Historical fiction has been very good to Ken Follett. After the success of Pillars of the Earth and its sequel, World Without End, both set in 12th C England, he now turns his eyes toward the 20th century, with a planned trilogy that will cover the entire 100 years (and is thus called The Century Trilogy).

The first book, Fall of Giants arrives next week and is widely expected to be the blockbuster of the season. Using the formula he developed in the earlier series, the author follows several families through WWI to the early 1920’s. Prepub reviews all note the book’s length (Kirkus called it “cat squashing”), but applaud its readability. The publisher has announced a million copy first printing and it is already at #10 on Amazon sales rankings.

Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy) Ken Follett Retail Price: $36.00 Hardcover: 985 pages Publisher: Dutton Adult – (2010-09-28) ISBN / EAN: 0525951652 / 9780525951650

Penguin Audio; UNABR; 9780142428276
Books on Tape Audio; UNABR; Narrator: John Lee; 9780307737380
Audio on OverDrive
Spanish-language edition; La caida de los gigantes; Random House; 9780307741189

Other Notable Fiction On Sale Next Week

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary by David Sedaris (Little, Brown) The illustrations are by Ian Falconer, but don’t expect these animals to be at all like Olivia. The new issue of Entertainment Weekly calls the book a “lurid beastiary…for the strong- stomached, these tales are toxic little treats, fun-size Snickers bars with a nougaty strychnine center.” If you’re having trouble grasping what that means, go here to Read an Excerpt. The book is already at #36 on Amazon sales rankings.

Don’t Blink by James Patterson and Howard Roughan (Little, Brown). About a mafia hit in a NYC steak house. Coauthor Roughan has worked with Patterson on several other titles, including Honeymoon, You’ve Been Warned and Sail.

The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War by Bernard Cornwell (Harper). The author’s first standalone set in America, about the Penobscot Expedition, a Revolutionary war battle considered the worst US naval disaster until Pearl Harbor.

Bury Your Dead: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (Three Pines Mysteries) by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books). “Gamache’s excruciating grief over a wrong decision, Beauvoir’s softening toward the unconventional, a plot twist so unexpected it’s chilling, and a description of Quebec intriguing enough to make you book your next vacation there, all add up to a superior read. Bring on the awards.” (Kirkus)

To Fetch a Thief: A Chet and Bernie Mystery, Spencer Quinn (Atria). “Tender-hearted Chet and literal-minded Bernie are the coolest human/pooch duo this side of Wallace and Gromit.” (Kirkus)

By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham (FSG)

Entertainment Weekly loves the writing (“There are sentences here so powerfully precise and beautiful that they almost hover above the page”), but found the plot thin with a main character not worth caring about, resulting in a B. It’s an Indie Next Pick for Oct.

The cover proves how striking sepia can be.

Adam & Eve by Sena Jeter Naslund (Morrow). Also an Indie Next Pick for Oct, Booklist says this “… outlandish stew of biblical analogy, political thriller, futuristic speculation, and old-fashioned adventure story by the best-selling author of Ahabs Wife (1999) teases and frustrates the reader.”

Bound by Antonya Nelson, (Bloomsbury) Featured in O Magazine’s “Six Books to Watch for in October,” Booklist calls Nelson ” A short story writer of exhilarating wit and empathy, [who] returns to the novel after a decade with heightened authority” and describes the book as “Tightly coiled, edgy, and funny, this complex tale of transcendent friendship begins with a spectacular death.” Audio from Tantor.

Safe from the Sea, Peter Geye, (Unbridled). We’re part of the fan club for Unbridled Books, an independent press that manages to publish astonishingly high level fiction. This first novel is an Indie Next Pick for Oct,

Classic themes of redemption,reconciliation, and family ties are set against the awesome power and beauty of the north shore of Lake Superior. In the final weeks of his life, Olaf relives the story of his survival in an ore boat wreck decades earlier, and acknowledges his feelings of guilt and regret, while his estranged son Noah discovers that things are not always as they seem.

Booklist suggests, “Give this book to readers of David Guterson and Robert Olmstead, who will be captured by the themes of approaching death and the pain and solace provided by nature.”

How to Read the Air, Dinaw Mengestu, (Penguin). Both an Indie Next Pick for October and the lead in O Magazine‘s “Six Books to Watch for in October,” which describes this story of a first generation Ethiopian American as a “quiet and beautiful new novel [that]…transcends heartbreak and offers up the hope that despite all obstacles, love can survive.”

Childrens

Knuffle Bunny Free: An Unexpected Diversion by Mo Willems (Balzer & Bray). Say it isn’t so! This is the final book in the series.

With just three weeks to go, UK betting odds put C by Tom McCarthy as the leading contender for the Booker prize (the top title in terms of sales is Room by Emma Donoghue; it’s number 2 in betting by a slight margin over Damon Galgut’s In a Strange Room, which won’t be published here until 11/2, after the prize is announced).

After getting the cold shoulder from Michiko Kakutani in the daily NY Times, (“disappointing and highly self-conscious”), it has fared much better with critics in other papers, including The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times (“An avant-garde masterpiece”) and the Sunday NYT Book Review (a “strange, original book”) and now gets an A- in the new issue of Entertainment Weekly,

The protagonist of Tom McCarthy’s experimental new work is named Serge, which is appropriate for a book so crackling with all things electric. Serge’s life — and his obsessions with telegraphy and Morse code — reads like W. Somerset Maugham tweaked to a frenetic and distorted frequency…

C Tom McCarthy Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2010-09-07) ISBN / EAN: 0307593339 / 9780307593337

Tantor Audio; UNABR; Narrated by Stephen Hoye

Making its debut on the USA Today best seller list at #43 after a week on sale is Booker shortlisted title Room by Emma Donoghue. It’s the 9th best-selling hardcover fiction title on the list, which means it should hit the NYT Hardcover Fiction somewhere around #9 this week; no mean feat in a season crowded with big name authors.

Of the titles on the Booker shortlist, it is currently selling the most in the US. The same is true in the UK, according to an analysis by The Bookseller.

The book has received many strong reviews in the U.S., including the cover of the NYT Book Review and a People pick. Library holds are growing quickly.

Room: A Novel Emma Donoghue Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-09-13) ISBN / EAN: 0316098337 / 9780316098335

Hachette Audio; UNABR; 9781607886273; $29.98
Hachette Large Print; 9780316120579; Trade Pbk; $24.99

TheBookseller notes that in the UK, sales of all the shortlist titles are outstripped by a title that didn’t make it from longlist to short,  The Slap by Australian Christos Tsiolkas. The book has not had the same level of success in the U.S. However, a strong review in the Washington Post, indicates that it is a candidate for both reading groups and readers advisory (and, it’s in trade paperback).

The Slap Christos Tsiolkas Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 496 pages Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) – (2010-04-27) ISBN / EAN: 0143117149 / 9780143117148

The tie-in for Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro hit the NY Times Trade Paperback best seller list this week at #17 (tied with #16), in advance of the movie which debuted in theaters on Friday.

Libraries are showing holds, up to 8:1 in some instances, on the hard cover.

Below is a behind the scenes video of the movie’s stars, director and the author discussing the book.

Below is the movie trailer.

Tie-in:

Never Let Me Go (Movie Tie-In Edition) Kazuo Ishiguro Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 304 pages Publisher: Vintage – (2010-08-31) ISBN / EAN: 0307740994 / 9780307740991

Plenty of fiction will be competing for readers’ attention next week, including a debut story collection from Riverhead Books that’s getting some buzz: Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self by Danielle Evans.

Entertainment Weekly gives the book a B+, saying that it “offers rich slices of African-American life . . . and carries a strong scent of freshness and promise.” But trade reviews are more mixed: while Booklist hails author Danielle Evans an “important new voice in literary fiction,”PW observes, “Evans has some great chops that would really shine with a little more narrative breadth.”

Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self Danielle Evans Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover – (2010-09-23) ISBN / EAN: 1594487693 / 9781594487699

Other Notable Fiction On Sale Next Week

Mini Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella (Dial Press) is “chock-full of the kind of sitcom shenanigans Kinsella’s fans expect,” says Kirkus.” This latest in the series (Shopaholic & Baby, 2007, etc.) keeps the silly plot moving along. A little more growth from her iconic heroine, though, might have won over new readers as well.”

The Exile: An Outlander Graphic Novel by Diana Gabaldon and Hoang Nguyen (Del Rey) recasts Gabaldon’s bestselling time-travel romance from her 18th-century Scottish hero’s point of view. PW wasn’t impressed: “Scenes that ought to be exciting, such as sword fights and escapes from the law are breezed over in a page or two. Approximately four out of five panels are simply talking heads, and despite Nguyen’s most valiant efforts, it simply isn’t visually interesting.”

Don’t Blink by James Patterson and James Roughan (Little, Brown) finds reporter Nick Daniels interviewing one of baseball’s legendary bad-boys when he accidentally captures a piece of evidence that lands him in the middle of a mafia war.

Sante Fe Edge by Stuart Woods (Putnam) gets a decent review from Booklist: “while some plotlines are a bit repetitive, particularly regarding Teddy, who has been on the run for many novels, and [his ex-wife] Barbara, who is also always one step ahead of her pursuers, theres plenty of fun here for those who enjoy losing themselves in Woods entertaining escapist fare.”

Bad Blood by John Sandford (Putnam) is the fourth novel featuring Virgil Flowers, agent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Kirkus calls it “lurid and overscaled. . . The mystery, which is resolved early on, leads to an extended series of cat-and-mouse games between Virgil and the people he knows are guilty of some truly heinous crimes.”

Heaven’s Fury by Stephen W. Frey (Atria) follows a sheriff trying to solve a murder before a blizzard isolates his town. PW was not impressed: “The plot of this stand-alone crime thriller from Frey (Hell’s Gate) fails to generate much excitement, despite a gruesome murder that may be the work of a satanic cult and scenes set during a crippling snowstorm.”

And, One We Had to Mention..

Presenting…Tallulah by Tori Spelling and Vanessa Brantley Newton (Aladdin) is a picture book for very young readers by reality show star and bestselling author Spelling. PW and Kirkus both panned it, finding the poor little rich girl unbelievable and unsympathetic. Several libraries we checked haven’t ordered it – but given the success of Spelling’s previous books, you’re likely to be hearing about it.

A new book by David Foster Wallace, unfinished at the time committed suicide, will be released on April 15th, 2011, according to a Little, Brown press release picked up by several sources, including the Associated Press and the New York Times Arts Beat blog.

We will update the story with ordering information when it is available.

In addition to the three Oprah fiction contenders we just mentioned, Emma Donoghue’s much anticipated novel Room arrives next week, with the highest sales rank of all the Booker shortlist titles on Amazon. The novel is told in the voice of a five-year-old who’s spent his entire life in a single room, held captive there (unknowingly) with his mother. It’s a People magazine pick in the current issue and was featured on NPR’s Morning Edition today. Holds are 5:1 or higher at libraries we checked.

Other Notable Fiction On Sale Next Week

Wicked Appetite by Janet Evanovich (St. Martin’s) begins a new series in a genre that Kirkus dubs “paranormal farce,” with the hunt for ancient artifacts corresponding to the seven deadly sins.

Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central) follows a mysterious new woman’s slow integration into a small town. The hardcover will be promoted not just by the publisher, but by the movie company that plans to produce a film version of the book, even though the screenplay has not yet been finalized, according to a Wall St. Journal story.

Reckless by Cornelia Funke (Little, Brown) draws on the spooky side of traditional fairy tales to launch a major new dark fantasy series for young readers. Despite making her mark as a master creator of richly imagined worlds with the Inkheart series, Funke’s latest effort gets mixed early reviews. Kirkus praises the “fluid, fast-paced narrative,” but PW finds “the writing is beautiful on one page, clunky on another…. Planned sequels will give Funke a chance to fill in the missing back-story that makes this a frustrating read.”

Next Friday, September 17, Oprah will select the 64th and final selection for her book club, in the final season of her talk show. The few clues are confusing. The blind ISBN has a St. Martin’s prefix and a $28 price. However, no title in St. Martin’s catalog matches that price. So, we have to assume that one of the two clues is a red herring.

Our hunch is that it’s St. Martin’s Some Sing, Some Cry, a novel of seven generations of African American life by sisters and playwrights Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza that goes on sale next week. A Shout & Share pick at ALA, it got a starred review from Booklist, which called it “glorious in its scope, lyricism, and spectrum of yearnings, convictions, and triumphs.” Ntozake Shane’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, is coming out as a movie in November, directed by Oprah’s close friend and producing partner for Precious, Tyler Perry. However, the price does not fit.

Some Sing, Some Cry: A Novel Ntozake Shange, Ifa Bayeza Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 576 pages Publisher: St. Martin’s Press – (2010-09-14) ISBN / EAN: 031219899X / 9780312198992

There’s also a possibility it might be another one of next week’s releases, the international bestseller Secret Kept by Tatiana de Rosnay (St. Martin’s), a psychological thriller set in Paris that plumbs the power of family secrets. PW said “this perceptive portrait of a middle-aged man’s delayed coming-of-age rates as a seductive, suspenseful, and trés formidable keeper.” And Booklist adds, “Expect demand among fans of both literary mystery and high-end romance.” Again, however, the price is not the same as that for the Oprah pick.

A Secret Kept Tatiana de Rosnay Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: St. Martin’s Press – (2010-09-14) ISBN / EAN: 0312593317 / 9780312593315

Others have suggested it might be Nelson Mandela’s Conversations with Myself, a collection of the South African leader’s personal papers, including journals kept on the run during the anti-apartheid struggle of the early 1960s and diaries written in Robben Island and other South African prisons during his 27 years of incarceration. But here, the book’s ISBN prefix doesn’t match (it’s from St. Martin’s sister Macmillan imprint, FSG) and it’s currently scheduled to release on October 11. However, the one thing that does match is the $28 price (also true for Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom , but, given Oprah’s history with the author, that one seems a real long shot).

Conversations with Myself Nelson Mandela Retail Price: $28.00 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux – (2010-10-11) ISBN / EAN: 0374128952 / 9780374128951

We’ve fallen in love with Ron Charles’s “totally hip video book reviews.” Now, with just two in the can (My Hollywood and Freedom), Ron announces that his employer, The Washington Post, has become the official sponsor. Swearing that this will have no effect whatsoever on the reviews, Charles throws in several “product placements” while reviewing Sara Gruen’s new book, Ape House.

Unfortunately, we can’t find a link to embed the review on EarlyWord. Please, Ron, tell The Washington Post they won’t be as hip as you are until they allow you to go viral.

For now, we all we have to give you the video review link. Charles also reviewed the book in print yesterday.

UPDATE: Hurrah! The new episodes of the Totally Hip Book Review are embeddable.

Literary darling Jonathan Franzen’s new book Freedom is the top-selling adult hardcover fiction title on USA Today’s Best Seller List — we also hear that it debuts at #1 on the upcoming NYT Fiction list.

Still, the book takes a back seat to Mockingjay. Suzanne Collins’ title is #1 on the USA Today list, which reflects sales of all books, regardless of format or age level. Freedom comes in at #5, following Mockingjay (on for two weeks), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (69 weeks), Debbie Macomber’s 1022 Evergreen Place (original pbk; this is its first week), and The Girl Who Played with Fire (58 weeks).

The big fiction title of the week is Sara Gruen’s Ape House (Spiegel & Grau). Gruen faces heavy anticipation after the runaway success of her 2006 title, Water for Elephants. The new book is about a group of researchers studying communication with bonobo apes through sign language. Consumer reviews have compared the book unfavorably to the previous title, echoing PW and Kirkus.

The NYT,  “…the novel address[es] a vast sweep of subjects: the potential for and implications of interspecies communication; the varieties and uses of sexual contact, both among humans and among the other primates; family dynamics and dysfunction; the abduction and enslavement of animals for scientific research; the crass obtuseness of pop culture; the very notion of what constitutes humanity and the humane.”

The LA Times;  “Animal lovers, particularly, will find much to like in Gruen’s depictions of the apes and the research into their language skills. And we do learn a lot about bonobos. But the book’s failure is in not concocting an engaging story through which to preach the beauty of the bonobos and the darker aspects of animal experimentation. The message is the book’s reason to be, she seems to tell us. But a novel requires more attention be paid to the art.”

Minneapolis Star Tribune; Intriguing tale of saving apes is short on passion

Lurking in the reviews are indicators that the book may become a hit with readers; the NYT says it’s “fun,” the L.A. Times calls it “charming.” Booklist, alone among the prepub reviews to give it a positive review, starred it and called it “wildly entertaining.”

And, in the Barnes & Noble Review, critic Jane Ciabattari calls the book flat-out “captivating.”

In a video, Gruen talks about her sources of inspiration.

Water for Elephants, the movie, starring Reese Witherspoon and Twilight heartthrob Robert Pattinson is scheduled to release next April.

Several libraries have received Ape House; holds are averaging 2:1 on moderate orders (2 copies each per large branch).

Ape House: A Novel Sara Gruen Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Spiegel & Grau – (2010-09-07) ISBN / EAN: 0385523211 / 9780385523219

LT; Random House; Pbk;  9780739328040; $26
RH Audio; UNABR; 9780739368541; $40

Other Notable Fiction On Sale Next Week

Sure Bets

Getting to Happy by Terry McMillan (Viking) the four women  from Waiting to Exhale are back. Essence, which ran excerpts beginning in May and concluding this month, declares “McMillan has lost none of her edge, humor or ability to capture our stories.”

The Widower’s Tale by Julia Glass (Pantheon) — Who can resist the subject?  A newly retired librarian experiences unexpected life changes.

Zero History by William Gibson (Putnam) — on the Amazon Top 100 for the past three days, now at #57 and rising, the author of Neuromancer; “returns to his familiar concerns with hacker culture, surveillance, paranoia, and viral marketing, with occasional digressions into the semiotics of fashion and celebrity and references to cosplay, base jumping, and the Festo AirPenguin (look it up)” Booklist.

The Thorn, by Beverly Lewis (Bethany House) —  the launch of a new series, The Rose Trilogy from the queen of the Amish romance genre.

Watch List

Russian Winter, by Daphne Kalotay, (Harper).  An aging ballerina recalls her complicated past while putting together her jewelry for an auction.  A hit at the ALA First Author program, the galley of Kalotay’s book has picked up librarian fans and strong prepub reviews. It’s a favorite of Kayleigh George, HarperCollins Library Marketing Associate; hear her speak about it here.

The Mullah’s Storm by Thomas Young (Putnam) is a debut novel about male and female co-pilots downed with a high-value prisoner in Taliban territory in winter that’s had strong prepub reviews. PW says that Young “draws on his own war experiences for verisimilitude, which, along with believable characters and an exciting plot, makes this one of the better thrillers to come out of the Afghan theater.”

A Curable Romantic by Joseph Skibell (Algonquin) is “an irresistible romp about a lovelorn 19th-century doctor who falls in with Sigmund Freud—and some dangerously attractive women,” says the  Oprah Magazine, which features it as one of 10 books to pick up in September, along with a reading guide.

The announcement of the Booker Short List was somewhat delayed by the transit strike in London today. The following are the six titles, by current Amazon sales rankings in the U.S. (The Guardian features a slide show with a description and the British publishing history of each title. Warning: those are the British covers):

#422 Room, Emma Donoghue, (Little, Brown, 9/13) — coming out next week, Room has received advance buzz and comparisons to The Lovely Bones.

#3,931  C, Tom McCarthy’s, (Knopf 9/07) —  just received a decidedly not positive review from Michiko Kakutani, NYT.

# 21,332 Parrot and Olivier in America, Peter Carey, (Knopf; 4/20) — if Carey wins, this would be his third Booker. The book reached a high of #422 on Amazon after it was released.

# 37,883  The Long Song, Andrea Levy, (FSG, 4/27) — reached a high of #9,642 — Jamaican-British author Andrea Levy also wrote Small Island, which was made into two-part series that appeared on PBS Materpiece Theater this Spring. Set in Jamaica in the 19th C, The Long Song is narrated by July, a house slave on a sugar plantation.

Not available in the U.S (UPDATE: These titles are now forthcoming)

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut

Not making the cut from the Booker long list is Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray (Faber & Faber) just released here to strong reviews. It has the highest U.S. Amazon ranking of the all the longlist titles at #134 and is currently being adapted as a film.

Also not on the list is the best-selling title in the UK (but at a lowly #11,993 on Amazon rankings here), The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, was published as an original trade paperback here by Penguin (4-27). The Australian author has made waves by calling European writers “dry and academic” as compared to Americans. The London Evening Standard called it a Slap in the Face for Popular Read.

One of the titles on our Watch List for this week, Skippy Dies, arrives in the US after being a hit in Britain. It receives a warm welcome from the Washington Post, which says,

If killing your protagonist with more than 600 pages to go sounds audacious, it’s nothing compared with the literary feats Murray pulls off in this hilarious, moving and wise book. Recently named to the Man Booker Prize long list, Skippy Dies is an epic crafted around, of all things, a pack of 14-year-old boys.

It’s also received an A from Entertainment Weekly, (which only granted Franzen’s Great American Novel, Freedom an A-) and 3.5 of a possible 4 stars in the 9/13 issue of People.

Although it sounds like an unlikely premise for a movie, it is currently being adapted by Neil Jordan (The Crying Game), who is also planning to direct.

Skippy Dies: A Novel Paul Murray Retail Price: $28.00 Hardcover: 672 pages Publisher: Faber & Faber – (2010-08-31) ISBN / EAN: 0865479437 / 9780865479432

How quickly one goes from literary darling to Jonathan Franzen, the Writer We Love to Hate (Newsweek, 8/26).

Last week, a whopping two weeks ahead of next Tuesday’s release of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, reviewers broke ranks to be among the first to deliver their verdicts on his tale of an upper-middle class Midwestern family. (Michiko Kakutani at the New York Times was first out of the gate, calling it “an indelible portrait of our times,” followed by the NYTBR cover review dubbing it “a masterpiece,” while Franzen himself appeared on the cover of Time.)

This week, it was a People pick, but Entertainment Weekly gives it a somewhat less stellar “A-“:

Freedom isn’t flawless: [the wife’s] journal reads more like Franzen than his character, and he gets sidetracked by quirky tangents. But this is a deep dive into a fascinating family that feels very real, and fully grounded in our time.

A backlash also began this week, with novelists Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner charging in an interview in the Huffington Post that.

…it’s a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it’s literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it’s romance, or a beach book – in short, it’s something unworthy of a serious critic’s attention.

Next week will bring the book itself, at last. Unsurprisingly, holds are  growing (though they’re not nearly as high as those for a certain YA dystopian novel).

Freedom: A Novel Jonathan Franzen Retail Price: $28.00 Hardcover: 576 pages Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux – (2010-08-31) ISBN / EAN: 0374158460 / 9780374158460