Tina Fey‘s memoir Bossypants is set to dominate the media next week, after not just one but two excerpts in The New Yorker. The star of TV’s 30 Rock has also done an interview with In Style, in which she discusses how she juggles acting, screenwriting, producing and being a mother.

Reviewing the book in Slate, Katie Roiphe praises Fey for cutting her way through the male-dominated comedy world with “tough feminism” delivered with humor.

Holds are high at libraries we checked, any many libraries have more copies on order.

Bossypants Tina Fey Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Reagan Arthur Books – (2011-04-05) ISBN / EAN: 0316056863 / 9780316056861

Large Print; Little, Brown, 9780316177894

Other Notable Titles on Sale Next Week

One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, A Marriage and the Language of Healing by Diane Ackerman (Norton) is the author and naturalist’s memoir of her husband’s battle to recover from a stroke. It’s eagerly awaited by librarians on GalleyChat and O Magazine made it one of “18 picks for April”. In a starred review, Booklist called it “A gorgeously engrossing, affecting, sweetly funny, and mind-opening love story of crisis, determination, creativity, and repair.”

Gangster Government: Barack Obama and the New Washington Thugocracy by David Freddoso (Regnery) is a critique of the President’s administration by the author of The Case Against Barack Obama.

I’m Over All That: And Other Confessions by Shirley MacLaine (Atria) shows the actress hasn’t changed her core beliefs. Booklist calls it “a witty little memoir” and sums up her stances: “Reincarnation, yes; against organized religion, yes; still interested in acting, mostly.” And sex? Not so much.

Next week is dominated by new books in series (two of which are coming to an end), but one debut mystery may break through.

To Watch

The debut mystery Bent Road by Lori Roy, (Dutton/Penguin), arrives with the kind of inhouse excitement the publisher felt for Tana French’s breakout. It’s received stars from Kirkus, Library Journal and PW, and a review that reads like a star from Booklist, “Terrifying and touching, the novel is captivating from beginning to end.” Publishers Weekly called it “Midwestern noir with gothic undertones [that] is sure to make several 2011 must-read lists.”

Movie Tie-in

Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin, (St. Martin’s Mass Mkt., 9780312993177; Trade Pbk. 9780312600723). The tie-in arrives this week, the movie opens in theaters on May 6th, starring Kate Hudson and Ginnifer Goodwin. Check out the trailer here.

Usual Suspects

The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel (Crown) is the sixth and final book in the Earth’s Children series. Despite some long spells between books (the first, The Clan of the Cave Bear, came out in 1980; the most recent, The Shelters of Stone, in 2002), this one is hotly anticipated. It’s been on the Amazon Top 100 (now at #12) for 67 days.

The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell (Knopf) is, sadly, the final mystery featuring Kurt Wallander, which is likely to bring it extra media attention.

Lover Unleashed by J. R. Ward (NAL/Penguin), book nine in the Black Dagger Brotherhood vampire series, it’s getting a 300,000 printing.

Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later by Francine Pascal (St. Martin’s Press). The girls of the popular Sweet Valley High series, which began in 1983, are now grown up and what grownup fan can resist them? Entertainment Weekly‘s reviewer, for one. That former fan rates it a lowly C.

Mystery: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman, (Ballantine Books). The book is a mystery, but the title actually comes from the nickname of the murder victim in this 26th book featuring the L.A. psychologist/detective.

Nonfiction

Come to the Edge: A Memoir by Christina Haag (Spiegel & Grau). The ex-girlfriend of JFK Jr. revealed some supposed scandal (Tantric Sex! Marijuana! Thrill-seekng!) in an excerpt in Vanity Fair, riling up the tabloids. The book received more measured attention in an early review this week from Janet Maslin in the NYT. The author is scheduled to appear on the Today Show next week.

The media’s already got the jump on next week’s laydown of Sarah Vowell‘s Unfamiliar Fishes, a short, idiosyncratic history of Hawaii by the National Public Radio star and bestselling author.

Entertainment Weekly gives it a “B,” saying it “could use a little more of Vowell’s voice peppered throughout some of the long stretches of history and reporting, [but] her brainy wit and savvy cultural references keep the book from seeming like homework.”

There are also short interviews with Vowell in USA Today and Vanity Fair.

Unfamiliar Fishes Sarah Vowell Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover – (2011-03-22) ISBN / EAN: 9781594487873 / 9781594487873

Also up next week is Lost and Found: Unexpected Revelations about Food and Money by Geneen Roth, the author that Oprah made into a star. It arrives with a 200,000-copy laydown. Kirkus calls it, “a timely portrait of one woman’s devastating loss and subsequent rise from the ashes of the Bernie Madoff scandal.”

Lost and Found: Unexpected Revelations About Food and Money Geneen Roth Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2011-03-22) ISBN / EAN: 0670022713 / 9780670022717

T.J. English (Havana Nocturne) will be getting media attention next week for his book about New York in the 1960’s, The Savage City. It will be reviewed in the NYT Metro section on Sunday and the author is booked for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The Savage City: Race, Murder, and a Generation on the Edge T. J. English Retail Price: $27.99 Hardcover: 496 pages Publisher: William Morrow – (2011-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 9780061824555 / 9780061824555

Below is our weekly roundup of titles to watch next week, by authors you may not have heard about yet, but are poised for success, as well as our list of “usual suspects.” The week brings a large number of new books from big-name authors, including Harlan Coben and Alexander McCall Smith.

Titles to Watch

Spiral by Paul McEuen (Dial) is a techno-thriller that New York Times critic Janet Maslin compared favorably to Michael Crichton in his prime in a review that jumped the book’s pub date, as we mentioned earlier this week.  Today’s Wall Street Journal anoints the author a “publishing star,” although an “unlikely” one (McEuen is a Cornell physics professor) and points out that the book was a best seller in Germany, where it was published in translation last fall. Film rights have also been sold.

The Mozart Conspiracy by Scott Mariani (Touchstone) is this British author’s U.S. debut, though it’s actually the second installment in his thriller series featuring ex-SAS warrior Ben Hope. PW calls it “a fast, exciting read in The Da Vinci Code tradition,” though Kirkus adds “apart from the rumor that he was poisoned, though, don’t expect to learn much about Mozart.” It has a 125,000-copy first printing. Orders are in line with modest holds at libraries we checked.

The Four Ms. Bradwells by Meg Waite Clayton (Ballantine) is the story of four friends who met in law school in the early 1980s and have maintained their ties through decade of marriage, children, divorce, and various career twists, until they must confront a buried secret. Library Journal is on the fence, comparing it unfavorably to the author’s 2008 bestseller The Wednesday Sisters: “Instead of true characterization, Clayton resorts to literary quotes, legalese, and Latin verbiage to give her characters unique voices. Still, fans of Elizabeth Noble, Ann Hood, Elin Hilderbrand, and other luminaries of female friendship fiction will find much to captivate them.” Libraries we checked have modest orders in line with modest reserves to date.

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Thanks to a controversial video trailer for Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived by Rob Bell, the book’s publication date has been pushed up by a week. In the video, the Grand Rapids, Michigan mega-church pastor and bestselling author of Velvet Elvis leans toward “universalism ─ a dirty word in Christian circles that suggests everyone goes to heaven and there is no hell,” as CNN.com’s “Belief Blog” puts it.

On March 14, Bell will be the subject of a New York Times profile, and will appear on Good Morning America and Nightline.

Several libaries we checked did not have copies on order. Others showed holds of up to 10:1 on light ordering.

Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived Rob Bell Retail Price: $22.99 Hardcover: 224 pages Publisher: HarperOne – (2011-04-01) ISBN / EAN: 006204964X / 9780062049643

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week…

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Next Week’s Notable Nonfiction

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe, will receive  major media exposure next week. She has written the cover story about Hilary Clinton for Tina Brown’s newly-redesigned Newsweek, which debuts next week (with a weekly book section!). The book will be featured on several NPR shows, including Morning Edition, it will be excerpted in USA Today and several reviews are scheduled.

Lemmon’s book is the story of an Afghan woman who became an entrepreneur under the Taliban, employing over 100 women, despite being banned from schools and offices, in the vein of Three Cups of Tea.

Libraries are showing modest reserves on modest orders, but interest could increase as Lemmon makes her media rounds.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe Gayle Tzemach Lemmon Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Harper – (2011-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061732370 / 9780061732379

Memoir to Watch

The Source of All Things: A Memoir by Tracy Ross (Free Press) is an exploration of the author’s childhood sexual abuse. Kirkus says, “Ross’s seesawing of emotions left her in a constant state of flux, but this uncertainty of emotion is one of the narrative’s primary strengths. Ross continually explores the boundaries of father-daughter intimacy, never demonizing her stepfather, but instead, humanizing him—a far more difficult task.”

Usual Suspects

The Money Class: Learn to Create Your New American Dream by Suze Orman (Spiegel and Grau) reassesses the American Dream — home, family, career, retirement — in view of current economic realities.

Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan by Jeff Greenfield (Putnam) is the veteran CBS News reporter and commentator’s journey in what-ifs, based on his extensive research, and has a 100,000 printing. PW calls it “fun but insubstantial.”

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki (Portfolio) offers a new perspective on the art of influence, by the author of bestseller The Art of the Start.

Big Debuts

Altar of Bones by Philip Carter (Gallery Press) is a thriller by an “internationally renowned author” writing under a pseudonym (OK, so it doesn’t really count as a debut) with a 200,000-copy printing, about a mysteriously powerful altar in Siberia, the San Francisco lawyer who inherits it, and the ex-special ops agent who protects her from those who wish to control it. Library Journal says the “chase and fight scenes are adrenaline-charged, breath-holding sensations,” but Kirkus calls it a “a competent and action-filled story, if one without much attention to detail,” and PW slammed it, saying, “by the time the unsurprising ending rolls around, all suspense has been drained from the action.”

The Informationist by Taylor Stevens (Crown), is, says the publisher, a “blazingly brilliant debut [that] introduces a great new action heroine, Vanessa Michael Munroe, who doesn’t have to kick over a hornet’s nest to get attention, though her feral, take-no-prisoners attitude reflects the fire of Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander.” Kirkus adds, “the writing is stellar, the heroine grittier than Lara Croft and the African setting so vivid that readers can smell the jungle and feel the heat—a gifted debut with much promise.”

The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht (Random House) is the season’s  (and, perhaps, the year’s) major literary debut. It comes with high expectations; Obreht is the youngest of the New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 fiction writers. LJ, Booklist and PW all call it varying degrees of brilliant. Boolist‘s starred review goes the furthest; “Every word, every scene, every thought is blazingly alive in this many-faceted, spellbinding, and rending novel of death, succor, and remembrance.” Only Kirkus introduces a caution; “…at times at times a bit too dense and confusing.” Laura Miller in Salon this week, finds the book too heavy on descripiton, “…no sooner does Obreht’s narrative work up a little momentum or present a masterful scene than it hits a patch of long, dozy paragraphs filled with way too much detail about the scenery.”

To Watch

Holds are mounting on light ordering for next week’s release of Carol Edgarian’s second novel, Three Stages of Amazement. This exploration of how privleged people cope (or don’t) when fate turns against them, pivots on a seemingly perfect, 40ish Bay Area couple who run into trouble when the surgeon husband needs financing for a new medical invention and gets it from his wife’s dashing and successful ex-boyfriend.

In the New York Times, Janet Maslin calls it “a fiery, deeply involving book with an eccentric streak that keeps it constantly surprising,” and compares it favorably to Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, saying it handles its “high-strung, hot-blooded, restless people conflating their own private crises with the political and economic turmoil of their times” in half the space Franzen does, “with less loftiness but more soap-operatic plot tricks.” O Magazine finds it “generous and graceful and true.”

Usual Suspects

The Jungle by Clive Cussler and Jack Du Bruhl (Putnam), the eighth Oregon Files thriller, finds Juan Cabrillo and his crew of mercenaries engage in one daring rescue operation after another with progressively higher stakes. PW says, “The frenetic action moves from Afghanistan to Singapore and the Burmese jungle with lots of derring-do at sea before climaxing in a surprising locale in a fashion sure to delight series fans.”

Silent Mercy by Linda Fairstein (Dutton) finds Alexandra Cooper, the ADA who heads Manhattan’s Special Victims unit, investigating a fire at a Baptist church in Harlem. Kirkus says, “Above average for this bestselling series, though not up to the mark of Hell Gate (2010).”

Love You More by Lisa Gardner (Bantam) finds Detective D. D. Warren of the Boston police and Massachusetts state trooper Bobby Dodge together again, as partners in the investigation of a state trooper who shot and killed D.D.’s husband. Booklist gives it a starred review: “Winner of the 2010 International Thriller Award for The Neighbor, Gardner hits an even higher mark this time and will have a national marketing campaignauthor tour, TV advertising, online saturation bombing, etc.to support her.”

The debut to watch this week is Cleaning Nabokov’s House by Leslie Daniels (Touchstone). It follows a woman rebuilding her life after losing her children to her ex-husband. It’s an in-house favorite at S&S because it “hits the sweet spot of being both literary and commercial.” PW agrees, “Despite the curiosities of the grief-to-gumption plot, Daniels’s writing is slick and her characters richly detailed, and even when it dips into sheer goofiness, it’s still a pleasure to read.” Blackstone publishes the unabridged audio and a large print version is coming from Thorndike in July (9781410438478; $30.99). The author lives in Ithaca, NY.

Usual Suspects

Sing You Home by Jody Picoult (Atria) follows a custody battle for fertilized embryos between a lesbian couple and one of their newly religious ex-husbands. Booklist says  “Picoult’s gripping novel explores all sides of the hot-button issue.” It has a 150,000 copy first printing, and includes a CD of songs that correspond to each chapter.

Minding Frankie by Maeve Binchy (Knopf) takes place in a closely knit Irish neighborhood where a young alcoholic struggles with unexpected fatherhood. Library Journal calls it “an enjoyable novel about life, love, and second chances.”

The Night Season by Chelsea Cain (Minotaur/Macmillan) is, amazingly, the fourth novel featuring Portland detective Archie Sheridan. The Wall Street Journal features the author today, calling the new book Cain’s “tamest to date” and says her “bid to reach a broad, mainstream audience without disappointing Gretchen fans may prove tricky.”

The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (DAW)  is a continuation of the 2007 fantasy novel The Name of the Wind, in which an innkeeper recalls a life of heroic deeds. Library Journal declares it “reminiscent in scope of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series and similar in feel to the narrative tour de force of The Arabian Nights, this masterpiece of storytelling will appeal to lovers of fantasy on a grand scale.”

Rodin’s Debutante by Ward Just (Houghton Mifflin) follows a boy’s adolescence and early adulthood in Chicago during the mid-20th century. Entertainment Weekly gives it an A-, “Don’t be misled by the title; this engaging coming-of-age tale has little to do with either Auguste Rodin or a debutante.”

River Marked by Patricia Briggs (Ace) is book six in the supernatural Mercy Thompson series.

Children’s Books

Fancy Nancy: Aspiring Artist by Jane O’Connor and illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser (HarperCollins) is a children’s book about the artistic aspirations of a little girl with glitter markers.

The memoir category continues to grow, as proved by the large selection coming next week.

Already making headlines is Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso (FSG), the memoir of the author’s seduction and molestation, beginning at age 7, by a serial child rapist in his 50s, it follows their 15-year relationship. New York magazine reviewed it this week, calling  it “an unstable mixture of bildungsroman, dirty realism, and child pornography” and calls it “beautiful and appalling.”

Andre Dubus‘smemoir of his childhood, Townie (Norton), an EarlyWord favorite since his appearance at ALA Midwinter, has already garnered admiring reviews.

A natural outgrowth of the public fascination with celebrity chefs and their cookbooks is the celebrity chef memoir. Next week brings two with strong backing from their publishers:

Gabrielle Hamilton recently confirmed her chops as a writer with an excerpt in the New Yorker from Blood, Bones and Butter, which recounts her trajectory from a 1970s Pennsylvania childhood that disintegrated in divorce to opening her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune.

The memoir has also wrested rare praise from New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani, who says,

…the book is hardly just for foodies. Ms. Hamilton, who has an M.F.A. in fiction writing from the University of Michigan, is as evocative writing about people and places as she is at writing about cooking, and her memoir does as dazzling a job of summoning her lost childhood as Mary Karr’s “Liars’ Club” and Andre Aciman’s “Out of Egypt” did with theirs.

Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef Gabrielle Hamilton Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Random House – (2011-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 140006872X / 9781400068722

Grant Achatz, whose Chicago restaurant Alinea was crowned the best in America by Gourmet magazine, also delivers Life, on the Line: A Chef’s Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat. Co-written by Nick Kokonas, the book has a 75,000 copy first printing. An excerpt in the new issue of People (March 7) chronicles Achatz’s struggle with tongue cancer.

Life, on the Line: A Chef’s Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat Grant Achatz, Nick Kokonas Retail Price: $27.50 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Gotham/Penguin – (2011-03-03) ISBN / EAN: 1592406017 / 9781592406012

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

Getting to Heaven: Departing Instructions for Your Life Now by Don Piper and Cecil Murphey (Berkley) is an “instruction book” regarding the Christian idea of the afterlife by the author of the multimillion-selling 90 Minutes in Heaven.

Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction That Changed America by Les Standiford and Joe Matthews (Ecco) is the story of the 1981 kidnapping and murder of six-year-old Adam Walsh—son of John Walsh, host of the Fox TV series America’s Most Wanted—which went unsolved for a quarter of a century. It will get a major round of publicity, including a March 1 Q&A with the authors in USA Today, a March 2 appearance by Joe Matthews and the Walshes on the Today show; and a March 3 segment on Nightline.

Revolt!: How to Defeat Obama and Repeal His Socialist Programs by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann (Broadside Books) advocates no tax increases, weakening federal regulations and cutting social programs in the name of deficit reduction.

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer (Penguin Press) chronicles the training process of a once forgetful U.S. Memory Champion. The author was interviewed on All Things Considered on Wednesday.

Cowboys and Aliens by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg is a graphic novel about an alien invasion of Arizona in 1873, and the basis for a big movie coming this summer. The movie trailer shown during the Super Bowl generated so much discussion that director Jon Favreau (Iron Man), fearing people didn’t get it defended it to MTV.

Our guess is that the combination of star Harrison Ford and Jon Favreau (Iron Man) will result in a hit. But whether that will make people want to read the comic is anyone’s guess. Still, libraries haven’t ordered it and may want to give it serious consideration.

Cowboys and Aliens Scott Mitchell Rosenberg Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 112 pages Publisher: It Books – (2011-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061646652 / 9780061646652

Fiction Worth Watching

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain (Ballantine), a fictionalized portrait of Ernest Hemingway’s first marriage can be seen as A Moveable Feast from Hadley Richardson’s point of view. Entertainment Weekly gives it an A-, saying, the “biographical and geographical research is so deep, and [McLean’s] empathy for the real Hadley Richardson so forthright (without being intrusively femme partisan), that the account reads as very real indeed.”

The ARC was featured at the Random House booth at Midwinter. Cuyahoga P.L. has taken a strong stand on the book, partly because the author is local (she’s from Cleveland Heights). Cuyahoga’s Coll. Dev. Manager Wendy Bartlett read the ARC and says it’s got “book discussion group” written all over it.

The Sweet Relief of Missing Children by Sarah Braunstein (Norton) is a “complex and multifaceted study of children who conquer bad childhoods—and children who cannot,” according to Library Journal, which declares,”Braunstein paints gorgeous portraits of a wide variety of characters, all fully realized.” The author won the 2007 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award and was named as one of the National Book Foundations 5 under 35, which recognizes five young fiction writers chosen by National Book Award winners and finalists.

Usual Suspects

Gideon’s Sword by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (Grand Central) is the first in a new thriller series about the newly hired employee of a secretive government contractor. PW says the “tired and predictable story line isn’t helped by a protagonist lacking the quirks of the authors’ popular series hero, FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast.” Kirkus largely concurs, but adds, “Crew is a great character, and this series holds promise.”

Treachery in Death by J.D. Robb (Putnam) is the 33rd novel with New York homicide detective Eve Dallas. Booklist says, this “entry in Robbs gritty, futuristic procedural series is one of the best yet: a sexy, high-stakes, high-adrenaline read that will delight series stalwarts, hook readers new to Eve Dallas, and please both mystery and romance readers.”

Pale Demon by Kim Harrison (Harper Voyager) is book nine in the supernatural Hollows series. Library Journal says, “This one features plenty of action and a strong central character, but it is a little bit lighter in tone than the last few installments in the series. Urban fantasy and paranormal romance fans will undoubtedly place plenty of holds, so purchase accordingly.”

Nonfiction

Despite an embargo, news is already breaking about Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown’s memoir, which includes the story of his abusive childhood, Against All Odds (Harper). We will be hearing a great deal more in the coming days; he is scheduled to appear on 60 Minutes this Sunday, followed by The Early Show, Today and The View the next day, plus more media attention throughout the week. As The Atlantic points out this month, politicians have only recently found political capital in writing about childhood traumas (just twenty years ago, a George Bush, Sr. spokesman famously said, “Real men don’t get on the couch”). On the other hand, the Boston Herald accuses Brown of hypocrisy.

A Simple Government: Twelve Things We Really Need from Washington (and a Trillion That We Don’t!) by Mike Huckabee (Sentinel) advocates a significantly smaller federal government.

Our Last Best Chance: The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril by King Abdullah II of Jordan (Viking) chronicles the life of the king of Jordan and possible peace plans for the region.

Appropriately, there are a torrent of leaks from Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website by former WikiLeaks spokesperson Daniel Domscheit-Berg, which goes on sale today (Friday, February 11).

Among the revelations: Wired magazine reports that “when Domscheit-Berg left WikiLeaks, he took the organization’s encrypted submissions system with him, and Assange’s site has been unable to accept new material since.”

And Gawker says the book claims that Assange has fathered at least four “love children” around the world.

Libraries we checked had modest holds on modest orders.

Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website Daniel Domscheit-Berg Retail Price: $23.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Crown – (2011-02-15) ISBN / EAN: 030795191X / 9780307951915

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

A Widow’s Story by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco) gets an “A” from Entertainment Weekly: “In a narrative as searing as the best of her fiction, Oates describes the aftermath of her husband Ray’s unexpected death from pneumonia.” Oates has already appeared on NewsHour, and a raft of features are due next week everywhere from the USA Today to Newsweek. It will also be featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review on February 20.

True You: A Journey to Finding and Loving Yourself by Janet Jackson and David Ritz (Pocket Books/Karen Hunter) reveals that Jackson’s brothers verbally abused her and her father beat her, according to a Los Angeles Times report on Meredith Viera’s interview with the singer, which will air on NBC’s Today on Friday, February 11 and Monday, February 14, and on “Dateline” on Sunday February 13.

33 Men: Inside the Miraculous Survival and Dramatic Rescue of the Chilean Miners by Jonathan Franklin (Putnam) is an inside (though above-ground) account of the Chilean mine collapse and rescue operation last year, based on more than 110 interviews with the miners, their families, and the rescue team.

Worth Watching:

History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky (Simon & Schuster) is the poet, novelist and Norton editor’s account of her sister’s early death at age 21, in 1990. PW calls it “a beautifully composed, deeply reflective work, [drawing] from literary and psychological examples to honor her sister through a thoroughly examined life.”

Inconceivable: A Medical Mistake, the Baby We Couldn’t Keep, and Our Choice to Deliver the Ultimate Gift by Carolyn Savage and Sean Savage (HarperOne) chronicles a couple’s spiritual struggle after learning a fertility clinic implanted the wrong embryo. Booklist says, “The story is compelling and well told, although the Savages come across as martyrs more than saints.”

The #1 Indie Pick for February, West of Here by Jonathan Evison, arrives next week. Also a popular choice on EarlyWord‘s Galley Chat, the novel follows the past and present residents of a fictional town on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. Reader ratings are also high on GoodReads.com.

Entertainment Weekly gives it a “B+”: “Characters occasionally blur together, and some of the more interesting ones don’t get the attention they warrant, as the large scope hinders any close-ups. Still, if you take a step back, the big picture is pretty impressive.”

More media is bound to pay attention, since the book was highlighted on the BEA Editor’s Buzz Panel. And as we’ve mentioned before, this titles earned a rare triumvirate of starred reviews from Booklist, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. LJ sums up, “Fans of Jess Walter and Jim Lynch will be thrilled to find another author whose love for the Pacific Northwest and its people shines through with humor and clarity.”

At libraries we checked, there are modest holds on modest orders.

West of Here Jonathan Evison Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 496 pages Publisher: Algonquin Books – (2011-02-15) ISBN / EAN: 1565129520 / 9781565129528

Audio: Highbridge; 9781615731169; $39.95

Usual Suspects On Sale Next Week

A Heartbeat Away by Michael Palmer (St. Martin’s) is medical thriller with a 200,000 copy printing, in which terrorists release a virus in the Capitol during the State of the Union address. Booklist says, “Palmer’s track record (15 medical thrillers, 15 international best-sellers) assures a full-court press on the promotional front, and his latest, though disappointing, will get it, from national print and radio ads to an electronic avalanche.”

The Twelfth Insight: The Hour of Decision by James Redfield (Grand Central) is the fourth entry in the Celestine series.

Red Wolf by Liza Marklund (Atria) is the fifth novel featuring journalist Annika Bengtzon by the co-author of The Postcard Killers with James Patterson. Library Journal says, “Marklund blends the sociology and politics of contemporary Sweden with a taut mystery, capturing the Scandinavian chill as she builds suspense to an eminently satisfying conclusion.”

Dirtier Than Ever by Vickie Stringer (Atria) takes readers on another bumpy ride in this urban fiction outing with Red, Bacon, and Q–the love-hate triangle from Dirty Red and Still Dirty.

Lucky Stiff by Deborah Coonts (Forge) is the sequel to the chick-lit-gone-wild debut Wanna Get Lucky?, featuring Las Vegas casino troubleshooter Lucky O’Toole. Library Journal says, “watching Lucky navigate the dangerous shoals of the male-dominated world of gambling is a delight. Las Vegas is the perfect setting for this witty tale of misdirection and larger-than-life characters. Fans of J.A. Konrath’s Jack Daniels series will love this.”

Young Adult

Angel by James Patterson (Little Brown) is the seventh Maximum Ride novel, in which evil scientists are still trying to convince Max that she needs to save the world, this time by providing the genetic link in speeding up the pace of evolution.

Worth Watching

Instruments of Darkness by Imogen Robertson (Pamela Dorman/Viking) was an October Sneak Peak on BookReporter.com, which compared this historical novel about a British commander’s wife who trades life at sea for the English countryside to Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith.

Michael Oher, the offensive tackle for the Baltimore Ravens, finally tells his side of his adoption story, which is central to Michael Lewis’s bestseller The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game and the subsequent film starring Sandra Bullock. He explains on the Huffington Post that he wrote his memoir, I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness to the Blind Side and Beyond (with Don Yeager) because “I wanted to talk about some of the questions people have about how I was portrayed in the movie and about my life before I came to live with the Tuohys.”

Kirkus says: “The book is strongest when Oher conveys his hard-won wisdom through specific examples and anecdotes from his life. When he dispenses more generalized advice, the narrative reads like a generic public-service announcement.”

At libraries we checked, orders were in line with modest reserves.

I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness, to The Blind Side, and Beyond Michael Oher Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Gotham – (2011-02-08) ISBN / EAN: 1592406122 / 9781592406128

Other Notable Titles on Sale Next Week

Known and Unknown: A Memoir by Donald Rumsfeld (Sentinel) chronicles the career of the Secretary of Defense during 9/11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani calls it: “tedious, self-serving. . .  [and] filled with efforts to blame others — most notably the C.I.A., the State Department and the Coalition Provisional Authority (in particular George Tenet, Colin L. Powell, Condoleezza Rice and L. Paul Bremer III) — for misjudgments made in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the failure to contain an insurgency there that metastasized for years.” On Monday, February 7, Rumsfeld will appear on “World News” with Diane Sawyer at 6:30 p.m. ET and on “Nightline” at 11:35 p.m. ET. On Tuesday, February 8, he will appear on “Good Morning America” at 7 am ET.

Spousonomics: Using Economics To Master Love, Marriage, and Dirty Dishes by Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson (Random) is a quirky and practical look at relationships by, respectively, a front-page editor for the Wall Street Journal and an award-winning New York Times reporter who’s covered Wall Street. Based on the authors’ survey of 1,000 couples, Szuchman explains that the key to a good sex life is to keep it “affordable.” If couples are tired, “they make it quick. Maybe they don’t even bother to take their shirts off. When one of them is in the mood, they say so,” she says in an essay on the Daily Beast.

The Foremost Good Fortune by Susan Conley (Knopf)  is a memoir of family’s move from Maine to Beijing, only to find that the cultural differences between their two homes pale when the author gets a cancer diagnosis. Booklist calls it, “Beautifully written and insightful on many levels.”

Radio Shangri-La: What I Learned in the Happiest Kingdom on Earth by Lisa Napoli is a memoir of an ex-journalist’s search for wholeness and spiritual renewal in Bhutan, while helping to launch Kuzoo FM, the nation’s fledgling radio station. Kirkus says, “the author’s authentic voice and light, pleasant cultural insights make for a refreshingly uplifting book.”

Fondly remembered by critics and booksellers for her 2003 debut hit I Don’t Know How She Does It, Allison Pearson returns next week with I Think I Love You, a wistful novel about a grown woman who looks back on her dream of becoming Mrs. David Cassidy in 1970s Wales, and winds up heading to Las Vegas to meet him in mid-life.

People gives it four stars and designates it a People Pick. Even the New York Times‘ Michiko Kakutani is wooed:

[Pearson] shows how Petra’s crush on David Cassidy is really a kind of rehearsal for the love and passion she wants to one day lavish on a real boy in real life, and how those youthful emotions both endure — and are transformed — as the years and decades tick by. . . . [A] groovy little novel whose charms easily erase any objections the reader might have to the prepackaged and heavily borrowed plot.

I Think I Love You Allison Pearson Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2011-02-08) ISBN / EAN: 1400042356 / 9781400042357

CD: Random House Audio, $40, ISBN 9780307747525

Check Your Holds

A Discovery of Witches: A Novel by Deborah E. Harkness (Viking), a debut is the first in a planned trilogy, about witches and vampires that is rising fast on Amazon (now at #3), with growing holds in libraries. Part of the story is based on real events; like her main character, Harkness discovered a manuscript, missing since the 1600’s, that was once owned by Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer.  Entertainment Weekly gives it a B+, complaining of some bloat, but summing up, “as the mysteries started to unravel, the pages turned faster, almost as if on their own.”  Parade Magazine was unequivocal on Sunday, making it a Pick of the Week and calling it “580 pages of sheer pleasure.” Harkness spoke at the AAP Trade Libraries Breakfast at ALA MidWinter. It will be available in large type from Thorndike in March (9781410436337).

Usual Suspects

The Secret Soldier by Alex Berenson (Putnam) is the fifth thriller featuring ex-CIA man John Wells, by the winner of the 2007 first novel Edgar for The Faithful Spy. Kirkus says, “the plot unfolds along predictable lines in a story arc that Tom Clancy readers or viewers of TV’s 24 will find old hat.” 

A Red Herring Without Mustard: A Flavia de Luce Mystery by Bradley Alan (Delacorte) is Ms. Flavia de Luce’s third outing, after her bestselling debut in The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and return in The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag. Here, she demonstrates a firm knowledge of poisons while saving a gypsy from accusations of child abduction. PW calls it, “a splendid romp through 1950s England led by the world’s smartest and most incorrigible preteen.” 

The Matchmaker of Kenmare by Frank Delaney (Random) is the sequel to Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show, in which matchmaker Kate Begley plies her profession in neutral WWII Ireland. Booklist says, it “combines the charm of an Irish yarn with the excitement of a political thriller and the romance of a 1940s war movie.”

Heartwood: A Novel by Belva Plain (Delacorte) explores the inevitable endings of romantic relationships through the experiences of a mother and daughter. 

Also worth watching:

The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady by Elizabeth Stuckey-French (Doubleday) is the tale of a once unwitting subject of an experiment in radioactivity, who sets out to avenge the dire consequences of that same study. It follows the author’s much praised 2002 debut novel, Mermaid on the Moon. LJ says, “mixing the suburban angst of Tom Perrotta with the snarky humor of Carl Hiaasen, Stuckey-French has written a page-turner that is thoughtful, amusing, and nearly impossible to put down.”

Kids:

No Passengers Beyond This Point by Gennifer Choldenko (Dial) is a children’s fantasy about three siblings whose plane lands in a mysterious world, by an author best known for her Newbery Award-winning historical fiction. Kirkus calls it, “convoluted” with “a confusing host of secondary characters. Fascinating, if not entirely successful.”