing for more from the world of Harry Potter can rejoice – sort of.

J.K. Rowling announced that the eighth Potter story will take place on the stage in London’s West End in the form of the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

The Pottermore website offers this teaser of a summary:

“It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children … While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.”

According to Entertainment Weekly, the play is based on “an original story by Potter scribe Rowling, English TV writer Jack Thorne, and John Tiffany who won a Tony Award for Broadway’s Once.”

USA Today reports the play follows events set directly after the epilogue in Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, 19 years after Harry defeated Voldemort. It is scheduled to begin its run the summer of 2016 at London’s Palace Theater. Similar to the final HP movie, the play will be in two parts.

Another extension of the HP universe, this one a prequel, will be coming to movie theaters next year, in the form of an adaptation of Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them. It is planned as the first of three movies.

Tickets go on sale for the show on Oct 28. No word yet on a tie-in book edition.

In her recent weekly book chats airing on Seattle’s NPR affiliate KUOW librarian Nancy Pearl talks Mystery and Fantasy.

Last week she discussed Tabula Rasa (Bloomsbury USA; Tantor audio; OverDrive Sample) by Ruth Downie, the newest in Downie’s Ruso mysteries set in Roman Britain. Just released in paperback, the sixth in the series takes place while the Romans are building Hadrian’s Wall and involves the case of a missing British boy.

Nancy says that Downie “give such a picture of the time and the place” that she feels she is taking a wonderful Roman history class as she reads them.

On October 6, Nancy addressed Fantasy with the last book written by the late Mal Peet, The Murdstone Trilogy: A Novel (Candlewick; Candlewick on Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Peet, who passed away in March, might have been best known for his YA novels, but Nancy loved this adult send-up of writing in general and Fantasy in particular.

Calling it “sui generis” she says it’s like nothing she has ever read before.

The story is about a writer urged by his agent to change his focus from YA realistic fiction to Fantasy so he can start to sell books again. Knowing nothing of the genre he makes a deal with a strange creature – the creature will write the novel in exchange for a mysterious amulet.

Nancy says the story “totally charmed” her and is full of word play, satire, and wonderfully humorous set pieces.

It is also an open question as to what the novel actually is, not a trilogy at all as the subtitle makes clear and perhaps not a Fantasy either, making it a challenge for catalogers.