Among next week’s releases are two much-buzzed-about debuts. Library demand is highest for The Postmistress by Sarah Blake, with holds of  6:1 or higher on modest orders.

The tale of an American radio reporter in WWII London, the novel is winning comparisons to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society from booksellers, one of whom touted The Postmistress in PW‘s Galley Talk column, and also in a USA Today story on breakthrough winter titles. The book also carries a blurb from Kathryn Stockett, author of the runaway bestseller, The Help.

Entertainment Weekly gives it an A- in the new issue, saying “There’s both exquisite pain and pleasure to be found in these pages, which jump from the mass devastation in Europe to the intimate heartaches of an American small town.”

The Postmistress Sarah Blake Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam – (2010-02-09) ISBN / EAN: 0399156194 / 9780399156199

Available from Blackstone Audiobooks

• CD: $100; ISBN 9781441725714
• MP3 CD: $29.95; ISBN 9781441725745
• Cassette: $65.95; ISBN 9781441725707

Audio and e-book available from OverDrive

——————————–

Union Atlantic, the first novel by Adam Hazlett, author of the bestselling story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here, is also attracting 2:1 hold ratios in libraries we checked. The novel explores the gilded age of the last decade, centering on a land dispute between a young banker and a retired schoolteacher, and was chosen as a #1 Indie Next Pick for February.

New York magazine profiles Hazlett this week, as did PWearlier, both noting that the book, which Hazlett began writing ten years ago, foretells the recent financial crisis and even the bailout. He tells New York that when he began writing it, he feared readers might not know, or even care, what the Fed is.

Libraries have ordered it in similar quantities to The Postmistress, with one-fifth the number of holds.

Union Atlantic Adam Haslett Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Nan A. Talese – (2010-02-09) ISBN / EAN: 0385524471 / 9780385524476

Other Major Titles On Sale Next Week

Adriana Trigiani‘s Brava Valentine (HarperCollins), the second in her Valentine trilogy about a loving but fiery Italian American family, is showing reserves of 6:1 at one library we checked, making it the most-anticipated fiction title of the week.

Alex Berenson‘s The Midnight House(Penguin), the fourth in a series featuring superspy John Wells,  is also much in demand, though not available at all libraries we checked.

Peter Straub‘s A Dark Matter (Knopf Doubleday) “ranks as one of the finest tales of modern horror,” according to PW.

Chuck Hogan‘s Devils in Exile(Simon & Schuster) is “a compelling portrait of a good man who makes bad choices and in the end must battle his way out of a destructive and deadly life,” PW said.

2009 was the year of “the sudden and splendid blossoming of the short story,” declared the Guardian, observing that women have picked up three major UK prizes this year. Two of the three have been published in the U.S.

Why would women’s work stand out in this short form, when women are less often awarded major prizes for their novels? Guardian critic Sarah Crown speculates that

Short stories…are famously uncommercial; that, coupled with the perceived exactingness of the form and its heavyweight literary lineage, means that short stories by women are taken seriously – and awarded accordingly.

Most recently, Zimbabwean author Petina Gappah claimed the Guardian‘s First Book award for fiction, for her collection, An Elegy for Easterly. “Gappah’s deep well of empathy and saber-sharp command of satire give her collection a surplus of heart and verve,” said the PW review. According to World Cat, 336 libraries have it, with those we checked showing modest numbers of copies.

An Elegy for Easterly: Stories Petina Gappah Retail Price: $23.00 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Faber & Faber – (2009-05-26) ISBN / EAN: 0865479062 / 9780865479067

——————————————

Last May, Alice Munro won the £60,000 Man Booker International prize, for a body of work the judges described as “practically perfect.”  The Canadian author’s most recent collection is Too Much Happiness, which up to seven holds per copy on hand, or more, in several libraries we checked.

Too Much Happiness: Stories Alice Munro Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2009-11-17) ISBN / EAN: 0307269760 / 9780307269768

Available in Large Print from Center Point Platinum Fiction on January 1, 2010

• $34.95; ISBN 9781602856462

Also available from Random House Audio

• CD: $40; 9780307576736

PW‘s provocative cover image and title for its annual African American feature stirred up plenty of controversy on Twitter and blogs yesterday – and now the book blogs at the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune are asking their readers to weigh in.

African American novelists Carleen Brice and Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant were among the first to criticize the cover for presenting the work of black authors in the context of a negative stereotype. PW editor Calvin Reid explained that he’d chosen the cover image from the book Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present, edited by Deborah Willis. “While it never occurred to me that anyone would be offended by these images, I was very wrong and I have to acknowledge that,” he wrote. For a full summary of the debate, check out blogger and Examiner.com writer Nordette Adams’s post about it.

Many are arguing that the cover controversy distracts from the PW feature itself, which reviews the impact of the recession on the African American book market. It includes the disturbing news that there appears to be less serious fiction by black authors entering the marketplace, according to Jabari Asim, editor-in-chief of the Crisis and a former editor at the Washington Post Book World. In the article, book editors confirm that they are increasingly cautious about acquiring books by black authors at a time when chain bookstores are cutting back their orders, black bookstores have difficulty competing on price, consumers are extremely price-sensitive, and the popularity of street lit category is slowing.

Also included in the feature is a list of notable African-American titles slated for Fall 2009 and Winter 2010. Here are a few of the key fiction picks on the list:

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow is a “much-touted debut novel” about the biracial daughter of a black G.I and a Danish mother. In some libraries, there are already holds on this book, which is coming in February 2010.

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky Heidi W. Durrow Retail Price: $22.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Algonquin Books – (2010-02-16) ISBN / EAN: 1565126807 / 9781565126800

Audio also available from Highbridge on February 1, 2010

• CD: $26.95; ISBN 9781598879230

——————————————-

Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is set before the Civil War at a free-territory resort in Ohio that attracts four white female friends, as well as slaveholding men and their enslaved mistresses. Most libraries we checked had 10 or fewer copies on order, and a few holds.

Wench Dolen Perkins-valdez Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Amistad – (2010-01-01) ISBN / EAN: 006170654X / 9780061706547

Audio also available from Books on Tape in January 2010

• Unabridged CD (7 discs): $70; ISBN 9780307713704

——————————————-

Best African American Fiction 2010, edited by Gerald Early is the second volume in an annual short fiction series. Libraries we checked have 10 or fewer copies.

Best African American Fiction 2010 Gerald Early Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: One World/Ballantine – (2009-12-29) ISBN / EAN: 0553806904 / 9780553806908

——————————————-

Gloryland by Shelton Johnson is the story of a black man born on emancipation day in 1863 who joins the U.S. Cavalry and is posted to the newly created Yosemite National Park in 1903 – and it’s written by a modern day Yosemite Park ranger. World Cat says 179 libraries have it. Those we checked had modest holds on modest numbers of copies.

Gloryland Shelton Johnson Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Sierra Club/Counterpoint – (2009-09-08) ISBN / EAN: 1578051444 / 9781578051441

————————-

And here is the book that is the source of the controversial cover image:

Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present Deborah Willis Retail Price: $49.95 Hardcover: 244 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2009-10-05) ISBN / EAN: 0393066967 / 9780393066968

The Lovely Bones movie opens this weekend, and the reviews are…rough. Peter Jackson, the director of Heavenly Creatures and Lord of the Rings, gets flack for being too faithful to the novel, and for going astray with special effects in his depiction of heaven, where the teenage protagonist ends up after she is murdered.

But remember – newly-jacketed tie-in editions displayed front-of-store in bookstores can remind readers of books they always meant to read. It’s worked in this case; the tie-in rose to #18 on last week’s USA Today bestseller list.

Newsweek calls The Lovely Bones an awkward mix of thriller, police procedural, family melodrama and mystical fantasy that lacks Sebold’s skill in holding its disparate elements.

By remaining faithful to Sebold’s myriad flights of fancy… [Jackson] has inadvertently highlighted the book’s vulnerabilities. When The Lovely Bones loses its grip on you, its momentousness turns into silliness.

People magazine gives the movie a dismal 1.5 of possible 4 stars in the 12/21 issue. The review is even more scathing (not available online): Jackson has made “a gallon-size, candy-colored margarita, but it contains only a thimble-full of actual tequila,” it says. “How much you like Bones may depend on how strongly you believe in a neon-bright afterlife.”

The Associated Press review is only slightly more tempered, praising Jackson’s striking imagery, but calling the resulting spectacle “showmanship, not storytelling, [that distracts] from the mortal drama of regret and heartache he’s trying to tell.”

The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold Retail Price: $14.99 Paperback: 368 pages Publisher: Back Bay Books – (2009-09-30) ISBN / EAN: 0316044938 / 9780316044936

——————-

The Lovely Bones: Deluxe Edition Alice Sebold Retail Price: $16.99 Paperback: 328 pages Publisher: Back Bay Books – (2007-09-17) ISBN / EAN: 0316001821 / 9780316001823

Yann Martel’s new novel, Beatrice and Virgil, is set for publication in April 13, 2010, Random House announced today on its library marketing blog. (It’s a drop-in, meaning that it’s not listed in Random House’s Spring 2010 catalog).

And yes, Martel’s first book since The Life of Pi, his huge international bestseller which won the Man Booker Prize, has at least two animals in it. Here’s how Amazon describes it:

A famous author receives a mysterious letter from a man who is a struggling writer but also turns out to be a taxidermist, an eccentric and fascinating character who does not kill animals but preserves them as they lived, with skill and dedication — among them a howler monkey named Virgil and a donkey named Beatrice….

Galleys may be available at ALA Midwinter or PLA in Portland – so check the Random House booth if you’re there. There’s no jacket available yet, but here are the rest of the details: