Titles to Know, Next Week, 6/16 to 6/20/14
Amazon’s resolve to discourage customers from buying Hachette titles will be put to the test next week with the arrival of The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (Hachette/Mulholland Books; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print). Libraries have ordered plenty of copies to fill heavy holds on this sequel to The Cuckoo’s Calling, (both actually written by J.K. Rowling, of course). Rivaling The Silkworm in number of holds is Jennifer Weiner’s All Fall Down (S&S/Atria; S&S Audio) a novel about the serious subject of addiction. Watch for Weiner on the Today Show on release day, June 17.
Topping both is Janet Evanovich’s latest in her long running Stephanie Plum series, Top Secret Twenty-One, (RH/Bantam; RH Audio; RH Large Print).
All the titles mentioned here, plus a few more, are listed with ordering information and alternative formats on our downloadable New Title Radar, Week of 6/16/14
To Recommend
Amazon is promoting Summer House with Swimming Pool to people who want The Silkworm. In libraries, it already has fairly strong holds queues, so you may not want to follow suit. The following titles show fewer holds despite great advance excitement, offering good alternatives (and one is from Hachette).
The Quick, Lauren Owen, (Random House; BOT)
A debut that has inspired a great deal of passion among librarians on GalleyChat and is a LibraryReads pick for June:
“This book starts out slowly, with an unconventional Victorian-era romance and builds to an unexpected development by the end of part one. Owen continues the slow boil of suspense with a curiously-enticing plot, centering on members of an exclusive London gentleman’s club who are testing the boundaries of their own organization. For those who enjoy historical fiction with a twist.” — Lucy Lockley, St. Charles City-County Library, St. Peters, MO
The Fever, Megan Abbott, (Hachette/Little, Brown)
The seventh novel by an novelist with a growing reputation has inspired comments like this in Slate — “Megan Abbott is the kind of author whose books, once you’ve discovered them, present an immediate dilemma: You want to read them all, one right after the other, in hopes of prolonging the spell, yet you also become consumed with the need to hold one or two titles on her backlist in reserve, so you can be assured there will always be one yet to come.” People magazine described the story in their “Great Summer Reads,” roundup, “In Abbott’s affecting seventh novel, a mysterious affliction suddenly spreading among teenage girls shakes a community to its core.”
That Night, Chevy Stevens, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s. Macmillan Audio; Thorndike)
GalleyChatter Robin Beerbower calls Stevens her “go-to” author for readers looking for thrillers and adds that her latest is a ” top-notch psychological thriller that was so relentless I had to stop reading a few times to catch my breath.”
Media Attention
The Last Magazine, Michael Hastings, (Penguin/Blue Rider)
Journalist Michael Hastings was known for his fearlessness. His 2010 Rolling Stone article “The Runaway General” brought down Afghanistan armed forces commander, General Stanley McChrystal. In 2012, he wrote a profile of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for Rolling Stone, newly relevant now that the former POW has been released. Last year, at just 33 years old, Hastings was killed in a single-car crash in Los Angeles, leaving behind a draft of his first novel. New York magazine characterizes it as “a provocative piece of thinly fictionalized nonfiction … a posthumous mission accomplished … [which] tells the story of the run-up to the Iraq War from a perspective that many of his colleagues would like to forget.”
Your Fathers, Where Are They? And The Prophets, Do They Live Forever?, Dave Eggers, (Knopf, RH Audio)
An advance review from the formidable Michiko Kakutani in yesterday’s New York Times, indicates the regard Eggers commands from critics. She is, however, underwhelmed saying this novel, “reads like a skeletal play, written by a journeyman who seems intent on mashing up Samuel Beckett with a straight-to-video thriller about a serial kidnapper.”
Tie-ins
All Together Dead (TV Tie-In), Charlaine Harris, (Penguin/Ace)
The final 10-episode season of HBO’s True Blood starts a week from Sunday. Some think that’s a good thing (Entertainment Weekly gives the new season a middling B-, even though they see it as an improvement over the previous one). Harris herself has finished with the series, having launched a new one with Midnight Crossroad, (Penguin/Ace). The HBO series has wandered away from the books, so the new series may have little in common with the tie-in.
The Two Faces of January, Patricia Highsmith, (Grove Press)
The latest adaptation of one of Highsmith’s novels opens on August 8, starring Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst. Unfortunately, it will only be in a limited number of theaters, so this may not bring the attention to the author’s work that The Talented Mr. Ripley did, Fortunately, it brings a tie-in of the book that was originally published in 1964, and an opportunity to update your Highsmith collections.