The HBO series The Pacific launched last week, Hurt Locker won big at the Oscars, the Green Zone, a movie based on a book about soldiers in Baghdad releases today — it feels like we’re surrounded by American wars, both past and present.

And now, coming next week, one of the most anticipated novels of the season is about a group of Marines in Vietnam, Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes.

It has an interesting publishing history. The author, a Vietnam Marine veteran himself, spent years looking for a publisher. Berkeley nonoprofit El Leon Press finally acquired it and published it. The author then submitted it to B&N’s “Discover Great New Writers Program,.”  B&N loved it, but felt it needed the help of a larger publisher for marketing and distribution. Independent publisher Grove Atlantic stepped up and became co-publisher.

If you’re wondering how women will respond to this gritty, realistic portrayal of war (leeches are only part of it), in an interview in Shelf Awareness, Marlantes says,

I have to say, it was women who rescued this book from obscurity. So many women were early readers, and so many women love the book. One of the best blurbs for Matterhorn is from a woman, the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Christina Robb. I think the intense relationships appeal to women readers, and they are curious about not only Vietnam but about combat in general. I’ve had several women call me or e-mail me with statements like, “Until I read your novel, I never understood why my brother is all by himself up in Alaska” or “why my husband behaves as he does.” This is very gratifying to me.

Rival retailers, Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as independent booksellers, are all backing it. It was the talk of the American Booksellers Association’s MidWinter Institute last month and they made it an Indie Next pick for April. Amazon is featuring it on the Books home page as the lead titles of seven Best Books of the Month, resulting in a steady rise on Amazon’s sales rankings. B&N is promoting it with e-mail campaigns and special instore displays (in a further sign that B&N expects it to be a big book, they’ve alreay issued a press release, lauding their own involvement with the book’s publication).

Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War Karl Marlantes Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 592 pages Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press – (2010-03-23) ISBN / EAN: 080211928X / 9780802119285

Blackstone Audio; UNABR

17 CDs; 1-4417-4228-5; $123.00

2 MP3CDs; 1-4417-4231-5;$44.95

Playaway;1-4417-4234-6; $79.99

15 Tapes; 1-4417-4227-8; $105.95

The author of This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All has been on tour, talking up her book and the need to support library funding.

Now, you have a chance to ask her questions. She’ll be interviewed by Virginia Stanley of HarperCollins’ Library Marketing on Virginia’s Blogtalk Radio show, Library Love Fest. You are invited to send in questions or to call in (info on how to do so is on the show site).

The interview will be live tomorrow, Thursday March 18th at 2 pm EST (you can listen to the recorded version at any time after that). Anyone who calls or writes in will get a free book — the only catch is that you need to register beforehand here.

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This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All Marilyn Johnson Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Harper – (2010-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061431605 / 9780061431609

Audio: Tantor; 2/22/10
Trade: 9781400116348; 7 CD’s; $34.99
Library: 9781400146345; 7 CD’s; $69.99
MP3: 9781400166343; 1 MP3-CD; $24.99

The video from CBS Sunday Morning‘s feature on The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is now available online:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Of the reviewers’ recent favorites, the leader, as judged by sheer numbers as well as enthusiasm, is Chang-rae Lee’s The Surrendered.

USA Today‘s review brings the total from consumer publications to at least 15 by our count (we may have missed some), including People magazine, The Portland Oregonian and the NYT BR.

The novel traces the lives of three people who meet in a South Korean orphanage just after the war, through several decades, shifting back and forth in time and place.

The Washington Post feels that the main character, June, is portrayed so well that she  seems “more real than some people we know. But her power is somewhat dimmed by the two less compelling figures…” The review ends on a note echoed by many others,

Serious readers these days are not so unsophisticated as to expect a novel like The Surrendered to provide any sort of uplift — which it certainly does not — or to teach them Very Important Lessons about war and its catastrophic effects. They will read this book to share the life that’s in it, and they have every right to expect that it will offer life in return. With one full-hearted portrait out of three, Lee has only partially but rather magnificently succeeded.

The Boston Globe expresses it this way,

The Surrendered is a dream you can’t quite wake up from. You close the book, shut your eyes, and there’s little June still running for a train, trying to save her fractured life. Again, you feel a keen anguish. Lee understands that in art and in stories what is perhaps most valuable is not what can be explained but what can be felt.

Anne Morris of the Dallas Morning News isn’t so sure,

The Surrendered propels readers through shocking scenes of torture, rape, murder, starvation and mutilation in its 480 beautifully written pages. It’s up to readers to decide whether the enlightenment is worth the cost.

I go back and forth on that. This novel gave me nightmares.

These comments haven’t put off library readers; holds are heavy in some areas.

Below are links to the reviews;

• Boston Globe, 3/7
• San Francisco Chronicle, 3/7
• Entertainment Weekly, 3/9, A
• Washington Post, 3/9
• New York Times (daily), 3/8
• Newsday (behind a pay wall), 3/12
• Portland Oregonian, 3/13
• New York Times Book Review, 3/13
• Dallas Morning News, 3/14
• Philadelphia Inquirer, 3/14
• Seattle Times, 3/14
• Los Angeles Times, 3/14
• Minneapolis Star Tribune, 3/14
• USA Today, 3/16
• People, 3/22 issue, lead review; 3 of 4 stars

The Surrendered Chang-rae Lee Retail Price: $26.95 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover – (2010-03-09) ISBN / EAN: 1594489769 / 9781594489761

ebook available from OverDrive

Jane Brody, the NYT‘s health columnist writes movingly today about her husband’s death.

Brody notes that this “Personal Health” column is very personal,

When I wrote Jane Brody’s Guide to the Great Beyond, I had no idea that I’d be putting its precepts into practice in my immediate family within a year of publication. But as I said in the book, “You never know.” You never know when your time will be up, and so it is best to prepare for the end sooner rather than later.

Jane Brody’s Guide to the Great Beyond: A Practical Primer to Help You and Your Loved Ones Prepare Medically, Legally, and Emotionally for the End of Life Jane Brody Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Random House – (2009-02-17) ISBN / EAN: 1400066549 / 9781400066544

She also mentions Francine Russo’s “excellent new book,” They’re Your Parents, Too!

They’re Your Parents, Too!: How Siblings Can Survive Their Parents’ Aging Without Driving Each Other Crazy Francine Russo Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Bantam – (2010-01-26) ISBN / EAN: 0553806998 / 9780553806991

ebook available from OverDrive

The first of what will be many reviews of Michael Lewis’ The Big Short are in. The Washington Post says,

If you read only one book about the causes of the recent financial crisis, let it be Michael Lewis’s, The Big Short.

That’s not because Lewis has put together the most comprehensive or authoritative analysis of all the misdeeds and misjudgments and missed signals that led to the biggest credit bubble the world has known. What makes his account so accessible is that he tells it through the eyes of the managers of three small hedge funds and a Deutsche Bank bond salesman, none of whom you’ve ever heard of. All, however, were among the first to see the folly and fraud behind the subprime fiasco, and to find ways to bet against it when everyone else thought them crazy.

In today’s NYT, Michiko Kakutani says that, “No one writes with more narrative panache about money and finance than Mr. Lewis, the author of Liar’s Poker, that now classic portrait of 1980s Wall Street,” but, she feels, by focusing on individuals who made millions by betting against the bubble, “the reader is put in the position of rooting for [them].”

Business Week also criticizes the Lewis for “glamorizing” these people, but “For those who enjoy a knife cutting through the obfuscation and arrogance of Wall Street, Lewis is king.”

Lewis appeared on Sixty Minutes on Sunday; he will appear on many other shows this week — the Today Show, NPR’s All Things Considered, and Jon Stewart, among others today, followed by Fresh Air and Charlie Rose tomorrow.

On Friday, we noted that library holds were surprisingly light; they began increasing rapidly over the weekend. The book is now at #1 on Amazon. Lewis’s earlier books are also rising — Liar’s Poker, Panic, Moneyball and Blind Side.

PART ONE

Watch CBS News Videos Online

PART TWO

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Cotinuing at #5 on the 3/21 NYT Nonfiction best seller list after five weeks, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks got feature treatment on CBS Sunday Morning yesterday.

Author Rebecca Skloot will also appear on the Colbert Report on Tuesday.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Rebecca Skloot Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Crown – (2010-02-02) ISBN / EAN: 1400052173 / 9781400052172

Random House Audio; UNABR; 9780307712509; $35
Audio and e-book available from OverDrive

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The program also aired a shorter version of this segment on Letters to Jackie that originally appeared on CBS Evening News on Monday, March 8th.

Watch CBS News Videos Online
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Letters to Jackie: Condolences from a Grieving Nation Ellen Fitzpatrick Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Ecco – (2010-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061969842 / 9780061969843

ebook available from OverDrive.

Seth Grahame-Smith set off the monster mashup craze last year with his Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Published as a $12.95 paperback by independent press Quirk Book in Philadelphia, it continues to be a huge success.

One wondered when Grand Central picked up the rights to the author’s next book, ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, whether fans would accept the turn away from the classics to a historical figure and if they would be willing to spring for the more expensive hardcover.

Evidently, neither is a problem. The book landed at #4 on the 3/21 NYT Fiction bestseller list.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Seth Grahame-Smith Retail Price: $21.99 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Grand Central Publishing – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0446563080 / 9780446563086

Hachette Audio; UNABR; 9781607881735; $26.98
BBC Audio: UNABR; 9781607883548; $69.99
ebook and audio available from OverDrive

First-time novelist Lauren Oliver arrives on the 3/21 NYT Children’s Chapter Books best seller list at #8 with Before I Fall. The book is told by a girl who dies in a car accident, but gets to relive the last day of her life seven times.

The book was launched with a 100,000-copy first printing. PW featured the author’s unique “ARC tour;” she sent out 2 copies, asking readers to pass the book on and insert comments. One copy actually made it back to her, after traveling throughout Europe, loaded with comments and drawings.

It received stellar prepub reviews and is the #1 Indie Next Spring 2010 Children’s Pick.

The Guardian sees it as part of a trend of novels by dead or dying YA’s, which is led, of course, by The Lovely Bones and includes:

• Before I Die, Jenny Downham, (David Fickling Books/Random House, 2007)
• Thirteen Reasons Why, Jay Asher (Razorbill/Penguin, 2007)
• Elsewhere, Bavrielle Zevin (Square Fish/FSG, 2005)
• If I Stay, Gayle Forman (Dutton, 2009)

The author has a four-book contract; her second novel, Delirium, is planned for publication in winter 2011.

Before I Fall Lauren Oliver Retail Price: $17.99 Hardcover: 480 pages Publisher: HarperCollins – (2010-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 006172680X / 9780061726804

ebook and audio available from OverDrive.

Arriving at #28 on the 3/21 Extended NYT Fiction best seller list is Heresy by S.J. Parris, a pseudonym for Stephanie Merritt. It’s her first outing under this name, her first time writing an historical thriller, and her first time on the best seller list. The Washington Post recently pegged Heresy as part of a subgenre they call “the religious thriller”:

If proliferation is a sign of health, then the most vigorous member of the historical novel species must surely be the religious thriller. We know what to expect of these ecclesiastical romps: Sadistic clerics, heroic visionaries, ancient texts, torture chambers and a sprinkling of Latin are guaranteed whether the turmoil being depicted is the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Inquisition or some obscure schism.

Set in the 16th C. the book is about a real-life Italian monk who was excommunicated for believing that the earth revolves around the sun. Escaping to Oxford, he was recruited as a spy for Elizabeth I and become involved in trying to solve some grisly murders. Heresy was acquired as the first in a trilogy

Merritt/Parris recently wrote in the Guardian that she enjoyed writing this book more than any of her others,

The best crime and thriller novels, though they may work within certain parameters, can offer just as much scope for psychological depth, tenderness and a critical perspective on society as “serious” novels, and writers such as Robert Harris and Matthew Pearl prove that you don’t have to compromise on prose style to create a cracking plot.

Heresy S.J. Parris Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 448 pages Publisher: Doubleday – (2010-02-23) ISBN / EAN: 0385531281 / 9780385531283

Random House audio; ABR; 9780307714299; $30
ebook available from OverDrive

Coming to theaters April 9th (debuting in a limited number of theaters on March 19) is The Runaways, a movie based on Cherie Curry’s 1989 memoir, Neon Angel, recently updated as a tie-in.

The movie was previewed in the NYT this weekend,

…a new film about the trailblazing bad-girl rock band from the 1970s that spawned Joan Jett, is how authentic it feels…One reason may be that the movie partly based on Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway (Harper Collins), a newly revamped autobiography by the group’s lead singer Cherie Currie, whose chillingly quick self-destruction is relived through Dakota Fanning.

Official Web site: RunawaysMovie.com

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Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway Cherie Currie, Tony O’neill Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: It Books – (2010-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061961353 / 9780061961359

After dozens of high-profile best selling titles about various aspects of the financial crisis, the most anticipated title, and the one the may be the most accessible to the broadest audience is…

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine Michael Lewis Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2010-03-15) ISBN / EAN: 0393072231 / 9780393072235

It arrives with much fanfare; an excerpt in Vanity Fair, appearances on Sixty Minutes (Sunday), the Today Show, NPR’s All Things Considered, and Jon Stewart, among others on Monday, followed by Fresh Air and Charlie Rose on Tuesday.

Holds in libraries are surprisingly light; all the publicity could change that.

Viking’s big early spring debut, Angelology, is bringing hosannas from some and pitchforks from others.

Viking wasn’t the only publisher to see potential in the book; they were one of seven houses to bid on it last year, and won with a rumored six-figure deal, (Publishers Weekly, 1/28/09). Shortly after, movie rights were sold for $1 million to Columbia (see our earlier story).

USA Today gives it the love in the current issue,

What do you get when an Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate and critically acclaimed memoirist [Falling Through the Earth, 2006] trolls for the same readers who loved Dan Brown’s search for the grail of best-sellerdom in The Da Vinci Code? In the case of Danielle Trussoni’s Angelology, a spellbinding quest novel.

And, further,

[Trussoni] has worked out her fantasy scheme brilliantly. Her literary riddles resolve with the aesthetically pleasing precision of a well-oiled antique clock. She offers up intriguing characters, lyrical nature descriptions, hidden clues, secret codes, hidden manuscripts and treasure hunts, creating a sumptuous and surprising novel.

As we noted earlier, both People and the NYT BR featured Angelology as their lead reviews last week and both were won over. The Chicago Tribune is not so appreciative, saying that the plot is “so convoluted it makes The Da Vinci Code look like a model of clarity” and the reviewer notes regretfully that Trussoni is at work on a sequel. In the daily NYT, Janet Maslin says it’s “prettily written,” but goes on to detail the book’s “nonsenical” story line. Perhaps most damning, she notes that “Ms. Trussoni does not even tie up this book’s loose ends. She leaves her story in virtual midair…”

In the libraries we checked, holds are averaging just 3:1 on light ordering.

Angelology Danielle Trussoni Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2010-03-09) ISBN / EAN: 0670021474 / 9780670021475

Penguin Audiobooks: 03/09/2010; $39.95; ISBN 9780143145264

Two novels to keep an eye on next week – Paolo Giordano’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers, an international bestseller that’s starting to draw media attention, and Sarah Addison Allen’s third novel, The Girl Who Chased the Moon, which has solid demand in libraries that have ordered it.

Paolo Giordano’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers is the saga of two misfit Italian schoolmates as they move through life.

Today’s NYT calls it, “…a mesmerizing portrait of a young man and woman whose injured natures draw them together over the years and inevitably pull them apart.”

It gets an A- in the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, which says,

We’re engrossed by the way in which a dreadful combination of faulty brain wiring and rotten luck propels each child’s future, like number sequences locking into place.

USA Today also mentions this debut novel by a 27 year old Italian physicist in an international roundup:

Don’t be frightened off by the author’s Ph.D. or the book’s title… Giordano’s passionate evocation of being young and in despair will resonate strongly with readers under 30. Alas, overbearing parents, special-needs siblings, cruel classmates, physical and sexual insecurities, guilt, loneliness and grief are universal plagues.

The Solitude of Prime Numbers Paolo Giordano Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books – (2010-03-18) ISBN / EAN: 0670021482 / 9780670021482

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The Girl Who Chased the Moon, the tale of a young woman’s seach for her roots in a small Southern town, received a starred review in Library Journal:

Allen’s warm characters and quirky setting are what will completely open readers’ hearts to this story. Nothing in it disappoints.

The Girl Who Chased the Moon Sarah Addison Allen Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Bantam – (2010-03-16) ISBN / EAN: 0553807218 / 9780553807219

Other Titles With Buzz On Sale Next Week

The Spellmans Strike Again (Spellman Files Series #4) by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster)

Think Twice, by Lisa Scotoline, (St. Martin’s Press)

But the real news in fiction next week is in childrens and YA titles:

Stephenie Meyer‘s Twilight: The Graphic Novel (Yen Press) — Meyer’s first foray into Manga.

The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary by Jeff Kinney (Amulet Books) — the movie opens next week (see trailer here).

L.J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Shadow Souls (HarperTeen) — fans are resting easier, now that the CW has announced that the series based on the books has been renewed for the fall.

James Patterson‘s Maximum Ride: Fang (Little Brown)

On Tuesday night, Jon Stewart interviewed Mark Thiessen on Comedy Central’s Daily Show. Going in, you had to know, simply from the title of the book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, that the interview would be contentious.

The extended interview continues in two additional parts:

• Marc Thiessen Extended Interview Pt. 2
• Marc Thiessen Extended Interview Pt. 3

Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack Marc A. Thiessen Retail Price: $29.95 Hardcover: 376 pages Publisher: Regnery Press – (2010-01-18) ISBN / EAN: 1596986034 / 9781596986039