Hang on to your out-of-print copies of Elizabeth Taylor: My Love Affair With Jewelry. They are now selling online for up to $1,999. It’s currently the most popular Taylor book on Alibris.

There were dozens of books about Taylor and various sources have weighed in on their favorites (more will surely come):

Books To Help You Remember The Great Elizabeth Taylor — NPR

Elizabeth Taylor’s life was a true page-turner — USA Today

16 Elizabeth Taylor books, scandals included — L.A. Times

Every one of the lists includes My Love Affair with Jewelry (says NPR’s Linda Holmes, “If you don’t have Elizabeth Taylor’s campy, frothy tribute to her bauble collection on your coffee table, you are really missing out.”)

Also included on each list is the recent book on the Taylor/Burton romance, Furious Love, which Holmes calls a “soapy, delicious and highly literary double biography.”

Tomorrow, the  authors are scheduled to appear on The Early Show (CBS) and an ABC 20/20 special with Barbara Walters.

For our money, the best description of the book came from Kayleigh George, HarperCollins Library Marketing.

Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century Sam Kashner, Nancy Schoenberger Retail Price: $27.99 Hardcover: 512 pages Publisher: Harper – (2010-06-01) ISBN / EAN: 006156284X / 9780061562846

Large type; Thorndike; 9781410429858; $32.99
OverDrive WMA Audiobook; Adobe EPUB eBook

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.”

Louis Zamperini, the hero of Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, was featured on Fox News on Christmas Eve. Now 93 and living in California, Zamperini, with a mind an voice undimmed by age, still speaks like a man of his era (about a religious conversion after hearing Billy Graham speak, he says, “I realized what a heel I was to turn my back on God”).

As a result of the story, Zamperini’s own autobiography, Devil at My Heels (with a foreword by John McCain) broke in to the Amazon 100. The out-of-print hardcover edition of the book is for sale at prices ranging from $129 to  $599.

Several local newspapers (the Lexington Herald Leader, the Louisville Courier-Journal, and the Houston Chronicle) also featured Zamperini, as an inspirational story for the holidays

Hillenbrand’s Unbroken is now at #1 on Amazon sales rankings, edging out The Autobiography of Mark Twain and Decision Points by George W. Bush.

Devil at My Heels: A Heroic Olympian’s Astonishing Story of Survival as a Japanese POW in World War II Louis Zamperini, David Rensin Retail Price: $13.95 Paperback: 320 pages Publisher: Harper Paperbacks – (2004-02) ISBN / EAN: 0060934212 / 9780060934217

Next week, book lovers and Jackie Onassis fans may enjoy the first of two books looking at her career as an editor in the publishing industry: Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books by William Kuhn.

According to Kirkus, “Kuhn argues that Jackie touched on forbidden themes in her own life—her husband’s adultery, the humiliation of marriage, political machinations—only through her list, including such books as Barbara Chase-Riboud’s controversial novel Sally Hemings (1979) and Elizabeth Crook’s novel about Sam Houston and Eliza Allen, The Raven’s Bride (1991).

The New York Times Fashion section explores the rivalry (complete with trash talk) between author Kuhn and Greg Lawrence, whose Jackie as Editor: The Literary Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis will arrive on January 4 from Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press.

Libraries we checked have modest orders in line with modest holds for both titles.

Reading Jackie: Her Autobiography in Books William Kuhn Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Nan A. Talese – (2010-12-07) ISBN / EAN: 0385530994 / 9780385530996

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Jackie as Editor: The Literary Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Greg Lawrence Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books – (2011-01-04) ISBN / EAN: 0312591934 / 9780312591939

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

Straight Talk, No Chaser: How to Find, Keep, and Understand a Man by Steve Harvey (Amistad) is the popular radio show host’s followup to his #1 New York Times bestselling book of relationship advice, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. Lots of publicity is line up, including Good Morning America on Tuesday, publication day and a profile in the NYT Sunday Arts & Leisure section (tentatively scheduled for 12/19).

The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop by Dan Charnas (NAL Hardcover) chronicles the financial history of rap and hip-hop.

Fiction: Usual Suspects

Dead or Alive by Tom Clancy with Grant Blackwood (Putnam), the newest geopolitical military thriller with Jack Ryan, arrives with a 1.75 million printing.

Queen Hereafter: A Novel of Margaret of Scotland by Susan Fraser King (Crown) is historical fiction set in 11th-century Scotland. PW says, “Though clichés often plague the prose… King’s blend of historical figures and fictional characters turns a medieval icon into a believable mother, wife, and ruler.”

Buttons and Bones by Monica Ferris (Berkley Hardcover) follows Betsy Devonshire, amateur investigator and owner of Crewel World Needlework in investigating another mystery.

Young Adult

Last Sacrifice (Vampire Academy Series #6) by Richelle Mead is the final installment in the bestselling Vampire Academy series.

On the Daily Show last night,  Jon Stewart gave Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra: A Life what may be his strongest endorsement yet, “F—-n’ awesome. I tell you man, a really awesome read.”

The book, already a best seller, rose from #16 to #11 on Amazon sales rankings as a result.

Déjà vu?

It will come as sad news to libraries trying to keep up with the demand for The Autobiography of Mark Twain that it was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air last night.

Libraries aren’t the only ones behind the curve; the book’s publisher, University of California Press, is working to get more copies into the pipeline and booksellers are kicking themselves for not seeing it coming.

One of the elements fueling the demand is the often-repeated story that it was suppressed for 100 years, according to Twain’s desire to not offend the people mentioned in it. However, as we’ve pointed out before, this is not completely true, since most of the autobiography has already been published (in the current issue of the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik says only 5% of this edition is new material).

So, why the embargo myth? Bob Hirst, director of the Mark Twain Project, who has been working on Twain’s papers for 30 years joked to NPR in an earlier interview,

…can you spell marketing plan? If you say here’s a little bit of the autobiography, but you can’t see the whole thing for a hundred years, you’re gonna sell a book. Mark Twain knew how to sell a book.

Gopnick puts it more pointedly, calling this version of the material, which has been edited and published three times before,

If not exactly a deliberate swindle, it is an endlessly repeated put-on, a shaggy-dog story without a punch line…[that] keeps getting replayed for credulous audiences.

He finds very little to admire in the book, calling it, “…slack and anti-rhythmic. Scarcely a single sentence in the whole thousand pages stands out to be admired.”

Does he recommend reading any of the other versions? No, he finds Life on the Mississippi and Roughing It far superior (try that out on customers demanding the Autobiography).

Bookseller Arsen Kashkashian, (Boulder Book Store) calls the phenomenon The Absurdity of Twain Fever and predicts that “many copies of the Autobiography now in the hands of gleeful customers will end up, after great disappointment, flooding back into the bookstore in 2011 as forgotten used tomes.”

Above: The currently sought-after edition and two earlier versions of Twain’s Autobiography

Wondering why you haven’t received your orders of the Mark Twain autobiography?

The New York Times reports that the publisher, the University of California Press, did not anticipate the demand. The same is true for booksellers, who are discovering, to their regret, that it has become the desired gift book of the season.

According to the NYT, the original print run was 50,000 (which probably seemed aggressive at the time). The U. of Cal. Press uses a small printer in Michigan that has been working overtime to produce 30,000 copies a week and has engaged larger trucks so they can transport more copies in each shipment to warehouses.

In libraries, holds are growing and outpacing the other surprise hits of the season. They are slightly higher than Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra and the Booker winner, The Finkler Question, but not quite as high as Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken.

Part of the allure of the book is that the autobiography was supposedly held back for 100 years. But the director of the Mark Twain Project, Robert Hirst, told NPR recently,

In spite of these efforts at suppression, however, most of the autobiography has surfaced over the years, and the supposed “embargo” has only led to increased interest in and sales for the book.

Hirst also says that the reader “might find [this edition] a bit of a slow read at times” because  it,

…includes the numerous false starts Twain made before he settled into the dictation….It is heavy slogging. But I would recommend what Mark Twain would recommend: If you’re bored with it, SKIP.

The Sexiest Man Alive is Ryan Reynolds.

Oops, sorry, the real news is that the 11/29 issue of People gives three books the four-star treatment (but the lead title, Bush’s Decision Points gets only 3.5):

The Distant Hours, Kate Morton, “A nuanced exploration of family secrets and betrayal, Morton’s latest [after The Forgotten Garden] is captivating.”

The Distant Hours: A Novel Kate Morton Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 576 pages Publisher: Atria – (2010-11-09) ISBN / EAN: 1439152780 / 9781439152782

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Foreign Bodies, Cynthia Ozick, “Who would dare rewrite Henry James? Ozick proves up to the task, recasting The Amabassadors with Jewish Americans in post-war Paris.” It will be featured on the NYT BR cover this week.

Foreign Bodies Cynthia Ozick Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – (2010-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 0547435576 / 9780547435572

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Louisa May Alcott, Susan Cheever; “Cheever brings her characteristic lyricism to this loving, incisive portrait.”

Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography Susan Cheever Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2010-11-02) ISBN / EAN: 141656991X / 9781416569916

Laura Hillenbrand’s second book after her mega seller Seabiscuit is breaking records for media attention in advance of its release tomorrow. Library holds are growing on modest orders, so the issue now how many more copies to order.

Newsweek asks the central question, Can Laura Hillenbrand Top Seabiscuit?, and answers with a resounding “yes,”

Unbroken is wonderful twice over, for the tale it tells and for the way it’s told. A better book than Seabiscuit, it manages maximum velocity with no loss of subtlety. With a jeweler’s eye for a detail that makes a story live, Hillenbrand compresses pages of explanation into a paragraph and sometimes just a line. Even the planes come alive. One pilot describing what it was like to fly the unwieldy B-24s compares it to “sitting on the front porch and flying the house.”

But this doesn’t address how many readers will be willing to live through the book’s detailed descriptions of suffering. The hero of the story, Louis Zamperini, survives 47 excruciating days at sea after his WWII bomber crashes, only to be “rescued” by the Japanese and endure 2 more years of captivity in a brutal POW camp.

Janet Maslin, in today’s NYT says Unbroken tells a “much more harrowing, less heart-warming story” than did Seabiscuit and notes, “there’s a limit to how many times Ms. Hillenbrand can present a man-socks-shark-in-the-nose anecdote before it begins to get old.” But even so, she says, the book “manages to be as exultant as Seabiscuit.”

Hillenbrand, herself, addresses the differing appeal of the two books in the Wall Street Journal,

“Seabiscuit’s story is one of accomplishment. Louie’s is one of survival. Seabiscuit’s story played out before the whole world. Louie dealt with his ordeal essentially alone. His was a mental struggle.” That struggle, she adds, feels particularly resonant in 2010. “This is a time when people need to be buoyed by something, and Louie blows breath into people by making them realize that they can overcome more than they think.”

Our take; libraries that have ordered modestly should order more copies now as demand will be driven by the book’s considerable publicity (upcoming this week; the Today Show, NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, as well as the NYT BR). Will you need even more? That depends on whether readers are put off by the grimmer scenes, or whether they see it as a story of “survival, resilience and redemption” as the book’s subtitle describes it.

Will Unbroken follow Seabiscuit to the big screen? That would seem a no-brainer, but there are some sticky rights issues that have to be worked out, as outlined in the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Zamperini is still living (at 93, he is excited about promoting the book. Ironically, he is better equipped to do so than Hillenbrand, who suffers from chronic fatique syndrom). Universal optioned both Zamperini’s “life rights,” and his own earlier autobiography, Devil at My Heels, first in the 1950’s, with plans to star Tony Curtis and again in the 1990’s with Nicholas Cage in mind. It seems Universal still has the rights to the autobiography, although Zamperini says he’d rather they base the movie on Hillenbrand’s book.

Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, about a WWII hero who survived being shot down and drifting on a life raft in the open ocean, only to endure two years in a brutal Japanese POW camp, is poised to be next week’s biggest nonfiction release. As we wrote earlier, it’s a People Pick, was featured on the cover of USA Today‘s “Life” section, and is excerpted in the December issue of Vanity Fair. Hillenbrand’s appearances next week include the Today Show and NPR.

It also made PW and the Amazon Editors Top Ten lists for 2010. Today’s Wall Street Journal profiles the subject of the book, Louis Zamperini, and quotes a buyer for B&N, “We’re positioning it as the big book for the holidays.”

The one naysayer so far is Entertainment Weekly which gives the book a “B”:

Hillenbrand is a better writer than a lot of historians and biographers. At times her prose even veers toward the poetic. But… she gives this story a chronological structure that frankly gets a little plodding…. Also, as inspiring as Zamperini’s tale is, his ordeal isn’t exactly a joy to experience on the page.

Nevertheless, the book is rising on Amazon, reaching #11 this morning (making it the fifth highest nonfiction title on the list). We’ll see how it fares with word of mouth after its release.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption Laura Hillenbrand Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 496 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-11-16) ISBN / EAN: 1400064163 / 9781400064168

RH Large Print; 9780375435010
RH Audio; 9780739319697

Other Notable Nonfiction on Sale Next Week

Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda (HarperCollins) is a biography by the veteran publisher. PW says “Korda perhaps exaggerates the novelty and significance of Lawrence’s military exploits and makes an unconvincing stab at framing him in Joseph Campbell-inspired heroic archetypes. Still, Korda’s vivid portrait of Lawrence and his warring impulses captures the brilliance and charisma of this fascinating figure.”

My Passion for Design by Barbra Streisand (Viking) is an illustrated tour of the great star’s homes and art collections – and her first book. Streisand will appear for a full hour on the Oprah Winfrey Show on November 16.

Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters by Barack Obama (Knopf Books for Young Readers) explores the characteristics of 13 important figures in American history through a letter to the President’s daughters.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Scribner) chronicles the history of cancer, cancer treatments and new research into the disease. Reviewing the book in the  New York Times, yesterday, Janet Maslin objects that it is “transparently glib” to call the book a “biography,”  but that, “With objectives so vast, and with such a beautiful title, The Emperor of All Maladies is poised to attract a serious and substantial readership.” While the tone of the review is generally negative, it’s clear that Maslin is fascinated by much of it, underscoring her assessment that it will attract readers.

Decoded by Jay-Z (Spiegel & Grau) is part memoir, part tribute to the genre of hip-hop by the superstar. Entertainment Weekly gives it an A-: “The memoir’s chief theme is Jay-Z’s obsession with words…. He situates his work in the English canon, comparing his chosen form to the sonnet and crediting favorite authors (”Shout-out to Alfred, Lord Tennyson”). After reading Decoded, you won’t doubt for a second that he deserves the same level of respect as any of those great scribes.”

As expected for an author whose first book was an enormous success, Laura Hillenbrand is getting attention for her next title, Unbroken. And, as expected by most who have read it, it’s poised to do even better than Seabiscuit.

It’s a People Pick in the 11/22 issue. About a little-known WWII hero, who survived on a life raft in the middle of the ocean, only to be “rescued” by the Japanese and put in to a brutal POW camp for two years, Caroline Leavitt (frequent reviewer for People and the author of Pictures of You, Algonquin, Jan) says it is,

… as mesmerizing as it is gut-wrenching. And Hillenbrand’s writing is so ferociously cinematic, the events she describes so incredible, you don’t dare take your eyes off the page…a devastating story of the unforgivable, and of one extraordinary man who forgave.

Hillenbrand is also featured on the cover of USA Today‘s “Life” section today, the book is excerpted in the December issue of Vanity Fair and more publicity is coming, including appearances on the Today Show and NPR.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption Laura Hillenbrand Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 496 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-11-16) ISBN / EAN: 1400064163 / 9781400064168

RH Large Print; 9780375435010
RH Audio; 9780739319697

Nora Ephron‘s latest collection of humorous essays, I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections is a People Pick in the new issue, and New York magazine has a Q&A with her. Entertainment Weekly rains on the parade a bit, with a B- review (worth reading as an example of saying a great deal in just a few lines) as does Jane Maslin in today’s NYT, at much greater length.

Ephron’s also said to be launching a divorce section on the Huffington Post this week.

We hope she can remember her schedule next week, it’s a crowded one:

NPR/Morning Edition– 11/8
Charlie Rose – 11/9
Today Show – 11/9
The View – 11/10

All that, coming off the heels of her 2006 bestselling collection I Feel Bad About My Neck, is adding up to a 500,000 print run for her latest.

Booklist says: “A master of the jujitsu essay, Ephron leaves us breathless with rueful laughter. As the title suggests, she writes about the weird vagaries of memory as we age, although she is happy to report that the Senior Moment has become the Google Moment. Not that any gadget rescued her when she failed to recognize her own sister.”

I Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections Nora Ephron Retail Price: $22.95 Hardcover: 160 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2010-11-09) ISBN : 9780307595607

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

Decision Points by George W. Bush (Crown) gives personal insight into the major events of Bush’s presidency. Though it’s embargoed, there have been lots of leaks, as we’ve already mentioned.

Valley Forge: George Washington and the Crucible of Victory by Newt Gingrich, William R. Forstchen and Albert S. Hanser (Thomas Dunne) is historical fiction about the Continental Army during the winter of 1777, following up on the authors’ success with Try Men’s Souls (2009). Booklist says, “The dialogue tends to get a little long-winded, and the authors are unabashed cheerleaders for GW, but, really, who can blame them? American readers can’t get enough of Valley Forge, so expect high demand for this fair-to-middling fictional adaptation.”

Don’t Sing at the Table: Life Lessons From My Grandmothers Adriana Trigiani  (Harper)  was featured at the BEA – AAP  Librarian Lunch. PW says, “Trigiani combines family and American history, reflections on lives well-lived, and sound advice to excellent effect, as a legacy to her daughter and a remembrance of two inimitable women.”

Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices by Noah Feldman (Twelve) analyzes the composition and decisions of the Supreme Court during the 1940s and 50s. Kirkus calls it “an immensely readable history that goes behind the façade of our most august institution to reveal the flesh-and-blood characters who make our laws.”

Stacy Schiff’s biography of Cleopatra has enjoyed a great deal of prepub attention, fueled by talk of a movie version directed by James Cameron, starring Angelina Jolie AND in 3D. Now that Cameron has announced his next projects will be Avatar 2 and Avatar 3, Cleopatra appears to have been scuttled.

The book, however, stands on its own (Schiff won a Pulitzer Prize for Vera, her biography of Nabokov’s wife) and is reviewed widely today:

NYT, Books of The Times: The Woman Who Had the World Enthralled

NPR’s web site, How History And Hollywood Got ‘Cleopatra’ Wrong

Salon, Laura Miller, “Cleopatra”: Sex and sovereignty

USA Today, ‘Cleopatra’ burns with passion, both personal and political

The Wall Street Journal, In All Her Infinite Variety

The Washington Post, Stacy Schiff’s new biography of “Cleopatra,” reviewed by Maria Arana

It rose to #60 on Amazon sales rankings today. Holds in libraries, however, are modest so far.

Cleopatra: A Biography Stacy Schiff Retail Price: $29.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 0316001929 / 9780316001922

Hachette LARGE PRINT; Hdbk; 9780316120449; $31.99
Hachette Audio; UNABR; 9781607887010; $34.98

There’s been chatter all summer and into the fall about Stacy Schiff’s new bio, Cleopatra, most of it focused on whether James Cameron will direct a movie adaptation (in  3-D, no less), starring Angelina Jolie. Headlines indicate it’s definitely the director’s next project, but Cameron has only confirmed that he is considering it and that Jolie would be “hot” in the role.

The book finally arrives next week. Newsweek says,

Rarely have so distant a time and obscured a place come so powerfully to life. It is a great achievement…Faced with the perplexing question of how to write about a person when the evidence is sketchy and often misleading, Schiff has hit on an ingenious solution. She has written a biography in negative, describing the outlines of what she cannot know by brilliantly coloring around the queen.

It’s also featured in O, the Oprah Magazine; Why Cleopatra Still Matters. Schiff herself writes in the Wall Street Journal about why we are Still Under Cleopatra’s Spell.

Cleopatra: A Biography Stacy Schiff Retail Price: $29.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 0316001929 / 9780316001922

Hachette LARGE PRINT; Hdbk; 9780316120449; $31.99
Hachette Audio; UNABR; 9781607887010; 34.98

Legendary Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards is setting the tabloid press abuzz over excerpts from his new memoir, Life, in the Times of London, where (big surprise) he says that Mick Jagger has been “unbearable” since the 1980s.

In the New York Times, Janet Maslin calls Richards’ memoir “a big, fierce, game-changing account of the Stones’ nearly half-century-long adventure. . . . some of its most surprisingly revelatory material appears in what Mr. Richards jokingly calls ‘Keef’s Guitar Workshop.’ Here are the secrets of some of the world’s most famous rock riffs and the almost toy-level equipment on which they were recorded.”

Life Keith Richards Retail Price: $29.99 Hardcover: 576 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2010-10-26) ISBN / EAN: 031603438X / 9780316034388

• CD: Hachette Audio; $34.98; ISBN 9781600242403
• Large Print: Little Brown and Co., $31.99; ISBN 9780316120364

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks (Knopf) explores how people with impaired senses handle, and even excel at, everyday life, drawing on six case studies including his own loss of depth perception due to a tumor.

Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth and Treasure by Glenn Beck and Kevin Balfe (Threshold) outlines the economic ideas of the Fox News pundit.

Memoirs and Biographies

Cleopatra by Stacy Shiff (Little, Brown). Sure, it’s a bio of a fascinating historical figure by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, but the buzz around this book has focused on its adaptation as a movie, with Scott Rudin producing, James Cameron in talks to direct (in 3-D!), and Angelina Jolie possibly starring.

The Elephant to Hollywood by Michael Caine (Holt) “revisits familiar territory” from his first memoir, according to Kirkus, “including childhood poverty, the deprivations of World War II, faltering first steps in show business before signature roles in The Ipcress File (1965) and Alfie (1966) made him an international film star—but his warm, wry delivery keeps the material interesting, even though many of the anecdotes have a distinctly practiced feel.”

You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness by Julie Klam (Riverhead) is about a “slightly wacky person who, instead of looking inward for answers [to how to be happy], decided to help others — specifically, Boston terriers,” according to the 11/1 issue of People, where the book is a People Pick and garnered 3.5 of 4 stars.

My Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space: Adventures of an Ordinary Woman by Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Scottolini Serritella (St. Martin’s Press) is a collection of true life stories originally written for the Philadelphia Inquirer by the popular suspense writer and her daughter.

Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage by Hazel Rowley (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) examines the relationship between FDR and his wife.  PW says “Despite Rowley’s cheerleading that the cousins’ conflicts brought out their courage and radicalism, and that they loved with a generosity of spirit that withstood betrayal, FDR emerges as a narcissist while Eleanor carved a spectacular life.”

First Family: Abigail and John Adams by Joseph J. Ellis (Knopf) gets praise from PW: “Ellis’s supple prose and keen psychological insight give a vivid sense of the human drama behind history’s upheavals.”

Cookbook Season
The major gift-giving season will soon be upon us, bringing a raft of new cookbooks.

Barefoot Contessa How Easy Is That?: Fabulous Recipes & Easy Tips by Ina Garten (Clarkson Potter) focuses on simplifying meals without sacrificing quality. The Food Network guru will appear on the Today Show October 26  and 27.

The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century, Amanda Hesser (W.W. Norton) ; long before the Contessa became barefoot, the NYT was publishing recipes. In what is sure to be THE gift cookbook of the year, Amanda Hesser examined the NYT recipes since the newspaper began running them in the 1850’s, chronicling the effort in the NYT Magazine series Recipe Redux (the latest is about readers’ “most stained” recipes).

Keys to Good Cooking: A Guide to Making the Best of Foods and Recipes, Harold McGee (Penguin Press) was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air last night, shooting the book to #15 on Amazon sales rankings.