After a glowing cover review in the New York Times Book Review, Family Life by Akhil Sharma (W.W. Norton) is getting even more attention. It is called the “year’s first great novel” by Salon. In a review on NPR’s All Things Considered on Thursday, Meg Waltzer says the author, “takes a simple, emotionally difficult story and makes the reader brave the ongoing pain and become fully absorbed,” and the Huffington Post designates it as the week’s “Book We’re Talking About.”

Libraries that ordered it modestly are showing heavy holds ratios.

Next week is light in terms of releases from big-name repeat authors, but Nora Roberts is guaranteed a #1 spot on best seller list with The Collector, (Penguin/Putnam; Penguin Large Print; Brilliance Audio), a standalone hardcover. Booklist stars it, saying, “Roberts is performing at the top of her literary game, and the novel’s opening nod toward Rear Window should clue readers in to the fact they are in for an addictive blend of sleek suspense and sophisticated romance that would make Hitchcock proud.”

Below are a few other titles to have on the tip of your tongue (download our spreadsheet for ordering information on these and more titles arriving next week):

The Axe Factor: A Jimm Juree Mystery, Colin Cotterill, (Macmillan/Minotaur Books; Highbridge Audio)

If the title alone doesn’t sell you, this LibraryReads annotation may do the trick:

“I love this sharply-written and quirky cozy mystery. Jimm Juree is a wonderful character, slyly funny and insightful, with an oddball cast of family and friends to back her up. Set in coastal Thailand, this is a laugh-out-loud funny mystery with plenty of great twists and turns that will keep readers guessing.” — Vicki Nesting, St. Charles Parish Library, Destrehan, LA

Until You’re Mine, Samantha Hayes, RH/Crown

Word of mouth is building for this thriller.  It gets “much love” from ten  readers on Edelweiss, plus this passionate review from a bookseller, “When it comes to mysteries, I really treasure the authors who keep me guessing every time: Sophie Hannah, Mo Hayder, Michael Robotham, Tana French, Gillian Flynn – and now Samantha Hayes. I thought I had the book all figured out, but kept reading anyway because the story sucked me in. I’m glad I did, because the ending blew me away: I honestly had no idea what was coming. ” All four prepub reviews were strong and Entertainment Weekly features it this week with a B+, saying  “Hayes plants the seeds of suspense early, and they gestate until a truly spectacular ending bursts forth.”

The Kind Mama: A Simple Guide to Supercharged Fertility, a Radiant Pregnancy, a Sweeter Birth, and a Healthier, More Beautiful Beginning, Alicia Silverstone, Rodale Books

Back in 2010, the Oprah Show launched Alicia Silverstone’s book on the vegan lifestyle, The Kind Diet, into public consciousness and onto best seller lists. Expect Silverstone to make the talk show rounds for her new book on motherhood (she’s camera-ready, proving it with book trailer released back in November) which addressed the hot-button question, “When did making babies get to be so hard?”

Just when you thought you couldn’t read one more story about the  Michael Lewis phenomenon, Flash Boys, (Norton; S&S Audio), comes the news that Sony Pictures and Scott Rudin are wrapping up negotiations to buy the movie rights.

Brace yourselves; in the upcoming NYT Book Review‘s “money issue,” Lewis talks about the books he’s reading (currently at the top of his “want to read” pile are Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Christine Sneed’s Little Known Facts). Speaking of little known facts; did you know Lewis majored in art history at Princeton before getting a master’s in finance?

With her book, Lean In still  on the NYT Hardcover Nonfiction list after 53 weeks, Sheryl Sandberg has geared her message to a younger generation with Lean In: For Graduates (RH/Knopf; RH Audio). She appeared on the Today Show this morning.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As the anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing approaches, the Boston Public Library unveils an exhibit, “Dear Boston: Messages from the Marathon Memorial,” which includes items from the a spontaneous memorial that developed in Copley Square

One of the people who was injured in that tragedy, Jeff Bauman, appeared on the Today Show this morning, to talk about his remarkable recovery from losing both his legs and his book, released today, Stronger, (Hachette/Grand Central).

Bauman, will also be featured in a special report on Friday’s NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, “108 Hours: Inside the Hunt for the Boston Marathon Bomber.”

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

If you’re going to commit a crime in the U.S., go for the big bucks, says Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi on The Daily Show. If you are caught, the consequences are likely to be less severe. Our jails are filled with people doing time for smaller crimes, while bankers who steal billions go free.

His new book, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, (RH/Spiegel & Grau) released today, rose to #39 on Amazon’s sales rankings as a result of his appearance.

Titles arriving next week with guaranteed spots on the best seller list are Lisa Scottoline’s Keep Quiet and Stuart Woods’ Carnal Curiosity. Below are five others you need to know.

These titles and several more arriving next week are listed on our downloadable spreadsheet with full ordering information and alternate formats.

The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories, Marina Keegan, S&S/Scribner; Tantor Audio

Who wouldn’t tear up, reading this from a student as she faces graduation, “We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life.” Those words becomes even more poignant when you learn that their talented writer, Marina Keegan, died in a car accident just before she was set to begin a dream job at the New Yorker. Her final column for the Yale Daily News, became an internet hit after her death. It and several other writings that Keegan left behind are brought together in this book, featured as the lead review in People magazine, with 3.5 of 4 stars.

Family Life, Akhil Sharma, Norton

This LibraryReads pick is featured on the cover of NYT Book Review this week. Also on Entertainment Weekly‘s “must list,” it is described as an “autobiographic novel about an immigrant family derailed by an accident. It’s beautifully evocative and — tragedy notwithstanding — surprisingly funny.” It will  be featured on NBC’s Weekend Today Show.

Love Life, Rob Lowe, S&S; S&S Audio

Lowe already proved himself an entertaining memoirist with Stories I Only Tell My Friends. This follow up gets a nod from Entertainment Weekly, which says Lowe, “Goes out of his way not to tread the same ground he did in hits first memoir … this book is just as breezily enjoyable as its predecessor.”
Astonish Me, Maggie Shipstead, RH/Knopf; RH Audio

The author’s debut, Seating Arrangements, was a favorite among librarians and booksellers and her new title is an Indie Next pick. The Huffington Post also picks it as “The Book We’re Taling About” this week (even though they are not completely taken with this “leaping departure” from the author’s previous title). Jen Dayton at Darien Public Library, who was the first to alert us to Seating Arrangements, long before it become a best seller, reviews it on Edelweiss, saying it is, “a fascinating look into the lives of professional dancers and the damage that secrets can do. Book groups could have a field day with this one.”

In Paradise, Peter Matthiessen, Penguin/Riverhead

Matthiessen is known as a nonfiction writer, but considers himself a novelist who “writes other things,” as a long profile of his fascinating life in Sunday’s NYT Magazine details (unfortunately for Matthiessen, the author of the profile is not taken with his fiction). Wendy Bartlett, Cuyahoga Public Library, recommends In Paradise to librarians, saying this “book about a professor of Holocaust history who joins a spiritual retreat at Auschwitz and what he discovers about himself as he confronts a history he believes he already understands, is universal and personal at the same time … Matthiessen also explores how the Holocaust resonates for various countries and cultures by peopling the retreat with characters from all parts of the world. It’s a masterful and incredibly thought provoking construct” making it one to get “for your smart book discussion members.”

It’s being called “the fight that stopped trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange,” a live debate on CNBC that included Brad Katsuyama who is featured in Michael Lewis’s book, Flash Boys, (Norton; S&S Audio). Highlights below (the full 23 minutes are here).

Lewis tells Bloomberg BusinessWeek that he never anticipated the level of reaction this book is getting, citing Andrew Ross Sorkin’s column in the New York Times, which accuses Lewis of reserving “blame for the wrong villains … hedge funds and investment banks … easy targets,” rather than the “true culprits,” the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and other stock markets. Even though Sorkin calls Flash Boys an “important new book … a make-your-blood-boil read about the abusive way that high-frequency trading works,” Lewis calls Sorkin’s column “an idiotic piece of journalism.”

Time to order more copies; with this level of passion, Flash Boys will be talked about for a long time to come.

Never underestimate the power of an arresting image.

Metal Cats, to be released by indie Brooklyn publisher powerHouse Books in May, is proving irresistible to music sites, design sites, as well as Facebook and Pinterest postings. As a result the book is now rising on Amazon’s sales rankings.

For more, check  the powerhouse Spring 2014 catalog.

Debuting at #6 on the April 3rd Indie Hardcover Fiction Bestseller list is the #1 LibraryReads and IndieNext pick for April, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, by Gabrielle Zevin, (Workman/Algonquin; Highbridge Audio).

That may be confusing, since the book’s publication date, April 1, is after the cut-off date for reporting sales to the list, March 30.

The book actually shipped last week and enthusiastic indie booksellers wasted no time in getting it in to the hands of readers, employing some creative methods (today’s Shelf Awareness offers an example).

Their efforts were aided by an interview with the author on Friday’s All Things Considered. 

Debuting at #15 on the New York Times hardcover fiction list this week is a book we’ve had our eye on, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s You Should Have Known, (Hachette/Grand Central; Hachette Audio). That position  puts it just below another domestic thriller, The Husband’s Secret, by Liane Moriarty (Penguin/Putnam/Amy Einhorn) which has had a fairly long 16-week run on the list.

You Should Have Known arrived with strong advance buzz and 3.5 stars from People magazine. Janet Maslin in the New York Times last week heaps praise on the first part of the book, but complains that the latter “isn’t nearly as gripping.” The Los Angeles Times reviewer Wendy Smith says, “It’s almost impossible to put down Jean Hanff Korelitz’s riveting new novel for the first 200 pages as it dismantles the comfortable existence of a couples therapist over the course of a few nightmarish weeks” and agrees that the tension “dissipates in the second half,” but doesn’t regard that as a bad thing, simply  the book developing a “quieter drama.”

Libraries that ordered it modestly are showing heavy holds, as high as 12:1.

“If you smoked Colombian marijuana in the ’70s or ’80s, I owe you a thank-you card,” says Tony Dokoupil on CBS Sunday Morning.

Why?  “Because you brought my father’s product, and you bought my baseball gloves by extension, and you put me through private school. And you paid for the boat that we crisscrossed the oceans in and the Caribbean vacations. The good life.”

Dokoupil, currently a a senior writer for NBC News, also appears on NPR’s Fresh Air today, to talk about his book, which arrives tomorrow, The Last Pirate, (RH/Doubleday) about his search for his father, who left the family when his son was a child and the surprising things he discovered about him.

Kicking off a media blitz for his latest take down of Wall Street,  Flash Boys, (Norton; S&S Audio), Michael Lewis appeared on Sixty Minutes last night. Following that story, headlines in today’s print media scream that Lewis reveals the stock market is rigged.

Tomorrow, Lewis appears on the Today Show, NPR’s Fresh Air and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, as well as many other shows throughout the week.

The book is currently at #1 on Amazon sales rankings and libraries are showing holds.

Finally arriving next week, as we turn the corner to the spring book season, is a novel that both librarians and booksellers can’t wait to get in to readers’ hands, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry.

Among the big names arriving are new books by Mary Higgins Clark, Barbara Taylor Bradford and Brian Freemantle (download our spreadsheet for ordering information on these and more).

Below are seven to have on the tip of your tongue:

Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, (Workman/Algonquin; Highbridge Audio; Thorndike)

After an extraordinary amount of  advance buzz, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, finally arrives on shelves next week. It is the #1 pick for April for BOTH LibraryReads and IndieNext. If you haven’t gotten your hands on a galley, scroll through the reviews on Edelweiss to get a sense of how much excitement this novel is generating among your colleagues.

Here’s the response from someone who has read the book in depth, the audio narrator Scott Brick:

I’ve been blessed to narrate over 600 audiobooks thus far, and this book instantly pushed its way to the top of my list of absolute favorites. I told someone recently that I wish I could redo the book, and they asked, ‘Why, did you not like the way it turned out?’ I said ‘No, I just wish I could have that experience of reading every word again over and over again.’

Wendy Bartlett from Cuyahoga P.L. suggests, “Read this one before the customers find it.”

A.J. Fikry is a lonely and grumpy young widower whose life is transformed by the power of story. The wonderful Gabrielle Zevin (and if you don’t already have a favorite Gabrielle Zevin title, honey, where have you been??) begins each chapter in Fikry’s life with a page about a great book or short story whose theme is explored as you turn pages—like Eudora Welty’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” for instance. [NOTE: Thanks to the commenter who pointed that we confused the attribution — the author of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is actually Flannery O’Connor. Our apologies — Zevin has the proper attribution in her book].

But you (or your customers) don’t have to know the stories or books to enjoy this paean to booksellers, book people, and readers. Okay, sure, it’s set on a gorgeous island in the bookstore we’ve all wanted to own, with the townspeople we’ve all wanted to live next to. It’s a universal story with a bookstore setting, and I can’t tell you anymore without spoiling it except know this: you’ll be utterly and completely charmed.

Michael Lewis, Flash Boys, (Norton; S&S Audio)

Every new title by Lewis is an event and like his other books, this one is embargoed, so there hasn’t been much  information to go on, other than the author’s stunning track record as someone the media hotly pursues (the media blitz begins on Sunday with 60 Minutes and includes the Today Show on Tuesday, NPR’s Fresh Air and the Daily Show with Jon Steward. Download full Michael Lewis Media Roundup). More information emerged yesterday when the International Business Times broke the embargo, saying the book  “Shines Light On High-Frequency Trading,” a practice that enables banks to “Screw Their Customers.” The promotion for the 60 Minutes segment, released today, is headlined, “Stock Market Rigged, Says Michael Lewis in New Book.”

Emma Donoghue, Frog Music,  (Hachette/Little, Brown)

Most libraries have bought this one conservatively, but early consumer reviews indicate that, although quite different from Donoghue’s best selling Room, it will find its own large audience. In addition to Ron Charles’s rave in the Washington Post, it’s the lead book review in this week’s People magazine, with 3.5 of 4 stars and the author is profiled in this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review.

Frances Mayes, Under Magnolia, (RH/Crown; BOT; Thorndike)

Mayes is known, of course, for her books that made everyone dream of restoring a falling-down ruin in Tuscany. In this one, she examines her troubled childhood in Georgia. The prepub reviews are extraordinarily enthusiastic, indicating this one bears watching.

Michelle Huneven, Off Course, (Macmillan/FSG/Sarah Crichton Books)

Expect reviewers to be jumping on this one, based on the critical success of the author’s previous title, Blame, a National Book Critics Circle finalist. The L.A. Times review is the first one. It includes this intriguing line, “What Huneven so skillfully points out here is that love triangles, torrid affairs and the like are not just reserved for protagonists in Jackie Collins airplane novels.” Plus, we’re taken with that cover, which looks like something from Ransom Riggs’ collection.

Max Brooks, The Harlem Hellfighters, (RH/Broadway)

The book we most often see people reading on the subway is Brooks’s World War Z (before Brad Pitt turned it into something unrecognizable). Brooks’s new one is graphic novel about an actual war and an actual group of soldier; the black World War I regiment nicknamed, “The Harlem Hellfighters.” Sony has picked it for a big screen adaptation.

Katherine Addison, The Goblin Emperor, (Macmillan/Tor Books)

As we head in to the new season of Games of Thrones, readers may be interested in other fantasy books that explore politics and power. This one has extraordinary pre pub reviews, such as LJ‘s; “Court intrigue and politics are popular fodder for fantasy novels, but rarely have they been done better than in this fantastic new novel from Sarah Monette (writing as Addison). The writing is lovely, with characters who live and breathe.” It is also a GalleyChat favorite.

If you heard the promo for Karen Russell’s interview on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday, and thought, “I didn’t know she had a new book out,” you are not alone.

Her new book is actually an eBook-only novella titled Sleep Donation. Dozens of writers have released eBook-only short fiction, many of them “bridge” stories between titles in a series, to tide fans over between books, (such as Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novella, High Heat, RH/Delacorte). But when an author with Russell’s literary cred does it, it gets attention.

Adding further to the media allure, this is the first release from Atavist Books, a joint venture between media mogul Barry Diller and movie producer Scott Rudin, run by former Picador USA publisher Frances Coady (more on the company here, but fair warning, this story buys the Kool Aid that it is “revolutionary,” even though there are many others in this business). Adding even more media-worthy names, it comes with an audio read by indie actress Greta Gerwig, and even has an interactive cover designed by that oxymoron, a famous book designer, Chip Kidd. Plus, it has its own website.

Unfortunately, however, it does not seem to be available to libraries.

Appropriately, the novella is about an insomnia epidemic ravaging America, the result of people paying too much attention to electronic devices (take note, Arianna Huffington; this could be a cross-promotional opportunity for your book).

In addition to the attention from Fresh Air, the novella was also the lead title in Entertainment Weekly’s book section last week, in a story titled “Let’s Get Digital” that includes Joe Hill’s short story Wolverton Station (from HarperCollins/Morrow and available to libraries), Greg Iles’s novella, The Death Factory (also HarperCollins/Morrow and available to libraries) plus upcoming titles by two other literary darlings, Column McCann’s Gone (released March 18 by another ebook-only publisher Byliner and apparently not available to libraries) and Adelle Waldman’s New Year’s, a companion story to her The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., coming in May, from the old world publisher where Francis Coady used to work, Macmillan/Picador (presumably one of those places she refers to as “print originators [who] tend to see digital as a slightly embarrassing offshoot of print.”)