Movie news has brought World War Z (Crown), Max Brooks’ “historical account” of a future battle against world domination by zombies, back to best seller lists.

Brad Pitt’s production company bought the rights to the book before its 2006 publication, but as late as last month, it looked like the project would sink under the weight of its $125 million budget. A new source of funding came through recently and director Marc Forster has begun hiring, with a view towards a June start date and release next year.

Brad Pitt will star. Yesterday, it was announced that Mirelle Enos, star of AMC’s new crime drama The Killing, will play his wife.

Pitt’s next book adaptation is Moneyball, based on the book by Michael Lewis, and slated for release on Sept 23rd of this year. He is currently filming Cogan’s Trade, based on the George V. Higgins’ mystery, with a planned release of March 3, 2012 (for a full schedule of books-to-films, check our Upcoming — with Tie-ins listing).

Following a critical 60 Minutes story about the running of his charity and the truth of events recounted in his best selling books, Greg Mortenson responded via an interview in his local newspaper. He has now also given a lengthy interview to Outside online (via GalleyCat).

Noting that he is not a journalist, he says his co-author on Three Cups of Tea, David Oliver Relin, insisted that it was necessary to create a narrative arc out of Mortenson’s various trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan, so,

…rather than me going two or three times to one place, [Relin] would synthesize it into one trip. I would squawk about it and be told that it would all work out.

Mortenson’s publisher, Viking, has announced that they are conducting their own investigation into the accuracy of the books.

Last night, CBS 60 Minutes aired an investigation into complaints about how Greg Mortenson runs his charitable foundation and whether all the stories in his best sellers, Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools, are true.

Mortenson chose not to appear on the show to defend himself, but denied most of the allegations in a story in his hometown newspaper, admitting that some of the events recounted in his books are “compressed,” and revealing he is about to undergo heart surgery. He also asked supporters to circulate a letter he wrote in his defense (a Forbes.com columnist, while cheering on Mortenson, analyzes this as an approach to mustering grassroots support pioneered by Sarah Palin).

Expect to see Tina Fey’s memoir, Bossypants, arrive at #1 on the upcoming 4/24/11 NYT Print Hardcover Best Seller list.

It’s been receiving considerable media attention, including an interview with Fey on NPR’s Fresh Air last night and on Oprah this week (where she revealed that she is pregnant with her second child).

Bossypants Tina Fey Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books – (2011-04-05) ISBN / EAN: 0316056863 / 9780316056861

Audio;

• Hachette Audio; 9781609419691
• AudioGo Library (previously BBC Audio); 9781609417192
• Playaway; 9781611138795
• OverDrive WMA Audiobook, coming soon

Large Print; Little, Brown, 9780316177894

Have we caught your attention with these covers?

They’re a just a few of the cookbooks you can look forward to in the coming months, from the Edelweiss list of  the cookbooks most-ordered by independent booksellers. Edelweiss produces online catalogs for publishers (a few publishers are not on the system, such as S&S, so their titles are not included). Many independent booksellers use Edelweiss for ordering.

Earlier, we posted the Edelweiss most-ordered fiction and nonfiction lists.

Full cookbook list below, after the jump.

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What a week for Tea Obreht. Not only has the twenty-five-year-old author received press attention that would make Jonathan Franzen envious, her book The Tiger’s Wife lands at #11 on the 3/27 NYT Print Fiction Hardcover best seller list and at #1 on the independent booksellers’ list.

In Nonfiction, Andre Dubus’s memoir Townie moves up to #4, from #13, on the 3/27 NYT Print Hardcover list after two weeks. Riding waves of media attention, The Social Animal by David Brooks arrives at #1 on the list and Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein debuts at #3.

Going straight to #1 on the March 20th NYT Hardcover Fiction list is The Wise Man’s Fear, the second in the fantasy trilogy, by Patrick Rothfuss.

The first book, The Name of the Wind, came out in 2007 and was a hit with libraries. It won both the Alex Award and the RUSA Reading List Fantasy Award in that year. Librarian Nancy Pearl talked about it on NPR Morning Edition and recently tweeted that the new book is “a worthy sequel…Well worth the 4 year wait.”

In fact that wait may be part of the secret of its success,  (more…)

We predicted that The Paris Wife would land in the top five on the 3/13 NYT Print Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list. It didn’t; it debuted at #9 after its first week on sale, which is still a good showing for a debut title (and, it arrived at #1 on the National Indie Bestsellers list).

There are just two other debuts on the list: A Discovery of Witches, now at #4 after 3 weeks and The Help at #8, marking its 100th week on the list (the NYT BR offers a chart of some of the books that stayed on their lists for over 100 weeks; Scott Peck’s ’90’s hit, The Road Less Traveled tops them at 694 weeks). The Help, by the way, entered the list at a lowly #16 (it was tied with Christopher Moore’s Fool at #15).

We’re  always on the lookout for insight on which forthcoming titles will become hits, so we’re excited to find a new tool; Edelweiss, the company that produces online catalogs for publishers, has released lists of titles most-ordered titles through their system. Since most of the orders come from independent booksellers, the lists offer a interesting look at the upcoming months.

We’ve posted the Fiction and Nonfiction lists, which represent the top 30 titles ordered during the previous two months (only the publishers that use the Edelweiss system are included, representing the majority of the larger publishers, with a few exceptions, most notably, Simon and Schuster). You’ll notice that few of the repeat blockbuster authors appear on the lists; most independent booksellers find they don’t do as well in their stores (which is clearly reflected on the Indie Best Seller lists).

A few highlights:

Fiction

At #1 is State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, coming from Harper in June. Libraries, of course, have already placed their orders.

Surprisingly few libraries are showing orders for #12 title, The Kid by Sapphire (Penguin Press, Jul 5). It’s the sequel to Push, which was the basis for the last year’s surprise box office hit, Precious.

At #16 is The Last Werewolf by Duncan, Glen (Knopf, Jul 12); a new entry in the paranormal category that few libraries have ordered yet.

On GalleyChat, librarians have been talking about the thriller Before I Go To Sleep by Watson, S. J. (Harper, Jun 1) which appears at #17.

Nonfiction

Tina Fey has already been getting kudos for her New Yorker essay, “Confessions of a Juggler,” which offers a preview of her forthcoming book Bossypants (Reagan Arthur/Hachette, Apr 5), at #1.

Few libraries seem to have ordered the #2 title, Boomerang by Lewis, Michael (Norton, Jun 13).

We’re not surprised to see the new book by Eric Larson, author of the beloved Devil in the White City (fingers crossed that the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio sees the light of day and does it justice) at #3 with his upcoming book about an American family in Berlin in 1933,  In the Garden of Beasts (Crown/ Random House, May 10).

On our special edition of GalleyChat, the #7 title,  Lost in Shangri-La by Zuckoff, Mitchell (Harper; May 1), emerged as a favorite with librarians as well.

This last season of the Oprah Show is heavy on reunions and reconciliations. In a two-part show, former Oprah relationship expert Iyanla Vanzant, sat down with Oprah to talk about what lead to their split eleven years ago (click here for a video excerpt).

Her most recent book, Peace from Broken Pieces, is published by Smiley Books, founded by PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley. It is an imprint of Hay House.

The book is now #1 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

Peace from Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You’re Going Through Iyanla Vanzant Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Smiley Books/ Hay House – (2010-11-15) ISBN / EAN: 1401928226 / 9781401928223

The NYT ArtsBeat blog reports that Ablene Cooper, who works for Kathryn Stockett’s brother’s family, has filed a suit against the author on the grounds that one of the main characters in The Help, Aibileen Clark is an unauthorized use of her name and image.

An EarlyWord debut favorite,Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown, will arrive on the lower rungs of the 2/20 NYT Fiction Best Seller list. Quite a feat; the only other debut on that list is The Help, now on the list for an astounding 97 weeks (both titles are from the Amy Einhorn imprint at Putnam, which is also responsible for The Postmistress, underscoring that it is one to watch. Check out what is coming this summer from Einhorn in the Putnam catalog).

Back in November, we covered Weird Sisters on GalleyChat and are pleased to see that most of those titles are hitting big now (join us for the next GalleyChat ,Tuesday, March 1, 4 to 5 pm Eastern).

Remember the sisters’ motto; “There is no problem a library card can’t solve.”

The Weird Sisters Eleanor Brown Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam – (2011-02-17) ISBN / EAN: 0399157220 / 9780399157226

Penguin Audio; UNABR; 9780142428948; $39.95
Books on Tape; UNABR; 9780307881724; $39.95
Large Type; Thorndike; May, ISBN 13: 9781410437051, $30.99
OverDrive WMA and MP3 Audiobook coming soon

Get ready for 14 NYT best seller lists, rather than the usual 8.

The Feb. 13 lists expand to include E-Books (adult Fiction and Nonfiction), as well as Combined Print and E-Books lists.

Also, there are new combined paperback and hardback lists in both fiction and nonfiction.

The only revelation from the new lists is that people buy the same titles in eBooks as they do in print — James Patterson’s Tick Tock tops the fiction in both formats and Lauren Hillenbrand’s Unbroken leads in nonfiction.

Not so long ago, publishers had ample proof that Americans weren’t interested in books translation, even international best sellers. When Knopf introduced the first book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, a 100,000 copy first printing was considered risky. It’s amusing to look back to EarlyWord‘s first story about the book, a month before The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was released, when most libraries had ordered it modestly and some not at all. Today, over two years later, most large library systems own upwards of 300 copies and holds ratios are averaging 3:1.

Larsson continues to make news. Just this week,

• the New Yorker tackles the question, “what accounts for the success of [Larsson’s] novels despite their almost comical faults?”

• W Magazine features a photo spread on the English-language movie version of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, coming to theaters in December

• the latest Scandinavian import, Three Seconds, lands on the upcoming New York Times fiction best seller list at #9 (tied with #8) in its first week of publication.

• Larsson’s partner of 32 years, Eva Gabrielsson says she hopes to finish a fourth volume in the series.

Looks like we won’t stop talking about Larsson any time soon.

On the Daily Show last night,  Jon Stewart gave Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra: A Life what may be his strongest endorsement yet, “F—-n’ awesome. I tell you man, a really awesome read.”

The book, already a best seller, rose from #16 to #11 on Amazon sales rankings as a result.