Many of Stephen King fans are eagerly awaiting his return to the horror genre in Dr. Sleep, the sequel to Carrie, [CORRECTION: As pointed out in comments, Dr. Sleep is the sequel to The Shining] scheduled to be released some time in 2013.

Neil Gaiman profiles him in a story called, of course, “The King and I,” in the Sunday Times Magazine of London (the story is behind their paywall — but it’s available in full here, for those who don’t mind violating copyright — via New York magazine’s “Vulture” blog).

According to Gaiman, King is now at work on a novel titled Joyland, about an amusement park serial killer.

An “exclusive” nine-minute clip from the audio of Fifty Shades of Grey is on Entertainment Weekly‘s “Shelf Life” blog. We were suspicious, since the post is dated April 2nd (this year’s unofficial alternate to April Fool’s Day, since it was on a Sunday) and no publisher is listed.

Turns out, dear listeners, that it’s true. RH/Books on Tape confirms that they are doing the audio and that it will be available on OverDrive (UPDATE: it is downloadable ONLY).

BOT Library Edition Downloadable only, OverDrive; ISBN: 9780449808177 Price : $95

The book’s reader Becca Battoe, is the narrator of several YA and children’s audios, including Judy Blume’s It’s Not the End of the World. Her voice sounds young, appropriate for the innocent college student, Anastasia Steele. Don’t worry, the clip is very SFW.

Who should play Anastasia in the planned movie? People magazine suggests six actresses, including Emmy Rossum (starring in Showtime’s series Shameless and in the upcoming film version of the YA title, Beautiful Creatures).

The New York Times‘s review of the book du jour appears in the paper tomorrow, the day that Vintage releases trade paperback editions of Fifty Shades of Grey (the two other titles in the trilogy are scheduled for release on 4/17).

Unfortunately, we don’t get to hear Michiko Kakutani’s take on it. Instead, Alessandra Stanley, the newspaper’s television critic reviews it (no surprise, then, that many of the comparisons are to TV’s handling of sex). Stanley manages to come up with a new line about a book that has been talked to death; saying that it  “…is to publishing what Spanx was to the undergarment business: an antiquated product re-imagined as innovation.”

For their edition of the book, Vintage is sticking to what has now become an iconic cover:

Fifty Shades of Grey: Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy E L James Retail Price: $15.95 Paperback: 528 pages Publisher: Knopf/Vintage – (2012-04-03) ISBN / EAN: 0345803485 / 9780345803481

Cheryl Strayed’s grief /hiking memoir, Wild, may not have needed the media attention it’s begun receiving this week. The book debuts at # 7 on the 4/8 NYT Nonfiction best seller. Libraries across the country are showing heavy holds on moderate ordering (one large library has 173 holds on 10 copies).

NYT review, Dwight Garner, 3/27; The Tracks of an Author’s, and a Reader’s, Tears

Wall Street Journal review, Michael J. Ybarra, 3/26;  A Long Walk Unspoiled

People magazine, 3/25 lead review; 4 of a possible 4 stars; “with grace, wild humor and transcendent insights..Strayed’s language is so vivid, sharp and compelling that you feel the heat of the desert, the frigid ice of the High Sierra and the breathtaking power of one remarkable woman finding her way — and herself — one brave step at a time.”

Reese Witherspoon is probably happy about the news; she recently bought the film rights.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail Cheryl Strayed Retail Price: $12.99 Hardcover: 338 pages Publisher: RH/Knopf – (2012-03-20) ISBN: 9780307592736

   

The word-of-mouth hit Fifty Shades of Gray is featured on the cover of the new issue of Entertainment Weekly (subscribers will get the version on the right; the newsstand version features The Hunger Games).

What more could signal that “mommy porn” is now mainstream? Perhaps the $5 million Universal is rumored to have paid for the film rights (bringing speculation on whether the studio will risk an NC-17 rating) and the fact that all three books in the trilogy are in the top ten on USA Today’s bestseller list for the second week in a row.

Guess which books are in the top four spots (hint: they have to do with Entertainment Weekly‘s other cover).

Sadly, Barney Rosset did not live to see this.

As of today, Harry Potter ebooks are available for consumer purchase exclusively via the Pottermore.com shop.

As of tomorrow at 9 a.m., ET, the entire series will be available for checkout from OverDrive, according to an email sent by the company earlier today. Pre-orders, which had been temporarily halted, have now been restored (and the 10% discount extended through 4/30). The company also says that all holds place on earlier ordering will be honored.  The HP books are available in EPUB, Kindle and MP3 audio formats.

NPR’s Morning Edition examines Jodi Picoult’s popularity, pointing out that she is unusual among bestselling authors,

When you think about blockbuster bestsellers, genres like mystery, crime and romance typically come to mind. Ethical or moral fiction? Not so much. But that’s how Jodi Picoult, who has 33 million copies of her books currently in circulation, describes her novels. So how did an author who writes about divisive issues get so popular?

Picoult’s latest book, Lone Wolf, debuted at #1 on the NYT Fiction Hardcover best seller list this week.

Lone Wolf Jodi Picoult Retail Price: $28.00 Hardcover: 432 pages Publisher: S&S/ Atria/Emily Bestler Books – (2012-02-28) ISBN / EAN: 1439102740/9781439102749

It’s been a year since the news that Abraham Verghese’s long running best seller Cutting for Stone had been optioned for a movie.

Yesterday, news arrived that Danish director Susanne Bier (In A Better World, winner of an Oscar last year for Best Foreign Language Film )  has been signed for the adaptation. There’s no start date yet and Bier has another movie in the queue, but Playlist notes that, after releasing six films in the last ten years, Bier “shows no signs of slowing down.”

Librarians embraced the book, beginning with Verghese’s appearance at ALA Midwinter 2009 in Denver, where he spoke at the Breakfast and BookTalk sponsored by the AAP Trade Libraries Committee.

Cutting for Stone Abraham Verghese Retail Price: $15.95 Paperback: 688 pages Publisher: Penguin/Vintage – (2010-01-26) ISBN / EAN: 0375714367 / 9780375714368

After months of promotion, the English-language, David Fincher-directed version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opens across the country tomorrow.

According to the site Rotten Tomatoes, 82% of the 34 “top critics” give it a favorable review (although a few are a bit grudging).

Many of the reviews compare it to the earlier Swedish-language film (Time‘s critic Richard Corliss, says, it’s “like getting a Christmas gift of a book you already have”). A few hark back to Stieg Larsson’s original:

L.A. Times 

One reason Salander is catnip on the page is that she is anything but in real life. Antisocial when she’s not downright furious… she is fierce, furtive and feral…..[but the movie’s] cold, almost robotic conception of Salander as a twitchy, anorexic waif feels more like a stunt than a complete character, and so the best part of the reason we care enough to endure all that mayhem has gone away.

New York Times

Critic A.O Scott is also a fan of Lisbeth on the page, describing her as “Tiny as a sparrow, fierce as an eagle…one of the great Scandinavian avengers of our time, an angry bird catapulting into the fortresses of power and wiping smiles off the faces of smug, predatory pigs”  and believes that lead actress Rooney Mara, “…captures her volatile and fascinating essence beautifully.” He is not so enthusiastic about the book’s plot, however and feels “Larsson’s heavy-footed clumsiness as a storyteller” harms the movie. The changes from the book to the screenplay just show “…how arbitrary some of Larsson’s narrative contrivances were in the first place”  and the movie suffers from “…long stretches of drab, hackneyed exposition that flatten the atmosphere.”

Whatever the critical verdict, the publicity surrounding the movie continues to bring new readers to the book. Libraries are still showing holds queues.

It’s not certain whether Fincher will direct the next movies in the trilogy. At a recent press conference, he said he hasn’t been signed yet; “Classically, movie studios don’t make deals with directors, even if there’s a hope that there’s going to be three [films], because they want to make sure you behave.” He did, however, go on to say that if he were to direct the next two films, he would shoot them both at once. He also noted that the Dragon Tattoo shoot was “incredibly draining” for Rooney Mara because of all the “naysayers” who thought she was the wrong choice for the role.

Below is the trailer for the Swedish-language version:

An eBook-only title appears at No. 8 on the current the NYT eBook Nonfiction list. It is just the second e-only title to hit that list, (after Sarah Burleton’s self-pubbed abuse memoir, Why Me?), according to tracking by Publishers Lunch.

The book, The POLITICO Playbook 2012: The Right Fights Back, by Mike Allen and Evan Thomas, is an instant digital book, the first in a series of four titles about the 2012 election to be published in a joint venture between the political news site, Politco and Random House. It is billed as “the first in-depth look inside the 2012 Republican race to the nomination.”

As with other Random House titles, it is available for library lending via OverDrive, in Kindle, ePub and audio formats. However, relatively few libraries seem to have ordered it, raising the question of how libraries discover and buy e-only titles.

Co-author Mike Allen, the chief White House correspondent for Politico, has promoted the book on several national television shows, including PBS’s Charlie Rose Show and  CBS Face the Nation (bringing a tongue-in-cheek protest from the site FishBowlDC.com that POLITICO’s constant promotion has reached the saturation point).

The film of The Help is true to most of Kathryn Stockett’s novel, but its version of the story of maid Minny Jackson ends on a more upbeat note. Tate Taylor directed a scene based on the darker story element, which did not make it to the final cut. It is included as bonus material on the DVD and Blu-ray editions, released yesterday.

Entertainment Weekly features the clip on their “Inside Movies” blog, along with a fascinating interview with actress Octavia Spencer, who talks about how she prepared the young actors playing her children for the scene.

Below is a still, click here to watch the scene and read the interview.

Cable channel TNT did so well with its Rizzoli & Isles series, based on Tess Gerritsen‘s mystery novels, that it returns for a second season, beginning Monday, Nov. 28.

Perhaps inspired by the success of that series, TNT is about to launch Mystery Movie Night, which features full-length movies based on best-selling mysteries by various authors. It kicks off on Nov. 29 with Scott Turow’s Innocent, starring Bill Pullman as Rusty Sabich. Pullman has big shoes to fill.  Harrison Ford played Sabich in the 1990 adaptation of Turow’s earlier title, Presumed Innocent. Below is the schedule of the five other movies in the series, with tie-ins (there is none for the Turow, which came out trade paperback in May, Grand Central, 9780446562416).

TNT clearly expects that Mystery Movie Night will be a success. Shooting is about to start in Wilmington, N.C. on the first in the spring series, an adaptation of Hornet’s Nest by Patricia Cornwell (Putnam/Penguin, 1996).

Ricochet – Wednesday, Nov. 30. — Set in Savannah, this is based on the 2006 book by romantic (more specifically, “steamy”) suspense writer Sandra Brown. Tie-in: Ricochet by Sandra Brown, Pocket Books/S&S, Nov, 9781451678574

Hide – Tuesday, Dec. 6 — Based on the second title in Lisa Gardner’s D.D. Warren series, featuring a female Boston detective. Tie-in: Hide by Lisa Gardner, Bantam/RH, 9780553588088

Silent Witness – Wednesday, Dec. 7 —  Dermot Mulroney plays a defense attorney based on Richard North Patterson’s 1997 legal drama, a follow-up to Private Screening. Tie-in: Silent Witness by Richard North Patterson, St. Martin’s/Macmillan, Oct., 978125001484-9

Good Morning, Killer – Tuesday, Dec. 13 — Based on the second book in April Smith’s series set in Montana and featuring iconoclastic FBI agent Ana Grey. Tie-in: Good Morning, Killer by April Smith, Vintage/RH, Nov, 9780307950345

Deck the Halls – Tuesday, Dec. 20 — Based on the first book in Mary Higgins Clark and daughter Carol Higgins Clark’s series of holiday mystery novels, this one stars Kathy Najimy as a cleaning-woman-turned-private-eye. Tie-in: Deck the Halls, Pocket Books, Nov, 9781451678581

Tim Burton will develop the surprise YA hit Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs (Quirk Books, Jun, 2011) as a “potential directing project,” according to Deadline.

Riggs has the strange hobby of collecting old snapshots, he published highlights of his collection in his blog on the Mental Floss magazine site. For Miss Peregrine, he wove a story around some strange and haunting Victorian photos. It’s been on the NYT Children’s Hardcover list for 22 weeks, raching a high of #2.

An as-yet-untitled sequel to Miss Peregine is scheduled for Spring 2013.

Coming in April is a book that expands on Riggs’s Mental Floss series, called Talking Pictures.

Talking Pictures Ransom Riggs Retail Price: $13.99 Paperback: 368 pages Publisher: It Books/HarperCollins(2012-04-10) ISBN / EAN: 9780062099495, 0062099493

In today’s Washington Post, Ron Charles calls The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje, “a charming mixture of eccentricity, serendipity and impish fun.” The semi-autobiographical story of a boyhood journey that affected  the main character’s entire life, Charles says the novel’s “vignettes convey a delightful sense of the urgency and mystery of adolescence, their galloping imagination, thumping anticipation and assurance that every overhead whisper is a conspiracy, a forbidden tryst or a murder in the planning stages.”

The book is #4 on the new Indie best seller list, rising from #6 last week.

The Cat’s Table Michael Ondaatje Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2011-10-04) ISBN / EAN: 9780307700117/0307700119

RH Audio, 9780307943712; Center Point Large Print, 9781611732245

In its first week of publication, Michael Lewis’s Boomerang; Travels in the New Third World, (Norton, 10/3; S&S Audio) arrives at #1 on the Indie Hardcover Nonfiction List (we also hear that it will be at #2 on the upcoming NYT list).

After four weeks on the Indie Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list, the heavily-promoted debut, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Doubleday, 9/13; Audio, RH Audio and Books on Tape; Large Print,Center Point), moves back up to #1, after spending one week in the #2 position.

Also notable, The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje (Knopf; Random House Audio; Books on Tape), arrives at #4  in its first week of publication.