Emily Fridlund’s debut novel, History of Wolves (Atlantic Monthly Press; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample), just got a rave review on NPR’s web site.

Calling it “electrifying,” reviewer Michael Schaub says it “isn’t a typical thriller any more than it’s a typical coming-of-age novel; Fridlund does a remarkable job transcending genres without sacrificing the suspense that builds steadily in the book … History of Wolves is as beautiful and as icy as the Minnesota woods where it’s set, and with her first book, Fridlund has already proven herself to be a singular talent.”

Among other buzz, it is an Amazon best of the month title as well as their featured debut for January. As we pointed out in Titles to Know for the week, People magazines picks it in the new issue, calling it, “a compelling portrait of a troubled adolescent trying to find her way in a new and frightening world.” It is also the #1 Indie Pick this month.

Holds are growing, ranging from 3:1 to 12:1 where ordering is light. One library we checked has a 25:1 ratio, triggering a large second order. 

Calling the book a “sensation,” Deadline Hollywood reports that film rights were just acquired to Kill The Next One, a psychological thriller by Argentinian-born Federico Axat (Hachette/Mulholland Books; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample). Published in Spanish “to acclaim,” rights were also sold for translation into 30 other languages.

Released here earlier this month, it received a good, but not sensational, review in the most recent NYT BR crime column: “mind-bending … Truth, illusion and downright deceit keep crossing invisible lines in this hallucinatory plot.” However, the review continues, “it becomes easy to lose focus on who’s who and what’s what. The shape-shifting characters and fantastic events keep sending [the main character] to his therapist (and us to ours) for clarification … Axat is the kind of hypnotic writer you love to read but can never entirely trust.”

Other coverage to date, while decent, does not indicate a “sensation”:

USA Today includes it on a recent list of new and noteworthy books, quoting the Booklist review that also calls it “mind-bending” as well as “intriguing.”

PW gave it a star, writing “Axat fuses weird fiction with psychological suspense in his stunning U.S. debut.” 

Bustle counts it as one of “The 8 Best Fiction Books Coming Out This December That Are Perfect For Holiday Snuggles,” writing “Like a chilling, murder-y version of Pay It Forward, this thriller unfolds as a man seeking to end his life is given the opportunity to kill two other people and then be killed.”

Canadian librarians picked it as a November Loan Stars title.

Holds are commensurate with cautious ordering in American libraries we checked, but Hollywood’s excitement may foretell growing interest.

HBO’s adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s 2014 best seller, Big Little Lies, begins airing on February 19, 2017.

The just-released first full-length trailer is making headlines. Glamour calls it “The Mom Version of Pretty Little Liars You’ve Been Waiting For” and Entertainment Weekly says that the “Trailer Hints At Dark Underbelly Of Parenting.”

The cast includes Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern and Shailene Woodley, causing the  A.V. Club to note, “this one seems to star every famous white woman under the sun (plus Adam Scott).”

Tie-ins hit shelves in February:

Big Little Lies (Movie Tie-In), Liane Moriarty (PRH/Berkley trade pbk; February 7, 2017; Mass Market).

The first teaser trailer for HBO’s adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s 2014 best seller, Big Little Lies, has just been released. Shailene Woodley plays Jane, a young single mother who moves to a coastal community so her son can attend a better school. There she becomes entangled in the messy lives of the seemingly perfect mothers of her son’s classmates, Celeste (Nicole Kidman) and Madeline (Reese Witherspoon). PopSugar gives a full rundown of the cast, with comparisons to the characters in the book.

The setting has been changed from the book’s Australia to Southern California. The seven-episode series is directed by Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers Club), who also worked with Witherspoon on the adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir, Wild.

Release is planned for some time in 2017. No specific start date has been set.

Witherspoon, who set up her production company Pacific Standard to develop better roles for women, worked with Kidman to produce the series. The pair have also acquired the rights to Moriarty’s most recent book, Truly Madly Guilty (Macmillan/Flatiron; Macmillan Audio).

Tie-ins will be published in February.

Big Little Lies (Movie Tie-In)
Liane Moriarty
PRH/Berkley trade pbk; February 7, 2017
Mass Market

Just weeks before Inferno hits screens, comes news that Robert Langdon will star in yet another book by Dan Brown, Origin (PRH/Doubleday; Sep 26, 2017; ISBN 9780385514231), the fifth in the series.

The news is being widely reported. In a press release Doubleday says:

“In keeping with his trademark style, Brown interweaves codes, science, religion, history, art and architecture into this new novel.
Origin thrusts Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon into the dangerous intersection of humankind’s two most enduring questions, and the earth-shaking discovery that will answer them”

The title is already on wholesaler systems for pre-order.

Fall books have replaced most of the summer titles on best seller lists, but one is still going strong. Months after its publication on July 19, Ruth Ware’s second novel,  The Woman in Cabin 10 (S&S; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample), continues at #17 on USA Today’s list released today, and is therefore declared “a sleeper hit.”

According to the book’s publicist, quoted by USA Today, the success is due in part to word of mouth and the April release in paperback of Ware’s debut, In a Dark, Dark Wood, which “set the table for Cabin.”

Although it was listed on multiple summer reading lists, it received few reviews in the consumer press, other than a glowing mention in a thriller roundup from the Washington Post comparing it aptly to Alfred Hitchcock’s films.

Librarians were early advocates. Both her novels have been Library Reads picks as well as Galleychat favorites.

Library holds queues are long are growing.

More is coming from Ware. She signed a deal with her British publisher for two more books, to be released in the summers of 2017 and 2018 and Reese Witherspoon acquired the film rights to her first book, In a Dark, Dark Wood.

Just one adaptation opens in the coming week but  it will not make much noise, since it opens in a limited number of theaters (also on VOD), which is unfortunate because it received strong reviews when it premiered at this year’s SXSW.

I Am Not a Serial Killer is based on the 2009 thriller of the same title by Dan Wells. The first in a series, it received a starred review from Kirkus, which called it a “gory gem …this deft mix of several genres features a completely believable teenage sociopath (with a heart of gold), dark humor, [and} a riveting mystery.” Other titles in the series received equally strong reviews from both Booklist and Kirkus.

The plot line is reminiscent of  another series, Dexter. In this case, the main character is a 15-year-old struggling with the realization that he exhibits the classic personality traits of a serial killer. As he fights his own tendencies, he uses his special knowledge to try to help solve a series of murders happening in his small town.

The movie stars Back to the Future‘s Christopher Lloyd and, as the main character, Max Records (Where the Wild Things Are).

It might not be the gold medal that Michael Phelps and the American women gymnastics earned last night, but the next Dan Brown film adaptation, Inferno, won its own Olympic competition. On the strength of a trailer played between high profile events, the novel jumped on Amazon, rising from #384 to #6.

Inferno (PRH/Anchor; trade pbk. ISBN 9780804172264; May 6, 2014; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample) spent five straight weeks at #1 on the NYT hardcover bestseller list , and an additional 13 weeks in the top five.

It’s the fourth of the Robert Langdon novels but the third film adaptation, after The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons. The third novel, The Lost Symbol, was attempted, but was abandoned after the screenplay proved difficult, running through three screenwriters.

Ron Howard again directs, with Tom Hanks starring as Langdon, a Harvard symbologist who cannot seem to stay out of trouble. Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything, Rogue One), Irrfan Khan (Life of Pi), Omar Sy (The Intouchables), and Ben Foster (Lone Survivor) also join the cast. David Koepp (Indiana Jones/Crystal Skull, Angels & Demons, Jurassic Park) wrote the screenplay.

Entertainment Weekly provides a concise summary of the action, saying Langdon “attempts to untangle a deadly mystery rooted in history, and this time, he finds himself swept up in a murderous conspiracy and plague tied to Dante Alighieri’s Inferno and the nine circles of hell.”

The first movie was a blockbuster.  Angels and Demons followed three years later. Although deemed a success, it did not do as well as its predecessor. Collider points out that the seven-year gap between the last film and the new one raises the question of whether “the audience remains all this time later.” If the book’s movement on Amazon’s rankings is an indicator, the answer to that question is yes.

The movie premieres on October 28, 2016 in the US with an international start date of October 12th.

As we pointed out when the first trailer appeared, several tie-ins arrive in September:

Inferno (Movie Tie-in Edition)
Dan Brown
Trade Paperback, (PRH/Anchor)
Mass Market, (PRH/Anchor)
Audio CD (PRH/Random House Audio)
Inferno (Movie Tie-in edition en Espanyol), (PRH/ Vintage Espanyol)

With her 8th novel, a dark thriller about a young female gymnast, You Will Know Me (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample), author Megan Abbott is poised to break out,

It got the NPR bounce on Amazon (rising to #145) after Maureen Corrigan reviewed it on yesterday’s Fresh Air, using gymnast metaphors to describe it as a “terrific new psychological suspense novel [with] a plot that somersaults and back flips whenever a safe landing seems in sight.”

It’s been racking up positive reviews, with the daily NYT ‘s critic Jennifer Senior enthusing that Abbott “is in top form in this novel … filling her readers with queasy suspicion at every turn.”

The timing of the release conveniently ties in to the Summer Olympics.  Interviewed by  Entertainment Weekly  Abbott says that the inspiration for the parents in the novel came directly from US Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman, who recently pulled off a nail bitter to qualify for the women’s all-around finals. Abbott references video footage that went viral in 2012, but Aly’s mom and dad are also getting noticed this year (see video below).

Holds are soaring, with some libraries we checked running as high as 5:1.

In a rare move, The New York Times Book Review devotes a full issue to a single genre.  Summer Thrills, offers 19 reviews, some covering multiple titles, that highlight buzzy books (reviewed by buzzy authors) and titles new to the scene.

Sophie Hannah (Woman with a Secret) reviews Megan Abbott’s You Will Know Me (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample), a novel about murder and an Olympic hopeful. Hannah says that Abbott “sticks the landing,'”admiring the “glittering carapace of [her] lush, skillful, subtle writing,” praising some of the novel’s “radical and satisfying” elements, and calling it “brilliant” and “excellent.”

Lee Child, whose Jack Reacher thrillers are reliable best sellers, reviews The Death of Rex , by  C.B. George (Hachette/Lee Boudreaux Books; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample), set in contemporary Zimbabwe and focused on three married couples.

Part of the buzz around the novel is the author. George is a pseudonym for a writer Child doubts is new at the game, writing that it is unlikely the novel is a debut, in fact “it would be astonishing if it were — like being able to play the Moonlight Sonata with no prior experience of the piano. Therefore ‘C.B. George’ must be a pen name, and speculating about who — or, more accurately, what kind of established writer — lies behind it became a matter of ongoing interest, illuminated by what I took to be clues scattered throughout the text.” In the end Child decides “C.B. George is a screenwriter — and now also a novelist of great quality.”

Another best-selling author, Joseph Finder, reviews two books by insiders. The first is the latest by Stella Rimington (the former director general of MI5 said to be the model for 007’s M). Breaking Cover (Macmillan/Bloomsbury USA; OverDrive Sample) is the ninth Liz Carlyle thriller and Finder says Rimington writes it with “crisp authority.”

Matthew Palmer works in the US State Department, with stints on the National Security Council, and has written two novels previous to The Wolf of Sarajevo (PRH/Putnam; OverDrive Sample). This one Finder says contains “some
truly exciting scenes … And its conclusion is thrilling … The aura of authenticity on the smaller scale helps lend gravity to plot twists that, in other hands, might have seemed outlandish.”

A debut, the historical thriller The Devils of Cardona, Matthew Carr (PRH/Riverhead; Penguin Audio; OverDrive Sample), is the first crack at fiction by a nonfiction author. It is set in 1584, Spain and involves the Inquisition and the murder of a priest. Reviewer/author Esmeralda Santiago says that it advances through “well-structured chapters and harrowing scenes” and that it “is as exciting as it is enlightening from its first pages to its satisfying end.”

Titles we have covered such as Missing, Presumed, Dark Matter, and Crow Girl also get attention.

Close behind the holds leader for the week (and perhaps the summer),  Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine) is Liane Moriarty’s latest psychological thriller, published today, Truly Madly Guilty (Macmillan/Flatiron; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Holds have risen dramatically since we wrote about it on Friday, but if readers agree with reviewers, they may stall. The NYT gave it a less than stellar early review, USA Today chimes in today, calling it a “summer bummer,” accusing it of stringing out its mystery and not being “as much fun as The Husband’s Secret or Big Little Lies.”

Stephenie Meyer will release her second novel for adults this fall, a thriller starring a female secret-agent, The Chemist  (Hachette/Little, Brown on November 15).

The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, and USA Today are all reporting the story based on a press release.

As quoted in the WSJ Meyer says:

“The Chemist is the love child created from the union of my romantic sensibilities and my obsession with Jason Bourne/Aaron Cross … I very much enjoyed spending time with a different kind of action hero, one whose primary weapon isn’t a gun or a knife or bulging muscles, but rather her brain.”

It will be the first thriller by the author most famous for her YA Twilight saga novels and will her second adult novel after her SF  novel, 2008’s The Host.

Arriving tomorrow is the first in James Patterson’s new original trade paperback series, titled BookShots. The first in the series features his most popular character, Cross Kill: An Alex Cross Story (Hachette/BookShots; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample), it is just 144 pages long. [UPDATE: a second BookShot will also be released tomorrow, Zoo 2 : A Zoo Story, James Patterson, Max DiLallo. The series will release 2 to 4 titles the first week of each month, see list below].

CBS Sunday Morning featured an interview with Patterson yesterday [Note: the video of the interview is no longer available]. He explains the idea behind BookShots,

“This is a little bit of a revolution … unfortunately for a lot of people …books [have become] just too long for them to deal with … [BookShots] are very, very fast-paced. They’re like reading a movie.”

CBS correspondent Anthony Mason is surprised to learn that Patterson writes books in longhand, rather than using a computer, to which the author replies “Yeah, well, thank God I don’t work on a computer because then I’d be really prolific!”

Twenty-three BoosShots will be released in 2016. Mason says that Patterson, who is famous for using co-authors, is “involved in every single one of them” and Patterson adds for “80% of ’em I did the outline.”

Included are titles that appear distinctly non-Pattersonesque, listed as “James Patterson’s BookShots Flames.”

Below are the titles scheduled through the end of the year.

The Trial: A BookShot : A Women’s Murder Club Story, James Patterson, Maxine Paetro, July 5

Little Black Dress, James Patterson, Emily Raymond, July 5

Learning to Ride , Erin Knightley, James Patterson (Foreword by), July 5

The McCullagh Inn in Maine , Jen McLaughlin, James Patterson (Foreword by), July 5

Chase: A BookShot : A Michael Bennett Story, James Patterson, Michael Ledwidge, Aug. 2

Let’s Play Make-Believe, James Patterson, James O. Born, Aug 2

113 Minutes : A Story in Real Time, James Patterson, Max DiLallo, Sept. 6

Hunted, James Patterson, Andrew Holmes, Sept. 6

Sacking the Quarterback, Samantha Towle, James Patterson (Foreword by), Sept. 6

The Mating Season, Laurie Horowitz, James Patterson (Foreword by) Sept. 6

$10,000,000 Marriage Proposal, James Patterson, Hilary Liftin,  Oct. 4

French Kiss : A Detective Luc Moncrief Story, James Patterson, Richard DiLallo, Oct. 4

Killer Chef, James Patterson, Jeffrey J. Keyes, Nov. 1

Dazzling: The Diamond Trilogy, Part I, Elizabeth Hayley, James Patterson (Foreword by), Nov. 1

Bodyguard, Jessica Linden, James Patterson (Foreword by), Nov. 1

The Christmas Mystery : A Detective Luc Moncrief Story, James Patterson, Richard DiLallo, Dec. 6

Black & Blue, James Patterson, Candice Fox (With), Dec. 6

Radiant: The Diamond Trilogy, Part II, Elizabeth Hayley, James Patterson (Foreword by)

On the strength of what amounts to a full court press of coverage and to-die-for buzz, Before the Fall, Noah Hawley (Hachette/Grand Central; OverDrive Sample) is racking up impressive hold figures at many libraries we checked, soaring as high as a 23:1 ratio.

One reason for the long queues, libraries bought low even in the face of starred reviews from Booklist, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly and even though Hawley is well-known as the force behind the popular FX adaptation of Fargo.

Glowing consumer reviews came out on the eve of publication or the day of, also suggesting the media was expecting a hit. In a NYT‘s Sunday Book Review (posted on May 30, in print on June 5), author Kristin Hannah says:

“Noah Hawley really knows how to keep a reader turning the pages, but there’s more to the novel than suspense. On one hand, Before the Fall is a complex, compulsively readable thrill ride of a novel. On the other, it is an exploration of the human condition, a meditation on the vagaries of human nature, the dark side of celebrity, the nature of art, the power of hope and the danger of an unchecked media. The combination is a potent, gritty thriller that exposes the high cost of news as entertainment and the randomness of fate.”

In their review published the day the novel hit shelves, The Washington Post says it is “superb and cleverly constructed” and “should become one of the summer’s hottest sellers.”

The day of publication, USA Today wrote: “Noah Hawley has a hit show as the award-winning creator of FX’s quirky crime drama Fargo. Now he’s eyeing the best-seller lists: Before the Fall … is poised for takeoff.”

Rounding out the praise, it is an Amazon Editors Pick as a Best of the Month, an Indie Next pick, and it made the widely-syndicated St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s summer reading list.

So why the low order numbers at libraries? As The Wall Street Journal notes the author may be suffering from the track record of his previous titles. WSJ says: “Between 1998 and 2012, Mr. Hawley published four novels, none of which could be called a hit. At a low point, in 2008, there was The Punch, a family story that sold a mere 281 print copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen BookScan.”

But Hawley is a hot property now, following his Emmy-winning work on Fargo (he also worked on Bones).

Before The Fall sold to Sony before it was published, and Deadline Hollywood reports that Hawley “will produce the feature with John Cameron.” Publisher Grand Central, reports WSJ, “ordered an initial print run of 88,000 copies and has since reprinted an additional 16,000 copies. Foreign rights have been sold in 24 territories and counting.”

The attention continues. NPR’s Morning Edition got in on the buzz yesterday, interviewing the author.

Speculation is swirling over who will be the next 007, but we now know who will run the spy game on this side of the Atlantic.

John Krasinski is the next Jack Ryan.

The Office favorite will star as the famous fictional CIA agent, following in the footsteps of the film stars Chris Pine, Ben Affleck, Harrison Ford, and Alec Baldwin.

This time, however, Ryan is not headed to the big screen, but to an Amazon TV series.

While details are sketchy and no air date is known, Deadline Hollywood is reporting that “expectations are for the show to go straight-to-series” (translated: bypassing Amazon’s “try it out” pilot stage). It will not be a direct adaptation but “a new contemporary take on the character in his prime as a CIA analyst/operative using the novels as source material.”

Jack Ryan first appeared in 1984 in The Hunt for Red October (PRH/Berkley, 2013 is the most recent edition), which was also the first film adaptation (starring Baldwin).

Clancy went on to write a series of novels focused on Ryan’s rise from agent to the President of the United States before beginning a new series featuring his son, starting with The Teeth of the Tiger (PRH/Berkley, 2004).