Titles to Know and Recommend, Week of April 18, 2016
Two quite different titles arrive to remarkably similar fanfare next week. Each has been selected for Indie Next and/or LibraryReads, and has received advance media attention and great prepub reviews. Despite all this, both were excoriated by the daily NYT reviewers.
The titles covered here, and several other notable titles arriving next week, are listed with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of April 18, 2016
Of the two, Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld (PRH/Random House; BOT; OverDrive Sample) is receiving the most advance attention. An update of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, set in Cincinnati no less, it is the number one LibraryReads for April (see below), an Indie Next selection, People magazine’s “Book of the Week,” and is reviewed appreciatively by Entertainment Weekly. The author is featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday and profiled in the New York Times, but the daily NYT‘s reviewer Michiko Kakutani rains all over it in an early and particularly savage review (“reads less like a homage or reimagining of Austen’s classic than a heavy-handed and deeply unfunny parody.”).
In terms of holds for books coming out next week, it’s currently neck and neck with Amanda Quick’s ‘Til Death Do Us Part (PRH/Berkley; OverDrive Sample), also a LibraryReads pick. Both are far behind the holds leader, David Baldacci’s Last Mile.(Hachette/Grand Central; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print), his next thriller featuring detective Amos Decker after Memory Man.
The NYT‘s Janet Maslin does a hatchet job on another heavily anticipated novel, Maestra, L.S. Hilton (PRH/Putnam; BOT; OverDrive Sample), an Indie Next pick for April (see below). Marlin calls it “a pornographic shopathon travelogue thriller.” Entertainment Weekly gives it a more positive spin, saying it’s “a sensual, sweat-suffused thriller … engaging throughout, but [main character] Judith remains frustratingly distant, and that mires the novel in the realm of macabre wish fulfillment.”
Booklist ‘s starred review calls it “a gift for readers who delight in vengeful female protagonists.”
It is currently being adapted for Sony Pictures by screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson, described in a profile in the Wall Street Journal this week as “the new go-to voice for female-driven movie thrillers.”
It’s showing about half the number of holds as those for Eligible on similar ordering.
For readers who like twisty dark psychological thrillers, but with a bit less edge, take them to the new books shelves in YA for The Darkest Corners by Kara Thomas (PRH/Delacorte; Listening Library), Bustle recommends it, because it “explores the nature of truth, childhood friendships, and the unreliability of memory in shocking ways. Fans of authors like Gillian Flynn and books like The Girl On The Train and Luckiest Girl Alive won’t be able to resist this YA thriller.”
People Magazine Picks
People magazines “Book of the Week” is Sittenfeld’s Eligible. The other two recommendations are:
The Last Painting of Sara de Vos (Macmillan/ FSG; Macmillan Audio) — “This beautiful mediation on love and loss and art is as luminous as a Vermeer.” Also an Indie Next pick.
Girl About Town (S&S; Atheneum Books for Young Readers) — a classic whodunit by Dancer-director Shankman (Hairspray). People calls it a “Nostalgic gun.”
Also in the magazine is an excerpt of the bio, Kick Kennedy: The Charmed Life and Tragic Death of the Favorite Kennedy Daughter by Barbara Leaming, (Macmillan; Macmillan Audio)
Peer Picks
Three of the ten April LibraryReads pick hits shelves this week.
The #1 pick is Eligible: A modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, Curtis Sittenfeld (PRH/Random House; BOT; OverDrive Sample).
Leslie DeLooze, of Richmond Memorial Library, Batavia, NYLibraryReads introduces this next re-telling in the Austen Project:
“Love, sex, and relationships in contemporary Cincinnati provide an incisive social commentary set in the framework of Pride and Prejudice. Sittenfeld’s inclusion of a Bachelor-like reality show is a brilliant parallel to the scrutiny placed on characters in the neighborhood balls of Jane Austen’s novel, and readers will have no question about the crass nature of the younger Bennets, or the pride—and prejudice—of the heroine.”
Entertainment Weekly listed it as one of the “10 books you have to read in April,” saying: “Clear your afternoon and finish it in one gulp.” It is also an Indie Next pick for May and a GalleyChat favorite.
Sharon Layburn, of South 
Huntington Public Library, Huntington Station, NY calls the newest Amanda Quick novel, ‘Til Death Do Us Part (PRH/Berkley; OverDrive Sample) a “tour de force” in her inviting annotation:
“Gothic atmosphere meets tender romance in Quick’s latest Victorian era tour de force. Calista Langley asks crime novelist Trent Hastings for assistance in unmasking a twisted secret admirer that seems to have singled her out, and the two become tangled up in more than just an investigation. Quick perfectly balances setting, characters, plot, and relationship development–the end result being a story that will delight her legion of fans, as well as earn her new ones.”
A title sure to warm any librarian’s heart, 
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts, Joshua Hammer (Simon & Schuster; HighBridge Audio) also hits shelves.
Marika Zemke, of Commerce Township Public Library, Commerce Township, MI offers this introduction:
“For centuries, Arabic manuscripts were collected by private households in Mali, particularly Timbuktu: gilded manuscripts painted with real gold, showing vibrantly colored illustrations of nature. These highly valued manuscripts were handed down within families who acted as caretakers. As radicalized Muslim leaders came into power, the manuscripts were seen as corruptions of true Islam, requiring intervention. History and adventure at its best.”
Three Indie Next May selections also hit shelves.
Life Without a Recipe: A Memoir of Food and Family, Diana Abu-Jaber (W. W. Norton & Company).
“Is it any wonder that memoir is the richest genre? The stories we live are far more fanciful, heartbreaking, and ridiculous than the ones we create with our imagination. We have no control over them. They unfold in spite of our best efforts in a clumsy, unsettled mess that becomes our life. In Life Without a Recipe, Abu-Jaber stops along the way to consider the terrain. She can’t control the events, but she controls the words with tight, perfect sentences. There’s a beauty and elegance to the prose that elevates this story of the author’s search for identity that results in a warm and wise delicacy to be savored.” —Terry Nebeker, One More Page, Arlington, VA
Entertainment Weekly lists it as one of the “10 books you have to read in April.”
Maestra, L.S. Hilton (PRH/G.P. Putnam’s Sons; BOT; OverDrive Sample).
“Get ready to tear through this hedonistic and refreshingly sex-positive thriller that hits all the right notes. Hilton sets her amoral heroine, Judith, amidst the shallow elegance of the European art world. While Judith is deeply enamored with the lifestyles of the rich and famous, she is also a razor-sharp critic of bad taste and human softness, sniffing out and exploiting male weakness with gusto. She is utterly void of empathy, yet oddly sympathetic. I’ll be recommending this novel to everyone I know with a strong constitution and an appreciation for intensity!” —Seija Emerson, University Book Store, Seattle, WA
Mothering Sunday: A Romance, Graham Swift (PRH/Knopf; OverDrive Sample).
“A beautiful afternoon on Mothering Sunday — now known as Mother’s Day — in 1924 provides the backdrop for this exquisite tale of love, longing, and memory. Jane Fairchild, a house maid, has been the long-time lover to the heir-apparent at the estate next door. Their final cataclysmic afternoon together will alter the course of her destiny in ways that she never contemplated. Told in flashbacks by the nonagenarian Jane, this rare gem of a novella will haunt readers long after they turn the final pages. Superb!” —Pamela Klinger-Horn, Excelsior Bay Books, Excelsior, MN
It also made Entertainment Weekly‘s “10 books you have to read in April” listing: “‘Save some tissues for Graham Swift’s latest, an exquisite, emotionally resonant romance.”
Tie-ins
Two tie-ins come out this week, another in support of what Marvel hopes will be a blockbuster movie and a different kind of big film, the next starring Tom Hanks.
Last week we wrote about the Junior novel tie-in for the superhero film Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War. This week sees a re-print of the graphic novel itself: Civil War Movie Edition, Mark Millar and illustrated by Steve McNiven (Hachette/Marvel).
Captain America: Civil War opens 5/6/16.
A Hologram for the King (MTI), Dave Eggers (PRH/Vintage; OverDrive Sample) also comes out this week, tying in to the April 22nd opening of the new Tom Hanks movie directed by Tom Tykwer (Cloud Atlas), also starring Ben Whishaw, Tom Skerritt, and Sarita Choudhury.
Eggers’s 2012 novel was a finalist for the National Book Award and tells the story of a down-on-his-luck American salesman who hopes a deal made in Saudi Arabia will change his fortunes.
For our full list of upcoming adaptations, download our Books to Movies and TV and link to our listing of tie-ins.