Chris Buckley’s over-the-top NYT BR cover review (and several others that followed) propelled Tom Rachman’s debut novel, The Imperfectionists up the Amazon best seller lists and now it’s hit the 5/23 NYT Hardcover Fiction list at #13, tied with Anna Quindlin’s Every Last One at #12. Libraries are adding more copies as hold lists are lengthening.

As we wrote earlier, the book got buzz in the Fall of ’08, when Dial’s Susan Kamil, who also edited The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, won it in a spirited auction.

Recorded Books is releasing it on CD in September.

The Imperfectionists Tom Rachman Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: The Dial Press – (2010-04-06) ISBN / EAN: 0385343663 / 9780385343664

Adobe EPUB eBook available from OverDrive
Recorded Books:

• UNABR CD; 8 CDs; 9781449825621; $92.75; Anticipated Release: Sep 07, 2010
• UNABR Cassette; 8 Cassettes;.9781449825614; $67.75; Anticipated Release: Nov 15, 2010

Among the many series titles coming out this week, is a notable debut mystery. Holds are rising for The Poacher’s Son by Paul Doiron, about a son on a manhunt for his fugitive father, which arrives with four starred advance reviews.

Library Journal calls it “a richly imagined portrait of the vanishing wilderness in New England’s farthest reaches… a taut thriller and a thoughtful examination of the complicated relationship between father and son.”

Kirkus sums up: ” C.J. Box goes East. Like Box, Doiron will have his hands full trying to top his accomplished debut.”

The Poacher’s Son (Mike Bowditch Mysteries) Paul Doiron Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Minotaur Books – (2010-05-11) ISBN / EAN: 0312558465 / 9780312558468

Macmillan Audio; ISBN:9781427208965; $29.99
Available as a WMA Audio Book from Overdrive
Large Print from Center Point; ISBN 978160285756; $34.95
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Other Major Fiction Titles On Sale Next Week

61 Hours by Lee Child (Delacorte) is the 14th thriller with former military policeman Jack Reacher. In the NYT today, Janet Maslin calls it “the most highly evolved of Lee Child’s electrifying Jack Reacher books.” The new Entertainment Weekly gives it an A- and wonders why Reacher is not yet a household name. The review notes that, despite being part of a long series, the book stands on its own, “Everything you need to know about Jack Reacher is contained within its pages. And chances are you’ll want to seek out other Reacher adventures the moment you finish.”

Storm Prey by John Sandford (Putnam) is the 20th Lucas Davenport mystery.

Blood Oath: The President’s Vampire by Christopher Farnsworth (Putnam) is the first title in a new series featuring 160-year-old vampire Nathaniel Cade.

The Kings of Clonmel by John Flanagan (Penguin) is the eighth title in the Ranger’s Apprentice Series

Risk No Secrets by Cindy Gerard (Simon & Schuster) is the fifth romantic suspense novel in Gerard’s Black Ops, Inc. series

Young Adult series:

Spirit Bound by Richelle Mead (Razorbill) is book five of the Vampire Academy series. It’s already been in the Amazon Top 100 for 43 days and is currently at #23.

Love Bites by Ellen Schreiber (HarperCollins) is the seventh title in the Vampire Kisses Series.

Two notable women’s memoirs go on sale next week – both with modest holds in libraries we checked, though that’s likely to change as the media weighs in.

Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home by Lisa Ling Morrow is a reporter’s account of her 2009 capture and five month imprisonment in North Korea, after filming a documentary about women who defected from North Korea to China and were later forced into arranged marriages or sex slavery.

In a starred review, Booklist calls the memoir “a riveting story of captivity and the enduring faith, determination, and love of two sisters.”

The authors will be on Oprah on May 18th, and on the Today Show as well as CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 on May 19th. For more details, see EarlyWord’s Harper Buzz titlle page.

Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home Laura Ling, Lisa Ling Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: William Morrow – (2010-06-01) ISBN / EAN: 0062000675 / 9780062000675

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Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations by Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the author’s third memoir of her escape from an arranged marriage in Somalia to Holland, and most recently of building a new life in America.

PW was not impressed:

…many personal stories are repeated from her earlier accounts… Her wholesale condemnation of an entire religion and the multiple cultures it has engendered is so sweeping and comprehensive, and her faith in Western values (particularly her romantic view of Christianity) is so wide-eyed, that the book ultimately reads like a callow exercise in expressing the author’s own sense of aggrievement.

Hirsi Ali recently contributed an op-ed to the Wall St. Journal about a fatwa against the creators of the comedy show South Park for their portrayal of the prophet Muhammad.

Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations Ayaan Hirsi Ali Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Free Press – (2010-05-18) ISBN / EAN: 1439157316 / 9781439157312

Lately, I can’t stop talking about an adult galley I just read, Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things. Turns out I’m not the only fascinated by it. Last night, the authors, Randy Frost and Gail Steketee were featured on NPR’s Fresh Air. The book is now rising on Amazon and libraries are showing significant holds in libraries.

No wonder; it’s truly a compulsive read. Frost and Steketee write about people who collect stuff to the extent that it interferes with normal everyday living…no livable space due to piles and piles of things most people feel no need to collect, whole rooms filled, tunnels formed between dangerously tottering layers of clothing, books, newspapers and trash.

Frost and Steketee begin their examination of this psychological condition with by looking at one  of the most well-known case, the Collyer brothers of New York who died trapped in their piles of junk (they were the protagonists in E.L. Doctorow’s novel Homer and Langely).

These are not dry case studies but rather an empathetic exploration of theories and observations of why a person might become a hoarder. The book helps us examine our own hoarding tendencies and the triggers that may cause it. In addition to working with the individuals who are suffering, the authors devote a chapter to the effect excessive collecting has on relationships, especially with hoarders’ children who must learn to survive living with a parent who cannot stop creating chaos in the home.

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things Randy O. Frost, Gail Steketee Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt – (2010-04-20) ISBN / EAN: 015101423X / 9780151014231

Continuing to climb on Amazon’s sales rankings, after the author’s appearance on The View yesterday, CBS Sunday Morning (see below) and on Oprah last week, is The Other Wes Moore, now at #80.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates Wes Moore Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Spiegel & Grau – (2010-04-27) ISBN / EAN: 0385528191 / 9780385528191

Random House Audio; UNABR; 9780307877130; $35
Adobe EPUB eBook and WMA Audiobook from OverDrive

In the lead review in Sunday’s NYT BR, Christopher Buckley calls The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, “…so good I had to read it twice simply to figure out how he pulled it off,” and says he almost pities Rachman, “…because a debut of this order sets the bar so high.”

The novel is the story of a declining newspaper, told through the eyes of various members of its staff. Louis Bayard, in the The Washington Post, says it  “…is about what happens when professionals realize that their craft no longer has meaning in the world’s eyes…and that the only people who really understand them are on the same foundering ship, and that, come to think of it, they really loved that damn ship for all it made their lives hell.”

The attention brought the book to #4 on Amazon sales rankings yesterday, where it remains today.  It was also featured as an Amazon “Best Book of the Month.”

The book generated a lot of excitement in the fall of 2008, when seven publishers were bidding for the rights to publish it.  Dial’s Susan Kamil won, paying somewhere between $250,000 and $500,000, according to The New York Observer. Kamil was also the editor of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Holds are building on light ordering by libraries, with several showing ratios of over ten holds per copy.

The Imperfectionists Tom Rachman Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: The Dial Press – (2010-04-06) ISBN / EAN: 0385343663 / 9780385343664

Adobe EPUB eBook available from OverDrive.

Hampton Sides was interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air last night. Terry Gross calls his new book, Hellhound on My Trail, “a gripping account of [Martin Luther] King’s murder and the hunt for his assassin, James Earl Ray.”

Reviewers have been lining up to praise it;

• Art Winslow, Los Angeles Times;  “… by following the paths of King and Ray in a deadly pas de deux…[Sides shows] the synchronicity of movements as King and his colleagues plot political strategy … while Ray draws ever closer in what would seem an erratic path if we didn’t know, as in myth, that a tragedy foreordained lay on the road ahead.”

• Janet Maslin, Daily New York Times;  “Not many documentaries have the lean, unsparing urgency that can be found in Mr. Sides’s streamlined version…Both Dr. King and Ray come to life in these remarkable pages, generating great suspense without surprise, thanks to readers’ terrible foreknowledge of what will happen when these two cross paths.”

• Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today ; “through Sides’ use of novelistic pacing, details and descriptions, he creates suspense that will propel readers through a slice of history.”

Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin Hampton Sides Retail Price: $28.95 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2010-04-27) ISBN / EAN: 0385523920 / 9780385523929

Random House Audio; UNABR; 978-0-7393-5892-4; $45
OverDrive WMA Audiobook

Former First Lady Laura Bush is making a bid for her memoir, Spoken from the Heart, to become a Mother’s Day gift of choice. Though the book goes on sale next week, scores of newspapers and national TV news shows have begun to cover it. Libraries we checked have mounting holds, and are catching up to the demand with more copies on order.

CBS News anchor Katie Couric sums up the revelations, starting with Bush’s account of how, at 17, she sailed through a stop sign and ran into another car, killing a close high school friend.

In the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani praises Bush for capturing the her coming of age in Midland Texas in the 50s and 60s “with exacting emotional precision.” But Kakutani also calls the second part of the book “a thoroughly conventional autobiography by a politician’s wife… that sheds not the faintest new light on the presidency of the author’s husband, George W. Bush.”

The Washington Post parses Bush’s political statements in more detail.

Spoken from the Heart Laura Bush Retail Price: $30.00 Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Scribner – (2010-05-04) ISBN / EAN: 1439155208 / 9781439155202

S&S Audio: ABR; 9781442305205; $29.99

Tuesday

The Colbert Report

Conn Iggulden, who began the retro-edgy books for kids trend with The Dangerous Book for Boys is interviewed tonight by the guy who began the retro-edgy comedy news show.

The Dangerous Book of Heroes Conn Iggulden, David Iggulden Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: William Morrow – (2010-05-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061928240 / 9780061928246

Adobe EPUB eBook available from OverDrive

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

The Dream Machine: The Untold History of the Notorious V-22 Osprey Richard Whittle Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2010-04-27) ISBN / EAN: 1416562958 / 9781416562955

Tantor Media Audio; UNABR

Trade; 9781400114160; 14 Audio CDs; $39.99
Library; 9781400144167; 14 Audio CDs; $79.99
MP3; 9781400164165; 2 MP3-CDs; $29.99

OverDrive WMA Audiobook

Wednesday

The Colbert Report

Sonic Boom: Globalization at Mach Speed Gregg Easterbrook Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Random House – (2009-12-29) ISBN / EAN: 1400063957 / 9781400063956

Adobe EPUB eBook available from OverDrive

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency Ken Blackwell, Ken Klukowski Retail Price: $22.95 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Lyons Press – (2010-04-27) ISBN / EAN: 0762761342 / 9780762761340

One of the buzz titles at PLA, The Slap receives a resounding endorsement in the Washington Post today, in a review by Brigitte Weeks, a former editor of the newspaper’s Book World.

Set in Australia, the book follows the ripples caused by an incident at a barbecue. Having had it with an obnoxious four-year-old, an adult, not one of his parents, slaps the kid. The book switches back and forth among various characters and the repercussions of the event,

It’s a potentially confusing structure, but Australian writer Christos Tsiolkas is a master of seamless joints…He gets so close to his characters that the reader almost pleads with him to treat them more kindly.

The book can bring an American audience closer to life in Australia,

In The Slap we live for a few short weeks in suburban Australia, learning the language, becoming intimate with the characters and experiencing their customs. But finally the novel transcends both suburban Melbourne and the Australian continent, leaving us exhausted but gasping with admiration.

Published in Australia last year and winner of the Commonwealth Prize, the book debuts in trade paperback in the U.S. today.

The Slap: A Novel Christos Tsiolkas Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 496 pages Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) – (2010-04-27) ISBN / EAN: 0143117149 / 9780143117148

Coming to Oprah on Tuesday, is Wes Moore, the author of The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, (Random House). Moore is an investment banker, Rhodes scholar, former aide to Condoleezza Rice and, some say, the next black president.

Moore discovered another Wes Moore, his same age and from the same area of Baltimore. The other Wes Moore’s life was quite different, however, he was wanted for killing a cop. PW calls it a “moving exploration of roads not taken.” Libraries are showing 1:1 holds on modest ordering.

The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates Wes Moore Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Spiegel & Grau – (2010-04-27) ISBN / EAN: 0385528191 / 9780385528191

Random House Audio; UNABR; 9780307877130; $35
Adobe EPUB eBook and WMA Audiobook from OverDrive

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Wednesday’s show features Todd Bridges, the former Diff’rent Strokes star. The featured guest is former Miss USA Tara Conner.

Killing Willis: From Diff’rent Strokes to the Mean Streets to the Life I Always Wanted Todd Bridges Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Touchstone – (2010-03-16) ISBN / EAN: 1439148988 / 9781439148983

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There’s no direct book tie-in (at least, none has been announced yet), but John Edwards’ former mistress, Rielle Hunter gives her first TV interview to Oprah on Thursday. Earlier this year, Oprah featured former Edwards’ aide, Andrew Young, who wrote about the affair in his book, The Politician. And, last year, Oprah interviewed Elizabeth Edwards about her book, Resilience., back when she was saying that the affair with “that woman” was a one-time thing.

There’s a common theme among big titles arriving next week; many are aimed at Father’s Day gift giving (don’t panic, fellow procrastinators, it’s not until June 20th).

Media is lined up for The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me by Bruce Feiler. It was already in USA Weekend, featuring interviews with the men Feiler chose to take on a parenting role to his two girls, in the event he succumbed to the cancer that was successfully removed from his body in 2008. Upcoming coverage includes a profile in People (May 10; on newsstands next week), an appearance on the Today Show and The Glenn Beck Show on Fox News.

The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me Bruce Feiler Retail Price: $22.99 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: William Morrow – (2010-05-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061778761 / 9780061778766

HarperAudio; UNABR; 9780061988493; $29.99
Adobe EPUB eBook from OverDrive.
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The leadup to Father’s Day is also considered good timing for history titles. Heading that group is Hellhound On His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin by historian Hampton Sides. Libraries we checked have ordered solid quantities.

In Salon, critic Laura Miller praises the book as “a genuine corker”:

Sides’ meticulous yet driving account of James Earl Ray’s plot to murder King and the 68-day international manhunt that followed is in essence a true-crime story and a splendid specimen of the genre.

The Los Angeles Times adds that this “taut, vibrant account. . . shows the synchronicity of movements as King and his colleagues plot political strategy and follow his speaking itinerary, while Ray draws ever closer.”

Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin Hampton Sides Retail Price: $28.95 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2010-04-27) ISBN / EAN: 0385523920 / 9780385523929

Random House Audio; UNABR; 978-0-7393-5892-4; $45
OverDrive WMA Audiobook

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Other Major Titles on Sale Next Week

The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern by Victor Davis Hanson (Bloomsbury) is an anthology of previously published essays that, according to PW, are “well written, sometimes elegantly so, and closely reasoned. They address familiar material from original and stimulating perspectives. Hanson’s arguments may not convince everyone, but cannot be dismissed.”

Paradise General: Riding the Surge at a Combat Hospital in Iraq by Dave Hnida (Simon & Schuster) is a physician’s account of serving in Iraq that’s “realistic, gritty and full of black humor,” according to Kirkus, but “surrenders to mawkishness and, worst of all, bad puns, seemingly in an effort to be the Patch Adams of Baghdad.”

Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940-1945 by Max Hastings (Random House) is “a joy to read,” says Library Journal. “Despite other works examining this subject, libraries and readers of many persuasions will want this massive and detailed examination of the prime minister and his personal war.”

The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore (Random House) is the account of an investment banker, Rhodes scholar and former aide to Condoleezza Rice who investigates the life of another Wes Moore, his age and from the same area of Greater Baltimore, who was wanted for killing a cop. In a starred review, PW says:

“Moore writes with subtlety and insight about the plight of ghetto youth, viewing it from inside and out; he probes beneath the pathologies to reveal the pressures… that propelled the other Wes to his doom. The result is a moving exploration of roads not taken.”

Library holds are building for Orange is the New Black, Piper Kerman’s memoir of her 13 months incarcerated in the Danbury Federal Prison in Connecticut. A Smith college graduate with access to good lawyers, Kerman seemed an unlikely candidate for prison, but she was convicted on ten-year-old drug trafficking charges.

The book received considerable prepub attention, with an excerpt in The New York Times Magazine, another one in Marie Claire, and a profile hearalding her “…Hot New Memoir…” in New York magazine.

USA Today reviews it, warning readers to,

Resist the impulse to dismiss Kerman’s book as The Preppy Handbook for the Club Fed crowd. Orange transcends the memoir genre’s usual self-centeredness to explore how human beings can always surprise you. You’d expect bad behavior in prison. But it’s the moments of joy, friendship and kindness that the author experienced that make Orange so moving and lovely.

Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison Piper Kerman Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Spiegel & Grau – (2010-04-06) ISBN / EAN: 0385523386 / 9780385523387

Adobe EPUB eBook available from OverDrive.

Calling Francine Thomas Howard’s Page from a Tennessee Journal a “remarkable debut novel…a story as suspenseful as it is rich in detail about the evolving relationships between blacks and whites and men and women in the rural south,” USA Today gives Amazon’s fledgling publishing imprint. AmazonEncore, one of its first consumer reviews.

Begun in May of last year, AmazonEncore, according to Amazon’s Web site, is “a new program whereby Amazon will use information such as customer reviews on Amazon.com to identify exceptional, overlooked books and authors with more potential than their sales may indicate.”

The book was not reviewed prepub and few libraries own it.

Page from a Tennessee Journal Francine Thomas Howard Retail Price: $19.95 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: AmazonEncore – (2010-03-16) ISBN / EAN: 0982555067 / 9780982555064

Next week marks the release of two titles that picked up buzz at the recent Public Library Association conference in Portland.

Guy Gavriel Kay‘s Under Heaven, a historical fantasy set in a land resembling Tang Dynasty China, was endorsed by PLA buzz panel moderator Nancy Pearl. “It has everything in that made me such a fan of his in the first place,” she said. “Golly, I thought the new one was perfect.” Libraries we checked are on top of demand, as holds rise.

Library Journal called Kay’s novel “meticulously researched yet seamlessly envisioned, the characters and culture present a timeless tale of filial piety and personal integrity. Highly recommended for all collections and particularly for fans of the author’s distinctive approach to fantasy.”

Under Heaven Guy Gavriel Kay Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 592 pages Publisher: Roc Hardcover – (2010-04-27) ISBN / EAN: 0451463307 / 9780451463302

At the PLA buzz panel, librarians were also talking about The Slap, Christos Tsiolkas‘s brilliantly titled novel about the social fallout from an adult’s rash punishment of a wayward child at an Australian barbeque. This winner of the 2009 Commonwealth prize is being pubbed as a paperback original here and may be a good candidate for book clubs and readers advisors. Most libraries we checked had at least a few copies.

Library Journal said, “While there is not a lot to admire about most of the players in this exceptionally well-written story, their intertwined lives and slowly revealed connections make for a singular reading experience.”

The Slap: A Novel Christos Tsiolkas Retail Price: $15.00 Paperback: 496 pages Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) – (2010-04-27) ISBN / EAN: 0143117149 / 9780143117148

Major Fiction Titles On Sale Next Week

James Patterson and Maxine Paetro‘s The 9th Judgment (Grand Central) reveals the authors “at their best,” according to Bookreporter.com, “in a series that shows no signs of fatigue or flagging.” No surprise, it’s already at #8 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

Debbie Macomber‘s Hannah’s List (Mira), a tale of a Seattle widower’s pursuit of love, is “charming enough,” according to PW, “though Hannah’s cancer battle is glossed over, and the conceit of Michael considering marriage so soon is a little unrealistic.”

Nora Roberts‘s Savor the Moment (Nora Roberts’ Bride Quartet Series #3) (Penguin). Library Journal calls it “funny, sweetly sexy, as bubbly as champagne, and as addictive as chocolate, this thoroughly readable follow-up to Vision in White and Bed of Roses is one to savor.”

Isabel Allende‘s Island Beneath the Sea (Harper) received a starred review from Booklist: “Allende is grace incarnate in her evocations of the spiritual energy that still sustains the beleaguered people of Haiti and New Orleans. Demand will be high for this transporting, remarkably topical novel of men and women of courage risking all for liberty.”

Laurie R. King‘s The God of the Hive (Random House). PW says: “Those who enjoyed the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr. may appreciate bestseller King’s heavy-on-action, light-on-deduction 10th novel featuring Mary Russell and her much older husband, Conan Doyle’s iconic detective.”

J. R. Ward‘s Lover Mine (NAL) is the eighth installment in the Black Dagger Brotherhood urban fantasy series, (in the book’s trailer, the author says, she still doesn’t see the series ending). It’s currently at #11 on Amazon.

Y.A. Fiction

P.C. Cast‘s Burned (St. Martins Press) is the seventh installment in the young adult House of Night series. It’s at #13 on Amazon sales rankings.

Candice Bushnell, The Carrie Diaries (Balzar & Bray/ HarperCollins). While you’re waiting for Sex and the City 2 (don’t scoff; the first one made half a billion dollars), which opens in theaters on May 28th (and, yes, there is a tie-in; see our upcoming movie tie-ins listing), you can read the franchise prequel, Bushnell’s first YA title. It’s about about Carrie’s life as a high school senior in Connecticut. USA Today features it in the current issue. Entertainment Weekly addresses the cynical among us, saying,

It would have been easy to write a coming-of-age story about Carrie Bradshaw that ham-fistedly foreshadows everything fans of the franchise know will come to pass. But Bushnell nails something harder: telling another chapter
 in the story of a cherished character that stands on its own,

and give the book a lofty A-. This the first of two titles; the next one is planned for summer 2011 (frighteningly, there are hints that a Sex and the City 3 is in the works).