This time, it’s for a TV series.

Gillian Flynn’s debut Sharp Objects, (RH/ Shaye Areheart Books, 2006) is being developed as a one-hour serialized drama, according to many sources, including Entertainment Weekly.  Marti Noxon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) will handle day-to-day operations as the show runner, with Flynn as one of the executive producers. It has not yet been sold to a network.

The novel was an Edgar Award finalist for best first novel and Stephen King was a big supporter, 

To say this is a terrific debut novel is really too mild. I haven’t read such a relentlessly creepy family saga since John Farris’s All Heads Turn as the Hunt Goes By, and that was thirty years ago, give or take. Sharp Objects isn’t one of those scare-and-retreat books; its effect is cumulative. I found myself dreading the last thirty pages or so but was helpless to stop turning them. Then, after the lights were out, the story just stayed there in my head, coiled and hissing, like a snake in a cave. An admirably nasty piece of work, elevated by sharp writing and sharper insights.

Two movies based on the other books by Flynn arrive this fall. Dark Places, starring Charlize Theron, is listed for release on September 1 (although some sites list it as still TBD), and Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike and Neil Patrick Harris, on October 3.

The adaptation of  J.K. Rowling’s first adult book, The Casual Vacancy, (Hachette/Little, Brown), begins shooting in Gloucestershire today. The three-part series, a joint production between the BBC and HBO, is expected to begin airing later this year.

Gloucestershire’s village of Stroud, with its cobbled market square, will stand in for the fictional English village of Pagford. The series stars Michael Gambon (who replaced actor Richard Harris as Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies), as delicatessen owner Howard Mollison.

In addition, more Harry Potter is on its way. Warner Bros. just announced that production of a feature adaptation of the HP companion book, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, (Scholastic, 2001), will take place in their studios near London. Planned as a trilogy, Rowling has written the adaptation based on the fictional Hogwarts textbook. The first film is set to be released in November of 2016.

The second season of Orange Is The New Black was released on NetFlix on June 6th. It may have wandered  from the book, and may not live up to the first season, but it features even more references to other books, so many that Entertainment Weekly was able to create a season 2 reading list of a dozen titles (ranging from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars).

The memoir’s author, Piper Kerman appeared on the Diane Rehm show recently, to talk about her life since the book and the series and her work for prison reform.

With the airing of the new series, Orange Is The New Black has moved back up best seller lists.

Stephen Colbert continued his public fight against Amazon on Friday, saying the company’s “scorched-earth tactics” against publisher Hachette, have resulted in “more people getting screwed than in Fifty Shades of Grey.”

In an earlier show, he noted that Amazon’s disabling of the pre-order functions for Hachette titles is particularly hard on first-time authors, so he enlisted viewers to buy Edan Lepucki’s debut novel California (Hachette/Little,Brown), which is also a LibraryReads pick, via Powells. As of Friday, over 6,400 copies had been pre-ordered. Now he is urging viewers to make it a New York Times best-seller by continuing to pre-order copies through Powell’s and other independent booksellers.

Other Titles Getting The Bump

Fellow Comedy Central host, Jon Stewart, who is also published by Hachette/Grand Central, has not formally joined the fight, but he will give a bump to another Hachette title tonight on The Daily Show, by interviewing Daniel Schulman, author of Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty (Hachette/Grand Central).

Also tonight, Colbert will feature a title from Penguin Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality David Boies, Theodore B. Olson, (Penguin/Viking).

And on Wednesday, Colbert will interview Katty Kay and Claire Shipman co-authors of The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance—What Women Should Know, (HarperBusiness).

The ABC TV series based on NYC restaurateur Eddie Huang’s memoir, Fresh Off the Boat, (RH/Spiegel & Grau; RH Audio; BOT), has been given the green light for the 2014/2015 season.

Looks like they are sticking with the memoir title for the series. Earlier we reported that the network had changed the title to Far East Orlando, which received protests for being racist from many, including Huang.

Now the original title is getting its own criticism via Twitter.

Trailer below:

The controversial Australian novel, The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, (Penguin, 2010), may become an NBC eight-episode series. Lisa Cholodenko has signed on to direct. As The Guardian comments, “This is ideal ground for Cholodenko [The Kids Are All Right, and the HBO series, Olive Kitteridge, now shooting ] whose films explore the tensions, hypocrisies and foibles of liberal middle-class life,”

A hit in both Australia and the U.K., where it became a reading group staple, the novel is about the shock waves set off after a man slaps someone else’s 3-year-old at a barbecue. The author told The Guardian in January, “I wanted to write about complacency, the fact that Australia at the turn of the century had become one of the wealthiest and most prosperous nations on the planet. We had become richer, we had become fatter, but it also seemed that we had become less generous and less egalitarian because of this prosperity.” The same could be said of the U.S.

Below is the trailer for the Australian version:

The creepy teasers have been piling up for The Strain, the 10-episode TV series based on the vampire novel trilogy by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. The latest comes with a difference, a definite premiere date, July 13.

We’ll hold off on grossing you out further until the actual trailer arrives. Those with strong stomachs can watch all the teasers on The Strain’s official Web page.

Tie-in:

The Strain: TV Tie-in Edition

Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

Harper, June 24, 2014

Mass market; 9780062344618,  $9.99

The STARZ channel has just announced Saturday, Aug 9 as the premiere date for the 16-episode series adapted from Diana Gabaldon’s best-selling Outlander books.

Official Web Site: Starz.com/Originals/Outlander

Tie-ins:

Outlander (Starz Tie-in Edition)
Diana Gabaldon

RH/Bantam: July 1, 2014
9780553393705, 0553393707
Trade paperback (US)
$18.00 USD

Outlander (Starz Tie-in Edition)
Diana Gabaldon
RH/Dell: July 1, 2014
9780553393699, 0553393693
Mass market (rack) paperback
$9.99 USD

The teasers for The Strain, the 10-episode TV series based on the vampire novel trilogy by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, coming to the FX Network in July [UPDATE: Premieres July 13], are so creepy that one observer has taken to ranking them.

Below is the next-to-latest, which is ranked as not-that-creepy; click here to view the creepiest. Yet another was released yesterday (it’s tough to keep up), but it’s so obscure, few are likely to get it.

The newly-released cover for the upcoming the tie-in is pretty creepy in its own right:

The Strain: TV Tie-in Edition

Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

Harper, June 24, 2014

Mass market; 9780062344618,  $9.99

First, there was NYC restaurateur Eddie Huang’s memoir, Fresh Off the Boat, (RH/Spiegel & Grau; RH Audio; BOT), and his beyond-Bourdain TV food series of the same title on Vice’s Munchies Channel, just renewed for its third season. Next, there may be an ABC TV series based on the memoir. The pilot awaits network executive’s decision about whether it will get the greenlight. The title of the pilot, however, was recently changed to “Far East Orlando,” regarded as racist by many, including Huang himself.

The Wall Street Journal‘s “Speak Easy” blog sticks to the original title in “Why the Fresh Off the Boat TV Series Could Change the Game.” Admitting to possible bias, the author, the father of the 10-year-old lead, Jeff Yang, predicts,

The show is like nothing you will have ever seen before on television. If it makes it to air, it will blow minds, raise eyebrows and, to quote a line that my son says as Little Eddie, “change the game.” I would honestly say the same if I weren’t the lead actor’s father. It’s that different. And provocative. And, yes, gut-bustingly funny.

He notes that if it makes it to series, it will be the only Asian American family sitcom since Margaret Cho’s All American Girl  gave hope twenty years ago that “millions of people across the nation might be gathering to watch a show in which they’d be invited into an immigrant Asian household, experiencing our unique issues and aspirations through the humanizing lens of comedy.” 

But first, something has to be done about that title.

No more teasers, here’s the first full-length trailer for the 10-episode series, based on Tom Perotta’s novel. It  begins on HBO on June 29 (previously announced as 6/15).

The Leftovers (TV tie-in edition)
Tom Perrotta
Macmillan/St. Martin’s Griffin, June 3, 2014
9781250054227, 1250054222
Trade paperback, $15.99

Casting is moving forward for the ABC series based on The Astronaut Wives Club, Lily Koppel’s best-selling book  (Hachette/Grand Central; Hachette Audio and Large Print), about the wives of  of the first U.S. astronauts, published last summer (see our earlier coverage). Currently on board are:

Odette Annable —  Trudy Cooper

Bret Harrison — Gordon “Gordo” Cooper

Dominique McElligott — Louise Shepard

Desmond Harrington — Alan Shepard

JoAnna Garcia Swisher — Betty Grissom

Azure Parsons — Annie Glenn

Zoe Boyle — Jo Schirra

The 10-episode series, to be directed by Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook, My Sister’s Keeper)  is set to begin shooting this fall, to debut midseason, 2014/15.

Stephen Colbert, as we’ve often noted here, has been very good for books. Many authors have enjoyed the benefit of the “Colbert Bump” even as the host of Comedy Central’s Colbert Report makes mock fun of them on his show.

It’s just been announced that Colbert will leave that show to take the place of retiring David Letterman on CBS Late Night, beginning some time in 2015.

Entertainment Weekly raises the question on many minds. Who is the real Colbert once he sheds his mock-conservative persona?

We just hope the real Colbert continues to be interested in books.

The first teaser trailer for HBO’s The Leftovers, based on Tom Perotta’s novel, gives away very little:

The 10-episode series is co-created by Perotta and Damon Lindeloff, co-creator of the tv series Lost, who recently told Entertainment Weekly that the book first came to his attention via Stephen King’s review in the New York Times Book Review.

The series, starring Justin Thoreau, Amy Brenneman and Liv Tyler, premieres on June 15 at 10 p.m. EST, following the season finale of Game of Thrones.

The Leftovers (TV tie-in edition)
Tom Perrotta
St. Martin’s Griffin/Macmillan
On Sale Date: June 3, 2014
Trade paperback; 9781250054227, 1250054222

The final season of HBO’s True Blood, based on the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris, premieres Sunday, June 22, 2014 at 9pm ET/PT.

The teaser trailer, below, will be shown before tonight’s premiere of Game of Thrones season four.

Tie-in:

All Together Dead (TV Tie-In)
Charlaine Harris
Penguin/Ace Hardcover
On Sale Date: May 27, 2014,
9780425271551, 0425271552
Mass market (rack) paperback
$7.99 USD / $9.99

Although the Sookie Stackhouse series ended with Dead Ever After, (Penguin/Ace Hardcover, 2013), death in the Stackhouse universe is a relative thing. She continues to appear in short stories:

Games Creatures Play, edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner (Penguin/Ace Hardcover; Brilliance Audio; April 1) – includes a new Sookie Stackhouse story

Dead But Not Forgotten: Stories from the World of Sookie Stackhouse, edited by Charlaine Harris, Toni L. P. Kelner (Penguin/Ace Hardcover; Nov. 25, 2014) —  a collection of 15 stories written by authors chosen by Harris.

Harris begins a new trilogy in May, set in the small town of Midnight, Texas; Midnight Crossroad, (Penguin/Ace Hardcover; Recorded Books; Thorndike; May 6). The town has strange residents, of course, including a vampire that works in a pawn shop (on the night shift).

Publishers Weekly calls it “a solid entry in Harris’s catalogue [that] will do very well with her fans.”

Libraries are showing holds.