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

Two big commitments are on the agenda for tomorrow — voting and GalleyChat. For information on how to join the latter (begins at 4 pm., EST), link here.

During the last GalleyChat, Harper offered copies of Tom Franklin’s Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. Over 150 people took advantage of that offer; we’d like to hear how you are enjoying it.

We’re also curious to know if you are taking advantage of Simon & Schuster’s eGalley program (the latest title being offered is the paranormal thriller, Cryer’s Cross by Lisa McMann, coming in February with a 200,000 copy printing).

Cryer’s Cross Lisa McMann Retail Price: $16.99 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Simon Pulse – (2011-02-08) ISBN / EAN: 1416994815 / 9781416994817

Below are some other titles on our radar. We look forward to hearing what’s on your TBR list.

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

During our last galley chat, several wondered whether Laura Hillenbran’s new book will have as much appeal as the author’s earlier book Seabiscuit. I’ve read it and believe it will. In that book, Hillenbrand was able to get thousands fascinated by the story of a long-forgotten race horse. Imagine what the same author can do with a WWII hero who survived 47 days in the open ocean only to be captured by the Japanese. The book’s already received universally strong prepub reviews; we’re expecting heavy consumer coverage when it arrives in two weeks.

Looking ahead to the spring,

Left Neglected Lisa Genova Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Gallery – (2011-01-04) ISBN / EAN: 1439164630 / 9781439164631

Large Print; Thorndike; (ISBN 9781410433824; price $35.99; release date 1/5/2011

After Still Alice, a novel about  early-onset Alzheimer’s, this is the story about a woman afflicted with another brain disease; one that makes the sufferer unable to recognize part of themselves. Booklist has already called it “more accessible than her somber first book,” There is strong inhouse buzz that this will reach a wider audience than Still Alice.

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ARE’s for The Fates Will Find Their Way, a literary debut with strong inhouse buzz were sent in the Oct B&T mailing. Lee Boudraux’s editorial letter asks people to “take a moment” to read it; it’s a refreshingly short book (Boudraux terms it “economical”).

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

Highbridge Audio; 9781615731169

We’ve been hearing about this for months from Michael Rockliff, head of library marketing at Workman/Algonquin and we still have a few months to go before the public gets its hand on it. It’s picking up buzz at the regional bookseller shows, just received a star from LJ and it now has a Web site, complete with a timeline and newspaper clippings from the period the book covers.

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The Weird Sisters Eleanor Brown Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam – (2011-02-17) ISBN / EAN: 0399157220 / 9780399157226

Penguin Audio; 9780142428948

The sisters’ motto: “There is no problem a library card can’t solve.” From the editor that brought us The Help and The Postmistress, Booklist says that debut novel The Weird Sisters exhibits “no false steps.”

Jeffrey Deaver’s next book, the stand-alone Edge is coming out tomorrow. The author is interviewed in USA Today, in an article that leads with his next book, coming out in May.

Called just Project X at this point, it’s the next James Bond novel, which will place a 29-year-old Bond in a post-9/11 world. In the accompanying video, Deaver says that Bond will be the main character, but he will inhabit a Jeffrey Deaver novel; “one that moves very quickly, has a lot of twists and turns, a big surprise ending (actually, in this book there are two surprise endings) and a lot of interesting, esoteric information.”

In the article, Otto Penzler tells USA Today that will be a good thing, “…he can bring is a greater sense of suspense…A lot of the books and movies are becoming basically chase plots, and Jeff really has the ability to create suspense better than almost any writer working today.”

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Edge Jeffery Deaver Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 416 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2010-11-02) ISBN / EAN: 1439156352 / 9781439156353

Large Type; Thorndike; ISBN 9781410432759; price $35.99; release date 11/1/2010

As you may have heard (if not, you’ve somehow managed to avoid the ubiquitous ads), Conan O’Brien’s new late-night show debuts on TBS a week from today (in an interesting promotional move, “Show Zero,” the rehearsal for the actual show, debuts on the web tonight 11pm ET/8pm PT), initiating the next battle in the war to determine who the king of late night.

O’Brien appears on the cover of the new Rolling Stone. The just-released December issue of Vanity Fair runs an exclusive excerpt of The War for Late Night, NYT journalist Bill Carter’s look at what led to O’Brien’s leaving the Tonight Show.

Some of the magazines that didn’t get the excerpt are contenting themselves with excerpting the excerpt; Time lists the five best revelations and New York magazine’s “Vulture” blog, picks the best quotes.

The book releases on Thursday.

The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy Bill Carter Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 416 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2010-11-04) ISBN / EAN: 067002208X / 9780670022083

“After reading Finishing the Hat, I felt as if I had taken a master class in how to write a musical. A class given by the theater’s finest living songwriter,” says Paul Simon (yes, THAT Paul Simon) in the 10/30 NYT BR cover review of Stephen Sondheim’s collection of lyrics and commentary. The book is already riding high on Amazon sales rankings (now at #19 and rising) after Terry Gross’s interview with Sondheim on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday (listen here).

Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes Stephen Sondheim Retail Price: $39.95 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2010-10-26) ISBN / EAN: 0679439072 / 9780679439073

Ian Frazier’s Travels in Siberia has received several admiring reviews (San Francisco Chronicle,  Minneapolis Star Tribune. Boston Globe, among others). Here it gets the full treatment; a review as well as an inteview with Frazier by NYT Book Review editor Sam Tannenhaus (listen to the Book Review Podcast on the site).

Libraries are showing holds;  ratios are high where ordering is light.

Travels in Siberia Ian Frazier Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: 544 pages Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux – (2010-10-12) ISBN / EAN: 0374278725 / 9780374278724

Macmillan Audio; UNABR CD; 9781427210531

An EarlyWord favorite, Bruce Machart’s debut The Wake of Forgiveness, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Oct. 21) is hailed by Philip Caputo, who describes it this way,

Spanning some 30 years from the twilight of the frontier to the 1920s, The Wake of Forgiveness is a mesmerizing, mythic saga of four motherless brothers at war with one another and with their stern father, driven to establish himself as the biggest landowner in Lavaca County, Tex. Above all, as its title promises, it’s a story about forgiveness and a hard-won redemption.

Best Sellers

No surprise, Lee Child’s Worth Dying For (Delacorte Press, Oct, 19), lands at #1 on the 11/7 Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list, followed by Jan Karon’s In the Company of Others,(Viking, Oct. 19) at #2. Child was profiled by CBS Sunday Morning last week.

The Autobiography of Mark Twain (U. of California Press and on audio from Blackstone), which has been high on Amazon (currently at #12, it’s been in the Top 100 for 23 days), arrives at #2 on Hardcover Nonfiction. The bio. of Mickey Mantle, The Last Boy (Harper, Oct. 1) continues  at #4 after 2 weeks.

It takes guts to release a 1000-page-plus first novel in the thick of the fall season and expect the world to notice, but where would McSweeney’s Books – the literary home of Dave Eggers – be without guts, and good media connections?

Adam Levin‘s literary novel, The Instructions, takes place over four days in the life of a 10-year-old named Gurion Maccabee, born with a birthmark that spells out the Hebrew word for “Lord.” That’s enough to make him a troubled kid with a messiah complex, sent to a school for difficult children, where he plants seeds of rebellion.

The book has been getting early buzz in Chicago, where much of the action is set – with its ambition and girth drawing comparisons to David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Time Out Chicago declared it one of the Fall’s must-reads. The Chicago Tribune wasn’t convinced it needed to be so long, but declared that “for all its eye-rolling cleverness and sprawling unkempt invention, it’s to be savored.” And Chicagoist has a Q&A with the author.

And now, the New York Observer is chiming in, rather breathlessly: “This is a life-consuming novel, one that demands to be read feverishly. When it is over, other fiction feels insufficient, the newspaper seems irrelevant.”

Libraries we checked had modest holds on modest orders – but may want to keep an eye on this one, as the buzz develops.

The Instructions Adam Levin Retail Price: $29.00 Hardcover: 1030 pages Publisher: McSweeney’s – (2010-11-01) ISBN / EAN: 1934781827 / 9781934781821

Antonia Fraser’s memoir of her 30-year marriage to Nobel Laureate and playwright Harold Pinter, Must You Go?, coming next week, is beginning to draw attention on this side of the pond.

Best known as the biographer of Marie Antoinette and The Wives of Henry VIII, Fraser began her relationship with Pinter when he asked her book’s eponymous question while they were both married to other people.

The New York Times says

Must You Go? is not a proper biography of Pinter, nor a remotely full account of Ms. Fraser’s own life. Instead it’s a book of glowing fragments, moments culled from Ms. Fraser’s diaries. The prose is not overly winsome. “My Diary: it’s not about great writing,” she admits. “It’s my friend, my record, and sometimes my consolation.” But there’s hardly a dull page.

But Entertainment Weekly is more impressed, giving it an “A”:

Fraser’s bold, intimate, madly entertaining memoir of the years with her late husband Harold Pinter. . . . [is] a tender portrait of an exciting marriage, and a deliciously detailed account of living in the thick of creativity and fame.

Must You Go?: My Life with Harold Pinter Antonia Fraser Retail Price: $28.95 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Nan A. Talese – (2010-11-02) ISBN / EAN: 0385532504 / 9780385532501

More Notable Nonfiction

Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People by Amy Sedaris (Grand Central) is a farcical guide to crafting hobbies. Booklist says: “The true joy of this book lies in its hilarious and amazingly well-styled photo spreads, many featuring Sedaris in one of her uncanny disguises, including a teenager, an elderly shut-in, and Jesus. She devotes equal time to instruction on making homemade sausage, gift-giving, crafting safety, and lovemaking (aka “fornicrafting”).”

Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories by Simon Winchester (Harper) chronicles the geological and sociopolitical history of the Atlantic Ocean. PW is less than impressed: “Although he does not neglect the chief tragedies of the Atlantic, like the slave trade and the maritime battles, Winchester occasionally flits beelike from scene to scene, and the facts become lost in a blur.”  But the Economist finds it more satisfying balanced.

Me by Ricky Martin (Celebra) is the memoir of a pop music superstar.

Frank: The Voice by James Kaplan (Doubleday) was previewed in USA Today this week, after very positive prepub reviews, including stars from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist.

They Call Me Baba Booey by Gary Dell’Abate and Chad Millman (Spiegel & Grau) recounts the early life and career of the Howard Stern Show producer.

Cake Boss: The Stories and Recipes from Mia Famiglia by Buddy Valastro (Free Press) is a memoir by the star of the TLC show. PW says “despite great technical descriptions, including his bakery’s cannoli recipe and photos of his spectacular cakes, Buddy’s tale of immigrant success proves too familiar.” Thousands of show fans may beg to differ.

My Reading Life by Pat Conroy (Nan A. Talese) is an examination of the books and book people that have had an effect on the novelist’s life.  The new issue of Entertainment Weekly gives it a just a B-; “Like a coal worker dutifully marching back down the mine shaft, Pat Conroy returns to the seemingly non-depletable source of most of his output: his own life…It’s hardly new terrain, but some of the chapters are still sweetly moving.”

What is the richest city in the world really like? British writer Jo Tatchell moved to Abu Dhabi with her family in the early ’70’s, when it was just a “disheveled, dusty place.” In her new book, A Diamond in the Desert, she writes about her return to the now very different place, as she describes on NPR’s Morning Edition today.

In reviewing the book, Publishers Weekly called it a “glittering travelogue” and said, “Tatchell’s keen powers of observation and personal connections enable her to convey the hidden reality of this mirage-like city.” Kirkus agreed on that point, but wished she had been more forthcoming about her own family truths.

A Diamond in the Desert: Behind the Scenes in Abu Dhabi, the World’s Richest City Jo Tatchell Retail Price: $14.95 Paperback: 304 pages Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat – (2010-10-05) ISBN / EAN: 080217079X / 9780802170798

Grove Atlantic announced yesterday that they are publishing Roger Sterling’s memoir, cleverly titled, Sterling’s Gold. It is already rising on Amazon’s sales rankings (currently at #72).

Who’s Roger Sterling? The first person to answer correctly and the most completely in the comments section wins an ARC of The Hammersteins by Oscar Andrew Hammerstein (Black Dog & Leventhal, Oct).

Sterling’s Gold: Wit and Wisdom of an Ad Man Roger Sterling Retail Price: $16.95 Hardcover: 176 pages Publisher: Grove Press – (2010-11-16) ISBN / EAN: 0802119891 / 9780802119896

Antonya Nelson, author of Bound, is living out her midlife fantasy of buying a ghost town, one property at a time. She writes about it in today’s NYT “Home and Garden” section, noting that she and her husband,

… could be sitting in front of a HD screen watching a great movie. But instead we’re out here, filthy with splinters in our hands and bats flying out of our attic, eating hot dogs and drinking wine from aluminum cups. It’s not for everybody, but it appears to be for us.

Bound is Nelson’s fourth novel; it’s received a many positive reviews, including,

Los Angeles Times, by Carolyn Kellogg (October 17, 2010);

Nelson’s skills have been on display in her many short stories published by the New Yorker; Bound is her first novel in nine years. It is a work that resists the novelistic convention of having a climax, instead it eddies and returns. A year passes, and nothing much happens, other than the lines of these women’s lives drawing together. But maybe sometimes a quiet understanding is enough.

New York Times, by Liesl Schillinger (October 3, 2010)

It’s a liberation to read Nelson here in the long form. There’s no question of her superlative gifts for the short story….  In Bound, Nelson makes her story as big as it should be, and gives her characters room to run.

And, one negative,

Minneapolis Star Tribune, by Susan Comninos (September 26, 2010)

Bound is an ironic name for a novel that wants to intertwine the fates of its characters — including two from a town stalked by the serial killer known as BTK (bind, torture, kill) — but without tying up loose threads.

Bound Antonya Nelson Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Bloomsbury USA – (2010-09-28) ISBN / EAN: 1596915757 / 9781596915756

Audio; Tantor; 9781400118649

Much is made of what Obama reads. Harvard historian James T. Kloppenberg took another approach and read everything that Obama has written, in an effort to understand his guiding philosophy.

The New York Times reviews the resulting book, Reading Obama, in tomorrow’s issue. The book was not reviewed prepub, and, according to WorldCat, is owned by very few libraries.

Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition James T. Kloppenberg Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 296 pages Publisher: Princeton University Press – (2010-10-31) ISBN / EAN: 0691147469 / 9780691147468

For the legions who like memoirs and are still intrigued by the sixties, you can suggest Catherine Gildiner’s new book, After the Falls, coming out tomorrow.

Today’s Wall Street Journal review calls it a worthy follow up to the author’s 1999 best seller, Too Close to the Falls, which was,

…about an exuberant only child raised by eccentric parents in the 1950s, a decade that was anything but sterile or conformist for those in Cathy’s orbit. It was a wise and funny book, populated with memorable characters…Mrs. Gildiner, it was clear, had the rare skill of being able to present a child’s worldview in an adult’s voice, overlaid with an adult’s knowledge and judgment.

The new memoir picks up where the previous one left off, when the author was twelve years old, and continues through her college years during the ’60’s. Gildiner’s “gifts shine again” says the reviewer.

Independent booksellers also select it as a favorite title for November; it’s #6 on the Indie Next list.

After the Falls: Coming of Age in the Sixties Catherine Gildiner Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2010-10-28) ISBN / EAN: 0670022055 / 9780670022052

It’s working; a group of “web comic geeks” (according to the SF and science blog, io9, part of the Gawker network) wanted to make their self-pubbed title, Machine of Death: A collection of stories about people who know how they will die, a top best seller on Amazon’s sale rankings; it is now all the way to #2 (from a lowly #6,588). UPDATE: The book hit #1 and is at #4, but moving down, after 3 days.

More on the book here.

How many orders does it take to move a title into the Amazon top five? Based on this experience, say the authors, just a few hundred a day.

Given that, how much attention should you pay to titles moving up Amazon’s sales rankings? Obviously, there are flashes in the pan (we sometimes see an odd title, like a biology text book, suddenly rise, which tells us that class assignments have been handed out). EarlyWord uses Amazon sales rankings to identify rising demand, but we only report on titles that look like they will continue to rise, or to show the direct impact of recent media attention.

Machine of Death: A collection of stories about people who know how they will die Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo, David Malki ! Retail Price: $17.95 Paperback: 468 pages Publisher: Bearstache Books – (2010-10-13) ISBN / EAN: 0982167121 / 9780982167120

John Grisham is one of those authors that are considered “review-proof.” For what it’s worth, below are the first consumer reviews of his new book, The Confession, which arrives today.

USA Today, Carol Memmott, Grisham prosecutes the death penalty in The Confession

If Grisham’s dialogue and narrative sometimes cross the line between storytelling and proselytizing about the evils of the death penalty, he compensates through meaty character portrayals and an unpredictable end.

Washington Post, Maureen Corrigan

The Confession is the kind of grab-a-reader-by-the-shoulders suspense story that demands to be inhaled as quickly as possible. But it’s also a superb work of social criticism in the literary troublemaker tradition of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

Bloomberg News, Laurie Muchnick, Grisham’s Flat Death Row Parable

I agree with John Grisham on capital punishment, but reading The Confession, still felt like spending a week in solitary confinement.

Grisham was scheduled to do his regular day-of-book-launch sit-down with the Today Show this morning; we’ll add the video when it is available.

The book is currently #6 on Amazon sales rankings (Keith Richards’ memoir, Life is #1), making it the top-selling adult fiction title (the children’s titles, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Lost Hero are both higher).

The Confession John Grisham Retail Price: $28.95 Hardcover: 432 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2010-10-26) ISBN / EAN: 0385528043 / 9780385528047

• CD: Random House Audio: $45; ISBN 9780739376195
• Large Print: Random House; $29; ISBN 9780739377895
• Playaway: $59.99; ISBN 9781616572488

Genres, other than mysteries, don’t get much attention from mainstream reviews, so it’s amusing to see Michael Dirda write about “the fabulous and always entertaining realm of classic steampunk” in the Washington Post, specifically The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, by Mark Hodder, the first in a new series from Pyr, the five-year-old speculative fiction imprint of  independent publisher, Prometheus Books.

The book received a starred review in Booklist. However, Publishers Weekly was not as positive.

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (Burton & Swinburne) Mark Hodder Retail Price: $16.00 Paperback: 373 pages Publisher: Pyr – (2010-09-07) ISBN / EAN: 1616142405 / 9781616142407