Two titles that were embargoed prior to release are currently dueling for headlines. The attention has propelled each title into top spots on Amazon’s sale rankings, even topping the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy.

At number one is  No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden (Penguin/Dutton; Penguin Audio). The full 60 Minutes coverage is available here, including several additional “Overtime” segments. This appears to be the first and last of the author’s appearances for the book. Remember, Mark Bowden’s The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden, also embargoed, is arriving soon (Grove/Atlantic, 10/2).

At number three on Amazon sales rankings is The Price of Politics by Bob Woodward (Simon & Schuster; S&S Audio). Following his interview with Diane Sawyer, Woodward has appeared on several shows, including today’s CBS This Morning.

Libraries are showing heavy holds on both titles and many have ordered additional copies.

Meanwhile, a recent headline-making embargoed title, Paterno, which hit #1 on the NYT best seller list, has dropped off precipitously in sales, says The Hollywood Reporter, in a story about a possible movie based on the book (weird alert; Al Pacino may star).

Hitting new highs, Canadian Louise Penny’s eighth title in her beloved Inspector Gamache series, The Beautiful Mystery (Macmillan/Minotaur Books, Macmillan Audio; Thorndike Large Print), arrives at #2 on the Indie Hardcover Fiction Best Seller list and at  #12 on USA Today‘s list.

Designated a People Pick in the 9/3 issue, in this outing inspector Gamache of the Quebec Surete investigates the murder in a monastery, and in the process unearths painful truths behind the calm facade. Says People, “With enormous empathy for the troubled human soul — and an ending that makes your blood race and your heart break — Penny continues to raise the bar of her splendid series.”

This is the second of the series to arrive on best seller lists. Her previous title in the series, A Trick of the Light, debuted on the NYT list at #4 and stayed on for two weeks, and two more on the extended list.

The embargoed book about the Tour de France, The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton (RH/Bantam), contains accusations of doping among riders, including Lance Armstrong. It is being featured on many news outlets, including the Today Show this morning:

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The titles that have made the transition to the Booker shortlist, whittled down from the longlist, will be announced this coming Tuesday.

Currently, in the lead at UK bookies is Hilary Mantel’s Bring up the Bodies, with 7/2 odds at Ladbrokes. Close behind is Well Self’s Umbrella at 4/1. It will be published by Grove in the US on 12/10 (see our full list of titles, with US publishers).

In third place, with 8/1 odds is a relative unknown to American readers, Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng’s The Garden of Evening Mists (Perseus/Weinstein Books; original trade paperback). The author’s second book, it is also her second to appear on a Booker longlist. It was just released in the US and is reviewed in the NYT Book Review.

In the UK, it was published by a small publisher, causing the Independent to scold, “That a novel of this linguistic refinement and searching intelligence should come from a tiny Newcastle imprint tells us a lot about the vulgarity of corporate publishing today.”

The novel’s main setting is a Japanese garden that haunts the main character, who has just learned that she is losing her memory. Appropriately, Dominique Browning, who writes eloquently about gardens in her blog, SlowLoveLife.com, reviews it for the NYT. Clearly a fan, Browning says, “The beautiful garden referred to in the title plays host to the intertwining of several lives at a period cursed with being, so the saying goes, an ‘interesting time’ [World War II and its aftermath in Malaysia].”

The NYT claims that this fall, we will witness, “one of the most crowded literary traffic jams in recent memory … crammed with writers who are both household names and have not released a book in several years.”

In addition, most of the books are being published early in the season, to avoid the attention deficit brought on by the November election.

Because of the glut and the length of some of these novels, Ron Charles, reviewer for the Washington Post, tells the NYT that he will just not be able to get to some other books, such as Justin Cronin’s The Twelve, the second book in the trilogy which began with The Passage in 2010. None of the paper’s own reviewers are quoted in the story.

It may not need the attention; most libraries are showing more holds on it than on the other major literary titles he may review instead.

The titles are listed below by publication date (we’ve added Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, which we think is qualified to be on the list):

September Titles

Out Now (Sept 4)

NW,  Zadie Smith (Penguin Press; Penguin Audiobooks)

Sept 11

Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon, (Harper; HarperLuxe; HarperAudio) – Digital ARC on Edelweiss

This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz, (Penguin/Riverhead; Penguin Audio)

Sept 18

Joseph Anton: A Memoir, Salman Rushdie, (Random House; RH Audio; BOT)

Sept 27

The Casual Vacancy, J. K. Rowling, (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print)

October/November

Oct 23

Back to Blood, Tom Wolfe, (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print)

Nov 6

Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver, (Harper; HarperAudio; HarperLuse)  – Digital ARC on Edelweiss — not on the NYT list, but we feel it should be. Kingsolver’s last book, The Lacuna, came out in 2009.

Nov 13

Sweet Tooth, Ian McEwan, (RH/Doubleday/Talese) — digital ARC on Edelweiss

New controversy has surfaced about No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden (Penguin/Dutton; Penguin Audio), which releases today.  A group of Special Operations veterans released an ebook yesterday that suggests the pseudonymous author, Mark Owen, was motivated to write the book by anger against his former employers. According to quotes from the book by The Daily Beast, Owen,

 …was treated very poorly … once he openly shared that he was considering getting out of the Navy to pursue other interests…What do you do when you find yourself pissed off at your former employer, out of a job, and in need of a paycheck? You start cashing in chips.

According to the Daily Beast, the book is sympathetic to Owen and says the author does not reveal the most confidential information about the raid.

The ebook, No Easy Op, is written by a group of Special Operations veterams and published by SOFREP.com, through Amazon Digital Services. It is exclusively available on the Kindle and  is not available for library lending.

An interview with Owen is scheduled to air on Sixty Minutes this Sunday.

Lots of titles to watch next week, including librarian favorites from rising novelists Emma Straub and Tatjana Soli, Spanish sci-fi bestseller Felix J. Palma, and British debut author Morgan McCarthy. Usual suspects include Zadie Smith, James Patterson, Dale Brown and Clive Cussler and Thomas Perry – plus Elizabeth George makes her YA debut.

After dominating news all this week, No Easy Day, the eyewitness account of the killing of bin Laden is scheduled to arrive on Tuesday, but the Pentagon has warned that the author is in breach of the non-disclosure agreements he signed when he became a Navy SEAL and that “Further public dissemination of your book will aggravate your breach and violation of your agreements.”

Christopher Hitchens posthumously delivers his last words on mortality, Gretchen Rubin shares more tried and true advice on cultivated happiness, and NBA superstar Dwyane Wade reflects on his rise as a basketball player and his role as a father.

Watch List

Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures by Emma Straub (Penguin/Riverhead; Thorndike Large Print; Dreamscape Media, read by Molly Ringwald) is the story of a farm girl’s rise (and fall) as a movie star in early Hollywood – and Riverhead’s lead debut novel for the fall. Entertainment Weekly  gives it an “A-“ saying, “Though the tale may be familiar, Emma Straub’s fantastic debut novel… brings fresh sparkle to the journey.” It’s a B&N Discover Great New Writers pick. It also had buzz during our August GalleyChat.

Breed by Scott Spencer writing as Chase Novak (Hachette/ Mulholland Books; Hachette Audio) is a medical thriller about an infertile couple who transform themselves into parents via reproductive technology, but it has an unexpected side effect, causing them to develop strange appetites that scare their twin children. Janet Maslin gave it an early review in  Thursday’s New York Times, in which she calls Spencer the “gently literary author still best remembered for the lush prose of his 1979 Endless Love…[who has] has started writing in a pulpier and more diabolical vein.”  She that, while it displays “keen antennas for sensory detail,” it is  “a gruesome book, a full-bore foray into the horror genre, so literary loveliness goes only so far. It is probably best avoided by anyone not wishing to know exactly what it’s like to eat a baby pigeon.”  The cover sports a blurb from Stephen King, “By turns terrifying and blackly funny, Breed is a total blast.” Entertainment Weekly, however, gives it just a “B,” saying, “Breed is being touted as a modern-day Rosemary’s Baby, but Spencer… delivers the camp better than he does the scares.” A followup, Brood, is in the works.

John Saturnall’s Feast by Lawrence Norfolk (Grove Press) is a historical novel set in 17th century England about a boy who’s orphaned when his mother is accused of being a witch. He goes on to become the greatest cook of his generation. PW says, “Known for intellectual prose and complex plots, Norfolk this time out attempts to interweave time and senses, reality and myth, rewarding steadfast readers with savory recipes and a bittersweet upstairs-downstairs love story.” It was a BEA Librarian’s Shout ‘n’ Share pick, and is an Indie Next pick for September.

Norfolk offers a look at the surprising sophistication of English cooking in the 17th C:

The Map of the Sky by Felix J.Palma (S&S/Atria) is the Spanish author’s sequel to his bestselling take-off on H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. Here, the action begins when a New York socialite challenges her fiance to recreate Wells’ The War of the Worlds, setting off a chain reaction across time and space. LJ says, “Palma has again managed to infuse something very familiar with a new edge and life.” This one also kicked up some buzz on GalleyChat in August, where a librarian said that the novel “brings War of the Worlds to life.”

The Forgetting Tree by Tatjana Soli (St. Martin’s Press; Tantor Media; Thorndike Large Print) was a BEA Shout ‘n’ Share pick for Cuyahoga’s Wendy Bartlett. Here’s her pitch: “This book opens with a family tragedy that occurs in the first few pages. The rest of this thoughtful book is about how we heal–or don’t–after an unspeakable tragedy. It’s set on a  citrus ranch in Southern California. Soli’s first book, The Lotus-Eaters, did very well with our customers, and was really good for book discussion. She reminds me of a young Barbara Kingsolver. Her language is simple but not plain, her characters are extremely well drawn, and the setting is like a movie it’s so easy to visualize.”

The Other Half of Me by Morgan McCarthy (S&S/Free Press) is a paperback original about two siblings who grow up in a dysfunctional aristocratic English family in Wales with secrets that go back for generations. Robin Beerbower, our go-to librarian for scary titles, says this one “is being compared to Ian McEwan’s Atonement, but I’m finding it more compelling than that. The pacing is a bit slow but it features a completely unreliable but fascinating narrator and the gorgeous writing kept me engrossed.”

Returning Favorites

NW by Zadie Smith (Penguin Press; Penguin Audiobooks) is Smith’s first novel in seven years and one of the most anticipated titles of the early fall (it even gets an early review from BusinessWeek). It focuses on three characters who have risen above their childhoods in a Northwest London housing estate in the 1970s, with varying degrees of success. Michiko Kakutani, in the NYT, expresses disappointment, calling it a “much smaller, more meager book” than Smith’s critically acclaimed debut, White Teeth. In the Washington Post, Ron Charles expresses sympathy for the author, who, “Ever since… her dazzling debut in 2000, Zadie Smith has labored under an enviable weight of critical and popular expectations.” He acknowledges that the new novel it difficult, but worth the effort: “At times, reading NW is like running past a fence, catching only strips of light from the scene on the other side. Smith makes no accommodation for the distracted reader — or even the reader who demands a clear itinerary. But if you’re willing to let it work on you, to hear all these voices and allow the details to come into focus when Smith wants them to, you’ll be privy to an extraordinary vision of our age.” Smith spoke out this week to protest the possible closing of hundreds of  local libraries in Great Britain.

Usual Suspects

Zoo by James Patterson (Hachette/Little Brown; Hachette Audio) revolves around Jackson Oz, a young biologist, who witnesses a coordinated lion ambush in Africa that spurs him to heroic action.

Tiger’s Claw: A Novel by Dale Brown (HarperCollins/ Morrow; Harperluxe; HarperAudio) is a thriller in which China and the U.S. find themselves fighting over the Pacific after a preemptive strike.

The Tombs by Clive Cussler and Thomas Perry (Penguin/Putnam; Thorndike Press; Penguin Audiobooks) is the fourth outing with multi-millionaire treasure hunters Sam and Remi Fargo, who join an archaeologist in excavating an ancient Hungarian battlefield. PW says, “this adventure series stands as one of the crown jewels in the Cussler empire.”

Young Adult

The Edge of Nowhere by Elizabeth George (Penguin/Viking) is the veteran mystery author’s first YA novel, the start of a series about a psychic 14 year-old girl who must fend for herself after her mother runs away from her stepfather. Booklist says, “what’s best here are the characters, both young and adult. There are no stereotypes, and their humanity keeps the story moving, even when the plot is tied in knots.”

Nonfiction

No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden (Penguin/Dutton; Penguin Audio; Thorndike recently acquired large print rights) is under embargo until Tuesday, but copies  are already out and details are being reported widely. On Thursday, the Pentagon warned the author, reports Reuters, that he “in material breach and violation of the non-disclosure agreements you signed,” and “Further public dissemination of your book will aggravate your breach and violation of your agreements.” There’s no news on how this might affect the author’s scheduled media appearances.

Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life by Gretchen Rubin (RH/Crown Archetype; Random House Audio; BOT) picks up where the author’s bestselling The Happiness Project left off, with ideas to simplify and enhance one’s domestic life with children. PW says, “Although it lacks the freshness and originality of her earlier book, this perceptive sequel offers elegant musings about the nature of happiness combined with concrete ways to make the place where we sleep, eat, and watch TV truly a home.”

Mortality by Christopher Hitchens (Hachette/Twelve; Twelve; Hachette Audio) is the lauded cultural critic’s look at illness, suffering, cancer etiquette, religion and his own incipient death from esophageal cancer in December 2011. PW says, “Hitchens’ powerful voice compels us to consider carefully the small measures by which we live every day and to cherish them.” 125,000 copies.

A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball by Dwyane Wade (HarpreCollins/Morrow) is a memoir by the NBA superstar, Miami Heat player and divorced single dad of two sons that charts his upbringing by his drug-addicted mother on Chicago’s South Side. Kirkus says, ” A refreshing chronicle of a fervent sportsman with his head and heart in all the right places.”

If the government wants to block publication of No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden (Penguin/Dutton; Penguin Audio), they’d better hurry. The publisher just announced it’s being released the book this coming Tuesday, a week earlier than planned. In response to strong demand, reports the NYT, the print run has been increased from 300,000 to 575,000.

At least a few copies are already out. Both The Huffington Post and the Associated Press claim to have purchased copies in bookstores and report that some of the book’s details contradict official descriptions of  bin Laden’s killing.

The author was reportedly in talks with studios last week about a film adaptation. Dreamsworks has issued a statement yesterday, saying, “Neither Steven Spielberg, DreamWorks Studios or DreamWorks Television will be optioning Mark Owen’s book No Easy Day.”

The upcoming book about the killing of Osama bin Laden, No Easy Day, is not the first on the subject nor will it be the last, it just has the major advantage of being an unauthorized account by an eyewitness (it is currently being reviewed by the Pentagon; the CIA has also stated that they have a copy).

Coming this fall is another book on the raid, this one by Black Hawk Down author, Mark Bowden, notes Publishers Weekly. Called The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden (Atlantic Monthly; Brilliance Audio), it’s scheduled for release on Oct. 16, a month after the 9/11 pub. date for No Easy Day. The book has been embargoed pending an agreement with a “major media outlet” to break the news in the book.

Grove Atlantic publisher Morgan Entrekin tells PW that the two books are complementary. “Mark will be able to put this in a bigger context… [he’s] been covering the special forces for 15 years. He’s probably the pre-eminent reporter on special forces” and that No Easy Day will whet appetites for more analysis. A first-copy printing of 125,000 is planned.

In a starred review, Booklist says that David Levithan in his YA novel, Every Day (RH/ Knopf Books for Young Readers; Listening Library; releases tomorrow), has created  “an irresistible premise that is sure to captivate readers, ” about a 16-year-boy who wakes up each morning in a new body but still in love with the same girl and trying to find his way back to her.  The reviewer admits, however, that “the story requires a willing suspension of disbelief.”

Evidently NYT columnist Frank Bruni isn’t willing. In a review in the special “Back to School” childrens books section of Sunday’s NYT Book Review, he duns the book for being “wantonly sentimental” and filled with ”unnecessary subplots and too many gimmicky passages.”

He does admit, however, that there are elements that are likely to make the book the hit; “Levithan’s talent for empathy, which is paired in the best parts of the book with a persuasive optimism about the odds for happiness and for true love.” Bruni notes that the novel’s central question, “the degree to which love can be bigger than, or a slave to, corporeal realities…makes special sense in a story about teenagers, written for teenagers. The teenage years are when so many of us feel most self-consciously hostage to our imperfect shapes and cosmetic peculiarities, raging against them and wondering if someone might possibly love us despite them.”

Entertainment Weekly reviewer Stephen Lee exhorts readers to “Suspend disbelief and give the out-there premise of David Levithan’s new novel, Every Day, a chance.”  On EW’s “Shelf Life”  blog, he calls it one of his two favorite YA novels of the year (along with John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars) and posts a video featuring two dozen YA superstars reading from it.

In addition to being an author, Levithan is publisher and editorial director  at Scholastic. He came up with the idea for 39 Clues and the new Infinity Ring series and is the editor of  The Hunger Games. Below, he reads from Every Day.

Last week’s news that No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden (Penguin/Dutton; Penguin Audio) will be published on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 came as a surprise to many, including the Pentagon.

Soon after it was revealed that the pseudonymous author “Mark Owen” is actually the 36-year-old, recently retired Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette, he was threatened with prosecution by Adm. Bill McRaven if he reveals classified secrets and al Qaeda posted his photo on their site, with the caption, “the dog who murdered the martyr Sheikh Osama bin Laden.”

Meanwhile, Bissonnette has been in meetings with Steven Spielberg, among others, about  a film adaptation, according to the New York Post. The author is scheduled for a media blitz the week the book is published that includes 60 Minutes and the Today Show (it hasn’t been announced whether he will still appear in disguise as originally planned) and publisher Penguin/Dutton has increased the print run from 300,000 to 400,000. Due to the heavy embargo, many libraries have not yet ordered the book.

Other Navy SEAL movies are in the works. Bradley Cooper is set to produce and possibly star in a film based on the best selling  American Sniper a memoir by former SEAL Chris Kyle (HarperCollins/Morrow). Two films about the hunt for bin Laden will hit theaters this fall. Ironically, Code Name Geronimo is likely to arrive in theaters before Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, which was moved from an earlier date to Dec. 19, after criticism that it would bring renewed attention to Obama’s authorization of the risky raid and possibly affect the election. The producers have not revealed the sources for the movie.

J.K. Rowling’s only U.S. appearance for her forthcoming adult title, The Casual Vacancy, (Hachette/Little, Brown; 9/27) will be held in New York on Oct. 16, when she joins State of Wonder author Ann Patchett for a conversation at Lincoln Center. Tickets, which include a copy of the book  will begin selling on Sept. 10.

The book is now at #17 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

USA Today has more on what is likely to be the biggest rollout of the fall.

At the BEA Librarians’ Shout ‘n’ Share program, the panelists picked Attica Locke’s second thriller, The Cutting Season, (HarperCollins, 9/18) as one of their favorites for the fall. Wendy Bartlett exhorted the audience, “If your customers don’t know Attica Locke, you’re not doing your job of turning people on to great new talent.”

An added bonus, it will also be available in audio from Dreamscape (both CD and downloadable from OverDrive).

We’d like to see what would happen if libraries all over the country got behind The Cutting Season. Who knows? Maybe we could make a best seller. Here’s what you can do:

1) Ask library staff to read The Cutting Season (the digital ARC is available from Edelweiss).

2) If they share our enthusiasm, buy extra copies (consider buying extra of the audio as well).

3) Promote The Cutting Season on your Web site, newsletters, through readers advisory and in the local press. Let us know your creative ideas.

3) Watch holds to see if they grow.

4) Report back on your success.

Locke lives in Los Angeles where she is active on the Board of the Los Angeles Public Library Foundation. She is originally from Houston where her first book, Black Water Rising, is set. Her new book is set in Louisiana. It is the first title selected by Dennis Lehane for his new imprint at HarperCollins.

Downton Abbey season 3 arrives on these shores in January, following its September run in the UK.

To further whet already strong appetites, we have the following trailer. The tinny sound is because it was recorded from a TV in the UK (and smuggled here via New York magazine’s Vulture blog)

UPDATE: The video was pulled, but two official clips have appeared. Both hint broadly at the hoped-for sparks between new cast member Shirley MacLaine and Maggie Smith:

–

Americans will get a more extensive preview when The Chronicles of Downton Abbey: A New Era is published in November. Billed as the “official inside story of the history, characters, and behind-the-scenes drama of Season 3, when Downton Abbey enters the 1920s,” it is co-written by Jessica Fellowes, author of The World of Downton Abbey and niece of the series creator, Julian Fellowes and likely to be on many wish for the holidays.

The Chronicles of Downton Abbey: A New Era Jessica Fellowes, Matthew Sturgis Retail Price: $29.99 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press – (2012-11-13) ISBN / EAN: 1250027624 / 9781250027627

Warner Bros announced yesterday that William Hurt has been cast in the final major role for the movie Winter’s Tale based on Mark Helprin’s 1983 novel. Production is set to begin in October. Hurt will play the father of a young girl, played by Downton Abbey‘s Jessica Brown Findlay, who is dying of consumption in late 19th C Manhattan. Colin Farrell is set to play a thief who breaks into her mansion.

At the time it was published, Winter’s Tale received extraordinary praise in the the NYT BR. After several paragraphs about the plot, the reviewer finally despaired, saying, “We’re now scarcely more than a tenth of our way through Winter’s Tale, and my plot summary is a tissue of (to me) painful omissions.” He also despaired of doing the writing justice, saying he found himself “nervous, to a degree I don’t recall in my past as a reviewer, about failing the work, inadequately displaying its brilliance . . . Not for some time have I read a work as funny, thoughtful, passionate or large-souled. Rightly used, it could inspire as well as comfort us. Winter’s Tale is a great gift at an hour of great need.”

Perhaps it’s no wonder, then, that the film’s director Akiva Goldsman has been working for seven years to get the project off the ground.

It happens that Helprin’s next book, In Sunlight and Shadow (HMH; Blackstone Audio), will be published in October, the same month that filming is set to begin on Winter’s Tale.