William Boyd, selected by Ian Fleming’s estate to write the next James Bond novel, announced on the opening day of the London Book Fair yesterday that the title will be simply Solo, explaining, “In my novel, events conspire to make Bond go off on a self-appointed mission of his own, unannounced and without any authorization – and he’s fully prepared to take the consequences of his audacity.” It will be released in the U.S. by HarperCollins on October 8.

Boyd, who has written several prize-winning novels, including A Good Man in Africa, follows in the footsteps of several others who have donned the Fleming mantle. Jeffery Deaver published Carte Blanche in 2011 (S&S). It was a NYT hardcover best seller for 4 weeks. Sebastian Faulks’ Devil May Care (S&S, 2008) also spent a few weeks on the hardcover list. Raymond Benson published 6 titles from 1997 to 2002; John Gardner, 14 (the same number as Fleming wrote himself), from 1981 to 1996. Kingsley Amis, under the name of Robert Markham, was the first, with Colonel Sun in 1968.

Get an early peek at James Dashner’s forthcoming YA novel, which doesn’t hit shelves until Oct, The Eye of Minds (RH/Delacorte YR; Listening Library) on USA Today.com, where the first chapter is posted today (ARC’s have not been sent out yet, but RH Childrens tells us that they will have them at ALA).

It is the first in a new series, Mortality Doctrine, which is described as “a series set in a world of hyperadvanced technology, cyberterrorists, and gaming.” During a TwitterChat last month, Dashner said that it is “basically for the exact same people who love The Maze Runner. A very different story, as Dashner as you can get … but more intellectual and plot-driven than TMR” and that the main female character, Sarah, “is more central than Teresa was in TMR.”

Dashner is currently at work on the sequel titled The Rule of Thoughts.

A film of The Maze Runner, starring Kaya Scodelario, is scheduled for release on Valentine’s Day, 2014.

The author of Eat, Pray, Love, asked her  fans to help choose the US cover for her forthcoming novel The Signature Of All Things, (Penguin/Viking, Oct. 11).

The results are in and the one on the right, which we were betting on, came in DEAD LAST (click on image to see a larger version).

Below, Gilbert talks about the aspects of the book that each cover represents and why she is delighted that the middle cover won.

Talk about making the world your focus group. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, has invited fans to help choose the US cover for her forthcoming novel The Signature Of All Things, (Penguin/Viking, Oct. 11), by voting, today through Sunday, on one of three choices on her Facebook page:

The winner will be announced on Monday in USA Today.

Our bet, based on studies that show readers respond best to covers that feature people and give a sense of story, is that it will be the one on the right.

Just revealed, the cover of Doctor Sleep, coming Sept. 24 (S&S/Scribner; S&S Audio), Stephen King’s follow-up to The Shining.

Synopsis from StephenKing.com:

On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless—mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and tween Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the “steam” that children with the “shining” produce when they are slowly tortured to death.

Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father’s legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant “shining” power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes “Doctor Sleep.”

Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan’s own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra’s soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted readers of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.

Bill O’Reilly announced at the end of last night’s OReilly Factor that his next book will be Killing Jesus (Macmillan/Holt; 9780805098549), to be published on Sept. 24th (via USA Today).

O’Reilly said, “My co-author, Martin Dugard [also the co-author of Killing Lincoln and Killing Kennedy] and I have uncovered some amazing things about the execution of Jesus of Nazareth and how it all tied into Roman power.”

Eric Carle posted this Valentine’s Day greeting on his blog, and there’s more in store for his fans. Penguin Young Readers announces that a new picture book will arrive this fall, entitled Friends, (no ISBN or cover are available at this time).

Carle’s most recent book, The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse,(Penguin/Philomel) was released in 2011.

After 150 million copies in print in the US (450 million worldwide), how can you get customers to buy even more Harry Potter books?

Perhaps new covers will do the trick. For HP‘s fifteenth anniversary, Scholastic announced today that they will release all seven titles in trade paperback, with new covers by cartoonist Kazu Kibuishi (author/illustrator of the Amulet Series for Scholastic’s GRAPHIX imprint) in September, unveiling the first in the series. The American hardcovers will retain the original coves by Mary GrandPré.

Stephen King is making news this week. In an interview on Entertainment Weekly, he talks about Doctor Sleep, (S&S/Scribner; 9/24/13; S&S Audio), his eagerly anticipated followup to The Shining, which answers the question, “Whatever happened to Danny?”

And, a SuperBowl ad ran yesterday for a CBS series based on another of his books, Under the Dome, which begins this summer. The tie-in will be published May 14 (S&S/Gallery).

.

USA Today leads up to Oprah’s interview with Ayana Matthis, the author of her latest Book Club 2.0 pick, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, (RH/Knopf), with one of their own (click through for video).

Oprah’s interview appears on OWN network’s  Super Soul Sunday, this week, February 3, at 11 a.m. ET/PT.

Promo for the show also promises “OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB 2.0 NEWS!” which may mean the announcement of a new title.

A taste of Oprah’s interview below:

An “exclusive peek” at Kate DiCamillo’s next book, Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures (Candlewick, 9780763660406, 9/24/13; Listening Library), appears in USA Today. The accompanying article notes, “The 240-page novel, which tackles issues like loss and grief with humor, is interspersed with comic-style graphic sequences and illustrations by K.G. Campbell.”  USA Today also interviews DiCamillo.

Below is the excerpt (available via Scribd., so we don’t feel that we’re breaking USA Today’s exclusivity):

The cover for The Eye of Minds, by James Dashner (RH/Delacorte YR; Listening Library) is revealed as an “exclusive” (thus, we are not showing it here) on Entertainment Weekly‘s “Shelf Life” blog. The book is the first in a new series for ages 12 and up, The Mortality Doctrine.

The publisher’s description is below:

Michael is a gamer. And like most gamers, he almost spends more time on the VirtNet than in the actual world. The VirtNet offers total mind and body immersion, and it’s addictive. Thanks to technology, anyone with enough money can experience fantasy worlds, risk their life without the chance of death, or just hang around with Virt-friends. And the more hacking skills you have, the more fun. Why bother following the rules when most of them are dumb, anyway?

But some rules were made for a reason. Some technology is too dangerous to fool with. And recent reports claim that one gamer is going beyond what any gamer has done before: he’s holding players hostage inside the VirtNet. The effects are horrific-the hostages have all been declared brain-dead. Yet the gamer’s motives are a mystery.

The government knows that to catch a hacker, you need a hacker.

And they’ve been watching Michael. They want him on their team.

But the risk is enormous. If he accepts their challenge, Michael will need to go off the VirtNet grid. There are back alleys and corners in the system human eyes have never seen and predators he can’t even fathom-and there’s the possibility that the line between game and reality will be blurred forever.

There’s been no news on whether Dashner’s best selling title, The Maze Runner  (RH/Delacorte YR, 2009) will make it to the big screen. It was optioned by 20th C. Fox in January of 2011, with plans for Catherine Hardwicke (who directed the first Twilight movie and Red Riding Hood) to direct. In August of 2012, it was announced that Wes Ball will direct (Deadline, 8/23/12), but the movie is still listed as in “pre-production.”

We know how Janus felt; we had barely caught our breath from the multitude of 2012 best books lists (our selected links at right) when the first of  2013 reared their heads.

Huffington Post, “Best Books Of 2013?: Our Picks For The Year’s Biggest Reads”

The Atlantic, “Books to Look Forward to in 2013”

Flavorwire, “Flavorpill’s 30 Most Anticipated Books of 2013“

The Huffington Post gets it right that the title The World’s Strongest Librarian (Penguin/Gotham, May 2) will “win over bookstores and libraries;” it got our attention. Subtitled A Memoir of Tourette’s, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family, it’s by Josh Hanagarne, a librarian at Salt Lake City Public Library who writes a blog about books and weight lifting.

Also on the HuffPo list, as well as Flavorpill’s, is a novelization of a life that is ripe for it, Zelda Fitzgerald’s (but, wait, haven’t dozens of others, including her husband, already done that?);  Z, by Therese Anne Fowler (Macmillan/St. Martin’s, March 26). Notes The Atlantic, “we’ll gladly read a hundred novelizations of her life. Especially if they’re all like this one, which lets us into a 17-year-old Zelda’s head.”

Anticipation is already high for Stephen King’s Dr. Sleep, the sequel to The Shining, coming on Sept. 24 (just before the premiere of the new film adaptation of his debut novel, Carrie) as well as  Elizabeth Strout’s The Burgess Boys,(Random House) her next novel after her 2009 Pulitzer  Prize winner, Olive Kitteridge.

The second Oprah 2.0 pick, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, by Ayana Mathis, arrives on the NYT Hardcover Fiction best seller list this week at #10 (oddly, the annotation does not mention the Oprah connection —  “Fifty-some years in the life of an African-American family, starting with Hattie Shepherd, who leaves Georgia for Philadelphia in 1923.”)

It rose to #41 on the USA Today list from #95 last week.

Mathis received another strong endorsement after the Oprah pick, in the form of a rave from the NYT‘s difficult-to-please critic, Michiko Kakutani. The Washington Post’s Ron Charles is also impressed, but there are at least two dissenting voices, including the Wall Street Journal and a particularly scathing review in the L.A. Times, which says the book is,

…a callow work by a writer of still unpolished talents. Our great novelists give us fully rounded characters whose lives reflect the limitations, the possibilities and the wonder of the times in which they live. Mathis gives us a one-dimensional portrait of their suffering — and little else.

Taking advantage of Bond fever (Skyfall is still #1 in the box office, weeks after opening in November and has topped every new release since, including Spielberg’s Lincoln and even the final movie in the Twilight series), some news was released about the next title in the Bond book franchise, coming in fall, 2013.

It’s not much news, however. William Boyd, selected by the Ian Fleming estate to write the next novel, told the UK’s Radio Times, “All I will say is it’s set in 1969. Fleming died in 1964. He was in his mid-50s, so conceivably if he’d looked after himself a bit better, hadn’t smoked and drunk so much, he might have written a James Bond novel in that year.” The title of the upcoming book has not been released.

Boyd has not seen Skyfall, saying, “In the films Bond is a cartoon character, but in the novels he is far more troubled, nuanced and interesting.”

Recent attempts at reviving Bond in print have not met with as much success as the films. Jeffery Deaver published Carte Blanche, in 2011 (S&S). It was a NYT hardcover best seller for 4 weeks. Sebastian Faulks’ Devil May Care (RH/Doubleday, 2008) also spent a few weeks on the hardcover list.