Book Expo America is around the corner (Wed., May 27 through Fri., May 29; see our First-Timers Guide here as well as our Edelweiss collection of titles to  be featured at BEA 2015). There are bound to be more galleys grabbed than can be stuffed in a suitcase, so choosing just the right titles is paramount. Below is a rundown of highly anticipated titles road tested by our devoted GalleyChatters. Even if you’re not going to the show, this will give you a good idea of what’s going to be hot this summer and fall. Most are available as Digital Review Copies. — Robin Beerbower, EarlyWord’s GalleyChatter

Jonathan Evison will be signing galleys of his latest book, This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! (Algonquin/Workman, September) in the Workman booth. When Harriet Chance receives a reminder that her late husband’s Alaskan cruise tickets from a raffle are expiring, the 79-year-old decides to sail by herself, unaware of the family secrets that will emerge. As usual, Evison has such a clear eye for developing his characters and we love them despite their foibles.  I agree with Rosemary Smith, top Edelweiss reviewer and blogger, who said “Evison writes like a dream.”

Annie Barrows will be appearing at the Annual BEA Adult Librarians’ Author Lunch and has already received high praise from two Galleychatters for her new book The Truth According to Us (Dial Press/RH, June).  Janet Schneider (Bryant Library, NY) said this novel about a young woman writing for the Federal Writer’s Project in Depression-era West Virginia is “moving and complex, with fascinating main and secondary characters. Reminiscent in tone of Cold Mountain without the physical journey.”

Paula McLain is appearing at the Penguin Random House librarians’ breakfast to talk about her highly anticipated novel, Circling the Sun (Ballantine/RH, July), the story of aviation pioneer Beryl Markham whose own memoir, West With the Night was a sensation when it was first released (Hemingway said, in characteristically sexist terms, “this girl, who is to my knowledge very unpleasant and we might even say a high-grade bitch, can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers”) and again when it was rediscovered and republished in the 1980’s. Still in print, it was published in a new edition recently (North Point Press, 2013). New Rochelle (NY) Public Library’s Beth Mills says the novel can’t miss with its “compelling sense of place and the dramatic Karen Blixen/Denis Finch-Hatton/Beryl love triangle will pull in the Out of Africa fans.”

BEA regular Elin Hilderbrand will be signing copies of her forthcoming holiday novel Winter Stroll (Little Brown, October) in the Hachette booth as well as The Rumor (Little Brown, June) which arrives just in time for tossing in a vacation bag. As usual, Hilderbrand writes a juicy novel full of secrets, lies, and relationships. Stephanie Chase (Hillsboro Library, Oregon) said, “Full of everything that makes a Hilderbrand novel a wonderful read, from descriptions of food and Nantucket to a clash of privilege to friendships, rivalries, and affairs. So much fun!”

Sourcebooks Landmark will be giving away a large number of Katarina Bivald’s The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend (January 2016). St. Charles Parish Library’s (LA) Vicki Nesting suggests picking up a copy of  this charming tale of about a Swedish bookseller arriving in a dying town to visit her pen pal, only to find she has passed away. Vicki says it is  “full of life, love, and the power of books, and is perfect for fans of Lorna Landvik and Fannie Flagg.”

Glamour magazine books editor Elisabeth Egan’s
A Window Opens (S&S, August) could have been simply a good contemporary women’s novel about marriage, career, and children, but in Egan’s deft hands it becomes a novel that anyone who loves books will appreciate (one of Egan’s characters suggests those of us who read e-galleys, print galleys, and “carbon-based books” are “platform agnostics”). Simon & Schuster will be giving away galleys and Egan will be appearing in the session Debut Fiction from Industry Insiders.

BEA Editors’ Buzz Adult Books will feature Dan Marshall’s scorching memoir, Home is Burning (Macmillan/Flatiron, October). Painfully honest, shockingly irreverent, extremely crude, and at times side-splittingly funny, Marshall’s remembrances of the year of taking care of his father dying from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) while also dealing with his mother’s cancer battle had me laughing through my tears. The publisher says “Dave Eggers meets David Sedaris,” which is an apt description, and I would add Augusten Burroughs to the mix.

Garth Risk Hallberg’s ambitious debut City on Fire, set in gritty 1970s New York City is a high-profile title, because of reports that it sold to Knopf for almost $2 million with movie rights going to Scott Rudin. Many of us were wanted to know if it is worth the 900 plus page count. The good news is that regular chatter Janet Lockhart gives it double thumbs up. She says, “A New Year’s Eve attack on a young girl connects the stories of a wide cast of characters that includes punk rockers, artists, school teachers, high school students, financial advisors, police officers, journalists, fireworks experts and more.  A literary page turner that will appeal to fans of Tom Wolfe, Dickens, David Foster Wallace, and Donna Tartt.” Hallberg will also be appearing at the BEA Editors’ Buzz Adult Books session.

GalleyChatters have been clamoring for months for the galley of Ernest Cline’s Armada (Crown/RH, July), the followup to librarian favorite Ready Player One,  Not only is the Digital Review Copy available now, but he will speak at the AAP’s Librarians’ Dinner. Leslie Stokes (Heard Co. Public Library, Georgia) said “Cline retains his magical ability to pull the reader into his story and take us on a thrilling ride. Fans of his first novel will be glad to see the return of 1980s pop culture references, but they are not so plentiful or obscure as to need footnotes.“

See our downloadable spreadsheet for more GalleyChat road-tested BEA titles. And don’t forget to join us for the post-BEA GalleyChat, Tues., June 2nd, 4 to 5 pm, EDT #ewgc (more details here).

After several attempts to adapt it as a movie, Caleb Carr’s best selling 1994 psychological thriller set in gilded age era New York, The Alienist is now headed to the small screen, as an 8-part series for TNT with Cary Fukunaga (True Detective) attached to direct.

Deadline reports this is part of a shift in the focus for the network towards  “edgier original programming.”

The series still has to be cast and filmed, so it will be at least a year until it comes to fruition, depending on Fukunaga’s schedule. He just completed work on Beasts of No Nation, based on the novel by Uzodinma Iweala, for Netflix and is gearing up for an adaptation of Stephen King’s IT. Variety reports that Will Poulter is currently in negotiations to play the demonic clown Pennywise.

Word of mouth seems to growing for Jessica Knoll’s debut novel Luckiest Girl Alive (S&S; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample). Based on its recent move up Amazon’s sales rankings, it is likely to hit best seller lists next week and may get an additional boost as  People‘s “Book of the Week” in the new issue, “the perfect page turner to start your summer.”

We named it a “Watch Title” for this week, based on reviews and GalleyChatters enthusiasm. Since then, holds have taken off with some libraries showing ratios as high as 9:1 on very light ordering.

Hollywood is also calling. Reese Witherspoon, who has developed an eye for domestic thrillers, having produced the film of Gone Girl, plans to adapt the novel for Lionsgate.

Randall Munroe, author of the runaway hit What If? has a new book coming out in November, Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words (HMH, Nov. 24).

Munroe announced the book on his popular website xkcd, “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language,” yesterday and it has already shot to #8 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

As Munroe details on his site, the book is a large format (9″ by 13″) collection of blueprints with diagrams of objects and explanations of their parts and uses, using only the most common 1,000 words in the English language. The result sometimes sounds like a precocious six-year-old (see the Saturn V rocket, called here, “Up Goer Five — The only flying space car that’s taken anyone to another world”). It could be the basis of some memorable party games.

There are still holds on What If? in libraries across the country. Expect high demand for Munroe’s upcoming title as well.

The Daytime Emmys for children’s programming are usually the provence of PBS. This year, however, some new players got nods, including Netflix, Youtube and Amazon Studios which won five awards for their original stop-motion adventure series for preschoolers, Tumble Leaf, tying with the perennial winner, Sesame Street.

Amazon Studios is now turning to adaptations. Of the six pilots offered in January, four got series orders, including the two that are based on childrens books.

The Stinky & Dirty Show
Based on the award winning series that began with I Stink! by Kate and Jim McMullan (HarperCollins Childrens), Amazon’s adaptation is expected to debut in 2016. EarlyWord Kids Correspondent, Lisa Von Drasek is a looking forward to it, saying, “The pilot episode is brilliant, high production values and a great story.”

Just Add Magic
Based on the book by Cindy Callaghan (S&S/Aladdin, 2010).

Amazon also announced that they have ordered six more pilots for kids, three of them based on books. Following their now-established process, Amazon will debut the pilots this summer for  customers to review and vote on their favorites.

The Kicks
Based on the middle-grade book series about four soccer players by US Olympic Gold Medalist Alex Morgan The Kicks, which began with Saving the Team (S&S Books for Young Readers).  The fifth in the series, Hat Trick, is set for publication next month. The adaptation will be directed by Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum (Ramona & Beezus).

Bear in Underwear
Based on the books by Todd Goldman, (Blue Apple Books)

Lily the Unicorn
Based on the book by Dallas Clayton (HarperCollins, 2014) and produced by the Jim Henson Company.

The Lost Generation will be back on the big screen this year. The film adaptation of A. Scott Berg’s National Book Award winning bio, Max Perkins: Editor Of Genius, (Dutton, 1978; available in trade pbk. from Penguin Berkley), has been acquired for distribution by Lionsgate.

Colin Firth plays the legendary Scribner editor, with Jude Law as Thomas Wolfe, Dominic West as Ernest Hemingway and Guy Pearce as
F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Also in the cast are Laura Linney as Perkins’ wife Louise Saunders, and Nicole Kidman as Aline Bernstein, who was romantically involved with Wolfe.

To be released some time this year, the film has already generated Oscar buzz (which means it’s likely to be released towards the end of the year).

No trailer is available yet, but the Daily Mail gives glimpses of the actors during production last fall.

Our Books to Movies & TV listing has updated information on over 400 adaptations in the works (for tie-ins, check our Edelweiss collection).

Recent news:

The Circle, adapted from Dave Eggers’ book of the same title (RH/Knopf, 2013), starring Tom Hanks and Alicia Vikander is set  to begin filming in California, Aug, 2015

Queen of the South, based on the novel by Arturo Perez-Reverte, (RH/Alfaguara, 2010), already adapted as a hit show by Telemundo, has been ordered as a series by USA Network, to be released some time in 2016.

The Sense of an Ending, based on Julian Barnes’ Booker award winner, (RH/Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), produced by BBC Films, has signed Jim Broadbent to star.

A Dog’s Purpose, based on the 2010 best seller by Bruce Cameron (Macmillan/Forge), is in development with Lasse Hallstrom to direct

American Crime Story: The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson, a series for FX, based on the book by Jeffrey Toobin, (Random House, 1996) is ramping up. Selma Blair just joined the cast to play Kris Jenner, the ex-wife of Simpson’s attorney, Robert Kardashian, to be played by David Schwimmer. Also in the cast are Cuba Gooding Jr. as Simpson and John Travolta as Simpson’s co-counsel Robert Shapiro. No boadcast date yet, but the tie-in is scheduled for 9/29/15.

The Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement in horror and dark fantasy were announced at the World Horror Convention in Atlanta, Georgia last weekend.

Steve Rasnic Tem won in the Novel category for Blood Kin (Solaris Books; OverDrive Sample) while Maria Alexander’s Mr. Wicker (Raw Dog Screaming Press) was selected as best First Novel. John Dixon took honors for best Young Adult Novel for Phoenix Island (S&S/Gallery Books; OverDrive Sample) and Jonathan Maberry won the Graphic Novel category for Bad Blood (Dark Horse Books; OverDrive Sample).

Jack Ketchum and Tanith Lee each received Lifetime Achievement Awards.

The full list of winners and nominees is available on the Horror Writers Association website.

Holds are spiking well over a 3:1 ratio at some libraries for Greg Iles’s The Bone Tree (HarperCollins/Morrow; HarperLuxe; Harper Audio; OverDrive Sample), the fifth novel in his Penn Cage series and the second in a 3-book arc that began last year.

The novel, which picks up where Natchez Burning left off, debuted on the NYT best seller list at the #4 spot on May 10 and moved down slightly to #6 on the May 17 list.

We listed it as one of the “Six Titles to Make You an RA Guru” the week of April 21 and The Washington Post’s Bill Sheehan gave it a glowing review yesterday, saying:

Like Natchez Burning, Iles’s latest is a hugely elaborate illustration of a famous line by William Faulkner: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Iles puts his own distinctive stamp on that Faulknerian theme, and the result is a very American epic-in-progress that leaves us waiting, none too patiently, for whatever revelations are still to come.

Deadline Hollywood reports that Tobey Maguire is developing a cable series based on Natchez Burning, working with David Hudgins who was the co-showrunner for Friday Night Lights. The project is with Amazon Studios, which has ordered scripts for two episodes.

Stephen King will release an audiobook-only title this summer, Drunken Fireworks (Simon & Schuster Audio; CD and DD, OverDrive Sample), about a fireworks rivalry that gets way out of hand.

To be released on June 30^th, at the close of audiobook month, it is narrated by Tim Sample, who also read King’s Four Past Midnight: The Sun Dog.

In early November the short story will be released in print as part of a new King collection, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (S&S/Scribner; Nov 3.; ISBN 9781501111679). The full collection of stories will also be published in audio (no word yet on the narrator).

According to The Wall Street Journal, Drunken Fireworks will stream for free on July 2 as a promotion for CBS’s new web-based podcast platform Play.it. CBS Radio stations in more than 20 markets will run promotions for four days starting June 29.

The Wall Street Journal sees this as a case of corporate synergy, since King is published by the CBS-owned Simon and Schuster.

King is known for his interest in helping promote new technologies. Back in 2000, he brought attention to eBooks by releasing the digital novella Riding the Bullet, causing the NYT‘s critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt to wonder, “is this the wave of the future or just a confluence of unusual circumstances?”

As season one of the Outlander series winds down on Starz (the finale airs May 30), shooting has begun on the next season.

Based on the second novel in the book series, Dragonfly In Amber (RH/Delta; 2001; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample), it follows Jamie and Claire as they escape to France and try to stop the Jacobite rising.

Once again, it spans multiple time periods and also introduces new characters, including Jamie and Claire’s adult daughter Brianna, Fergus, Jamie’s spy and one-day-adopted son, and a young Lord John Grey.

According to the website zap2it, author Diana Gabaldon is pleased with the plans for season 2, saying:

The Parisian stuff is very good, and in fact I’m deeply impressed by the outlines I’ve seen of those scripts … I think they’ve done a wonderful job of pulling out the most important plot elements and arranging them in a convincing way …

Season two is slated to air in the spring of 2016, so fans will have to endure a year-long wait, or as they call it, #Droughtlander.

Click on the image above.

Below are newly added items:

May 11 — Sign up for LJ’s BEA Galley Guide here

May 1 — PW ‘s list of Adult Galleys to Grab
and Can’t Miss Kids’ Galleys.

A limited number of FREE show passes available to qualified library staff from Unshelved. Link here.

Christopher Bollen’s second novel,  Orient (Harper; HarperCollins and Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample) “might well be this summer’s most ambitious thriller or this summer’s most thrilling work of literary fiction” according to author Ivy Pachoda in her glowing LA Times review of Bollen’s second novel.

It is a review with plenty of juicy quotable lines for readers’ advisors to reference – especially when working with patrons who like their crime novels filled with high body counts and a thrumming sense of place.

And Pachoda knows a thing or two about capturing a strong sense of locale — she did it in her book Visitation Street (HarperCollins/Ecco; OverDrive Sample), set in Red Hook, Brooklyn. In her review of Orient she clearly appreciates a fellow author who is able to create a similar vibrant evocation of place, saying:

The Orient of Bollen’s novel is of course Orient Point, the town at the eastern-most tip of Long Island’s less fashionable North Fork — think Gatsby’s West Egg to Daisy’s East Egg — which has so far resisted the Ralph Lauren and McMansion uprising of the Hamptons to the south. But the artists are coming, scooping up pricy shorefront properties, gutting the charming homes, bringing their cavalier city ways and transforming the quaint town as they see fit.

Her quotes just get better, ending with this summary:

There’s a smorgasbord of delights in Orient, from its murderous plot to the cheeky fun Bollen has at the expense of the art world. And there is ample room in this expansive novel for surprisingly soulful descriptions of everything from the intricacies of beekeeping to the beauty of deer hunting. Most impressive is how Bollen’s book is rich in literary diversions, moments of keen sociological and emotional insight — often into personal isolation — that transcend the conventions of its story.

Pachoda is not alone in her admiration. USA Today offers another quotable line:

… a gorgeously written book whose literary chops are beyond doubt. Come for the prose, and stay for the murders.

Buried in Entertainment Weekly’s new issue, long after the “Baby Power List,” the lavish look at Quentin Tarantino’s “Bloody, Brutal Hateful Eight” and the excerpt of Stephen King’s upcoming Finders Keepers, (not online) comes the “Summer Books Preview.”

The full listing of 40 titles is not available online, but we’ve created an Edelweiss collection of all the titles so you can check for Digital Review Copies (NOTE: Ernest Cline’s hotly anticipated Armada, RH/Crown, just became available).

Below are links to the sections that are available online.

10 Big Fat Beach Reads To Look Out For This Summer

Hot Reads: 6 Sequels Coming To Bookshelves This Summer

5 Out-Of-This-World Tales To Read This Summer

Calling it the “next True Detective,”  the Hollywood trades announce that HBO is set to adapt Liane Moriarty’s best seller Big Little Lies (Penguin/Putnam/Einhorn), winning it away from Netflix in a competitive auction. Niclole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon are producing and plan to star. They originally acquired the rights to the book, planning to adapt it as a feature film.

Like True Detective, which burnished the careers of its two stars, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, Hollywood watchers think this may do the same for Witherspoon and Kidman.

Both actress/producers have developed a taste for domestic thrillers. Kidman starred in Before I Go to Sleep, based on the novel by S.J. Watson (Harper, 2011). She’s also bought the rights to The Silent Wife, by A. S. A. Harrison (Penguin original trade pbk, 2013).

Reese Witherspoon recently optioned Watson’s upcoming mystery thriller Second Life (Harper; HarperAudio; HarperLuxe) and was a producer for Gone Girl, based on the novel by Gillian Flynn (RH/Crown, 2012).

Emily St. John Mandel has won the Arthur C. Clarke award, recognizing the best in Science Fiction, for her bestselling novel Station Eleven (RH/Knopf; RH & BOT Audio; Thorndike; OverDrive Sample).

The book, a post-apocalyptic tale that weaves back and forth in time as it follows the fate of several characters while also exploring the sustaining power of art, has racked up a litany of accolades.

A finalist for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner, it was picked as one of the Favorite of Favorites by LibraryReads, and made multiple best books of the year lists including Entertainment Weekly’s which selected it as their #1 pick.

As we reported, George R.R. Martin is on the bandwagon too, lobbying fans to support it for the Hugo award.

The genre categorization doesn’t sit well with Mandel. Responding to a review in the Washington Post’s “Science Fiction and Fantasy” column she told Ron Charles,

I was surprised to discover that if you write literary fiction that’s set partly in the future, you’re apparently a sci-fi writer … my only objection to these categories is that when you have a book like mine that doesn’t fit neatly into any category, there’s a real risk that readers who only read “literary fiction” won’t pick it up because they think they couldn’t possibly like sci-fi, while sci-fi readers will pick up the book based on the sci-fi categorization, and then be disappointed because the book isn’t sci-fi enough.

On the other hand, this offers readers advisors an opportunity to use Station Eleven to expand both SF and literary readers’ horizons.

Check your holds, they  are heavy in some libraries and trade paperback edition is scheduled for June 2,