It’s a book announcement that caused a molecular biologist blogging on the Scientific American site to go all weak in the knees. Astronaut Chris Hadfield signed a deal with Random House Canada to write two books (Hadfeld is Canadian). The first, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, is scheduled for release on Oct. 29. It will be published in the U.S. on the same date by Hachette/Little, Brown.

Commander of the International Space Station for five months, Hadfield is known his creative use of social media to document his experiences.

At this point, only the Canadian edition is listed on retailer and wholesaler sites. Below is the Random House Canada book trailer.

The first trailer for the biopic JOBS, starring Ashton Kutcher was just released. Originally scheduled for April, it is now opening on Aug. 16. In addition to Kutcher as Steve Jobs, it stars Dermot Mulroney (as Mike Markkula, who supplied key funding for Apple’s startup), Josh Gad (Steve Wozniak), and Matthew Modine (John Scully).

Even though it’s likely to bring renewed attention to Walter Isaacson’s best selling bio, Steve Jobs (S&S), it is not based on it or any other book. At one time there were two Jobs biopics in development. Sony was working on an adaptation of the book, with Aaron Sorkin writing the script. No news has emerged about that project since Sorkin mentioned it briefly in January. Last week, he told Vanity Fair that he is at work on a Broadway play but made no mention of the film.

Isaacson’s book will be released in paperback on Sept. 9, nearly two years after the hardcover. It featured an image of the older Jobs, the paperback uses a photo of him as a young man, looking so much like Kutcher that some might confuse it for a tie-in.

Every year, reviewers tell us which title they think will be THE book of the summer. In some cases, they have been right (e.g., Gone Girl, and Girl With the Dragon Tattoo).

This year, when Janet Maslin declared The Shining Girls, (Hachette/Mulholland) by Lauren Beukes “a strong contender for the role of this summer’s universal beach read,” Cuyahoga P.L. buyer Wendy Bartlett, who was a bit skeptical, asked the library staff to get involved, read the galley and let her know if she should increase the library’s order. We asked you to join in with our The Summer Beach Read Challenge.

The upshot? Cuyahoga is sticking with their original order for the book, which came out this week. Staff reviews and the comments on EarlyWord have been mixed. Most like the main character, but think that this book, which involves both time travel and serial killers would have been better if the author had focused on one or the other.

Check your holds, however. Libraries we checked had waiting list of 10:1 on light ordering.

What is the Cuyahoga staff excited about? It’s a fall title, that has also recevied strong response on GalleyChat, The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, (S&S, Oct). Below is Wendy’s annotation:

Need a laugh? Here’s the funniest book of the year. Don is a professor who thinks dating is a colossal waste of his time. (Think Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory, and you understand the kind of guy Don is.) So with the help of his friends, he devises a questionnaire to find the perfect wife, and ends up helping someone completely unexpected. You’ll love this main character. Customers who liked The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time or Temple Grandin’s books will enjoy this light-hearted look at living with Asperger’s. It also reminded me of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, last year’s big Brit import. This book was released in the U.K. first and was a big hit (read the review in The Guardian).  I think it’ll be a big hit here too; this will be a great reader’s advisory title.

If your image of Dicken’s Miss Havisham is one of an ancient crone, you are in the majority. When Helena Bonham Carter, who is 46, was approached to play the role in the new adaptation of Great Expectations, she tells the Telegraph, it was “like a slap in the face.”

But the film’s director, Mike Newell (who has led dozens of films, including Four Weddings and a Funeral and the fourth Harry Potter), explained, “if you read the book she’s actually in her 40’s.” She took the role.

Released last fall in the UK, it was recently announced that it will debut in the US this coming October 11th.

Shortly after, another U.K. import, a novel that imagines Havisham’s early life will be released. It’s a fall pick by Kansas City P.L.’s Kaite Stover, who described it at the recent BEA as,

Blending two of the human race’s greatest cultural productions—Dickens and beer—Ronald Frame’s Havisham, (Macmillan/Picador) explores Catherine Havisham’s privileged upbringing as the daughter of a brewer, her jilting at the altar, and her devolution into the bitter, love-scorned woman generations of readers have grown both to loath and ultimately pity. Frame successfully transforms Catherine from simply a bitch into a lover, a child, a mother (of sorts), a sinner, and possibly a saint.

Reviewing it, The Times of London said,

Dickens provided a perfectly adequate backstory for Miss Havisham, but this re-imagining will delight readers who (like another Dickens icon) have always wanted more. You might think you know how it ends, but Frame has a talent for thrilling Victorian melodrama, and he tackles the controversial ending (Dickens wrote two versions) with superb assurance. Best of all, he’ll send you back to the original.

Great Expectations has inspired other spin-offs, most notably, Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs and Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip (which was also made into a movie), but this is the first to be based on Havisham.

The following “featurette” includes a comment by Carter that in Dickens’ novel, “the older generation uses the younger generation to heal their own heart.”

The number one hot galley for children’s librarians at BEA was Kate DiCamillo’s Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures, illustrated by K.G. Campbell, coming in September from Candlewick (also, Listening Library).

Betsy Bird, NYPL librarian and author of SLJ’s Fuse 8 blog, had this to say about  it when I ran into her on the show floor,

“Squirrels, to my mind, are the least lauded and most deserving city animal dwellers I know of. Mo Willems may have created the ultimate pigeon and there are few rats to compare with Templeton, but squirrels have few icons and fewer fans. I expect all that to change with the advent of Flora & Ulysses. Pithy and poignant, smart and good, this is a story that will allow you to fall in love with those chattering, perpetually hungry, tree denizens all over again.”

DiCamillo recevied the Kerlan Award at the University of Minnesota on Saturday.

Kevin Henkes Snags A Galley

Kevin Henkes read aloud during BEA from his new middle grade novel, The Year Of Billy Miller, due out in September (HarperCollins/Greenwillow). Sadly, there were no galleys to be had, but it was fun to see Henkes get excited about a galley that he was dying to read, snagging the last copy at the HMH booth of My Mistake by Daniel Menaker.

What book lover could resist the publisher’s description:

“Daniel Menaker started as a fact checker at The New Yorker in 1969. With luck, hard work, and the support of William Maxwell, he was eventually promoted to editor. Never beloved by William Shawn, he was advised early on to find a position elsewhere; he stayed for another twenty-six years. Now Menaker brings us a new view of life in that wonderfully strange place and beyond, throughout his more than forty years working to celebrate language and good writing.”

After all the buzz programs, author presentations, and hours walking the floor at BEA, what impressed librarians most? The Librarians’ Shout ‘n’ Share panel, organized by the AAP and Library Journal is a good indicator. In just one hour, librarians buzzed nearly 75 titles. Many of them are available on Edelweiss or NetGalley, so you can play along at home. Below are titles that were on many librarians’ lips (a full list of all the titles from Shout ‘n’ Share, including ordering information and which are currently available as digital ARCs, through Edelweiss and/or NetGalley, is on our downloadable spreadsheet Shout-n-Share-BEA 2013).

Bringing cheers from the audience when it was mentioned was The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic (Penguin/Dorman, Aug. 1), a debut by Emily Croy Barker. Angela Carstensen, SLJ‘s “Adult Books For Teens” columnist noted, “Pamela Dorman’s pitch at LJ‘s Day of Dialog was incredibly persuasive. She called it The Magicians for girls and Jane Eyre crossed with Harry Potter.” Digital ARC’s are availalble on Edelweiss and on NetGalley (the book is also part of First Flights, the Penguin Debut Author program — more information is here).

John Searles clearly won fans during the AAP librarian’s dinner. His Help for the Haunted, (HarperCollins/Morrow, Sept. 17) was mentioned wherever librarians gathered. Kaite Stover, the female half of Booklist‘s described its appeal; “Deftly shifting between a traumatic past and present, Help for the Haunted delivers the gripping story of recently orphaned Sylvie Mason,whose parents aided souls with paranormal afflictions before their sudden death in an abandoned church. Immediately prior to their deaths, Sylvie’s parents were searching for her sister, Rose, who later becomes Sylvie’s guardian and may even have had a hand in their parents’ death. The novel explores the tension between the two sisters as Sylvie with the help of a detective struggles to remember what exactly happened the night of her parents’ death. Murky, and yet straightforward, Help for the Haunted haunts the reader from cover to cover, drawing her deeper into the investigation as the detective and Sylvie circle the conclusion of the case.” Download Kaite’s full presentation here: BEA Shout n Share – K. Stover

Among Alene Moroni picks was  Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (RH/Crown), which explores what happened to many of the patients and the heart-breaking decisions the staff of a New Orleans hospital had to make after Katrina.  It was also one of the titles featured in the closely-watched “Edtiors’ Buzz Panel,” (see USA Today story).

Doug Lord, LJ‘s “Books for Dudes” columnist was enthusiastic about The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay (RH/Doubleday, Sept. 10), a memoir by an Iranian-American who not only decided to move to Tehran during a particularly turbulent year, but also brought his blonde, blue-eyed wife and young son with him.

Robin Nesbitt of Columbus [OH] Metropolian Library said her collection development goal this year is to raise circulation through books, (not DVD’s), so she is searching out titles that will connect with her public. Thus, Night Film, by Marisha Pessl, (Random House, Aug. 20) is on her radar. The author, whose 2007 debut, Special Topics In Calamity Physics was structured around a syllabus for a college literature course, switches focus to a different art form in a literary thriller about a reclusive movie director.

Librarians were also buzzing about a novelty board book they discovered in the aisles, Little Penis, which incorporates a puppet (the subtitle; A Finger Puppet Parody Book). Published in January, it will be followed this fall by “the perfect stoccking stuffer,” Little Penis Santa Clause, (both by Craig Yoe, published by S&S/Cider Mill Press). For some reason, neither was picked by the panel, although Stop Tweeting Boring Sh*t: The New Rules of Work (Chronicle, July 23) was. It just may be more workplace appropriate.

During this week’s YA GalleyChat, our EarlyWord Kids Correspondent, Lisa Von Drasek raved about Elizabeth Wein’s forthcoming Rose Under Fire, (Disney/Hyperion, 9/10/13) a companion novel to last year’s Code Name Verity.

We’ve just learned that it is now available on NetGalley — perfect timing for Memorial Day reading. Click here to link directly.

Both books are about a little-know subject, the women who ferried planes in WW II. On Memorial Day, I will be reading Rose Under Fire in honor one of the first of those pilots who was killed, my aunt, Mabel Rawlinson. I never knew her, but, having grown up with her legend, I feel sure she would have loved these books.

She would have also loved that they’re published by Disney/Hyperion; Disney studios designed Fifinella, who became the mascot for the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots.

Olympic gold medal soccer player Alex Morgan, currently playing for the Portland Thorns, scores with the first book in a planned middle grade series, The Kicks. Book one, Saving the Team (S&S Young Readers), debuts on the NYT Middle Grade Best Seller list at #7 during its in its first week on sale.

The second book in the series, Sabotage Season will be published in September. A third one  is in the works.

Pat Conroy’s beloved novel The Great Santini is based on the author’s troubled relationship with his abusive father.

In October, Conroy will publish a memoir, The Death of Santini, (RH/Nan A. Talese; RH Audio; RH Large Print) which, according to the publisher, describes how the two became closer and that love can “conquer even the meanest of men.”

Rick Riordan’s next publication is a short story, “The Son of Sobek,” included in the paperback edition of The Kane Chronicles, Book Three: The Serpent’s Shadow (Disney/Hyperion, releasing today; also to be released as an e-book, with audio read by the author, on June 19). The cover and an interview with Riordan are featured in today’s issue of USA Today.

In “The Son of Sobek,” Percy Jackson (of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, which features Greek mythology) and Carter Kane (of The Kane Chronicles, featuring Egyptian) come together for the first time. Riordian tells USA Today, “It was definitely reader driven. The fans wanted to see a crossover, and I thought, ‘Let’s see what happens!'”

He also notes, “Sobek is the crocodile god from Egypt, and the son of Sobek would be one of this followers. So … you can expect some major crocodile action in this book. The cover captures Carter and Percy at their first meeting … The two don’t really start on the best terms.”

Book four in the Heroes of Olympus series, The House of Hades (Disney/Hyperion; Listening Library) arrives Oct. 8.

Who knew that writing a popular series of books could be so dangerous? The WSJ reports that Charlaine Harris has opted out of doing a tour for her upcoming 13th Sookie Stackhouse book, Dead Ever After (Penguin/Ace, releasing Tuesday) because fans have been so vocal in their disappointment that it is the final book in the series.

Harris is planning a new series, set in small West Texas town, featuring “..familiar characters and supernatural themes, which could help draw Sookie fans to the books.” As a bridge, Ace will release a short story next spring featuring both Sookie and the main character of the new series (no publishing information yet, but it is likely to be an ebook-only title).

She has also written an epilogue to the Sookie series, After Dead, (Penguin/Ace), an A to Z listing of over 100 characters, with information on what happens to each of them, coming in November.

In October, she will release the first in a series of graphic novels, Cemetery Girl, in which a girl who is left for dead in a graveyard, wakes up with no idea how she got there and the unsettling ability to see spirits (9780425256664; listed in the publishers catalog, on page 24).

Last fall, John Grisham told Matt Lauer on the Today Show that he was seriously considering a sequel to his first and favorite novel, A Time to Kill. Over the years, he said, he has “been looking for some other trial [Mississippi lawyer] Jake could have a couple of years after the trial in A Time to Kill…and I’ve found the story.”

Random House just announced that Grisham’s next book will be that sequel, Sycamore Row (via the AP sydicated story), to be published on Oct. 22 by the Doubleday division of Random House (also RH Audio, BOT and RH Large Print).

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The next season of the popular British series, Downton Abbey is currently in production. The series’ first black actor has just joined the cast. Gary Carr will play jazz singer Jack Ross, reports the UK’s Independent. A slide show of the other new additions, gives hints about the upcoming story lines (there’s at least one new love interest for Lady Mary).

Among the returning cast members are audience favorites, Shirley MacLaine and Maggie Smith. However, Siobhan Finneran, who played the conniving lady’s maid O’Brien, will not be back.

The author of the best selling Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey (RH/Broadway; Tantor Media), Countess Fiona Carnarvon, is publishing a new book about Highclere Castle this fall, featuring Lady Almina’s successor, Lady Catherine, the Earl, and the Real Downton Abbey (RH/Broadway).

Lady Carnarvon, her home and her previous book were featured on CBS Sunday Morning earlier this year.

Last year, after many attempts to bring Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series to the screen, Sony Pictures TV acquired the rights according to Deadline.

Now, nearly a year later, Deadline writes that the project is “slowly inching to the screen” as a the producers have opened a “writers room” for four writers who will be working on the adaptation.

The eighth installment of the series, Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, (RH/Delacorte) is coming in December. Gabaldon answered questions about the book earlier this month on Entertainment Weekly‘s “Shelf Life” blog.