The village of Holt in Wiltshire is gearing up for the BBC’s arrival next week to begin filming the adaptation of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel. The shoot will take place in Great Chalfield Manor, standing in for Thomas Cromwell’s home.

Mark Rylance, who will play Cromwell, is familiar with that house. It was used as the Boleyn family home in the 2008 film of Phillipa Gregory’s novel, The Other Boleyn Girl (S&S/Scribner), in which he portrayed Thomas Boleyn.

Fans who have been eagerly awaiting Mirror And The Light, the projected final volume in Mantel’s series, were disappointed when it was announced that her next book, coming at the end of September, is The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher and Other Stories, (Macmillan/Holt, Macmillan Audio, read by Simon Vance), which is obviously not part of the Tudor series.

She has said, however, that she plans to finish Mirror And The Light this year. That book is clearly very much on her mind. On Saturday, speaking on BBC radio about why she finds her subject Cromwell so fascinating, she addressed the inevitable final event of the story, when his “life will end abruptly on the scaffold.” Rather than seeing his life as ending of failure, she hopes the “reader, when we get there, will be moved, will be sorry, but will also be  astounded by the life I’ve narrated. I aim to leave my reader harrowed, and yet braced, ready for the next thing.”

The Lifetime cable channel is going “V.C. Andrews crazy,” according to BuzzFeed, as a result of the ratings success of their adaptation of what BuzzFeed characterizes as “the incest classic,” Flowers in the Attic.

In the midst of filming the sequel, Petals on the Wind, the network, according to an unnamed source, has signed the other two books in the original Dollanganger series, If There Be Thorns and Seeds of Yesterday, (but not the prequel, Garden of Shadows), as well as the standalone, My Sweet Audrina.

Heather Graham and Ellen Burstyn will return in the sequel to Flowers, but, since Petals picks up the story ten years later, the Dollanganger kids have been recast with older actors.

No release date has been set for the sequel, but new editions of the books have been announced (no covers yet)

Petals on the Wind
V.C. Andrews
S&S/Gallery June 17, 2014
Trade paperback, $14.00
9781476789552, 147678955X

S&S/Pocket Books
Mass market, $7.99
9781476789569, 1476789568

HBO’s Game of Thrones cast and crew get the Annie Liebovitz treatment in the April issue of Vanity Fair.

The cover story has been setting the internet afire by declaring that, with season four  beginning on April 6, the show has a “massive problem on the horizon,” in that it is catching up to the books.

This is not a new concern, however. It was anticipated, even before the HBO series began. As Time magazine’s TV critic says, the “answer generally was, Martin will hurry up with the last two books, or HBO will take a while with the series or–look, a raven!”  That appears to still be the answer.

The executive producers tell Vanity Fair that they’d like to wrap up the show after “seven or eight seasons.” To that end, they have met with Martin (who is also a producer on the show), to find out how the various plot lines will end, so they have a road map (for more details on the books, a longer version of VF‘s conversation with Martin is available online. Sorry, he doesn’t reveal what he told the executive producers).

The pressure from the show is nothing compared to what Martin, who is five volumes in to the planned seven-book series, has already endured from fans to get on with it (as the New Yorker wrote  on the eve of the 2011 publication of Book 5, A Dance with Dragons, they can be pretty unforgiving).

HBO’s Season 4 covers roughly the second half of A Storm of Swords, the third in the book series. To add a little confusion for casual observers, Book Four, A Feast for Crows, will be released as a tie-in edition.

As Time‘s critic advises, it’s best just to relax and enjoy each series for their unique pleasures.

A Feast for Crows (HBO Tie-in Edition): A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Four
George R.R. Martin
RH/Bantam, 4/1/14
Trade paperback; 9780553390575, 0553390570
$18.00 USD / $21.00 CAD
Mass market paperback; 9780553390568, 0553390562
$9.99 USD / $11.99 CAD

People magazine presents an exclusive sneak peek, in the form of four photos from the second season of the Netflix series, Orange is the New Black, which made Piper Kerman’s 2010 memoir, (RH/Spiegel & Grau, 2011; tie-in, 2013) a best seller. It premieres on Friday, June 6.

They do their best to try to turn into a story. It’s almost as fun as watching Glamour magazine try to glean news from the 17-second teaser trailer that was released last month.

The Fox/National Geographic reboot of the 1980 PBS phenomenon, Cosmos, has plenty of star power to bring to its goal of “making science cool again.” Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane is behind it along with the “Hollywood cool” astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is also the host. The first episode on Sunday was introduced by President Obama. It even got the ultimate in cool promotions, its own Superbowl commercial.

Reviews of the first show are mixed, but cautiously optimistic for the rest of series. Unfortunately, as the L.A. Times reports, the ratings indicate that it drew “only” 6 million viewers and was “trounced by ABC’s premiere of Resurrection,” (reminder: that series is based on the book The Returned by Jason Mott, Harlequin/MIRA).

The original series made a best seller of Sagan’s  tie-in. With twelve more episodes to go, the new one could still do the same for the revised tie-in (RH/Ballantine).

It may also bring renewed attention to Tyson’s many books of his own, the most recent of which is Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier (Norton, 2012).

This week, Jon Stewart gives rare attention to a novelist (who happens to be well-known as the creator of Family Guy and director of Ted). The rest of the week, he returns to his interest in politics and the future. Colbert should have fun on Tuesday with “the rockstar of the Internet,” Jaron Lanier.

Monday, March 3, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Seth MacFarlane, A Million Ways to Die in the West, (RH/Ballantine; RH Audio; BOT; March 4).

Billed as MacFarlane’s debut novel, this actually began life as a screenplay. A movie of the same title, starring Charlize Theron, Amanda Seyfried, Liam Neeson, as well as MacFarlane himself, premieres on May 30th.

The Wall Street Journal interviewed MacFarlane last week, saying, “In an inversion of the usual adaptation process, Mr. MacFarlane reverse-engineered A Million Ways to Die in the West from a script he co-wrote with his friends and frequent collaborators, Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild.” Guess they never heard of a novelization. Describing the book, the article adds, “The novel is likely to be polarizing—with some finding it bitingly funny and fresh and others dismissing it as juvenile—much like his animated shows and his blockbuster 2012 comedy Ted.”

The trailer for the movie, below (warning, NOT for the squeamish and also NSFW):

The rest of the week:

Tuesday, March 4

Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Jim DeMint, former South Carolina senator, a leading tea partner, and now CEO of conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation. His new book is Falling in Love with America Again, (Hachette/Center Street, March, 2014).

The Colbert Report

Jaron Lanier, Who Owns the Future?, (trade pbk reprint, March 4, S&S) — Originally published last year, The New York Times called this “brilliant” and “daringly original.”

Thursday, March 6

Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Paul Taylor, The Next America: Boomers, Millennials, and the Looming Generational Showdown, (Perseus/PublicAffairs, Feb. 11) — The Washington Post calls this a  “masterful synthesis of polls.”

The cult favorite, Veronica Mars TV series, starring Kristen Bell as a teenage sleuth, was canceled after its third season in 2007. Since then, creator Rob Thomas has not allowed the property to die. Through a Kickstarter campaign, (the most successful one to date), he raised the funds for a movie version. He also signed with RH/Vintage for two books based on the character (he has written several novels, including the 1996 YA title Rats Saw God).

The movie debuts on March 14 (see trailer below) and the first book, Veronica Mars: The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line, which features the 28-year-old Mars after the events of the movie, arrives on March 25. It is currently at #29 and rising on Amazon sales rankings.

To catch up on the story, link here.

Also on the horizon is a collection of essays in the Wiley-Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series, coming in May, Veronica Mars and Philosophy: Investigating the Mysteries of Life (Which is a Bitch Until You Die), edited by George A. Dunn.

Since Jon Stewart returned from his time away from The Daily Show to direct a movie, he’s shown greater interest in Hollywood, featuring more actors and director and fewer authors.

But this week, he is back in the groove, with three of his four weekly shows featuring authors.

Monday: The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran, Hooman Majd, (RH/Doubleday, 11/8/13)

Stewart is a bit late to the party on this book, which was featured on NPR after it was published last fall.  He has a natural affinity for the subject; his forthcoming movie, Rosewater, (no release date yet), is based on another book about a family in Iran, Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival by Maziar Bahari, (Random House, 2011).

Tuesday: The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind, Michio Kaku, (RH/Doubleday, 2/25/14)

The media’s favorite physicists  explores the cutting edge of brain research.

Thursday — Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street’s Post-Crash Recruits, Kevin Roose, (Hachette/Grand Central)

The author also appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition last week (see our earlier story ).

Film crews return to Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. this week for the HBO adaptation of Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers (Macmillan/St. Martin’s, 2011).

Starring Liv Tyler, Amy Brenneman and Justin Thoreau, the show’s creator is Lost‘s Damon Lindelof, who spoke to Entertainment Weekly last month about how he discovered the book,

I was reading The New York Times Book Review – which is the way that I pretend to read books; I read the reviews of the books and then I can articulately pretend like I’ve read them — and Stephen King wrote a review of The Leftovers, which he described as the best episode of The Twilight Zone that had never been shot …  I ran and got the book immediately and I got maybe 50 pages in before I decided: This should be a television show…

A tie-in edition is scheduled for release in May.

Just announced, the second season of the Netflix series, Orange is the New Black, which made Piper Kerman’s 2010 memoir (RH/Spiegel & Grau, 2011; tie-in, 2013) a best seller, premieres on June 2.

Actress Taylor Schilling stars as Piper, who was incarcerated for 13 months in the Danbury Federal Prison in Connecticut

Below is the 17-sec. teaser trailer. If it leaves you wanting more, Glamour‘s Web site offers “4 Things You Need to Know About Season Two”

An MTV headline asks — True Detective: Who The Hell Is The Yellow King?

The answer? It’s a reference is to an 1895 collection of interconnected horror stories, The King In Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, which just jumped to #5 on Amazon’s sales rankings. It is also available, as the MTV story points out, as a free download from Project Gutenberg.

HBO’s True Detective has several literary connections. It was created by Nic Pizzolatto, who has published a collection of short stories, Between Here and the Yellow Sea, (McAdam/Cage, 2006), named by Poets and Writers magazine as one of the top five fiction debuts for 2006, and a novel, Galveston (S&S/Scribner; admiringly reviewed by Dennis Lehane in the NYT BR).

The series is directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, who, incongruously, was the director of the most recent film adaptation of Jane Eyre. His next project, according to a recent interview with Forbes, is also based on a book, Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala, (HarperCollins, 2005), with Idris Elba in the lead.

Several new projects have the name R.L. Stine attached. MTV has picked up a 10-episode series based on his title for adults, Eye Candy (RH/Ballantine, 2004; cover, above; initial series logo to right, featuring a shot of Brooklyn’s trendy DUMBO neighborhood).

The pilot was directed by Catherine Hardwicke (the first Twilight movie), who is exec. producer of the series. It stars Victoria Justice as a hacker being pursued by a cyber stalker (The Hollywood Reporter, 2/11/14). No news yet on when it will premiere.

A new film adaptation of his Goosebumps series (Scholastic) is gearing up for production, as evidenced by several new casting announcements. The latest addition is Dylan Minnette, to co-star with Jack Black, who was announced back in September. Minette will play Zach Cooper, who moves with his family to a new town where their neighbor is, in a twist, R.L. Stine himself (played by Black). Odeya Rush is set to play Stine’s niece Hannah.

Meanwhile, Scholastic recently relaunched the Goosebumps series, with Goosebumps Most Wanted (Scholastic)  which Stine describes as “a new book series featuring all of my most-wanted villains and most-wanted stories.”

His Fear Street series is also set for relaunch (the result of a Twitter campaign), beginning with Party Games in October from Macmillan/St. Martin’s.

UPDATE: Entertainment Weekly previews the cover of Party Games (at right)

Several years after it was first announced, a TV series based on Neil Gaiman’s award-winning novel, American Gods, (HarperCollins) may be moving forward. Originally set as an HBO series to be produced by Tom Hanks’ Playtone company, the rights have just been picked up by FremantleMedia. On his blog, Gaiman says, “As to where you will be able to see it, who is going to be in it, who will be writing or show-running, none of these things have yet been settled. But it already looks like it’s going to be a smoother run developing it than it had at HBO, so I am very pleased.”

Gaiman also announces that a separate project, based on the American Gods followup, Anansi Boys (HarperCollins), is set to be made into a TV miniseries in the UK for the BBC.

There is also movement on another title in the “long awaited Gaiman adaptations” category. Last month, it was announced that a film version of the Sandman graphic novel series (Vertigo) will be directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt who may also star. In an interview, however, Levitt warns it is still “Very, very early days.”

Last year, it was announced that Ron Howard had signed on to direct The Graveyard Book as had Joe Wright for an adaptation of Gaiman’s adult novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

Howard is currently filming another adaptation, Heart of the Sea, based on Nathaniel Philbrick‘s In The Heart of the Sea, scheduled for release on March 13, 2015. Wright is in pre-productionan on Pan, a original prequel to Peter Pan, with Hugh Jackman starring as Blackbeard, now set for release in July, 2015

As  book people know, it’s important tune in to major cultural events to see what book information they may convey.

What did yesterday’s Superbowl broadcast tell us about forthcoming books?

Unsurprisingly, books got scant attention on the field, so we had to turn to the commercials. At $4 million per 30-second spot, we didn’t expect an actual book ad, but there were a few for book adaptations, including the usual comics-based movie teaser; this time for two Marvel productions, Captain America: Winder Solder, coming April 4th, and  Amazing Spider-Man 2, which releases on May 2nd. Several children’s tie-ins are coming for each, which are listed on our Upcoming Movies Based on Book, with Tie-ins.

Also featured, a trailer for the already heavily-promoted FX TV series based on Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s vampire trilogy, The Strain, (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2009). This one has already appeared on the Web, so no surprises. The moody trailer seems to have mystified some and it still only gives “Summer” as the release date.

We did learn that Fox, in partnership with National Geographic, is putting marketing bucks behind their reboot of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, hosted by the world’s best-known astrophysicist, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, with the tagline, “14 billions years in 13 episodes.” It begins airing on March 9.

Tie-in:

Cosmos by Carl Sagan, Foreword by Neil deGrasse Tyson

RH/Ballantine
December 10, 2013

9780345539434, 0345539435 $15.00

The release of the trailer for the new season of HBO’s Game of Thrones has been watched on YouTube nearly 10 million times since it was released on Sunday (it will probably break that number by the time we finish this post). Time magazine offers a handy run down of the new characters glimpsed in the footage.

This season, which begins on April 5, is based on the fourth in George R.R. Martin’s series of books, titled A Feast for Crows. [Note; Thanks to an alert from a reader’s comment, we have learned that season 4 is actually based on the second half of book 3. ScreenRant.com delves in to how the TV series differs from the books).

Tie-ins are listed below (covers have not yet been released; the one above is for the 2005 first edition):

A Feast for Crows (HBO Tie-in Edition): A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Four
George R.R. Martin
RH/Bantam; On Sale Date: April 1, 2014
9780553390568, 0553390562
Mass market (rack) paperback
$9.99 US / $11.99 Can.

A Feast for Crows (HBO Tie-in Edition): A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Four
George R.R. Martin
RH/Bantam; On Sale Date: April 1, 2014
9780553390575, 0553390570
Trade paperback
$18.00 US / $21.00 Can.