The sudden attention to Helen Macdonald’s memoir H is for Hawk (Grove Press; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample) has resulted in the book being out of stock at many wholesalers.

We’ve checked with the publisher who says a new printing is coming by the end of the week and yet another next week.

Those copies are sure to be snapped up as the media continues its blitz. The New Yorker has a piece on it in this week’s issue (with a headline that puts to shame all our attempts at hawkish puns, “Rapt“), the author was interviewed on NPR’s midday news program Here and Now yesterday and several other sources including Time magazine have stories in the works.

Also keep your eyes open for requests another book. The New Yorker describes H is for Hawk as “one part grief memoir, one part guide to raptors, and one part biography of T. H. White, who chronicled his maiden effort at falconry in
The Goshawk, written just before he began work
on The Once and Future King.”

The Goshawk is available from the New York Review of Books Classics.

Jennifer Lawrence (Hunger Games, Winter’s Bone, Silver Linings Playbook) is set to star as a combat photojournalist in an adaptation of Lynsey Addario’s just released memoir,  It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War (Penguin, Feb. 10; OverDrive Sample). Steven Spielberg is attached to direct.

Warner Bros. won what Deadline characterizes as a “whirlwind auction” for the film rights, adding”The memoir has been the hot title since it was excerpted by The New York Times Magazine, and there were no shortage of bidders for the life of a woman who goes into the most dangerous places in the world in search of truth.”

The book has also been featured on NPR’s Fresh Air, Elle, Entertainment Weekly, Time, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and it debuted at #11 on the 3/8 NYT Hardcover Nonfiction Best Seller list.

Below, Addario appears on The Daily Show:

This month’s GalleyChat has now ended. Join us for the next one, Tuesday, April 7, 4 to 5 p.m. Eastern (3:30 for virtual cocktails). PLEASE NOTE: We will have sprung ahead to DAYLIGHT time by then so make adjustments for your own time zone.

#ewgc Tweets

Veronica Roth, author of the hugely popular Divergent series (Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant, and the companion book, Four), just announced a deal with HarperCollins for a two-book YA “duology,” set for publication in 2017 and 2018.

The HarperCollins press release states that the books will be “in the vein of Star Wars” and will explore “the story of a boy who forms an unlikely alliance with an enemy. Both desperate to escape their oppressive lives, they help each other attain what they most desire: for one, redemption, and the other, revenge.”

Roth has just begun working on the new books and is, according to the Associated Press, taking her time with their development. In the meantime, the second title in the Divergent trilogy, Insurgent, hits movie screens on March 20^th.

The second and final trailer was released last week.

When Warren Buffett speaks, investors listen. His fiftieth annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders published Saturday, is called a “must read” by the financial news site TheStreet and is getting even more attention than usual because in it, the 84-year-old announces he has found a successor (but doesn’t say who that is).

He also mentions two books. MarketWatch  picked up on the story and both titles raced into the top 100 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

Of Fred Schwed’s Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?: Or A Good Hard Look At Wall Street (Wiley, 2006), first published in the 1940s, Buffet says, “If you haven’t read Schwed’s book, buy a copy at our annual meeting. Its wisdom and humor are truly priceless.”

He counsels against financial advisors, warning that most of them “are far better at generating high fees than they are at generating high returns. In truth, their core competence is salesmanship” and says investors would be better off reading Jack Bogle’s The Little Book of Common Sense Investing (Wiley, 2007; OverDrive Sample).

He also quoted Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, but that mention did not have a perceptible effect on sales.

Girl in the Dark (Random House/Doubleday, 3/3/15; BOT), a memoir written by a woman calling herself Anna Lyndsey (to protect her privacy), recounts a rare and mysterious reaction to light – sunlight and fluorescent – so severe she was forced to quit her job and live in a dark room, sustained by midnight walks, the radio, and audiobooks.

So, of course, it is also available as an audiobook.

Spotting it early, NPR highlighted the book in a “First Read” feature a few weeks ago, calling it “a gorgeously written, occasionally snarky chronicle” and T: The New York Times Style Magazine ran a profile of the author, describing her book as “funny, sharp, mostly devastating.”

More attention is on the way. Reviews are scheduled by People and the NYT Book Review, making this a good time to order additional copies.

Jane Pauley takes a look at “the hit of the season on Broadway,” The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, on today’s CBS Sunday Morning, through the eyes of a group of Philadelphia students with autism.

The publisher took the unusual step of publishing a “Broadway Tie-in Edition” of Mark Haddon’s 2003 best seller:

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: (Broadway Tie-in Edition)
Mark Haddon
RH/Vintage: November 25, 2014
9781101911617, 1101911611
Trade Paperback; $14.95 USD

Soon to join it on Broadway is the stage adaptation of first two books in Hilary Mantel’s Tudor trilogy, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, set to open on March 20.

The play also has a tie-in, but in the form of the actual script along with, according to the publisher, “a substantial set of notes by Hilary Mantel on each of the principal characters, offering a unique insight into the plays and an invaluable resource to any reader looking for an even deeper understanding of Mantel’s historical creations.”

Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies: The Stage Adaptation, 
Hilary Mantel, Mike Poulton (adapted by)
Macmillan/Picador: February 24, 2015
9781250064172, 1250064171
Trade Paperback; $16.00 USD

The BBC six-part series adaptation begins April 5 on PBS Masterpiece. Two tie-ins are coming this month:

Wolf Hall: As Seen on PBS Masterpiece
Hilary Mantel
Macmillan/Picador: March 17, 2015
9781250077585, 1250077583
Trade Paperback, $16.00 USD

Bring Up the Bodies: The Conclusion to PBS Masterpiece’s Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel
Macmillan/Picador: March 17, 2015
9781250077608, 1250077605
Trade Paperback, $16.00 USD

Last year, the daily NYT profiled Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard claiming he “has held much of the literary establishment in thrall ever since his 3,600-page, six-part autobiographical novel, My Struggle, started appearing in English in 2012,” but admitting, “If you are a lay reader, you may not have heard of Mr. Knausgaard.”

The NYT Style magazine, T even asked him  to write about his “tortured relationship with fame,”  a status confirmed by a backlash in both The Nation and Slate, with Katie Roiphe asking, “What if My Struggle Was Written By A Woman?”

“Lay readers” will be let in on the secret with a two-part excerpt from the fourth book in the series, beginning with an approporatedly moody cover feature in the March 1 New York Times Magazine.

It is published by the nonprofit Archipelago Books which ran a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to publish a special hardcover edition of My Struggle: Book One last year.

My Struggle: Book Four
Karl Ove Knausgaard
Archipelago: April 28, 2015
9780914671176, 0914671170

As we’ve been tracking, H is for Hawk (Grove Press; OverDrive Sample), Helen Macdonald’s memoir has been enjoying remarkable reviews and now, it debuts on the 3/8  NYT Nonfiction list at #8.

We’re a bit surprised, because its official pub date isn’t until next week, but the book actually shipped last month. Gregory Cowles notes in his Inside the List column that Macdonald has been flummoxed by the response the book’s already received in the U.K. (her actual quote, from  the Belfast Telegraph is, “That threw me into a massive wobble!”). We can expect it to rise higher on next week’s list, which will reflect the impact from the raves in this week’s People and Entertainment Weekly.

The author responded yesterday to the tweeted news from her publisher:

Blimey! I can’t do cartwheels, so I just did a celebratory forward roll. #happyH
— Helen Macdonald (@HelenJMacdonald)

Arriving at #11 is another memoir that has received media attention, combat photojournalist Lynsey Addario’s  It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War (Penguin, Feb. 10; OverDrive Sample).

On the Young Adult list, The DUFF: (Designated Ugly Fat Friend) by Kody Keplinger (Hachette/Poppy) arrives at #2, its first appearance since being published in 2010, as a result of  the promotion for a film adaptation, which arrived in theaters last week. A low-budget film (which may be the reason the publisher decided to only release the tie-in as an eBook), its “respectable” success is being attributed to an effective social marketing campaign, which may have also driven interest in the book. (View trailer here and see “What Makes The DUFF This Generation’s Mean Girls“)

Further down, at #7 is a standalone eBook short story from Cassandra Clare, Welcome To Shadowhunter Academy, the first in the Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, a series of ten eBooks which will be publised monthly, as announced last fall in Entertainment Weekly‘s “Shelf Life” column. It is available both in eBook ( ISBN 9781481443142) and downloadable audio (ISBN 9781442383937).

In fiction, The Girl on the Train continues to chug along at #1 with no slowdown in sight. Publishers Weekly compares the BookScan numbers to those for another well-known blockbuster and finds “The Girl on the Train has pulled well ahead of where Gone Girl was six weeks in. At that point, Gillian Flynn’s book had sold 116K units total [which is below GOTT‘s more than 230K units], was #3 on the week’s Hardcover Fiction list, and was the #11 book overall.” Holds in libraries we checked for GOTT are continuing at a steady rate of 4:1.

On the heels of the massive success of Fifty Shades of Grey at the box office and the book’s return to bestseller lists, comes news that Anne Rice’s 1980s BDSM trilogy might become a television series.

The company behind Lifetime’s Devious Maids has bought the TV rights to Rice’s Sleeping Beauty trilogy (Plume. 2012; OverDrive Sample), according to The Hollywood Reporter. Rice will executive produce with Rachel Winter (who was nominated for an Oscar for her work on Dallas Buyers Club).

In contrast to her reactions to some of the adaptations of her previous novels, Rice seems happy with Thania St. John as the choice of screenwriter, telling The Hollywood Reporter “Thania’s voice resonates perfectly and will keep this story true to my original vision.” St. John has written for Grimm, Buffy the Vamipre Slayer, Chicago Fire, and Covert Affairs.

Long controversial and frequently challenged in libraries, The Nerdist says the hard core trilogy, first written under the pen name A. N. Roquelaure, “makes 50 Shades of Gray look like an episode of The Brady Bunch.”

USA Today reported last November that Rice is working on a fourth book in the series.

Next week, the final book in Dennis Lehane’s trilogy arrives, the public will finally get their hands on the memoir all the reviewers are raving about and a new book arrives from the surveillance expert that Malcolm Gladwell urges everyone to read.

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 March 1

Holds Leaders

World Gone By, Dennis Lehane (HarperCollins/ Morrow; HarperAudio; HarperLuxe)

In 2008, Lehane surprised his fans by stepping away from detective novels and into a historical epic, with The Given Day, (2008), set during Boston’s 1919 police strike. He picked up the story in Live by Night, (2012), with Joe Coughlin the black sheep youngest son of the prominent Boston Police captain from the first book, as he becomes a Prohibition era mob boss. This, the final in the trilogy, extends the story into WWII and is an Indie Next pick for April:

In the prologue of World Gone By, Lehane describes his main character but certainly captures his own abilities as well: ‘Joe Coughlin had a gift for bringing the beacons of the city into contact with her demons and making it all seem like a lark.’ This is Lehane’s great gift: creating characters with the full scope of human dimensions — our inner angels and devils, our passions and our crimes — and immersing them in the timeless trials of our world while disguising his feat as the entertainment of a ‘good read.’ Lehane is a magician, a maestro, and a master of the written word. — J.B. Dickey, Seattle Mystery Bookshop, Seattle, WA

Ben Affleck is set to star and direct a film adaptation of Live By Night. for Warner Bros. Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana & Elle Fanning will also star. That studio also holds the rights to the first in the series, but there’s been no further news about it.

The Assassin, Clive Cussler, Justin Scott (Penguin/Putnam; Penguin Audio)

The eighth adventure featuring private detective Isaac Bell, following 2014’s The Bootlegger, also coauthored with Scott.

Advance Attention

H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald (Grove Press, March 3, 2015; OverDrive Sample)

From The New York Times Book Review to People magazine, all are entranced by this memoir (see our stories from last week as well as this week).

Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant (RH/Knopf; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample)

On the cover of this coming Sunday’s NYT Book Review, Neil Gaiman strives mightily to love Ishiguro’s heavily anticipated novel. He can take a cue from the Washington Post‘s former Book World editor, Marie Arana who is a fan and booksellers, who picked it as an Indie Next title.

#1 Picks

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, Rachel Joyce, (Random House; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample)

#1 LibraryReads March pick:

Miss Queenie Hennessy, who we met in Joyce’s first book, is in a hospice ruminating over her abundant life experiences. I loved the poignant passages and wise words peppered throughout. Readers of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry will enjoy this book. There’s no fast-paced plot or exciting twists–it’s just a simple, sweet story of a life well-lived. — Andrienne Cruz, Azusa City Library, Azusa, CA

The Fifth Gospel, Ian Caldwell, (S&S; S&S Audio)

Caldwell was the co-author of The Rule of Four (2000), which was considered a more literary Da Vinci Code. In a starred review, Booklist says this new title may sound like it’s mining the same territory, but it “has more in common with high-end literary-historical thrillers like those by Iain Pears … [and is] the best kind of page-turner, one about which you also have to think.” Independent booksellers like it so much they made it the #1 March IndieNext pick.

It is also a LibraryReads March pick:

A murder on Vatican property begins this tale of religion, politics, and family. Two brothers, both priests, struggle to make sense of their friend’s murder. When one is accused, the other must go to extreme lengths to prove his brother’s innocence. Caldwell’s second novel is a book to savor. This is a heart-wrenching book you will want to read more than once. — Elizabeth Kanouse, Denville Public Library, Denville, NJ

More Picks

Where All Light Tends To Go. David Joy,  (Penguin/Putnam; BOT)

LibraryReads March:

This beautifully written novel juxtaposes the glory of the Appalachians against the despair of everyday life. Jacob McNeely recognizes his family’s brutality, but Maggie, the love of his life, gives him hope. Achingly told, the visceral prose will stay with readers long past the conclusion. Fans of the Southern fiction of Ron Rash and Wiley Cash will fall in love with this new voice. — Jennifer Winberry, Hunterdon County Library, Flemington, NJ

Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral,  Mary Doria Russell, (HarperCollins; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample)

A favorite from December’s GalleyChat, collection development librarian Janet Lockhart (Wake County Public Libraries) welcomed this new novel by the author of the popular book group title The Sparrow as “compulsively readable” and “A bravura piece of storytelling.“

It is a March Indie Next pick:

This continuation of the story begun in Doc is equally engaging. From a shroud of American West mythic bombast and misrepresentation, Russell creates compelling, realistic characters with Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday shown to be both heroic and heatbreakingly human. Epitaph focuses on Josie Marcus, the love of Wyatt’s life. Theirs is a grand romantic tale told in hardscrabble detail, and Russell even makes what could have been cardboard villains into fully realized characters, both flawed and sympathetic. A rip-roaring good yarn!  —Kathi Kirby, Powell’s Books, Portland, OR

Crossover Picks

Vanishing Girls, Lauren Oliver (HarperCollins)

LibraryReads March:

Reminiscent of E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars, this book begs for a re-read after you finish it. Nick, the main character, is recovering from a devastating trauma. Her family life is turned upside down, and a longtime childhood friendship is strained due to her sister’s exploits. I recommend this book to anyone who loves to read multi-layered stories. — Sybil Thompson, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Cleveland, OH

The author is at work on the screen adaptation of her 2014 book Panic for Universal.

Mosquitoland, David Arnold (Penguin/Viking BYR; Listening Library)

This YA title has garnered a remarkable amount of “Love” from librarians and booksellers on Edelweiss, and received an advance rave in the 2/27 issue of Entertainment Weekly, which notes that, among the current “glut of angst-ridden first-person novels about the everyday trials of adolescence … [it] is a breath of fresh air when a novel like David Arnold’s Mosquitoland bucks the usual classifications and stands defiantly alone.”

Upcoming Media Attention

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World, Bruce Schneier, (Norton)

The cover blurb, from Malcolm Gladwell, reads, “The public conversation about surveillance in the digital age would be a good deal more intelligent if we all read Bruce Schenier first.”

Schneier, the cryptographer who helped journalist Glenn Greenwald review Edward Snowden’s NSA documents, will be interviewed on NPR’s Science Friday next week. Both Politico and the Atlantic will feature excerpts and reviews are coming from the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Economist.

A debut novel that is an in-house favorite at Algonquin, strongly promoted by Workman’s library marketer Mike Rockliff, tops the just-released April Indie Next List. Orhan’s Inheritance (Algonquin Books, 4/7) by Aline Ohanesian which takes place in both the Ottoman Empire and the 1990s, centers upon a dark segment of Turkish history as explored through two characters, an elderly woman living in an Armenian-American nursing home and a Turkish man learning about his family’s past.

In his recent library newsletter (download it here), Rockliff extols Ohanesian’s prose, sharing an excerpt to prove his point:

Seda takes a deep breath and picks up the embroidery in her lap. She hunches over her hands, letting her fingers work the delicate stitching. Three rows of red and yellow diamonds mark the pattern as Anatolian in origin. Despite her resolve, the past is bleeding out of her fingers, staining everything it touches.

The Indie Next annotation is equally compelling:

Debut author Ohanesian’s historical novel relives the nearly forgotten tragedy of the Armenian Genocide during and after WWI. Through deportations, massacres, and executions of Christian and Jewish Armenians, the Ottoman Empire and its successors eliminated 1.5 million citizens. Ohanesian’s beautifully written book shares a tale of passionate love, unspeakable horror, incredible strength, and the hidden stories that haunt a family. Highly recommended. — Doug Robinson, Eagle Eye Book Shop, Decatur, GA

Orders are light at many libraries we checked.

In the newsletter, Mike also announces he will retire in June after ALA Annual in San Francisco, which gives us one final chance to thank him for many years of unflagging enthusiasm for both books and libraries.

Last week, Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk (Grove Press, March 3, 2015; OverDrive Sample) got rare double raves from sister but quite separate publications, the book section of the daily NYT and the cover of the Sunday NYT Book Review.

This week, it gets the same treatment from another pair of sister publications, People magazine and Entertainment Weekly.

It’s People‘s “Book of the Week,” with this stellar review (not available online),

Obsessed with falconry since childhood, British naturalist MacDonald decides to adopt and train a goshawk as a way to handle the frief that overwhelms her after her father’s death. Her evolving relationship with th feral bird, whom she christens Mabel, is the subject of this unusual memoir. Captivating and beautifully writtten, it’s a meditation on the bond between beasts and humans and the pain and beauty of being alive.

Entertainmenet Weekly begins their review (also not yet online) by declaring that this “memoir about an out-of-work English professor grieving over her father who comes to find solace and purpose by killing bunnies for her hawk will be one of the loveliest things you’re read this year …”

For R.A. purposes, you may want to cut the “killing bunnies” section when quoting the review.

Called “ground breaking” by Flavorwire, this Sunday’s NYT Book Review goes even further in praising a new novel that examines issues of motherhood, After Birth by Elisa Albert (HMH, Feb 2; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample), warning that it should not be consigned to the “women’s fiction” category, but should be considered, “… as essential as Red Badge Of Courage. Just because so much of mothering happens inside a house doesn’t mean it’s not a war: a battle for sovereignty over your heart, your mind, your life.”

It is also a “People Pick” in last week’s issue (not online),

Faculty wife and new mom Ari’s idea of work-life balance is being just as sick of her dissertation as she is of her maternal obligations. Then a pregnant indie-rock legend movers to town. Can commiserating with her girl crush cure Ari’s postpartum depression? Albert’s scathing send-up of modern motherhood boils with dark humor and brutal honesty.

Wendy Bartlett at Cuyahoga greatly increased the library’s order, even though holds are still light, based on a request from staff expecting it to be a hit with women under 35 as well as that rare rave from the NYT Book Review.

On a side note, we’re finding ourselves in the unusual situation of quoting the Book Review often these days, a result of their covering titles earlier and publishing reviews that make you impatient to read the books. Wendy reports the Cuyahoga staff has noticed the change and now consider it nearly as influential on generating interest as People and Entertainment Weekly.

This September, fans can stop wondering what happened to Louisa Clark, from Jojo Moyes’ best selling novel, Me Before You, (Penguin/Pamela Dorman).

The sequel, titled of course After You, is announced today by USA Today.

The announcement comes just as production is about to begin this April on the movie version of the first book, starring Emilia Clarke as Lou, a young woman who is hired as caretaker for the paralyzed Will, to be played by Sam Claflin. Originally scheduled for release in August, according to USA Today, it won’t hit screens until 2016.

The book is currently showing as Untitled on some distributor sites:

ISBN: 0525426590 EAN: 9780525426592
Penguin/Pamela Dorman; $ 27.95
Pub Date: September 29, 2015