Another Grey is on its way, Titled simply Grey, it’s Fifty Shades told from Christian’s point of view.

Author E. L. James announced on Instagram today that the book will be published on June 18th and the story has been picked up widely, from USA Today to the Wall Street Journal.

According to Amazon, it will be published by RH/Vintage in trade paperback with the ISBN is 978-1101946343, but it is not yet listed on Edelweiss or wholesaler catalogs (UPDATE: it is now listed on some wholesaler catalogs).

In a press release, Tony Chirico, President of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group indicates this was a surprise release (in other words, you were not living under a rock if you haven’t heard of it), “Given the secrecy and immediacy of the publication, we’ve worked hard to ensure that the book will be well represented in the retail marketplace on June 18^th.”

Thanks to Janet Lockhart, Collection Development Librarian at Wake County Public Libraries for the alert!

If you are going to ALA in San Francisco at the end of the month, the AAP has some great book and author events scheduled.

Fellow procrastinators, don’t delay, these events are free but most require registration and they fill up quickly, (links to registration below):

AAP SAN FRANCISCO BOOK BUZZ 2015
Thursday, June 25^th, 2015 from 8:00am-5:00pm
San Francisco Public Library, Koret Auditorium, Lower Level
100 Larkin Street , San Francisco, CA 94102

Join the AAP Children’s and Adult Library Marketing Committees for an all-day AAP San Francisco Book Buzz. Children’s and Teen titles will be buzzed from 8:30am-12:30pm, and Adult titles will be buzzed from 1:30-5:00pm with a lunch in between, provided by the publishers.

ON THE CHILDREN’S SIDE, HEAR FROM: HarperCollins Children’s Books, Albert Whitman, Macmillan Children’s, Sterling Children’s Books, Starscape & Tor Teen, Little Brown Books for Young Readers, Little Bee Books, Algonquin Young Readers, Perseus Books Group, Penguin Young Readers Group, National Geographic Kids, New York Review Children’s, Harlequin TEEN, Random House Children’s Books, Sourcebooks, Quirk Books, Scholastic, Soho Teen, W.W. Norton & Co., and Simon & Schuster!

ON THE ADULT SIDE, HEAR FROM: Simon & Schuster, Perseus Books Group, New York Review Books, Hachette Book Group, Sterling, W.W. Norton & Co., Quirk Books, Random House, Workman, Sourcebooks, Macmillan, Soho Press, National Geographic, Melville House, HarperCollins, Harlequin, and Penguin!

SIGN UP HERE TO ATTEND.

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AAP/LIBRARYREADS BOOK-A-LICIOUS BREAKFAST
Saturday, June 27^th, 2015 from 8:30am-10:00am
Marriott Marquis San Francisco (Golden Gate B)
780 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Hear from authors:

• Charles Belfoure, author of House of Thieves (Sourcebooks Landmark)
• Anthony Marra, author of The Tsar of Love and Techno (Hogarth)
• Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You (Penguin Books)
• Nnedi Okorafor, author of Lagoon (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press)
• Stacy Schiff, author of The Witches (Little, Brown & Co.)
• Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed (Picador/Macmillan)

 AUTHOR SIGNING TO FOLLOW EVENT.

 Space is limited. Please SIGN UP HERE TO REGISTER YOUR INTEREST IN ATTENDING by Friday, June 19^th. We will send you a confirmation if we can accommodate your request.

Formal invitation (with book covers) here: ALA 2015 Book-a-Licious Breakfast invite

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AAP CHILDREN’S & TEEN AUTHOR SPEED DATING EVENT

Saturday, June 27^th from 3:00-4:00pm
Marriott Marquis San Francisco (Golden Gate B)
780 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

• Elana Arnold, The Question of Miracles (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers)
• Kathleen Baldwin, A School for Unusual Girls (Tor/Forge Books/Tor Teen)
• Lizi Boyd, Big Bear little chair (Chronicle Books)
• Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death (Arthur A. Levine Books)
• Monica Brown, Lola Levine is Not Mean! (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
•  Soman Chainani, The School for Good and Evil #3: The Last Ever After   (HarperCollins Children’s Books)
• Bruce Covill, Diary of a Mad Brownie (Random House Children’s Books)
• Joshua Davis, Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Macmillan)
• Tania del Rio, Warren the 13^th (Quirk Books)
• Matt Faulkner, Gaijin: American Prisoner of War (Disney-Hyperion)
• Kim Griswell, Rufus Goes to Sea (Sterling Children’s Books)
• Tamara Ireland Stone, Every Last Word (Disney-Hyperion)
• Stephen T. Johnson, Alphabet School (Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books)
• Estelle Laure, This Raging Light (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Amy Lukavics, Daughter Unto Devils (Harlequin TEEN)
• Paige McKenzie, The Haunting of Sunshine Girl: Book One (Weinstein Books/The Perseus Books Group)
• Sebastian Meschenmoser, Mr. Squirrel and the Moon (NorthSouth Books)
• Yvonne Prinz, If You’re Lucky (Algonquin Young Readers)
• Debbie Ridpath Ohi, Where Are My Books? (Simon & Schuster/ Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
• Lev Rosen, Woundabout (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
• Barney Saltzberg, Redbird: Friends Come in Different Sizes (Workman)
• Allan Stratton, The Dogs (Sourcebooks Fire)
• Craig Thompson, Space Dumplins (Scholastic)
• Steve “The Dirtmeister” Tomecek, Dirtmeister’s Nitty Gritty Planet Earth: All About Rocks, Minerals, Fossils, Earthquakes, Volcanoes, & Even Dirt! (National Geographic Kids Books)

SPACE IS LIMITED. YOU MUST RSVP HERE TO PARTICIPATE.

You will receive an email with your table number closer to the event.

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BOOKLIST’S READ ‘N RAVE
Monday, June 29^th, 2015 from 9:00-10:00am
Moscone Convention Center, Room 122 (N)

Everyone gets excited by the new ARCs available at conference. Come hear six collection development specialists rave about their favorite titles gathered from the exhibit floor. This lively panel, co-organized by Booklist and the AAP, will feature librarians Stephanie Chase (Hillsboro Public); Naphtali Faris (KCPL); Alene Moroni (King County); Kaite Mediatore Stover (KCPL); Stephen Sposato (Chicago Public); and David Wright (Seattle Public). Moderated by Rebecca Vnuk, Booklist’s editor for Reference and Collection Management.

NO ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED

INFO HERE.

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AAP/LIBRARYREADS MYSTERY AUTHORS PANEL
Monday, June 29^th, 2015 from 10:30-11:30am
Moscone Convention Center, Room 122 (N)

Hear from authors:

• Cara Black, author of Murder on the Champ de Mars (Soho Crime)
• Allison Brennan, author of Compulsion (Minotaur Books/Macmillan)
• John Katzenbach, author of The Dead Student (Mysterious Press)
• Keith McCafferty, author of Crazy Mountain Kiss (Viking)
• Kate White, author of The Wrong Man (Harper Paperbacks)

AUTHOR SIGNING TO FOLLOW EVENT.

Space is limited. Please SIGN UP HERE TO REGISTER YOUR INTEREST IN ATTENDING by Friday, June 19^th. We will send you a confirmation if we can accommodate your request.

Formal invitation, with book jackets, here,:ALA 2015 Mystery Authors Panel invite

Social media has created a new crop of “celebrity” authors.

First there were the blogger books, hits like Deb Perelman’s The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, a title born out of Perelman’s blog that went on to win the IACP Julia Child First Book Award and to be named as one of Cooking Light magazine’s Top 100 Cookbooks of the Last 25 Years. Julie and Julia by Julie Powell started life as the successful Julie/Julia Project blog, and was then adapted as a movie starring Amy Adams and Meryl Streep. Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton, garnered extended and glowing attention and hit best seller lists.

YouTube is the new celebrity petrie dish. Once strictly a platform, after seeing many of its top stars poached, YouTube recently announced it will become a producer. Publishers have also come calling with book contracts. Always alert to trends, the Atria division of Simon and Schuster, launched a new imprint last year, Keywords Press, to focus on digital stars, a story that was covered by The New York Times.

Hot names include Shane Dawson, Connon Franta, Joey Graceffa, Hannah Hart, Paige McKenzie, Zoe Sugg (Zoella), Miranda Sings, and Mamrie Hart, each of whom has a staggering number of followers and can make a book race up the Amazon sales rankings just by posting videos urging their fans to order in advance.

Franta’s A Work in Progress (S&S/Atria/Keywords Press; OverDrive Sample), Hannah Hart’s My Drunk Kitchen (HarperCollins/Dey Street; OverDrive Sample), and Mamrie Hart’s You Deserve a Drink (Penguin/Plume; OverDrive Sample) have all been the top selling books in their categories on Amazon.

Joey Graceffa has won two Teen Choice awards for his online-video programming. With YouTube’s backing he is set to create a “murder-mystery reality series.” He recently released In Real Life (S&S/Atria/Keywords Press; OverDrive Sample).

Shane Dawson’s YouTube show, also a Teen Choice winner, led to his competing in the Starz original series The Chair, which pits two directors against each other to create a movie from the same script. Viewers voted Dawson the winner. He recently published  I Hate Myselfie (S&S/Atria/Keywords Press; OverDrive Sample), which hit the top thirty in Amazon’s sales rankings.

With a built-in PR force of millions of followers, publishers are eager to help these YouTube stars extend their brands into old media as well as new, as Publishers Weekly reports.

However, library ordering and holds do not yet reflect this enthusiasm. It may be a while before these new stars follow the paths of Perelman and Stanton.

Next week two hotly anticipated titles arrive, Judy Blume’s In the Unlikely Event (which. she recently told People magazine, may be her last book. It is their “Book of the Week” in the new issue) and Stephen King’s Finders Keepers.

We’re a bit distracted by Book Expo America today, so we will publish a fuller rundown of titles on Monday.

Meanwhile, you can download our spreadsheet of notable titles arriving next week, with ordering information and alternate formats, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of June 1, 2015

UPDATE: Deadline reports (11/9/15) “Clan of the Cave Bear’ Not Going Forward At Lifetime, Pilot Being Shopped”

The  pilot for a Lifetime series, The Clan Of The Cave Bear, based on Jean M. Auel’s 1980’s books, has behind it high-profile executive producers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. The cast is now taking shape, indicating that filming may begin soon.

Set 25,000 years ago, Auel’s Earth Children series, the first of which is The Clan Of The Cave Bear (RH/Crown), imagines a clan of Neanderthals adopting an orphaned Cro-Magnon girl Ayla, who, as she grows up, demonstrates superior intellect and eventually breaks free of the restrictions imposed on the female members of  the Clan. The book was a New York Times best seller for five months.

The lead role of the adult Ayla went to British actress-model Millie Brady in January. Since then, other major roles have been filled. Johnny Ward will play Broud, the future clan leader. Hal Ozsan will play Brun, the current Clan leader. Charlene McKenna has just joined the cast in the role of  Brun’s sister Iza, the Clan’s medicine woman and Ayla’s mentor.

The book was made into a disastrous movie in 1986, starring Daryl Hannah as Ayla.

   
The first woman to win the British Fantasy Award, Tanith Lee has died at age 67 after a long illness. She won the World Fantasy Award twice and was a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from both the World Fantasy Convention and the Horror Writers Association. Although she never won the Nebula, she was nominated twice.

In an appreciation, the SF web site i09 says Lee “was one of the most prolific and influential authors of fantasy and horror. Everyone seems to know her for something different. Some people are obsessed with The Silver Metal Lover, [RH/Spectra; originally published in 1977] while others devoured her fantasy series.”

But the Guardian notes she “seemed to have fallen out of favour as a writer in recent years, as did many writers who came to prominence in the SF fields in the Seventies.” the author herself said in a 1998 interview, with Locus Magazine “If anyone ever wonders why there’s nothing coming from me, it’s not my fault. I’m doing the work. No, I haven’t deteriorated or gone insane. Suddenly, I just can’t get anything into print.”

As tastes in genre fiction shifted, that problem only continued and now just a handful of her books are in print.

Her debut, The Birthgrave (Penguin/DAW; OverDrive Sample) is being reprinted for its 40^th anniversary next week. The other books in that trilogy are planned for release over the next several months.

The first look at stills from the film adaptation of The Martian by Andy Weir, (RH/Crown) are now on People.com.

Starring Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Donald Glover, and scheduled for release in November, it is directed by Ridley Scott.

The book began as a self-published science fiction title, later picked up by Random House’s Crown imprint. It appeared on multiple best books lists and was a Feb. 2014 LibraryReads pick, the 2014 RUSA Reading List selection for  Science Fiction, as well as an Alex Award winner.

Neurosurgeon Henry Marsh, who was the subject of an award winning film, has written a memoir about the high-risk work of operating on the brain, Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; HighBridge Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Marsh appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross yesterday and described how he relies upon a quarter ton microscope to see inside the jelly-like substance of the brain and uses a microscopic vacuum cleaner called a sucker to remove tumors.

The memoir made multiple shortlists for a range of awards in Britain including the Guardian First Book Prize and the Costa Book Award.

The Guardian review was glowing:

Why has no one ever written a book like this before? It simply tells the stories, with great tenderness, insight and self-doubt, of a phenomenal neurosurgeon who has been at the height of his specialism for decades and now has chosen, with retirement looming, to write an honest book. Why haven’t more surgeons written books, especially of this prosaic beauty? Of blood and doubts, mistakes, decisions: were they all so unable to descend into the mire of Grub Street, unless it was with black or, worse, “wry” humour? Well, thank God for Henry Marsh.

On this side of the ocean, the memoir has received strong coverage in The New York Times Sunday Book Review and by Michiko Kakutani in the daily NYT Books section. Sam Kean reviews it for The Wall Street Journal and it is one of The Washington Post’s picks of the best memoirs for the month. It is also rising on Amazon.

Holds are strong on light ordering.

Making the wives of the 1% nervous, a tell-all memoir set in the lavish world of the NYC elite, Primates of Park Avenue by Wednesday Martin (Simon & Schuster), is racing up the Amazon rankings ahead of next week’s publication date.

Martin, a social researcher who moved with her financier husband and toddler son to the Upper East Side, turns her trained eye (she has a PhD from Yale) on the women who lunch – at charity benefits that can cost $10,000 a table.

She found herself bemused at the culture until she framed the quest for the newest “it” bag and the preschool hierarchy through the lens of anthropology, both befriending and observing the women of her new circle and collecting their stories.

The women who told their tales, as the NY Post’s “Page Six” reports, are now feeling exposed, “a guessing game has emerged about which glossy, manicured moms are included as stories in the book.”

Martin wrote an essay for the NYT which has drawn plenty of attention and commentary. Some of the attention-getting tidbits include upper-crust husbands granting wives year end bonuses, parents paying obscene amounts of money for their babies to have food coaches and sending toddlers to tutoring sessions to learn to interact well in play dates.

The guessing game of who does what, along with the gossipy and avid reading, is a scene straight out of the The Help.

The predictable controversy and mommy-shaming is more like the 2011 backlash against Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

It all adds up to a juicy summer read and a fair bit of schadenfreude.

Check your orders. Many libraries have yet to order it and those that have show growing holds.

NPR has one, Mark Zuckerberg has one. And now Costco has started their own book club.

The first pick is Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper, released in trade paperback today by S&S.

The club is announced in the June issue of COSTCO Connection, with a plot summary, “This debut novel tells the story of Etta, who, in her 80s, sets out to walk from her home in Saskatchewan to the ocean. Leaving behind her husband, Otto, Etta is joined by James, a coyote. And, she is trailed by Russell, who has always loved her.”

It also happens to be one of the titles that librarian and book club guru, Nancy Pearl recently selected as one of her under-the-radar summer picks on NPR’s Morning Edition. Nancy credits it for involving character development, saying that the book is a page turner in the less traditional sense of the term, because it “makes you want to find out more about [each character] … as you turn the pages, you delve deeper into their hopes and where they are at the moment in their life.”

The COSTCO Connection features an accompanying story on how to develop a book club and they’ve hit on some crossover potential, noting that Costco warehouses carry many items useful to book clubs beyond books, like food, beverages, folding tables and chairs.

Also featured in the June issue is Costco book buyer Pennie Clark Ianniciello’s pick for the month, one of our favorites, Wiley Cash’s A Land More Kind Than Home. (HarperCollins/Morrow Paperbacks).

Ianniciello has long been recognized in the book business for giving a new life in trade paperback to debuts and below-the-radar titles.

She’s not the only influential Costco buyer, the company’s wine buyer, Annette Alvarez Peters, is recognized as a major influence in that business (Costco is the largest importer of French wine in the world).

So this month’s COSTCO Connection  article on “the exciting flavors of sauvignon blanc” could enjoy cross over with reading clubs, not to mention the Italian cheeses in another article (Pecorino Romano is noted as pairing well with sauvignon blanc).

Librarian Nancy Pearl announces her list of summer reading titles on NPR, picking six midlist under-the-radar novels.

Talking with Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep, Nancy begins with The Revolutions by Felix Gilman (Macmillan/Tor; OverDrive Sample), which she calls a “21st-century example of Victorian science fiction … with a little bit of steam punk.”

A thriller The Swimmer by Joakim Zander (Harper; HarperCollins and Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample) gets high marks for its fast pace and involving story while Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper (Simon & Schuster; OverDrive Sample) makes the list for its description of character.

The Strangler Vine by M.J. Carter (G.P. Putnam’s Sons; HighBridge; OverDrive Sample) clearly captures Inskeep’s love of history (he just published a book on American history, Jacksonland), prompting him to break into Nancy’s summary to share a bit about the history of the East India Company. Set in India in 1837, it involves a new member of that company and a mysterious agent on the hunt for a notorious writer.

Two titles that did not make it into the on-air discussion are included in the online article:

The Half Brother by Holly LeCraw (RH/Doubleday; OverDrive Sample) explores how “much coincidence is possible in our lives.”

Unbecoming by Rebecca Scherm (Penguin/Viking; Penguin Audio; OverDrive Sample) is evocatively described as opening “with a lie.” It was a feature in our Penguin Debut Authors program, First Flights.

The Girl on the Train is now one major step closer to the screen. Deadline reports that DreamWorks has hired Tate Taylor to direct. Taylor’s had experience with best selling novel adaptations, having directed the movie based on his childhood friend, Kathryn Stockett‘s novel, The Help.

Deadline also reports that GOTT is “the fastest selling adult novel in history with over two million copies sold in the United States alone.” but that story, recently reported by the Wall Street Journal now has a correction which reads, “In an earlier version of this article, the book’s publisher incorrectly said it was likely the fastest ever to reach that sales figure. Books that have sold faster include Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, which sold 2 million hardcovers in just over a month, not including ebooks.”

Publicists are already in high gear, promoting the currently filming FX mini-series American Crime Story: The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson, based on the book by Jeffrey Toobin, (Random House, 1996). Publicity stills of various characters in their roles have appeared in many publications as well as on Entertainment Tonight.

Catch glimpses in the ET video of Sarah Paulson as prosecuting attorney Marcia Clark, Cuba Gooding Jr. as Simspon, John Travolta as Simpson’s lawyer, Robert Shapiro, David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian, Courtney B. Vance as Simpson co-counsel Johnnie Cochran, and Billy Magnussen as Kato Kaelin.

No boadcast date yet, but the tie-in is scheduled for 9/29/15.

Two best selling authors returning next week, Nelson DeMille with his first book since 2012, Radiant Angel, (Hachette/Grand Central; Hachette Audio) and Clive Cussler with the 10th in his Oregon Files series, Piranha, (Penguin/ Putnam; Brilliance Audio; Wheeler Large Print). A debut gets a leg up from Entertainment Weekly and the NYT Book Review in the contest for The Book of Summer 2015, Kent Haruf’s final novel arrives, as well as several other titles with strong  recommendations from peers in libraries and bookstores.

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 May 25, 2015

Advance Attention

Hand Drawn Jokes for Smart Attractive People, Matthew Diffee, (S&S/Scribner)

Review Attention

The Rocks, Peter Nichols, (Penguin/Riverhead; Penguin Audio; OverDrive Sample)

This gets double coverage in the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, on the “Must List; the Top 10 Things We Love This Week”  (“heartbreaking yet funny”),  it is reviewed in the issue. It’s also reviewed by Kate Christensen in the upcoming  NYT Book Review.

Starred by PW and Kirkus, it also is an Indie Next pick:

This enchanting tale set against the backdrop of the beautiful Mediterranean is a bittersweet double love story told in reverse. The Rocks begins with a dramatic, shocking event and then moves backward in time to reveal the 60-year-old secret that caused the unraveling of a marriage and forever altered the lives of the two families involved. A page-turning family saga with a mystery at its core, this is the perfect book to usher in a summer of great reading!” —Adrian Newell, Warwick‘s, La Jolla, CA

Peer Picks

Our Souls at Night, Kent Haruf, (RH/Knopf; RH & BOT Audio)

An Indie Next #1 and LibraryReads pick, this is the author’s final book, published after his death last year. As the Wall Street Journal reports, he knew he was dying as he wrote it. “Normally, it took him six years or more to write a novel. But in a rush of creative energy, he wrote a chapter a day.”  He finished it in 45 days.

LibraryReads recommendation:

Beautiful, elegant and poignant, this novel is a distilled experience of Haruf’s writing. The story of how two elders attempt to poke at the loneliness and isolation that surrounds them will stick with me for a long time to come. I’m amazed at how Haruf says so much with such spare prose. He will be missed. — Alison Kastner, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR

The Water Knife, Paolo Bacigalupi, (RH/Knopf; Brilliance Audio)

Both an Indie Next and a LibraryReads pick (plus stars from PW & LJ)

Bacigalupi’s novel looks at the possible struggle for water rights in the southwestern United States. Reading Bacigalupi’s novel made me thankful for the current easy access to clean drinking water, yet fearful for our future. A great read for any fan of dystopian fiction.– Lindsay Atwood, Chandler Public Library, Chandler, AZ

Dietland, Sarai Walker, (HMH; Highbridge Audio)

Indie Next, stars from Kirkus & LJ

“Meet Plum, a woman who has forever defined herself by her obesity and who gets through her daily routine by looking forward to the life that will come after her weight-loss surgery. When Plum discovers that she is being followed by a strange girl, her life is changed forever. While Plum embarks on her journey of self-acceptance, a violent feminist crusade takes the world by storm. As the two storylines converge, readers witness an unexpected transformation. This is a fun, no-apologies-offered debut!” —Tess Fahlgren, Fact & Fiction, Missoula, MT

Tie-ins

Of the movie and TV tie-ins releasing this week (for a list of all upcoming movie/tv ties-ins, check our Edelweiss collection), the adaptation that’s making the most impact is based on Jesse Andrews’ Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, (Abrams, 2012). As a result of the buzz, the book hit the NYT YA best seller list for the first time last week and continues this week.

The hit of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the screening won a standing ovation, the Audience Award for best drama, as well as the Grand Jury Prize, over-the-top reviews and Oscar predictions (see our list of other book adaptations in the early Oscars pool). The movie opens in limited release on June 12.

Official Site: meandearlmovie.com
Tie-in: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (Movie Tie-in Edition), Jesse Andrews, (Abrams/Amulet Paperbacks)

A second trailer was released this week:

Memorial Day weekend signals the kick-off of one of our favorite literary games, predicting which title will become THE book of the summer.

Two early candidates have just been released and you can join the game. The library marketing departments of both Random House and Simon and Schuster have agreed to offer copies. We just ask you to tell us what you think by posting your reviews on Edelweiss. Scroll down to the end of this post to find out how to enter.

Hitting best seller lists this week, in the footsteps of several other “girls” is Luckiest Girl Alive (S&S; S&S Audio). People calls it “the perfect page turner to start your summer,” naming it a “Book of the Week.” It’s had several endorsements, from EarlyWord GalleyChatters to Reese Witherspoon, who has announced plans to adapt it as a movie for Lionsgate.

Entertainment Weekly calls I Take You by Eliza Kennedy, (RH/Crown; RH Audio), the “first big beach read of the season”  and a “hilarious debut.”  Sister publication People backs that up by making it a “Pick of the Week.” It’s been likened to a big book of another summer, Where’s You Go Bernadette (with the reference slyly underscored by a similar minimal cover). Curiously, there is a Gone Girl connection for this title; both were edited by Lindsay Sagnette.

GalleyChatter Janet Schneider (Bryant Library, Roslyn, NY) recommends it in her Edelweiss review:

If it were possible to cross the complex, shifting morals of Gloria Wandrous from Butterfield 8 with the wacky decency of Bernadette Fox from Where’d You Go, Bernadette, you’d come up with Lily Wilder from Eliza Kennedy’s timely, thought-provoking page-turner I Take You. Lily is an amazing character–she has had a rocky emotional past and made some questionable choices–and her current dilemma about how to move forward in her relationship with fiance Will takes some unexpected yet realistic turns. I Take You. is a book for grown ups–who are looking for a fresh and frisky heroine to root for, with some genuine insights into the true meaning of fidelity along the way.

To get you in the mood for summer, Random House Library Marketing is offering a Summer Reading Poster that includes I Take You.
Download it here, or request a printed copy here.