The interest in the hidden identity of Elena Ferrante, author of the Neapolitan novels that have swept through the best seller lists, hit a boil this weekend, sending her titles soaring again on Amazon.

The real author behind the Ferrante pseudonym has rigorously kept her (or his) true identity private. She grants email interviews only and those exchanges pass through her publisher.

That only fuels speculation, and the latest, reports The New York Times, comes from an Italian author and professor who has conducted an historical and literary study of the books. He sets his eyes on a fellow professor from Naples named Marcella Marmo. Both Ms. Marmo and Ferrante’s publishers flatly deny it.

“It’s nonsense,” said the publishers and “I’m not Elena Ferrante,” said Ms. Marmo. Those predictable responses have not quelled speculation.

Holds and circulation remain high across the series that includes My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, and The Story of The Lost Child (all published by Europa Editions)

Just last week, it was announced that Ferrante is on the longlist for the Man Booker International Prize, adding even more interest to this long-running literary parlor game.

Time to re-check your holds on The Widow (PRH/NAL; BOT; OverDrive Sample). It is steadily climbing the NYT Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list, hitting #9 this week, its highest point to date.

The USA Today list shows a different pattern, where Widow appears to be dropping, moving to #34 this week from a high of #12. However, that list is more volatile because it tracks all formats, age ranges and subjects.  This week the paperbacks of several Oscar-related books jumped ahead of Widow, as did the paperback of the most recent Coctco pick, Kathleen Grissom’s  The Kitchen House (S&S/Touchstone; OverDrive Sample) which came back on the list at #9.

The greatest activity is on the NYT Nonfiction Hardcover list, with six new titles. Debuting in the highest spot is Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli at #5. As the NYT  “Inside the List” column notes, it comes to the U.S. at a propitious time,  less than a month after scientists reported findings that confirm Einstein’s theory of relativity. Most libraries show heavy holds on light ordering

As predicted by library holds, Fiona Barton’s The Widow (PRH/NAL; BOT; OverDrive Sample) hits best seller lists this week. It’s #12 on the 3/6/16 NYT Hardcover Fiction list. It’s also #12 on the USA Today list. That list combines all formats and categories and The Widow is the sixth hardcover fiction title.

At number one on both lists is Jeffrey Archer’s Cometh
the Hour, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Macmillan Audio), the sixth in the Clifton Chronicles. USA Today notes this is a step up for the author, “Archer’s previous peak was No. 5 in May 2013, with Best Kept Secret, the third book
in the series. All the Chronicles titles have hit the Top 25, with four now making the Top 10.”

The third book in Pierce Brown’s Red Rising trilogy, Morning Star (PRH/ Del Rey) debuts at #1 on the 2/28 New York Times Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list, More significantly, it’s also #1 on the USA Today list, outselling books in all categories and formats.

Interest is growing in the series. The previous two titles debuted in lower positions. Golden Son arrived at #6, dropping down to the extended list the next week. Red Rising debuted was on the extended list for three weeks. It was a #1 LibraryReads pick.

Brown is at work on another trilogy, titled Iron Gold, reports USA Today. It picks up after Morning Star, but focuses on different characters.

A movie adaptation of Red Rising is in the works. In an interview earlier this month, Brown said it is in development with World War Z director Marc Forster. Don’t expect it any time soon, however. Brown says, “we’re not trying to do a rushed job of this. I did the first two drafts and my buddy is doing a new draft.”

Based on recent best seller lists, people love to read about death.

NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday examines the trend, prompted by a recent article in The Guardian which, based on the popularity of Paul Kalanithi’s memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, (PRH/Random House; BOT; OverDrive Sample), offers two explanations: the books present examples of ways to face the inevitable and the seemingly sad subject holds a measure of optimism, because the act of writing a memoir grants a measure of immortality.

The interview highlights a couple of well-known examples, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow (Hachette/Hyperion, 2008) and Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson by Mitch Albom (PRH/Doubleday/Broadway, 2002).

There are plenty of newer examples too, including Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (Macmillan/Holt; 2014), which has been on the NYT hardback nonfiction bestseller list for over a year and Gratitude by Oliver Sacks (PRH/Knopf, 2015), now in its fifth week on that same list.

There’s no surer sign of the beginning of a new season than movement on the best seller list.

Two new titles land at #1 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction and Nonfiction best seller lists, breaking through titles that have dominated the top spot for weeks.

At #1 in nonfiction is one of our crystal ball titles, When Breath Becomes Air, (PRH/Random House; BOT; OverDrive Sample).

A young neurosurgeon’s account of facing his own death, it is followed at #2 by another new best seller, Pope Francis’s The Name of God Is Mercy (PRH/Random House).

In fiction, Elizabeth Stout’s latest, My Name Is Lucy Barton (Random House; Random House Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample) breaks through to number one, moving The Girl on the Train down to #3, which has just completed over a year on the list, most of that time in the top five. At #4 is an even greater phenomenon, Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See, on the list for 89 weeks.

John Grisham, Stephen King, and Michael Connelly take the top three spots on the current NYT’s Hardcover Fiction list but Mitch Albom’s The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto (Harper; OverDrive Sample) has opened in the number four spot, showing surprising strength when measured against the less than strong demand in libraries (holds are well within a 3:1 ratio where we checked).

Others are clearly enthused and USA Today selected it as one of their “Weekend Picks for Book Lovers.” They also selected the title currently holding down the top spot on the NYT’s Hardcover Nonfiction list, Jon Meacham’s Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush (Random House; BOT; OverDrive Sample).

It opens at #1 after continuing its rise following the juicy revelations that the senior President Bush called Dick Cheney an “iron ass” and had more to say about George W. Bush’s presidency.

Two other books about presidents fill the number two and three spots on the nonfiction list, Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger’s Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History (Penguin/Sentinel; Penguin Audio; OverDrive Sample) and Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s Killing Regan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency (Macmillian/Henry Holt; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Ten years ago Rick Riordan got kids interested in reading about Greek mythology with the publication of The Lightning Thief. Since then he has also written series based on Roman and Egyptian mythology.

Now he is turning his attention to Norse myths with his newest book Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book One, The Sword of Summer (Disney; Listening Library; OverDrive Sample).

It debuts this week in the #1 spot on USA Today’s Best-Selling Books list, a list that includes all ages and formats as well as in the top spot of The New York Times’ Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover list.

In and interview with Entertainment Weekly Riordan says that Norse myths present a special challenge because are gruesome and he had to figure out how to “present this accurately but also in a way that’s not completely terrifying”

Below is the book trailer.

The team at Slate are back with their next book club pick, this time it is the ongoing best seller and basis for the blockbuster movie, The Martian (Mass Market MTI; RH/Broadway; OverDrive Sample) by Andy Weir.

The discussion is wide ranging and at times persnickety as the three participants go back and forth with negative and positive responses.

Katy Waldman, Slate’s words correspondent, was “weirdly riveted” by the process of how astronaut Mark Watney works through the catastrophes involved in being abandoned on Mars, but she summarizes it as “nerd-wish fulfillment fantasy, the next wave of reality shows, like Survivor Mars” and in the end can only recommend it with reservations. However, she recommends the movie wholeheartedly.

Laura Miller, books and culture columnist for Slate, is the most positive on the book, offering some book-discussion worthy ideas, comparing it to several recent novels in which the protagonists work through complex processes to avert disasters, such as Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves.

November’s conversation will address one of the year’s most talked-about literary novels, Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (RH/Doubleday), currently up for two major awards. It is the favorite among odds makers to win the Booker Prize, to be announced later today. On the National Book Awards longlist, we will learn if it makes the shortlist tomorrow.

As we predicted last week, Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies (Penguin/Riverhead; BOT and Penguin Audio; OverDrive Sample) has made The New York Times hardcover fiction list at #7.

It is also exceeding a 3:1 holds ratio at most libraries we checked, with some placing second orders for additional copies.

The NYT’s features Fates and Furies in the Sunday Book Review “Inside the List” section as well, where Gregory Cowles, the paper’s preview editor and best-seller columnist, compares it to Gone Girl, “minus the murderous psychopathology.”

In a share-worthy summary, Cowles goes on to say “both tell the story of a marriage first from the husband’s somewhat complacent perspective, then change course midway to reveal a wife far more active and vengeful than expected.”

Librarian Nancy Pearl, who has often recommended Beryl Markham’s West with the Night (Macmillan/North Point Press; Blackstone Audio; eBook from OpenRoad Medic; OverDrive sample), interviews author Paula McLain as part of the Book Lust series airing on the Seattle channel. McLain’s  fictional take on Markham’s life, Circling the Sun (RH/Ballantine; BOT and RH Audio; OverDrive Sample) has been a NYT best seller since its publication at the end of July.

The two discuss how McLain came to focus on Markham after her success writing about Hemingway’s first wife in the novel The Paris Wife (RH/Ballantine; BOT and RH Audio; OverDrive Sample). It turns out that McLain struggled after the publication of that breakout book, spending years searching for a subject.

She wrote hundreds of pages on both Georgia O’Keeffe and Marie Curie only to have both projects fail to take off. Finally, while on vacation with her sister and brother-in-law she stumbled across West with the Night, Markham’s vivid memoir (which even Hemingway, who hated Markham, praised to the skies). McLain’s brother-in-law was reading it poolside and told her it was going to be important in her life. She ignored him and it for a year longer before picking up the story and getting swept away.

As predicted, Harper Lee’s “new” novel was the book of the summer, hitting number one on the NYT Hardcover Fiction best seller list in its first week of publication and remaining there for 6 weeks, only slipping to #2 last week, when Sue Grafton’s X hit that spot.

This week, titles from the fall previews fulfill predictions. The Girl In The Spider’s Web, by David Lagercrantz (RH/Knopf) and Purity by Jonathan Franzen (Macmillan/FSG) arrive at #1 and #2, moving Watchman to #3.

Another title that appears on all the fall previews, Elena Ferrante’s The Story of the Lost Child,  (Europa Editions) arrives on the Paperback Trade Fiction list at No. 3. Indicating that the heavy coverage has brought new readers to the author’s Neapolitan series, the first title in the series, My Brilliant Friend makes its debut  at #8, tied with Celste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You (Penguin Books) at #7, after 16 weeks. [Ng was one of the authors in our Penguin Debut Authors series.]

YouTube star Miranda Sing debuts at #1 on the NYT Advice, How-To, & Miscellaneous bestseller list with her first book, Selp-Helf (S&S/Gallery Books; OverDrive Sample).

It is #6 on the USA Today list, an even more impressive feat since that list does not divide titles by category, putting the social media author right behind:
1) Go Set a Watchman, 2) Grey,
3) Paper Towns, 4) To Kill a Mockingbird, and 5) Girl on the Train.

The NYT Sunday Book Review covers the book (actually, it’s more like a printed scrap book) in their “Inside the List” column, saying “YouTube star Miranda Sings — real name Colleen Ballinger — has become a comic sensation by milking the disconnect between her supreme confidence and her hopeless lack of ability in pretty much any human endeavor: can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t apply lipstick inside the lines. Now she’s taken that endearing incompetence into the book world with a parody advice guide.”

Sings is just one of the social media personalities charging into the old media world of books. As we reported earlier, there are dozens of others getting attention (see our collection of 17 new and forthcoming titles).

The book may have been propelled by the author’s appearance at VidCon which just wrapped and is shining old media attention on new media disruption. Founded by VlogBrothers John and Hank Green in 2010, it has grown exponentially.

In his lengthy report on the convention, Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair writes that “I have been to the high temple of digital video and I have seen its awesome, occasionally terrifying might. The revolution is not coming. It’s here.”

New York magazine signals their unease with the headline, “An Old Person’s Remote Recap of VidCon 2015.”

At the same time that #blacklivesmatter reveals tp those who weren’t aware that racism still plagues this country, two books also appeared as reminders. Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, (Harper), reveals the comlex reality behind the saintly character of Atticus Finch.

Written 55 years later Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me (RH/Spiegel & Grau; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample) describes how frightening it is to be a black parent today.

Both books now land at the top of the NYT best sellers lists, Go Set a Watchman on the fiction list and Between the World and Me on nonfiction.

The Girl on the Train is now one major step closer to the screen. Deadline reports that DreamWorks has hired Tate Taylor to direct. Taylor’s had experience with best selling novel adaptations, having directed the movie based on his childhood friend, Kathryn Stockett‘s novel, The Help.

Deadline also reports that GOTT is “the fastest selling adult novel in history with over two million copies sold in the United States alone.” but that story, recently reported by the Wall Street Journal now has a correction which reads, “In an earlier version of this article, the book’s publisher incorrectly said it was likely the fastest ever to reach that sales figure. Books that have sold faster include Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, which sold 2 million hardcovers in just over a month, not including ebooks.”