In the Washington Post this week, Patrick Anderson gave a glowing review to A Night Too Dark, by Dana Stabenow, the author’s 17th mystery, set in the wilds of Alaska.

He says that Stabenow “… is one of those regional crime novelists who too often don’t achieve national attention, ” adding, “Once you’ve met the strange characters who inhabit [these] novels, Sarah Palin becomes easier to comprehend.”

It’s clear that Stabenow is not unrecognized in libraries in the lower 48. It might surprise Anderson to learn that holds in libraries we checked are as high as 155 on 40 copies, with and additional 40 on 7 copies of the audio.

A Night Too Dark: A Kate Shugak Novel Dana Stabenow Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Minotaur Books – (2010-02-16) ISBN / EAN: 0312559097 / 9780312559090

Macmillan Audio; UNABR CD; 9781427208880; $39.99
Audio available from OverDrive

Rising on Amazon; now at #24 is a new parenting book, Raising Happiness.

The book’s author, Christine Carter, writes the blog “Half Full: Science for Raising Happy Kids.”

The book wasn’t reviewed prepub (check to see if you’ve ordered it; several libraries we checked hadn’t yet). It’s covered in these consumer magazines:

• US News & World Report, “On Parenting” blog; Two Simple Ways to Be a Happier Parent, 3/2
• Globe and Mail, How to raise joyful kids: Reject perfection and let them fail, Q&A with author, 2/28.
• Psychology Today, How to Raise an Olympic Athlete (blog post by the author), 3/3.

Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents Christine Carter Retail Price: $24.00 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Ballantine Books – (2010-02-02) ISBN / EAN: 0345515617 / 9780345515612

ebook available from OverDrive

HBO’s series, The Pacific, is based on memoirs that were published after the war.

A new memoir by a Marine who is featured in an episode of the series, was released yesterday.

It has not been reviewed. The publisher describes it as,

An unvarnished and moving memoir of a Marine veteran who fought his way across the Pacific Theater of World War II — whose story is featured in the upcoming HBO series The Pacific

This is an eyewitness — and eye-opening — account of some of the most savage and brutal fighting in the war against Japan, told from the perspective of a young Texan who volunteered for the Marine Corps to escape a life as a traveling salesman. R.V. Burgin enlisted at the age of twenty, and with his sharp intelligence and earnest work ethic, climbed the ranks from a green private to a seasoned sergeant. Along the way, he shouldered a rifle as a member of a mortar squad. He saw friends die-and enemies killed. He saw scenes he wanted to forget but never did-from enemy snipers who tied themselves to branches in the highest trees, to ambushes along narrow jungle trails, to the abandoned corpses of hara kiri victims, to the final howling banzai attacks as the Japanese embraced their inevitable defeat.

Burgin was one of the few surviving vets who attended the 2/24 premiere  in L.A. where he posed for photographers with actor Martin McCann, who portrays him on screen.

Islands of the Damned: A Marine at War in the Pacific R.V. Burgin, Bill Marvel Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: NAL Hardcover – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0451229908 / 9780451229908

Holt announced yesterday that they are ceasing publication of Charles Pellegrino’s Last Train to Hiroshima. Libraries can return copies and get refunds through their wholesalers; Macmillan’s sales department is sending a memo to wholesalers today on handling returns.

We checked with Tantor, the publisher of the audio version. They are also ceasing publication and distribution of the title and will issue refunds or credit for customers who wish to return their copies.

Questions about the book emerged last week, when it was discovered that one of the sources did not actually witness the events he claimed to have seen. Holt originally planned to make corrections in future editions. Things went from bad to worse, as Pellegrino was unable to answer questions about other sources as well as questions about the validity of his PhD, causing Holt to pull the book entirely.

Falling under the category of “Go Figure,” the book is rising on Amazon since the news broke; it’s now at #97 and several libraries are showing growing holds lists (it’s your choice whether to return them).

The story has appeared in many major news sources. Amusingly, the LA Times and other West Coast sources focus on the fall-out for James Cameron, who had optioned movie rights for the book.

The book received starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, strong reviews in LJ, Booklist and  SLJ as well as praise from the Washington Post, the New York Times and People.

The Last Train from Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back (John MacRae Books) Charles Pellegrino Retail Price: $27.50 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. – (2010-01-19) ISBN / EAN: 0805087966 / 9780805087963

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Tantor Audio:
Trade; 9781400115631; 10 Audio CD; $37.99
Library; 9781400145638; 10 Audio CD; $75.99
MP3; 9781400165636; 2 MP3-CD; $24.99

It was nearly fifty years ago, but it still has immediacy.

The assassination of John F. Kennedy brought an outpouring of letters to his widow, 1.5 million in total. A representative sampling of 200,000 of them were saved in Boston’s Kennedy Library, where they remained in boxes until recently, when historian Ellen Fitzpatrick spent five months reading through them.

She chose 250 of them for a book, Letters to Jackie, which releases today. It was featured in USA Today on Friday and on CNN Monday. It rose to #306 on Amazon; half the libraries we checked have not ordered it yet (it was not reviewed prepub).

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.

This Thursday, Oprah spends the show’s full hour with the only survivor of a tragic boating accident. Personal trainer Nick Schuyler set out for a deep-sea fishing trip one year ago with four friends. The boat capsized in unexpected bad weather. Clinging to the boat in rough seas, the friends helped each other as much as they could, but after 40 hours only Nick was left.

Schuyler writes about the frightening story in his memoir, Not Without Hope. It was not reviewed prepub, so many libraries have not ordered it.

Schuyler will also make appearances on the Today Show and Larry King Live. The book will be featured in People magazine and in USA Today (in the Sports section; two of the friends played for the NFL).

Not Without Hope Nick Schuyler, Jere Longman Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: William Morrow – (2010-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061993999 / 9780061993992

HarperCollins Audio: UNABR; 9780061999413; $18.99
Audio and ebook available from OverDrive

Two stellar reviews brought attention to Mark Mills’ third book, The Information Officer, propelling it to #79 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

The mystery is set in Malta during WWII. The L.A. Times calls it a “…novel so triumphantly old-fashioned, so double-upholstered with the stuff of classics, it reads like the story of Casablanca revisited, like a vanished Graham Greene.”

In the NYT BR, Marilyn Stasio says, “…the sense of immediacy Mark Mills brings to The Information Officer is so intense that this breathtaking novel reads more like a memoir than a wartime thriller.”

And, in fact, the book has its origins in a memoir, as the author reveals,

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The Information Officer Mark Mills Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-02-02) ISBN / EAN: 1400068185 / 9781400068180

Blackstone Audio
Read by Robin Sachs; Unabridged

7 Tapes; 1441721259; $65.95
1 MP3CD; 1441721297; $29.95
8 CD; 1441721266; $100.00

Audio and ebook available from OverDrive

Breaking onto the 3/7 NYT Nonfiction Hardcover bestseller list at #15, after two weeks on the extended list, is The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It by Wall Street Journal reporter Scott Patterson

The title refers to quantitative strategists, who employed new financial techniques that made them incredible amounts of money, but also brought about several major meltdowns, including the credit crisis of 2007.

Patterson was interviewed on Fresh Air last month (listen here), along with the “godfather” of quantitative finance, Edward Thorp, who first used the theory to win at blackjack.

The book is also reviewed the current issue of Business Week.

The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It Scott Patterson Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Crown Business – (2010-02-02) ISBN / EAN: 0307453375 / 9780307453372

Random House Audio; ABR; 9780739385067; $32eBook and Unabridged audio available from OverDrive

Next week is filled with new books about dogs.

One Good Dog Susan Wilson Retail Price: $22.99 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: St. Martin’s Press – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0312571259 / 9780312571252

Macmillan Audio; UNABR; 9781427209238; $22.99
BBC Audio; 9780792770312; $74.95
Audio available from OverDrive

Wilson, known for her romantic fiction, here turns to the love story of an unlikely couple; a man who has fallen off the corporate ladder and a dog from a homeless shelter. The story is told in alternating chapters from each of their points of view. All four prepub reviews were strong, with only Kirkus adding a sour note; “irresistible, if one dimensional.” It’s an Indie Next Pick for March.

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Love Is the Best Medicine: What Two Dogs Taught One Veterinarian about Hope, Humility, and Everyday Miracles Nicholas Trout Retail Price: $23.99 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Broadway – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 0767931971 / 9780767931977

Random House Audio; UNABR; 9780307707420; $30
Audio available from OverDrive

Veterinarian Trout follows up his successful Tell Me Where it Hurts with a story about what he learned from two of his patients.

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Saving Gracie: How One Dog Escaped the Shadowy World of American Puppy Mills Carol Bradley Retail Price: $21.99 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Howell Book House – (2010-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0470447583 / 9780470447581

eBook available from OverDrive

People magazine usually sticks to books from major trade publishers, so something special must have brought their attention to this book by niche pet book publisher Howell (now owned by Wiley). Not only do they review it in the new issue, they give four of four stars to this “scorching investigations of puppy mills,” which follows the rescue of Gracie, a sickly dog that would otherwise have been forced to breed until she died.

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But cats may have the last laugh; Oscar lands on the 3/7 NYT best seller list at #14 after some media attention, including strong reviews in USA Today and People and even a mention on Saturday Night Live, a sure sign of making it into the pop culture lexicon.

Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat David Dosa Retail Price: $23.99 Hardcover: 240 pages Publisher: Hyperion – (2010-02-02) ISBN / EAN: 1401323235 / 9781401323233

Blackstone Audio

5 Tape; 9781441721174;$54.95
1 MP3CD;9781441721211; $29.95
6 CD; 9781441721181;$76.00

Of the books being published next week, the likely sleeper is the debut novel Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson. It’s the #1 Indie Next Pick for March. The NYT‘s Janet Maslin was charmed; she already jumped the gun with a review on Monday, and compared it to Alexander McCall Smith.  Following in the tradition of British novels about village life, this book has a modern twist. The gentlemanly Major Pettigrew falls for a lovely Pakistani widow who runs the local tea shop. All four prepub reviews were equally smitten.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand Helen Simonson Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 1400068932 / 9781400068937

Random House Audio; UNABR; 9780307712844; $40
Audio downloadable from OverDrive

Other Fiction with Buzz Coming Next Week

Hardly a sleeper Jodi Picoult’s House Rules is showing it has the highest number of holds of titles coming next week. Libraries have anticipated the demand, so average ratios are less than 2:1. The new issue of People magazine gives it their highest rating, 4 out of a possible 4 stars. Entertainment Weekly is more luke warm, giving it a B. They describe the plot this way,

Emma, a single mother, copes just fine with her teenage sons — until the day Jacob is arrested for the murder of his tutor. Jacob has Asperger’s, and the cops confuse his symptoms — such as avoiding eye contact — with guilt.

They say the book “loses points for ruining what could have been a riveting mystery by establishing Jacob’s innocence at the outset.” However, People says, “Picoult weaves a provocative story in which she explores the painn of trying to comprehend the people we love.”

Entertainment Weekly reserves their highest rating this week, an A-, for Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask, a black comedy about a middle aged man who is fired from his job as a college fund raiser. What resonates is a “dazzling prose style that doesn’t so much run across the page as pick it up and throttle it.” Prepub reviews were mixed; LJ thinks its brilliant writing never comes together as a coherent novel, while Kirkus calls it the author’s most brillant work to date and Booklist starred it.

A book by the son of one of the founders of Hamas is making headlines around the world. Published by the Christian press Tyndale House, the book is coming out next week in the U.S. Libraries have not ordered it.

Mosab Hassan Yousef claims in his memoir, Son of Hamas, that he was a top informant for Isreal, and helped prevent dozens of suicide bombings by providing classified information. The author was interviewed in Isreal’s newspaper, Haaretz, on Wednesday, but made no comment to other reporters.

The story is being covered in newspapers internationally, including the  Washington Post, The New York Daily News, The Toronto Star as well as on TV (CNN and ABC News).

The book rose to #14 on Amazon’s U.S. sales rankings.

Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices Mosab Hassan Yousef Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Tyndale House – (2010-03-02) ISBN / EAN: 1414333072 / 9781414333076

Tyndale Audio; 3/2; 9781414333090; $29.99

The current edition of my new favorite column, Newsweek‘s “We Read It [So You Don’t Have To]” doesn’t live up to its name. It features The Poisoner’s Handbook and, rather than serving as a substitute for the book, it makes me want to get my hands on it as soon as possible.

In most libraries, that will be a while, since holds are heavy.

By Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer, Deborah Blum, The Poisoner’s Handbook is about the dawn of forensic chemistry in New York City in the 1920’s (when, as the author says, “a wealth of modern poisons [created] new opportunities for the clever poisoner.”) Kirkus called it “caviar for true-crime fans.”

The Sunday Washington Post calls it “immensely entertaining.” and recommends it for fans Patricia Cornwell, Kathy Reichs, Jefferson Bass, and forensic TV shows.

The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York Deborah Blum Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The – (2010-02-18) ISBN / EAN: 1594202435 / 9781594202438

Large Print, Thorndike; 9781410425126; $30.95

Audio; Tantor; UNABR; Available now

Trade; 9781400115501; 8 Audio CD; $34.99

Library; 9781400145508; 8 Audio CD; $69.99

MP3; 9781400165506; 1 MP3-CD; $24.99

Trade 9781400115501 8 Audio CD $34.99Library 9781400145508 8 Audio CD $69.99MP3 9781400165506 1 MP3-CD $24.99

“Ripped from the headlines” is a book publicist’s cliche, but Adam Haslett’s debut novel Union Atlantic goes one step further; it actually predicted the headlines.

On NPR’s Morning Edition today, Lynn Neary says the book,

…sometimes reads as if Haslett was listening into the private conversations that led to the economic collapse and the bank bailouts that followed.

Yet the remarkable fact is that Haslett finished the novel well before the real-life events took place. In the late ’90s, Haslett was reading about the Federal Reserve and some of the economic problems that were just beginning to stir.

Listen to her interview with Haslett here.

Also, on NPR’s All Things Considered Monday night, reviewer Alan Cheuse paired Union Atlantic with Jonathan Dee’s The Privileges, as “Two Novels That Are On The Money,” calling them both “terrific reads.”

Union Atlantic Adam Haslett Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Nan A. Talese – (2010-02-09) ISBN / EAN: 0385524471 / 9780385524476

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The Privileges Jonathan Dee Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 272 pages Publisher: Random House – (2010-01-05) ISBN / EAN: 1400068673 / 9781400068678

e-book available on OverDrive.

Several new books about Barack Obama are in the works, in addition to the just-announced Bridge by New Yorker editor David Remnick (Knopf, 4/6/10) — see earlier post.

Coming a few days before Remnick’s bio, is a book by Robert Kuttner, co-founder of the liberal magazine The American Prospect and author of Obama’s Challenge. Libraries we checked are not showing it on order.

A Presidency in Peril: The Inside Story of Obama’s Promise, Wall Street’s Power, and the Struggle to Control our Economic Future Robert Kuttner Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing – (2010-04-02) ISBN / EAN: 1603582703 / 9781603582704

Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter’s The Promise: President Obama, Year One will be published in May (most large libraries have it on order in small quantities). Alter also wrote The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, 2006, which got a boost in sales when Obama himself said he was reading it prior to taking office.

The Promise: President Obama, Year One Jonathan Alter Retail Price: $28.00 Hardcover: 464 pages Publisher: Simon & Schuster – (2010-05-18) ISBN / EAN: 1439101191 / 9781439101193

S&S Audio; UNABR; 9781442334458; $39.99

According to USA Today, other books by presidential biographers are in the works. David Maraniss, whose account of the early Clinton years, First in his Class, is considered, “a standard text for the early life and political rise of the 42nd president” is at work on a “long-range project” about Obama.

And, Robert Draper, (Dead Certain: The Biography of  George W. Bush) is working on a book that considers Obama “in the context of the civil rights movement.”

Says Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air, “Chances are, you’ve never heard of William Stewart Halsted, but if you’ve ever had a surgical procedure of any kind, you could say he’s affected your life…no one did more to modernize medical surgery.”

He was also a cocaine and morphine addict.

Gerald Imber, who has written a book about Halsted, was interviewed on last night’s show (listen here. Warning: surgical procedures are described; don’t listen before lunch)

The book rose to #74 on Amazon. Library ordering is light.

Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted Gerald Imber Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 412 pages Publisher: Kaplan Publishing – (2010-02-02) ISBN / EAN: 1607146274 / 9781607146278