Fans may take with a grain of salt the newly announced release date of Sept 8, 2017 for the film adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 novel It (cover, at left, from the S&S/Scribner trade paperback, released in January). The project has been on the burner since 2012. Back in December of 2014, it was confidently announced that it was set to begin filming the following summer, with True Detective‘s Cary Fukunaga directing.

Fukunaga left the project last May and has since been replaced by Andy Muschietti. Entertainment Weekly reports that “Fans of King’s novel should be pleased with the current take on the script” quoting the producer saying it will be in two parts, one “from the point of view of the kids, and then making another movie from the point of view of the adults, that could potentially then be cut together like the novel. But it’s gonna be a really fun way of making this movie.”

Currently filming, also after many delays, is the movie adaptation of King’s The Dark Tower, starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. It is set for release Feb. 17, 2017, so two long-awaited King adaptations may arrive next year.

THE DARK TOWER movie is filming; IT begins soon. Pretty cool.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) April 13, 2016

HBO has bought the rights to the TV adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s debut novel Sharp Objects (PRH/ Shaye Areheart, 2006), starring Amy Adams. Deadline characterizes the deal as part of a “very competitive situation” (i.e., many others were bidding on it, indicating it’s a hot property).

The show runner is Marti Noxon (Girlfriends’ Guide To Divorce, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) with Flynn writing many of the episodes. Jean-Marc Vallée will direct all the episodes. He has experience adapting books in this genre. He also directs HBO’s Big Little Lies, based on the book by Liane Moriarty, set to debut some time next year starring Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern.

This is the third of the Flynn’s novels to be adapted, following Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike and Neil Patrick Harris and Dark Places, starring Charlize Theron. Earlier this year, it was announced that Flynn’s short story, “The Grownup,” was sold to Universal. Originally published as “What Do You Do?” in Rogues, an anthology edited by George R. R. Martin, it was subsequently released in hardcover as The Grownup (PRH/Crown. Nov. 2015).

Jessica Knoll’s 2015 debut thriller, Luckiest Girl Alive, is soaring up the Amazon charts once again due to a raw, confessional essay the author wrote for Lenny, a newsletter and website founded by Lena Dunham along with Jenni Konner, the showrunner for Girls.

Knoll discloses in the essay that the horrific rape segments of her novel are based on her own life story, events she first said were entirely fictional.

“The first person to tell me I was gang-raped was a therapist, seven years after the fact. The second was my literary agent, five years later, only she wasn’t talking about me. She was talking about Ani, the protagonist of my novel, Luckiest Girl Alive, which is a work of fiction. What I’ve kept to myself, up until today, is that its inspiration is not.”

The New York Times also reports the story, extending on the essay with an interview with Knoll who told the paper of the aftermath of the rape:

“No one was treating me like a victim; they were treating me like I was a perpetrator, like I was getting what I deserved … The message I internalized was that nothing bad happened; you did something wrong.”

Luckiest Girl Alive remains in high demand in every library we checked with holds queues still present at many. Reese Witherspoon optioned the film rights, and Knoll is hitting the road for a book tour to support the paperback edition of her novel (S&S, April 5).

Just one week after it was published, Harlan Coben’s novel, Fool Me Once, Harlan Coben (PRH/Dutton; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample) is on the way to the big screen with Julia Roberts set to produce, according to Deadline,  and star as a former Army helicopter pilot who discovers something unsettling on her two-year old daughter’s nanny cam, images of her recently mudered husband.

Despite their cinematic qualities, only one of Coben’s novels has been adapted, the 2006 French film, Ne le dis à person (Tell No One). The rights to several others have been acquired, but are still listed as in development.

Among the many books cited as a worthy successor to Gone Girl, including The Girl on the Train, was a title that considered as better than either by several librarians on  GalleyChat, The Kind Worth Killing, by Peter Swanson (HarperCollins/Morrow; HarperLuxe; OverDrive Sample).

It did not quite become a household name, but the rights were picked up for a film, which now has a director, Agnieszka Holland, according to Deadline.

Of the book, Holland says she was,

 “ … really intrigued by this story. It’s full of paradoxes and I love paradoxes. The main heroine is tough as steel, but also as fragile as glass. Is she a victim? A psychopath? An avenger? What a great role for a talented actress! The story line is unpredictable, the genre feels fresh. A psychological thriller, which sometimes veers off towards black comedy, mixing humor with gore, genuine emotions with a detective mystery. The Kind Worth Killing will be fun to shoot, but even more fun to watch!”

Holds are growing in libraries on Fiona Barton’s The Widow (PRH/NAL; BOT; OverDrive Sample), which the A.V. Club headlines as “a delightfully trashy thriller.” A debut, orders are light, so requests are outpacing copies.

Little wonder. It is a book much in the news. Currently rising on Amazon’s sales rankings, it is the verge of breaking on to best seller lists.

As we reported, it is a March Indie Next pick, a People pick, and listed in the WSJ  as a potential big thriller of the year.

In the Washington Post, Lisa Scottoline notes, “Barton is a veteran British journalist who has reported for the Daily Mail and other publications, so it comes as no surprise that her prose is deft and her story well told. What does come as a surprise is that her novel is also richly character-driven in a way that is both satisfying and engrossing.”

Barton talks about her background as a reporter, the basis for her character, in an interview in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune. She is at work on a second novel that will also feature Kate Waters, the reporter in The Widow.

Riffing on the success of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, and The Girl on the Train, The Wall Street Journal picks five candidates to become the “world’s biggest thriller of 2016.” [link may require subscription]

The list should please Penguin Random House as all five titles are published through their imprints. Pleasing librarians who want to second-guess the WSJ, all five are available to request in e-galley.

First up is The Widow, Fiona Barton (PRH/NAL; BOT; OverDrive Sample; pubbed today)

As we reported earlier, it is a People and an Indie Next pick and that Entertainment Weekly thinks it “might have more of a right to the [Girl] comparison than most.” The Wall Street Journal also notes film have been sold to Playground Entertainment, one of the production companies behind the adaptation of Wolf Hall.

Maestra, L.S. Hilton (PRH/Putnam; BOT; April 19). WSJ reports the “steamy femme fatale story,” expected to be the first in a trilogy, sold in a seven-figure deal. Film rights were optioned by TriStar Pictures, with a screenplay in development by the writer behind The Girl on the Train film.

I Let You Go, Clare Mackintosh (PRH/Berkley; BOT; May 3) makes the WSJ list due to its “twisty” nature and its reception in the UK, where it ended 2015 as “the seventh best-selling product—not just book—on Amazon.co.uk last year (with Adele’s 25 coming fourth and The Girl on the Train claiming first).” [NOTE: you can chat with author Clare Mackintosh, as part of the EarlyWord/Penguin First Flights program on April 20th)

The Crow Girl, Erik Axl Sund (PRH/Knopf; BOT; June 14). WSJ writes that this book about a serial killer of children in Stockholm leads to “something even bigger and more sinister. “An international best seller, it’s the first in a trilogy that has already been published in 38 countries. At 758-pages, the WSJ calls it a “doorstopper.” Knopf, of course, has had success with other Scandinavian doorstoppers that feature “Girl” in the title.

Dark Matter, Blake Crouch (PRH/Crown; BOT; Aug. 2). Rounding out the list, is a novel by the author of the Wayward Pines trilogy. adapted by Fox TV. Based on just a particle manuscript, the author scored $1 million dea. Film rights sold soon after. The WSJ says the novel “has drawn comparisons to [the movie] Inception, is slated to be published in 20 territories.”

For those who enjoy the skewering of accepted wisdom, like “the book is always better than the movie,” read this:

The Girl on the Train Movie Will Surpass the Mediocre Book

The movie debuts Oct. 16, 2016, so we have a year before we find out if this prediction os accurate.

Gillian Flynn’s “new book” The Grownup (PRH/Crown; BOT; OverDrive Sample), released this week, is actually a short story that appeared in an earlier anthology. And, as a ghost story, it’s in a different genre from her domestic thriller Gone Girl. Fans, of course, are pressuring for a new full-length novel.

She gave those fans some hope during an interview with Salon, stating “I’m starting it right now. I’m a slow writer. I kind of overwrite and then whittle it down from there. I’m hoping to be done by end of next year. My guess is a 2017 publication.”

She is also suffering the anxiety of trying to live up to expectations after a runaway bestseller,

“I so wish I had one I was working on when Gone Girl came out. It’s a little intimidating to think about sending another thing out there. You’re never, ever going to repeat that thing – it was its own weird lightning in a bottle kind of thing … I think my main battle with the next one is to just do what has served me well so far, which is just write the kind of book I would read personally.”

Whatever the book is about, it will not revisit Amy and Nick. She says, “When people ask if I’m going to do a sequel, I always say ‘never say never.’ But it definitely won’t be the next one up. I feel like I need a break from their voices in my head.”

Flynn has a few other projects in the works that might get in her way. She is working with 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen on a heist thriller and is set to produce the TV series based on her novel Sharp Objects.

Just after the announcement that the film adaptation of The Girl on the Train is set for release a year from now, comes news about two other titles in the genre are taking major steps closer to screens.

Director Adrian Lyne has been selected to head up the film version of The Silent Wife, (Penguin, 2013) with Nicole Kidman starring. Lyne has had experience with stories about relationships gone spectacularly wrong, having directed both Unfaithful and Fatal Attraction.

The debut novel by A.S.A. Harrison, published as an original trade paperback, was a surprise best seller in 2013.

Another domestic thriller, also starring Kidman, this time along with Reese Witherspoon, Big Little Lies (PRH/Putnam, 2013) is in the works as an HBO limited series. It was just announced that Jean-Marc Vallee (Dallas Buyers Club) is in talks to make his TV directorial debut adapting the novel by Liane Moriarty. Deadline calls this “the highest-profile limited series packages to come together for HBO since True Detective.”

Kidman and Witherspoon will produce the series. The pair clearly love the domestic thriller genre. This is the second title by Morality they have acquired, having optioned the rights last year to The Husband’s Secret  (Penguin/Putnam/Einhorn, 2013). In May, they optioned S.J. Watson’s Second Life (Harper, June 2015). Earlier, Kidman starred in the film version of Watson’s debut, Before I Go to Sleep (Harper, 2011).  Witherspoon was a producer for the movie Gone Girl.

Amazingly, neither of them have anything to do with The Girl on the Train.

A release date of Oct. 7, 2016 has been set for the movie adaptation of the runaway best seller, The Girl on the Train, starring Emily Blunt. Also recently announced, Justin Theroux is in talks to play the lead character’s ex-husband after Chris Evans dropped out due to scheduling conflicts.

The movie will be shot in New York, but Emily Blunt will not adopt an American accent for the role. She told the BBC last month that she and director Tate Taylor have decided that she will play the main character the way she was written, as a British woman.

After the success of The Girl in the Spider’s Web, David Lagercrantz is on tap to write two more titles for the Millennium series.

Entertainment Weekly reports that his Swedish publisher has to release a fifth in 2017, followed by a sixth in 2019. Following the precedent of the previous, we can expect those books to be released simultaneously in the U.S.

According to a publisher statement, Lagercrantz found The Girl in the Spider’s Web “so much fun to write and such a breathtaking adventure” that he “just can’t resist” writing more.

In an earlier interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lagercrantz said he found plenty of subject material for the series, sharing that he kept notes while reading the first three books by Stieg Larsson and found “lots of threads that I’m sure he would have developed.”

After hitting the NYT Best Seller list at #1 on Sept. 20, The Girl in the Spider’s Web has remained in the top three, moving back to #2 this week.

Entertainment Weekly has the “U.S. exclusive” excerpt of The Girl in the Spider’s Web: A Lisbeth Salander novel, continuing Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series by David Lagercrantz (RH/Knopf; RH Audio; RH Large Print)

The site prefaces the sneak peek with this mini review:

“[In] David Lagercrantz’s highly-anticipated (and thrillingly good) continuation of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, … Lisbeth is taking more risks than we’ve ever seen, and Blomkvist is desperate to get a scoop for Millennium to salvage his journalistic reputation.”

The UK Daily Mail has the same excerpt for their side of the pond but has added their own illustrations.

Security has been tight about story details according to both the WSJ and the Daily Mail, but all of that ends soon. The book will be released on August 27^th in the UK and on Sept. 1 in the US.

Ruth Ware’s In A Dark, Dark Wood (S&S/Gallery/Scout Press; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample) has hit the NYT’s Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers list at #11.

It was our crystal ball pick last week and is gaining momentum. Some libraries are showing holds exceeding a 3:1 margin with others inching towards that threshold.

The setting of The Girl on the Train will be switched for the movie adaptation from the novel’s England to upstate New York, but the lead is still British.

Emily Blunt has recently completed negotiations for the starring role of Rachel. Deadline reports that Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson is currently in negotiations to play Rachel’s former husband’s wife, Anna.

Ferguson recently made her name by co-starring in an action movie with Tom Cruise, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. Blunt has had a similar experience, co-starring with Cruise in last year’s Edge of Tomorrow. Both actresses will draw on a different set of skills for this tale of psychological suspense.

There’s still several roles to be cast, including that of Rachel’s ex-husband Tom. Entertainment Weekly makes their suggestions (Tom Cruise is not one of them).

Tate Taylor (The Help) is directing the movie based on the novel by Paula Hawkins that is still at the top of best seller lists after 31 weeks.

UPDATE, 6/24/15: The third female lead has been cast. American actress Haley Bennett is set to play Megan, the woman Rachel watches from the train each morning until she suddenly disappears, drawing Rachel in to the search for her.