Titles to Know and Recommend,
the Week of Sept 21
Next week is a big one for YA and Middle Grade titles. In a strange coincidence, four of the ten titles on the longlist for the National Book Award Young People’s Literature will be published on the same day (our look at the full list here).
Familiar names appearing next week include Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert with a nonfiction title, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (an Indie Next pick), former GMA host Joan Lunden with a memoir about surviving breast cancer, Had I Known (Harper), Jan Karon’s next Mitford novel, Come Rain or Come Shine (Penguin/Putnam) and Ransom Riggs’ third Miss Peregrine book, Library of Souls (Quirk Books . NOTE: Tim Burton’s movie of the first book is scheduled for release on March 4 next year) and Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Reagan (Macmillan/Holt).
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 Sept 21, 2015
National Book Award YP Longlist Titles, Arriving Next Week
Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson (Harper/Greenwillow Books; HarperCollins Publishers and Blackstone Audio)
Steve Sheinkin, Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War (Macmillan/Roaring Brook Press)
M.T. Anderson, Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad (Candlewick Press)
Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Media Attention
Mycroft Holmes, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse (Titan Books; OverDrive Sample)
As Esquire writes, Abdul-Jabbar has had a 45-year obsession with Sherlock Holmes. In this, his first novel for adults, he focuses on Sherlock’s older brother in a prequel to Arthur Conan Doyle’s series.
He is scheduled for several TV appearances:
MSNBC-TV – Morning Joe – 9/21
NBC-TV – Today Show – 9/21
Comedy Central – The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore – 9/24
Peer Picks
Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson (Macmillan/Flatiron Books; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample) – LibraryReads (sept)
Popular with the BEA Librarian’s Shout ‘n’ Share panel, this memoir is both an Indie Next and a LibraryReads pick:
“Lawson’s hilarious memoir is a romp between absurdity and despondency. Passages alternate from ridiculously funny stories of her life to episodes of her sometimes debilitating depression. Lawson embraces living life, rather than merely surviving it. Why be just happy when you can be furiously so? Recommended to fans of David Sedaris and Sloane Crosley.” PJ Gardiner, Wake County Public Libraries, Raleigh, NC
The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine, Alex Brunkhorst, (Harlequin/MIRA)
“As Thomas walked into Lily Goldman’s antiques shop, he had no idea that his life was about to change completely. Assigned to write about Lily’s deceased father, a famous film industry mogul, Thomas meets a host of fabulously wealthy and eccentric people and quickly becomes a part of their privileged lives. Things get complicated when he meets Matilda, daughter of the most powerful man in Los Angeles, who has kept her confined to their estate her whole life. Thomas’ journalistic instincts kick in as he is enchanted by Matilda and he soon uncovers the many secrets these powerful people would rather not have revealed. This book is the definition of a page-turner: filled with romance, mystery, and great writing.” —Lori-Jo Scott, Island Bookstore, Kitty Hawk, NC
The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives, Theresa Brown, (Workman/Algonquin)
One of the titles brought up at BEA’s Librarian Shout ‘n’ Share, this is the perfect response to the Miss Colorado “Just a Nurse” controversy.
The Killing Lessons by Saul Black (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press; Macmillan Audio)
Saul Black is a pseudonym for bestselling author Glen Duncan, The Last Werewolf (2014). All four trade reviews give it a star.
Screen Adaptations
Hitting theaters today are the movie adaptations of:
Dashner, James, The Maze Runner: Scorch Trials (RH/Delaccorte), expected to land at #1 at the box office, recouping he losses from the first in the series.
Lehr, Dick and Gerland O’Neil, Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob — movie starring Johnny Depp is being reviewed widely, including NPR’s Morning Edition, saying Depp’s performance is “some of the best, most chilling work he’s done in awhile.”
Krakauer, Jon, Into Thin Air, (RH/Villard, 1997) — Movie Everest tells the story of terrifying ascent that Krakauer chronicled in his book (he is also portrayed in the movie). Reviewed in Rolling Stone.
Smith, Ashley, Unlikely Angel: The Untold Story Of The Atlanta Hostage Hero, (HarperCollins/Zondervan, 2005) — movie is titled Hostage, reviewed in today’s NYT.
Brower, Sam and Jon Krakauer, Prophet’s Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints, (Bloomsbury, 2012) — reviewed in today’s NYT
Coming next week:
Petit, Philippe, To Reach The Clouds — Movie titled The Walk opens in iMAX theaters on Sept. 20 and expands more widely on Oct. 1
Dick, Philip K., short story “Minority Report” (1956) — FOX TV series of the same title begins 9/21, a sequel to 2002 movie by Steven Spielberg which is based on the short story
For our full list of upcoming adaptations, download our Books to Movies and TV and link to our listing of tie-ins).
The following tie-ins arrive next week:
Tie-ins to the Peanuts movie, coming Nov. 11 arrive.
Many books are being published to tie in to the Star Wars movie which hits theaters in December. Tom Angleberger, the man who introduced Star Wars to origami, is one of the authors of three tie-ins for kids arriving next week.
Premiering on BBC America on Oct. 10 is The Last Kingdom, an 8-part series based on the first two books in the series Bernard Cornwell’s novels. The first two are being released as tie-ins:
The Pale Horseman, Bernard Cornwell (Harper Paperbacks; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample)
The Last Kingdom, Bernard Cornwell (Harper Paperbacks; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample)