Leading in the number of holds among the titles arriving next week, is the new book by Mary Higgins Clark, Daddy’s Gone A Hunting, followed closely by Stuart Woods’ Unintended Consequences and Lisa Scottoline’s Don’t Go (in this standalone, Scottoline wries for the first time from a male perspective, a soldier returning from Afghanistan).

In nonfiction, we’re reminded that Mother’s Day is around the corner with two tender mother-daughter memoirs; one by Jane Fonda‘s adopted daughter and the other by Carol Burnett.

All the titles highlighted here, and more, are listed on our downloadable file, New Title Radar, Week of April 8.

Watch List

The Ashford Affair, Lauren Willig, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Thorndike Large Print)

A modern-day young lawyer investigates her family’s past  from 1906 into the 1930’s in London and Kenya in this novel, giving the publisher the shorthand that it brings “an Out of Africa feel to a Downton Abbey cast of unforgettable characters.”

It’s been buzzed by librarians on GalleyChat who say the writing made them go back to read the author’s earlier books (this is her first historical romance outside of her popular ten-book Regency Pink Carnation series). It’s also a hit with booksellers who made it an IndieNext Pick for April, calling it  “ a convincing portrayal of 1920s English society and a family history artfully hidden from the current generation … Rich details, realistically flawed characters, and a narrative that travels from England to the high life of the ex-pat community in Kenya and finally to present day Manhattan make this a book to remember.”

The Interestings, Meg Wolitzer, (Penguin/Riverhead; Dreamscape Audio)

Called “a big and deliciously complicated novel that follows a group of summer-camp friends through the decades” on the NPR web site, where an excerpt is posted as one of their “Exclusive First Reads.” The cover blurb, “The wit, intelligence, and deep feeling of Wolitzer’s writing are extraordinary, and The interestings brings her achievement, already so steadfast and remarkable, to an even high level,” is by Jeffrey Eugenides, the author Wolitzer cited last year when argued in the New York Times Book Review that fiction by women is often treated less seriously than that by men. She is getting respect, with an early review from Janet Maslin in the NYT and a unadulterated “A” from Entertainment Weekly.

Midnight at Marble Arch, Anne Perry, (RH/Ballantine; Thorndike)

The latest title in Perry’s series set in Victorian England arrives with an extra jolt of interest. A book coming in May delves into a real-life crime that Perry was at the center of. In New Zealand in the early 1950’s, two girls, Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme murdered Parker’s mother. The story became the background for Peter Jackson’s 1994 film Heavenly Creatures, starring Cate Blanchett Kate Winslet in her first role as Hulme. Jailed as am accomplice, Hulme was later released and became, you guessed it, Anne Perry. Jennifer Dayton of Darien Public Library brought this up during this week’s GalleyChat, saying that the staff there is obsessed with a forthcoming book on the story, Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century, Peter Graham, (Skyhorse Publishing, May; digital ARC on Edelweiss).

Famous Mothers

The Lost Daughter, Mary Williams, (Penguin/Blue Rider; Tantor Audio)

Jane Fonda will join with her adopted daughter Mary Williams on Oprah’s Next Chapter this Sunday. Kirkus calls Williams’ book a “tender memoir of love and redemption.”

Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story, Carol  Burnett, (S&S; S&S Audio)

The beloved comedian writes in this memoir about her relationship with her eldest daughter, Carrie Hamilton, who died of cancer at age 38.

Media Magnets

The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth, Mark Mazzetti, (Penguin Press)

EMBARBOED: as we noted earlier this week, heavy publicity begins on Sunday for this book on the modern CIA, with a New York Times page one story and the author’s live one-on-one with Bob Scheiffer on CBS’s Face the Nation. On publication day, 4/9, the author is scheduled to appear on NPR’s Morning Edition, CNN’sSituation Room with Wolf Blitzer, and PBS’s Charlie Rose Show. Later in the week, comes MSNBC’s Morning Joe and NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, among others. The next week, Mazzetti is scheduled for the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Simpler: The Future of Government, Cass R. Sunstein, (Simon & Schuster)

As the former administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Sunstein streamlined government regulations (even overhauling the iconic “food pyramid”). His new book will get attention next week on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the PBS Nightly Business Report, NPR’s Marketplace, and Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, among others. His “Ten Steps Toward a Simpler World” appeared in the Wall Street Journal this week.

David Sheff, lived through the nightmare of his son’s addiction. As a journalist, he was able to take that experience and write about it in a best selling memoir, Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Meth Addiction (HMH, 2008). That son, Nic Sheff wrote his own memoir, Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines (S&S/Atheneum YR, 2008).

Nic wrote a second book, We All Fall Down: Living with Addiction. (Little, Brown YR, 2011) about his struggles to stay clean. His father, who sent him to ten different treatment programs, writes in his new book, Clean: Overcoming Addiction and Ending America’s Greatest Tragedy, (HMH, Brilliance Audio), that he has severe doubts about how addicts are currently treated and suggest alternatives.

He was interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday and on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on Monday and is featured in USA Today.

The book is currently #8 Amazon’s sales rankings and rising. His earlier book, Beautiful Boy, is also rising.

The first trailer for Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters, based on the book by Rick Riordan was released earlier this week.

Some Hollywood watchers are surprised that there is a sequel, since the first was not judged a financial success in theaters. This time around, director Thor Freudenthal (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) replaces Chris Columbus (the first two Harry Potter movies). The movie opens on August 7.

Official Web Site: PercyJacksonTheMovie.com

The tie-in edition arrives in July:

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Two The Sea of Monsters (Movie Tie-In Edition). Rick Riordan
Disney/Hyperion, 9781423160076, 142316007X $7.99 US / $8.99 Can

The new pope is getting the Life pictorial treatment in Pope Francis: The Vicar of Christ, From Saint Peter to Today, (Hachette/Life). A paperback book/magazine edition appears on newsstands this week, with the hardcover releasing on April 16.

A book by the new Pope, previously published in Spanish in 2010, will be released in English on May 7. On Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on Faith, Family, and the Church in the Twenty-First Century, (RH/Crown/Image Books) is a record of conversations between the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Rabbi Abraham Skorka, Rector of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary in Buenos Aires. According to the Random House press release, the two religious leaders address “such topics as God, fundamentalism, atheism, the Holocaust, abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and globalization.”

It will be released simultaneously in print, digital, large print and audio formats. The original Spanish-language version, Sobre el Cielo y la Terra will be published in North America in both trade paperback and eBook by RH/Vintage Espanol.

Also coming from the Image imprint of Random House is a book by Robert Moynihan, the founder of Inside the Vatican magazine, Pray for Me: The Life and Spiritual Vision of Pope Francis, First Pope from the Americas.

Jon Stewart clearly loves Mary Roach, greeting the author on Monday night’s Daily Show with the words, “I like your books!”

Her latest, Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (Norton; Tantor Audio), was released on Monday. The interview begins with the question of why your stomach doesn’t digest itself (hint; it’s a trick question).

After the appearance, Gulp rose to #3 on Amazon sales rankings.

Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In, will appear on the show tonight. That appearance is unlike to result in a rise on Amazon’s sales rankings, however. The book has held the #1 spot for most of the last month.

Below is part one of the interview; part two is here (warning: it features nutrient enemas).

Arriving just in time for National Poetry Month (April, if you have been under a rock), is Poems to Learn by Heart, collected by Caroline Kennedy and  illustrated by Jon J. Muth, (Disney/Hyperion, 3/26/13).

Caroline Kennedy thrilled us with an anthology of her family’s favorite poems in A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children, (Disney/Hyperion, 2005). She follows up with a delightful collection of poems that are terrific for memorizing. It includes old favorites like Mary Ann Hoberman’s Brother,

I had a little brother
And I brought him to my mother
And I said I want another
Little brother for a change.

Also included is A.A. Milne’s Disobedience that begins “James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby Dupree took great care of his Mother, though he was only three.”

Poems by Langston Hughes, Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson, join new ones sure to become classics like Jeff Moss’s If Little Red Riding Hood…,  a delightful imagining of how the storybook character would be instructed in the differences between a wolf and grandma by her dad.

We don’t have to wait all year to read poetry but it’s great to have a whole month to celebrate the reading, the sharing, and the writing of poetry. When and where? Everywhere! Try memorizing a verse or two while waiting in line at the grocery store, or a few short ones while waiting for those cookies to come out of the oven. Begin a class visit or a meeting or an assembly with a poem.

Try celebrating my favorite day of the year, national Poem in Your Pocket Day on Thursday, April 18, 2013. The idea is simple: poems are unfolded from pockets throughout the day during events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores. Select a poem you love during National Poetry Month, then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends or on Twitter by using the hashtag #pocketpoem.

At Bank Street College of Education, we would paper the hallways of our school with children’s selections. Let us know your plans, projects, and suggestions for Poem in Your Pocket Day by emailing npm@poets.org.

Need a little help on the poetry front? There is no more practical or current guide than The Poetry Friday Anthology: Poems for the School Year with Connections to the Common Core, by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong, an essential purchase.

After the jump, more helpful titles

(more…)

Major media is lining up for a book about the CIA by Pulitzer Prize winner and NYT reporter, Mark Mazzetti. Titled The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth, it is embargoed until release next Tuesday (probably to give the New York Times the first crack at it).

Covering the hot topic of the day, it examines the use of drone strikes that have been referred to as “surgical” (thus, “the way of the knife“) and the consequences of that policy.

Coverage begins Sunday with a New York Times page one story and the author’s live one-on-one with Bob Scheiffer on CBS’s Face the Nation. On publication day, 4/9, the author is scheduled to appear on NPR’s Morning Edition, CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, and PBS’s Charlie Rose Show. Later in the week, comes MSNBC’s Morning Joe and NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, among others. The next week, Mazzetti is scheduled for the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

In addition, the first serial will appear in the 4/12 issue of the New York Times Magazine (online on 4/9)

The New Yorker‘s august literary critic James Wood gives Rachel Kushner a rave for her new book, The Flamethrowers, (S&S/Scribner; Brilliance Audio), just don’t be put off by the opeining paragraph which begins “Put aside, for the moment, the long postwar argument between the rival claims of realistic and anti-realistic fiction.”

He calls the book, “scintillatingly alive. It ripples with stories, anecdotes, set-piece monologues, crafty egotistical tall tales, and hapless adventures: Kushner is never not telling a story.”

Equally enthusiastic, but without the academic trappings, is Sherryl Connelly in the New York Daily News; “The Flamethrowers slowly and seductively becomes a novel you just can’t quit.”

There’s so many significant titles coming out next week, that it’s almost a relief to note that one of them has been postponed; Jane Goodall’s Seeds of Hope (Hachette/Grand Central), due to accusations of plagiarism.

The media will have plenty to choose from next week. In addition to the titles featured below, Debbie Reynolds and Maya Angelou release their first memoirs in years, Gwyneth Paltrow brings out a new cookbook and Marie Osmond writes about losing her son (an excerpt is featured in People magazine this week). But the lion’s share of attention will likely focus on Mary Roach‘s examination of the alimentary canal, Gulp.

All the titles highlighted here, and more, are list on our New Title Radar, Week of April 1

Watch List

Life After Life, Kate Atkinson, (Hachette/Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print)

Reviewers are expecting a great deal from the author of  Started Early, Took My Dog, as evidenced by the fact that Janet Maslin jumped the pub date to review it in the New York Times this week. She calls this novel about a woman who lives her life over and over again, a “big book that defies logic, chronology and even history in ways that underscore its author’s fully untethered imagination.” It shares the #1 spot as an IndieNext Pick for April (along with Jill McCorkle’s book, which happens to have the same title), Atkinson is featured in the New York Times Magazine and gets an unequivocal “A” from Entertainment Weekly.

Reconstructing Amelia, Kimberly McCreight (Harper)

Also receiving an “A” from Entertainment Weekly is this debut which actually live up to the claim that it is “this year’s Gone Girl.” Excitement about it has been building on GalleyChat for months. Booksellers agree, making it an IndieNext Pick for April — “Throw out all the cliched superlatives! McCreight’s remarkable debut novel is about Kate Baron, a high-powered lawyer who believes that her daughter Amelia has committed suicide — until she receives the anonymous text — ‘She didn’t jump.’”

All That Is, James Salter, (RH/ Knopf)

Salter’s first novel in 30 years is featured as an “Exclusive First Read” on NPR’s web site, which describes him as a “writer’s writer” and notes “Salter’s deceptively simple prose…His sentences flow one to the next with a limpid inevitability that carries us along.” Entertainment Weekly, gives it a “B+”,  marking him down because he “opts for a panoramic view of [main character] Bowman’s life, bloating the narrative with minor characters’ backstories.” Still, it is the prose that wins the reviewer over, “the sentence-to-sentence craftsmanship is stunning, and Salter can still write a perfect love scene.”

The Flamethrowers, Rachel Kushner, (S&S/Scribner; Brilliance Audio)

The author’s previous title, Telex From Cuba garnered an enviable line in Carolyn See’s Washington Post review, ” It’s the kind of thing you should stock up on to give sick friends as presents; they’ll forget their arthritis and pneumonia.” It went on to become a National Book Award finalist. In anticipation of this, her next book, Maud Newton wrote in the NYT ‘Room for Debate’: I’m already gearing up to be annoyed if Rachel Kushner’s second novel, The Flamethrowers, doesn’t win something major.”  David Ulin writes in the L.A. Times that this book operates “…in the space between creativity and politics, the saga of an artist who travels from Lower Manhattan in the late 1970s to become immersed in the white hot center of Italian radical politics. Kushner is a vivid storyteller, worth reading for her sentences alone.” It is scheduled for coverage on NPR‘s“Weekend Edition” on Sunday.

Without a Summer, Mary Robinette Kowal, (Macmillan/Tor Books)

The third in series, a GalleyChat favorite described as “Regency romance with magic,” that will appeal to both fans of Jane Austen and those who find her a bit to stilted.  Check out what Ali Fisher has to say about it on “Uncharted Pages”

Media Magnets 

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, Mary Roach, (Norton; Tantor Audio)

In Mary Roach’s last book, Packing for Mars, she revealed how astronauts deal with poop in space. Will her new book deliver equally memorable moments? Tons of media attention is in the works next week, so we will soon be hearing about “poop transplants,” rectal smuggling and Elvis Presley’s megacolon. Hats off to the creative person in St. Louis who came up with the idea of a  “Dinner and Digestion” program, featuring the author. She is scheduled to appear on Fresh Air on Monday (which happens to be April Fool’s Day), and gets to again match wits with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show (see below for her previous appearance).

Instant Mom, Nia Vardalos, (HarperOne)

Wonder what happened to the writer and star of My Big Fat Greek Wedding? She became a parent, but not instantly as the title suggests. Here she recounts her efforts to become pregnant, what happened after she did and what her Hollywood life is like. Appearances are scheduled next week for the Today Show, The Katie Couric Show, and many others.

All You Could Ask For, Mike Greenberg, (HarperCollins/Morrow)

The cohost of ESPN’s popular sports show, Mike and Mike in the Morning, Greenberg’s most recent book was titled, Why My Wife Thinks I’m an Idiot, so his shift to what Kirkus describes as “chick lit, with somber overtones” is, as Booklist dryly notes, a”seemingly incongruous choice of subject matter.” It will be fun to see how this one is handled on talk shows.

NPR’s Fresh Air examined the passionate fights over whether the U.S. should enter World War II, with Lynne Olson, author of Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941, (Random House). The book releases today.

Olson says we may have difficulty understanding it now, but up until Pearl Harbor, Americans looked on the war as “kind of like a movie. … It was something that just didn’t affect them … most Americans, especially those who lived in the heartland — really didn’t feel that they had anything in common with Europe. They hadn’t been there. They thought this was a distant place that they really had nothing to do with.”

A book about The Searchers, a movie that even the author calls, “…perhaps the greatest Hollywood film that few people have seen,” hardly seems a candidate for popular interest, but library holds are heavy (although on modest orders).

Directed by John Ford, starring John Wayne and Natalie Wood, the movie is based on a true story of a woman who was abducted as a young girl by Comanches. Glenn Frankel’s book about the movie, The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend (Macmillan/Bloomsbury) was featured on PBS News Hour earlier this month and on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show yesterday. Director Martin Scorsese reviews in the 3/15 issue of  The Hollywood Reporter. 

Fans can look forward to new titles in popular series next week, including those by Donna Leon, Jacqueline Winspear, J. R. Ward and Robert Ludlam (as channeled by Kyle Miles). Reviews are already starting for Elizabeth Strout’s The Burgess Boys, the author’s next book after her Pulitzer Prize winning Olive Kitteridge. Also arriving is a novel widely expected to be the next Paris Wife, about another “Real Housewife of Historical Fiction,” Zelda Fitzgerald.

All titles and more are included on our downloadable spreadsheet, New Title Radar, Week of 3.25.13

Watch List

The Burgess Boys, Elizabeth Strout, Random House; RH Audio; BOT

Strout’s previous book, Olive Kitteridge was considered a dark horse when it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009. It went on to spend over a year on best seller lists in trade paperback. Her new book will again test readers’ willingness to accept some unlikeable characters, this time in novel form, rather than interconnected short stories. Signs are positive. It gets an unequivocal A from Entertainment Weekly and Ron Charles in the Washington Post says “…the broad social and political range of The Burgess Boys shows just how impressively this extraordinary writer continues to develop.”

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, Therese Anne Fowler, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Macmillan Audio; Thorndike Large Print)

Back in the early 70’s, Nancy Milford’s biography Zelda (Harper) shed new light on the F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda. It became a long-running best seller and is still in print. Jazz era fascination continued with Robert Redford’s portrayal of The Great Gatsby on film. Flash forward to today. Baz Lahrmann’s Great Gatsby arrives this summer and is preceded by a heavily-promoted book about Zelda, titled simply Z, after the way she signed her letters.

People designates it a Pick in the new issue, saying it is “richly imagined… sometimes reads like an insider’s delicious account of gossip-column fodder. But these characters aren’t caricatures and Zelda’s tales are told with restraint and insight… here, her touching story is also fascinating and funny and it animates an entire era.” Entertainment Weekly gives it a B+

Other forthcoming books that feature Zelda include a bio (UPDATE: this title is a novel), Beautiful Fools: The Last Affair of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald by R. Clifton Spargo (Overlook Press; May 2) and another novel, Call Me Zelda by Erika Robuck (Penguin/NAL Original Trade Pbk., May 7).

Life After Life, Jill McCorkle, (Workman/Algonquin; Thorndike Large Print)

As we noted earlier, this is the first of two novels arriving this season with the same title, both of which are #1 IndieNext picks for April. The IndieNext annotation reads,

Let yourself be drawn into the world of Pine Haven Estates in Fulton, North Carolina, and treat yourself to a cast of characters so rich that you will be bereft every time the point of view changes, only to find yourself enchanted anew. Pine Haven Estates is a retirement community, where life and death are inevitable companions. Its inhabitants and the people who care for and about them are at the center of this story that examines the cycle of life — what it means to be alive as well as how one faces the end of life. McCorkle’s first novel in 17 years depicts a community well worth visiting and offers a wonderfully satisfying reading experience. —Terry Gilman, Mysterious Galaxy Books, San Diego, CA

Media Magnets

Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family, Ezekiel J. Emanuel, (Random House RH Audio; BOT)

The eldest of the Emanuel brothers, a bioethicist, writes about his family, which includes brothers Rahm, Mayor of Chicago and Ari, a major Hollywood agent. All that star power brings attention, including an interview with three brothers by Brian Williams on NBC’s Rock Center tonight (promoted on The Today Show this morning) and features on the NPR’s upcoming Weekend Edition Sunday and CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, CBS This Morning Saturday and MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday.

Decisive, Chip Heath and Dan Heath, (RH/Crown Business; RH Audio; BOT)

Following their influential and best selling business books, Made to Stick and Switch, the authors turn to the question of how we can make more rational business and life decisions. Heath published a story in the Wall Street Journal this week and the book has been in Amazon’s top 100 for 12 days, but libraries are showing modest holds at this point

Tie-ins

We’ve already featured two of the three tie-ins arriving this week, A Storm of Swords (RH/Bantam; HBO series begins March 31) and The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, (Mariner Books; movie begins a limited run on April 26).

The third is The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer by Anthony Bruno (RH/Bantam). The movie stars Michael Shannon as a real-life hitman, trying to balance family and career, and co-stars Ray Liotta, Wynona Ryder, Chris Evans and James Franco. It opens on May 3.

Next week, celebrate the new season, with an extraordinary picture book about the famous ballet, The Rite of Spring (it really did cause a riot). Preschoolers will fall in love with a little pig who speaks frog and get ready for summer reading programs with a new Origami Yoda Activity Book by Tom Angleberger.

These and other titles coming out next week are listed on our downloadable spreadsheet, Kids New Title Radar, Week of March 25

Picture Books

When Stravinsky Met Nijinsky: Two Artists, Their Ballet, and One Extraordinary Riot written and illus. by Lauren Stringer, (Harcourt)

There are many children’s picture books about music and musicians (the Pinkneys’ Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington, and Raschka’s Giant Steps) and dance and dancer’s (numerous Nutcrackers, even one illustrated by Maurice Sendak, lovely ballet books by Rachel Isadora, Dance! with Bill T. Jones featuring Susan Kuklin’s photos, and the Pinkneys’ Alvin Ailey).

But, believe me when I say there are none like this one. Stringer’s words are music and her illustrations dance. She captures the excitement and movement of a turning point in music and dance history. In 1913, the avant-garde composer Igor Stravinsky composed The Rite of Spring (in French, Le Sacre du printemps) to be choreographed by the internationally renowned dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The collaboration was so shocking at the time that the debut performance ended with the audience rioting.

Stringer’s lyrical text and exuberant paintings reflect the artistic styles of the period without being imitative, expressing the joy, frustration and excitement of creative processes.

In addition, Stringer offers a few gifts on her Web site, including an activity guide created with Tracie Vaughn Zimmer. There is also a curriculum guide to the Rites of Spring from Carnegie Hall, and you can also hear the music and a discussion of its reception on NPR.

Ribbit!, Rodrigo Folgueira, illus. by Poly Bernatene, (RH/Knopf BYR)

If, like me, parents and teachers continually ask you for more books like Bark, George and Meow Said the Cow, latch onto this one.  Pre-schoolers find it hysterically funny when an animal makes the wrong sound; it’s becoming a genre of its own.

Oversized Preschool Board Book

Tell Me Something Happy Before I Go to Sleep (lap board book), Joyce Dunbar, illus. by Debi Gliori,  (HMH)

This oversized board book reprint of a book originally published in 1998 and no long in print, is just right for reading aloud with parenting classes, Headstart or a pre-school programs and is a good title for modeling the pleasure and possibilities of reading aloud.

Middle Grade Series

Magic Tree House #49: Stallion by Starlight (A Stepping Stone Book) by Mary Pope Osborne and Sal Murdocca (RH BYR; Listening Library)

Magic Tree House Fact Tracker #27: Horse Heroes: A Nonfiction Companion to Magic Tree House #49: Stallion by Starlight, by Mary Pope Osborne, Natalie Pope Boyce and Sal Murdocca, (RH BYR)

It might not be news or cause for a parade when a new Magic Tree House book is published, but it should be. Whenever a new Jack and Annie comes out of the box (the series is now just one titles shy of 50 titles), my heart still sings. Osborne’s consistently engaging, just-right stories hit home with newly fluent readers. The companion Fact Trackers are a terrific way for classroom teachers to connect the fantasy with Common Core standards. So, who wants to help organize the parade?

Defies Category

Art2 – D2’s Guide to Folding and Doodling: An Origami Yoda Activity Book by Tom Angleberger, (Abrams/Amulet)

Angleberger’s The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, Darth Paper Strikes Back, and The Secret of the Fortune Wookiee were runaway hits with Bank Street’s 4^th and 5^th graders (Origami Yoda was a Mock Newbery honor winner). Fair warning, this is “consumable,”  because of its pull-out pages. Buy one for reference and start planning Star Wars summer reading programming, using this and  Star Wars Origami: 36 Amazing Paper-folding Projects from a Galaxy Far, Far Away by Chris Alexander (with forward by, guess who, Tom Angleberger).

You can thank me later.

Young Adult 

If You Find Me, Emily Murdoch, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s)

A suspense-filled story about 15-year-old Carey, who is rescued after living in the Tennessee wods with her sister and meth-addicted mother. Prepub reviews are  strong, with Kirkus calling it a “deeply affecting story … made all the more so by Carey’s haunting first-person narration.” PW had issues with the credibility of the story, but still called it “memorable and deeply moving” and predicted that readers will fall in love with the characters.

Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, Meg Medina, (Candlewick; Brilliance Audio)

Kirkus calls this first-person story about a 15-year-old who is bullied when she goes to a new school in Queens, NY, “nuanced, heart-wrenching and ultimately empowering.”

Manga

Witch & Wizard: The Manga, Vol. 3, James Patterson and Jill Dembowski, Yen Press

It’s Patterson’s popular series, Manga style, a high-interest title that will appeal to graphic novel fans, both boys and girls.

On this week’s USA Today best seller list, Sheryl Sandberg’s “sort of feminist” manifesto, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, (RH/Knopf; RH Audio; BOT) is #1 in its second week on the list, after debuting at #133 last week.

That may not be much of a surprise, given the amount of attention it has received. The surprise is that it’s one of the few hardcovers on the list. By contrast, the latest Alex Cross title  by James Patterson is at #3, but in ebook. Of the top 50 USA Today bestsellers, 27 are ebooks, 18 paperbacks and just 8 hardcovers.

After a slow start, many libraries are showing heavy holds on all formats of Lean In.

HBO has begun promotion for its Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra, which premieres on May 26th. It features Michael Douglas in the lead, with Matt Damon, as his lover, Scott Thorson (pictured, at left, on the cover of the March 15 issue of Entertainment Weekly).

It is based on Thorson’s 1988 memoir, Behind the Candelabra: My Life With Liberace, which is being re-released by Tantor Audio in three formats; print, audio, and ebook on May 2.

This may be the last film directed by Steven Soderbergh, who, after 26 films in 24 years, has announced he is taking a break from filmmaking and will turn his attention to other interests (among them, importing cognac from Bolivia. What may be his last theatrical film, Side Effects, is currently playing in theaters).

Interviewed in The Hollywood Reporter, the director says he is very happy with his swan song, “I think people are gonna be surprised at how intimate it is, and that there’s no attempt to make fun of them or … to make them seem like cartoons… at the end of the day, [it’s just] two people in a room … there’s just a lot of rhinestone in it.”