Get ready for a full-on marketing campaign for the movie adaptation of Andy Weir’s debut sci-fi novel, The Martian (RH/Crown). Following the first trailer, released last month, comes a clip that cleverly introduces the characters.

The movie which debuts on Oct. 2, is directed by Ridley Scott and stars Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Michael Peña, Aksel Hennie, Sebastian Stan and Kate Mara.

The Martian (Mass Market MTI)
Andy Weir
RH/Broadway; October 13, 2015
Mass Market; $9.99 USD, $12.99 CAD
9781101905005, 110190500X

First came the controversy over the violence in UFC fighter Ronda Rousey’s autobiography My Fight/Your Fight (S&S/Regan Arts;  OverDrive Sample), which is sitting pretty at #16 on Amazon.

Now comes news that Paramount Pictures has bought the rights to the book and will cast Rousey in the starring role – playing herself. According to Variety Mark Bomback, who adapted Insurgent for the screen, will work on the script and serve as executive producer. Mary Parent (one of the people behind Noah and Godzilla) will produce along with Rousey. A start date has yet to be determined.

It will not be Rousey’s first role. She has been in The Expendables 3, Furious 7, and Entourage and is set to appear in Mile 22 alongside Mark Wahlberg.

Looking for a new suspense author to suggest? Take a look at Mary Kubica who appears on the verge of a breakout.

Following her debut The Good Girl, which was very positively received, her second novel Pretty Baby (Harlequin/MIRA; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample) proves she is a name to know.

The L.A. Times recently gave it a strong review saying “It is rare that a novel of what has come to be called domestic suspense is thrilling and illuminating, but Pretty Baby manages to be both without overtly showing the hard work that has gone into striking the right balance. In doing so, it raises the ante on the genre and announces the welcome second coming of a talent well worth watching.”

New York magazine lists it as one of “8 Books You Need Read This July” and the reviewer for the web site Smart Bitches Trashy Books gave it an A, saying “Pretty Baby is Kubica’s second book, and her sophomore novel is even better than its predecessor, The Good Girl. That’s saying a lot because I loved The Good Girl like whoa.”  NPR also gives it a big thumbs up.

A People pick, we highlighted it in our Titles to Know for the week.

In the on-going battle between the big screen and the small screen, Netflix made a splash by buying the rights to a major new movie, directed by Cary Fugunaka and starring Idris Elba. Beasts of No Nation. It is based on the 2005 novel by  Uzodinma Iweala about child soldiers in West Africa.

There’s one problem. To be eligible for Oscar consideration, the movie has to open in theaters. While many theaters refuse to book movies that will be released simultaneously on cable, Netflix has managed to make a deal with Landmark Theatres to premier the movie in 19 cities on the same day it begins streaming on Netflix, October 16.

The first trailer was just released:

Tie-in:

Beasts of No Nation Movie Tie-in 
Uzodinma Iweala
Harper Perennial: September 29, 2015,

The author won New York Public Library’s 2006 Young Lions Fiction Award. The book won  praise from a wide range of publications, including the NYT Book Review

Director Fugunaka was scheduled to direct Stephen King’s It, but dropped out weeks before production. Next up for him is a TV adaptation of Caleb Carr’s The Alienist for TNT. The author recently joined as producer.

Britain’s Carnival Films, the production company behind hits such as Downton Abbey and Agatha Christie’s Poirot is gearing up for a second season of Grantchester, to air on PBS Masterpiece in 2016, according to Deadline Hollywood.

Based on the short stories by James Runcie, the first season drew from the collection Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death (Bloomsbury; Movie-tie in ed.; OverDrive Sample). The new season appears to be based on Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night (Macmillan/Bloomsbury; OverDrive Sample; the publisher tells EarlyWord that a movie tie-in is likely, but has not yet been announced).

If you missed the first season, Grantchester features a dishy village vicar who solves crimes around his tiny hamlet outside of Cambridge, England and ventures further afield as well. Full of jazz music, anguished flashbacks to WWII, and frustrated romance, the sprightly paced 1950s set whodunits showcase well-drawn characters, a fabulous setting, and a not quite cozy tone.

Reviews were generally positive on both sides of the ocean when season one debuted. The Telegraph wrote “Stop it, I’m hooked. Sign me up. I’ll give you my cat and house to see what happens next.”

The LA Times called the show “guilelessly entertaining” and said that while it “lulls more than it grabs [like a] good sermon, you may think you’re only barely listening until you realize you’re fully immersed.”

The New York Times had a different view, however, claiming that Grantchester will be “breezy fun for fans of the form, though the more discerning will be put off by how rudimentary the actual murder mysteries are after being squeezed into 50 minutes (half the norm for this type of show). Others are liable to find it faintly ridiculous, more of a haiku than an actual drama.”

The show created demand for the book and holds spiked at some locations beyond a 3:1 ratio.

YouTube star Miranda Sing debuts at #1 on the NYT Advice, How-To, & Miscellaneous bestseller list with her first book, Selp-Helf (S&S/Gallery Books; OverDrive Sample).

It is #6 on the USA Today list, an even more impressive feat since that list does not divide titles by category, putting the social media author right behind:
1) Go Set a Watchman, 2) Grey,
3) Paper Towns, 4) To Kill a Mockingbird, and 5) Girl on the Train.

The NYT Sunday Book Review covers the book (actually, it’s more like a printed scrap book) in their “Inside the List” column, saying “YouTube star Miranda Sings — real name Colleen Ballinger — has become a comic sensation by milking the disconnect between her supreme confidence and her hopeless lack of ability in pretty much any human endeavor: can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t apply lipstick inside the lines. Now she’s taken that endearing incompetence into the book world with a parody advice guide.”

Sings is just one of the social media personalities charging into the old media world of books. As we reported earlier, there are dozens of others getting attention (see our collection of 17 new and forthcoming titles).

The book may have been propelled by the author’s appearance at VidCon which just wrapped and is shining old media attention on new media disruption. Founded by VlogBrothers John and Hank Green in 2010, it has grown exponentially.

In his lengthy report on the convention, Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair writes that “I have been to the high temple of digital video and I have seen its awesome, occasionally terrifying might. The revolution is not coming. It’s here.”

New York magazine signals their unease with the headline, “An Old Person’s Remote Recap of VidCon 2015.”

Alan Cheuse, author of Prayers for the Living and NPR’s All Things Considered book reviewer, has died at age 75, from injuries resulting from a car accident.

A creative writing teacher, a working writer, and a beloved voice on the radio, Cheuse inspired a deep appreciation of good writing and rich reading. His daughter, Sonya Cheuse, director of publicity for the publisher Ecco, told NPR that her father passed his love of literature down to her entire family: “My dad is the reason I love reading,” she says. “This is the family business.”

Susan Stamberg of All Things Considered has posted a remembrance.

It may be hard to believe, but next week we head into the fall publishing season. It will be a while before we begin to see multiple marquee name authors dominate . The only one this week is James Patterson with Alert, co-authored by Michael Ledwidge (Hachette/Little, Brown).

But we do have a cornucopia of peer recommendations, eleven titles from Indie Next alone. We’ve highlighted the ones getting the most buzz below and have included them all in this collection.

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 8/3/15

Advance Attention

The Man Who Wasn’t There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self, Anil Ananthaswamy, (Penguin/Dutton)

isn’t the only way the brain can go wrong. In this book Ananthaswamy examines the many ways the brain can go wrong, including Alzheimer’s  and body integrity identity disorder, or BIID, a which can make a person turn on his own body. .On Fresh Air, 7/28, Ananthaswamy tells Terry Gross the story of a man who had his healthy leg amputates because he had become convinced it wasn’t his own. The book is reviewed in the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, which calls it “a blazingly original excursion through the brain.”

Consumer Media Picks

Villa America, Liza Klaussmann, (Hachette/Little, Brown)

People “Pick of the Week,” 8/10/15 — “In the fictionalized look at 1920s socialites Sara and Gerald Murphy — real life inspirations for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night — party central is the Cote d’Azur and the players include novelists, painters and a stoic WW1 pilot Fitzgerald fans may go mad trying to separate truth from fantasy, but Klaussmann’s portrait of a marriage that endured many temptations (including Hemingway!) is intriguing and tender to the bone.”

Trust No One: A Thriller, Paul Cleave, (S&S/Atria)

People pick, 8/10/15 –“Jerry Grey, a thriller writer with early-onset Alzheimer’s, confesses a horrific murder to the police. Or is his jumbled mind just reciting the plot of his first bestseller? And why are cops convinced he really HAS killed someone — a crime he can’t remember? Cleave’s whirligig plot mesmerizes as Jerry fights his decline and tries to put together the pieces.?

Peer Picks

The Marriage of Opposites, Alice Hoffman

Indie Next:
“Hoffman’s newest novel is based on the life of Rachel Pomie Petit Pissarro and her favorite son, Camille, who would become the famed ‘Father of impressionism.’ Growing up in a Jewish refugee community on tropical St. Thomas in the 1800s, strong-willed Rachel dreams of the cool, rainy streets of Paris. Raised by a stern mother and a kind-hearted father, Rachel is forced to marry a widower to save her family’s business and later follows forbidden passions, creating a scandal that turns her community against her. Hoffman fills the pages with the island’s magic and color in this unforgettable tale of what it means to walk the tightrope between tradition and independence, love and logic.” —Julia Sinn, Bookshop Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA

LibraryReads:
“Exquisite… Alice Hoffman’s finest work to date. The Marriage of Opposites is a beautiful love story of a man and woman and a mother and child intricately woven together to capture the author’s true message: Love more, not less.” — Marianne Colton, Lockport Public Library, Lockport, NY

Alice Hoffman talks about the inspiration for the book in the following video:

In a Dark, Dark Wood, Ruth Ware, (S&S/Gallery/Scout Press)

LibraryReads:
“Leonora Shaw is a crime writer who lives a solitary life in London until she receives an invitation to a hen party for a friend she hasn’t seen in nearly ten years. The party takes place in a remote location with spotty phone service. Are you nervous yet? We know from the opening pages that something horrible happens, but just what, and to whom, how, and why will keep readers guessing — and flipping the pages. Recommended for fans of The Girl on the Train.” Vicki Nesting, St. Charles Parish Library, Destrehan, LA

Entertainment Weekly:
“… you’ll find it almost impossible to put this twisting, electrifying debut down … it’s foggy atmosphere and shilling revelations will leave you breathless.” A-

Lord of the Wings: A Meg Langslow Mystery, Donna Andrewsm, (Macmillan/Minotaur)

LibraryReads:
“It’s Halloween in Caerphilly and the town has come up with another festival to bring in the tourists. Meg Langslow is heading up the “Goblin Patrol”, there’s trouble at the Haunted House, and body parts are being found at the zoo. Meg is once again called in to save the day and solve the crime. If you enjoy your mysteries packed with humor and fun, don’t miss this return to Caerphilly with Meg and her zany family and friends.” — Karen Emery, Johnson County Public Library, Franklin, IN

Fishbowl : A Novel, Bradley Somer, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s)

Indie Next:
“Somer uses the unusual device of a goldfish plunging off of a high-rise balcony to tie together the disparate stories of the building’s inhabitants. As our hero, Ian, plummets past floor after floor, he glimpses the lives of the residents — witnessing birth, heartbreak, new love, and all of the pathos and wonder that comprise human existence. Although Ian has only a goldfish’s seconds-long capacity for memory, readers will find themselves returning to the essential truths of Somer’s characters again and again.” —Jill Miner, Saturn Booksellers, Gaylord, MI

The U.K. book trailer is our pick of the week:

Tie-ins

Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal, Dick Lehr, Gerard O’Neill, (PublicAffairs)

Boston crime boss beginning in the early 1970s,, Whitey Bulger wasn’t found guilty of his multiple murders and other crimes until 2013, a verdict greeted by the Hollywood press as providing a convenient ending for the biopic.

Published last year, Whitey Bulger: America’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice by Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy (Norton, 2/11/13) was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air and described as not only a fascinating story, but “just a great read.”

He was called “Whitey” for his balding white blonde hair, which meant that Johnny Depp had to change his look for the role.

The movie opens 9/18/2015 (for our full list of upcoming adaptations, see our Books to Movies and TV and our listing of tie-ins).

A new trailer was released this week.

The Scorch Trials Movie Tie-in Edition (Maze Runner, Book Two), James Dashner, (RH/Delacorte hardcover; Trade Paperback)

The second movie in the series opens 9/18/15. A third movie, The Death Cure, 2/17/17. For once, it looks like the finale of a series will not be split into two movies.

The second trailer was released last week:

Following the success of Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, Hollywood is mad for military movies based on books. Underscoring that, a film based on 13 Hours: The Inside Account Of What Really Happened In Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff (Hachette/Twelve,2014) opens on January 15, 2016, the same weekend that its predecessor opened last year.

Retitled 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, it is directed by Michael Bay and stars John Krasinski and James Badge Dale,

The release of the trailer was enough to send the book moving up Amazon’s sales rankings (currently at #88).

Tie-ins:

13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi
MItchell Zuckoff
Hachette/Twelve: November 24, 2015
Trade Paperback
Mass market

Those who have read Emma Donoghue’s claustrophobic best seller, Room  (Hachette/Little,Brown) may have trouble imaging a movie version. Director Lenny Abrahamson took it on, with Brie Larson starring. Just released is a teaser trailer that Entertainment Weekly calls “chilling,” Wired calls “heart-crushing” and E says may be “the year’s creepiest.”

Starring Brie Larson (recently seen in a quite different movie, Trainwreck Amy Schumer), it opens 10/16/15

Tie-ins:

Room : A Novel
Emma Donoghue
Trade Pbk.
Hachette/Back Bay: September 8, 2015
Mass Market
Audio CD

The movie adaptation of David Lipsky’s Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace, (RH/Broadway Books, 2010), titled The End of the Tour,  opens tomorrow.

The book and the movie are based on interviews with the normallly press-averse David Foster Wallace (Jason Segal in the movie) by Rolling Stone journalist Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) conducted when Wallace toured for his novel Infinite Jest. (Hachette/Little, Brown, 1996).

As a result, Wallace’s book, not Lipsky’s, is rising on Amazon sales rankings.

Analyzng the Eisner Awards, announced earlier this month at Comic-Con, the  LA Times views them as reflecting a “creative swell in children’s comics,” with several titles winning in categories not defined by age.

Caldecott honoree This One Summer by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki (Macmillan/First Second; OverDrive Sample) won for best New Graphic Album (essentially the best graphic novel of the year) and Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Brooke Allen, and Shannon Watters (S&S/BOOM! Box; OverDrive Sample) won the Best New Series award while Raina Telgemeier’s middle-grade Sisters (Scholastic, a companion to her previous title, Smile) won in the Writer/Artist category.

Tor.com views the awards as making a leap beyond superheroes, noting that the Best Writer Awards have traditionally gone to “an author producing pamphlet comics—serial, monthly works—rather than graphic novels.” This year breaks precedence with the award going to The Shadow Hero (Macmillan/First Second) by Gene Luen Yang “a writer who has made his name in the graphic novel industry, where he wrote and illustrated the first ever graphic novel to be a finalist for the National Book Award [Boxers and Saints]—and the first ever graphic novel to win the Printz Award [American Born Chinese].” They also note the number of women writers winning awards this year, with titles addressing subjects never before covered in graphic novels indicates that “the depth and breadth of what comics are—and can become—are reaching ever new heights.” This change was noted earlier this year by the Wall Street Journal.

The award for the best nonfiction graphic work went to Hip Hop Family Tree, vol. 2, by Ed Piskor (Norton/Fantagraphics).Volume one was published in 2013; volume three is coming in August.

Emily Carroll’s Through the Woods (S&S/Margaret K. McElderry) won for Best Graphic Album-Reprint, giving those who do not yet own this beautifully creepy work all the more reason to buy it. Carroll also won the Eisner for Best Short Story.

Continuing his somewhat incongruous attention to books, Seth Meyers featured graphic memoirist Alison Bechdel on yesterday’s Late Night show, devoting the entire second half to her book Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2006) and its Tony-winning Broadway musical adaptation.

Meyers asked Bechdel to share the impetus behind Fun Home. Although it’s covered in the book, Bechdel’s recounting added emotional depth to  the story of  her coming out while in college and how that ultimately revealed her father’s hidden homosexual infidelity. He died shortly after in an accident that may have actually been a suicide.

That sad moment was balanced against a scene from the play, staged on Meyers set, in which the Broadway cast performed “Changing My Major.”

Holds are spiking in some libraries beyond ratios of 6:1 while a few libraries we checked had copies on the shelf.

A cast album is also available:

Tesori, Jeanine, composer, Fun home: a new Broadway musical, (PS Classics)

The Man Booker Prize, Britain’s most prestigious literary award and, oddly, one of the few awards that affects sales in the U.S., surpassing our own National Book Awards, has released the 2015 longlist of thirteen titles.

This is only the second year that US authors have been eligible for the Prize. When the rules were changed, many feared the US would dominate the list, but that didn’t prove true in the first year, with only four titles by US authors on the longlist and the Prize going to Australian Richard Flanagan for The Narrow Road To The Deep North (RH/Knopf).

However, this year, says the Guardian, “those fears look more well-founded, with five US titles on the longlist of 13, and strong ones too.”

The shortlist of six books will be announced on September 15 and the winner on October 13.

Below is the longlist, with U.S. publishing information and links to U.S. consumer reviews.

Bill Clegg, Did You Ever Have a Family (S&S/Gallery; S&S Audio; Sept. 8, 2015), US

Forthcoming, so no consumer reviews yet, but it’s been popular  on GalleyChat and at BEA this year.

Anne Enright, The Green Road (Norton; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample; May 11, 2015), Ireland

Reviews — NYT Sunday Book Review; Washington Post

Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings (Penguin/Riverhead; HighBridge Audio; OverDrive Sample; Oct. 7, 2014), Jamaican, living in the US

Published last year in the US, this title appeared on many of the year’s best books lists.
Reviews — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times;  Washington Post; Wall Street Journal; NYT Sunday Book Review

Laila Lalami, The Moor’s Account (RH/Pantheon; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample; Sept 9. 2014), US, born in Morocco
Published last year in the US, this title appeared on many of the year’s best books lists.

Reviews — NYT Sunday Book Review; L.A. Times

Tom McCarthy, Satin Island (RH/Knopf; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample; Feb. 17, 2015), UK

Reviews — NYT Sunday Book Review; Washington Post; L.A. Times

Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen (Hachette/Little, Brown; OverDrive Sample; April 14, 2015), Nigeria

Reviews — NYT Sunday Book Review; NPR review

Andrew O’Hagan, The Illuminations (Macmillan/FSG; Tantor Audio; OverDrive Sample; March 24, 2015), UK

Reviews — NYT Sunday Book Review

Marilynne Robinson, Lila (Macmillan/FSG; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample; Oct. 7, 2014), US

Published last year in the US, this title appeared on the majority of of the year’s best books lists.
Reviews — David Ulin, Los Angeles Times; NYT Sunday Book Review; Wall Street Journal;  Ron Charles, Washington Post; Michiko Kakutani,  New York Times

Anuradha Roy, Sleeping on Jupiter (US publication has not been announced), UK, born in India

Sunjeev Sahota, The Year of the Runaways (RH/Knopf; 9781101946107; Mar. 2016), UK

Forthcoming, so no US consumer reviews yet

Anna Smaill, The Chimes (US publication has not been announced), New Zealand

Anne Tyler, A Spool of Blue Thread (RH/Knopf; Random House Audio; OverDrive Sample: Feb. 10, 2015), US

Reviews —NYT Sunday Book Review; Ron Charles, Washington Post; Los Angeles Times; Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life (RH/Doubleday; OverDrive Sample; March 10, 2015), US

Reviews — Washington Post; NYT Sunday Book Review; Los Angeles Times; Wall Street Journal; NPR review on Fresh Air

Reviewers are falling in love with Fastest Things On Wings: Rescuing Hummingbirds in Hollywood,  Terry Masear, (HMH).

There’s probably not much more you need than the title and cover to also become unchanged, but here’s a sampling of the reviews:

Fastest Things on Wings: inside the rehabilitation of injured hummingbirds — he Washington Post

Fastest Things on Wings is the soaring tale of a hummingbird rehabber — Los Angeles Times

Hollywood’s Hummingbird Rehabber Tells All —  National Geographic (take a look at this one, if only for the photos)

Even the New York Post calls it a “must-read”

It was also featured on WBUR’s “Here & Now

The book is rising on Amazon sales rankings. Library orders are light.