Standalone thrillers from Harlan Coban and Joy Fielding hit shelves next week, as well as an embargoed new bio of  Steve Jobs, already making headlines and two debut Y.A. titles that have caught Hollywood’s attention.

The titles covered here, and several more notable titles arriving next week, are listed, with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar Week of March 23 2015.

Holds Leaders

The Stranger, Harlan Coben, (Penguin/Dutton; Brilliance Audio; Thorndike; OverDrive Sample)

Kirkus approves of this standalone thriller, saying, “This 100-proof nightmare ranks among his most potent.” PW completely disagrees, but adds, “Even when not at his best, Coben is very good, and readers won’t be disappointed.”

The Cavendon Women, Barbara Taylor Bradford, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample)

A sequel to the Edwardian era Cavendon Hall, (2014), this title brings the family saga in to the 1920’s. Kirkus calls the books “Bradford’s answer to Downton Abbey.” Booklist considers it a “dishy continuation.”

Someone Is Watching, Joy Fielding, (RH/Ballantine; Brilliance Audio; Thorndike)

This standalone gets a star from Booklist, “Not geared to the faint of heart, Fielding’s story of one woman’s search for justice, understanding, and internal peace is nothing short of arresting.”

Media Attention

Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader, Brent Schlender, Rick Tetzeli, (RH/Crown Business; RH & BOT Audio)

The book behind this week’s headlines that Tim Cook offered to donate a portion of his own liver to the dying Steve Jobs. It’s embargoed, but the media, always obsessed with Jobs, has picked over leaks, some of which come from the online version of the upcoming excerpt in Fast Company and others from Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature (since blocked). Another bit of news is that the authors, who will appear on ABC ‘s Good Morning America next week, portray their subject quite differently than Walter Isaacson did in his best seller, Steve Jobs, the basis for the movie that is currently filming. As the Fast Company headline, “Kind. Patient. Human. The Steve You Didn’t Know,” indicates, Becoming Steve Jobs could be considered a rebuttal to the earlier book.

YA Advance Attention

The Haunting of Sunshine Girl: Book One, Paige McKenzie, Alyssa Sheinmel, (Perseus/Weinstein Books; Recorded Books)

Media mogul Harvey Weinstein picked up rights to a book and movie series based on the YouTube series that averages 5 million views per month, catching the attention of the NY Post, which rarely covers books, let alone YA books, in a story headlined “Harvey Weinstein thinks he’s found the latest young adult hit.” The review media is also enthusiastic. Kirkus calls it “Suspenseful, exciting and endlessly entertaining” and SLJ says, “Readers who appreciated holly Black’s Doll Bones (2013) or Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones series should consider picking up this creepy debut.”

The author was featured on the Today Show:

We All Looked Up, Tommy Wallach, (S&S BYR; S&S Audio;  OverDrive Sample)

A SF novel about four teenagers facing the arrival of a meteor that is likely to wipe out the earth, we first started hearing about it from YA Galley Chatters who were intrigued by both the the cover (be sure to click on it, above right, to see the larger version. It really doesn’t work as a thumbnail) and the blurb from Andrew Smith, “Tommy Wallach’s We All Looked Up is a triumphant debut—this generation’s The Stand. It is at once troubling, uplifting, scary, and heart-wrenching, and written with so much compassion for our fragile hold on the fleeting here and now. A glorious, wonderful, completely unforgettable novel.” It’s since received a string of superlative prepub reviews including stars from Kirkus and PW.

MTV News pulls out TV and film references to describe it, “Skins meets The Breakfast Club meets Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia.” Paramount nabbed the film rights.

Picks

The Precious One, Marisa de los Santos, (HarperCollins.Morrow; HarperLuxe; HarperAudio)

Both an Indie Next and a Library Reads pick:

Taisy hasn’t seen her father since he dumped her family and started another one 17 years ago. An unexpected invitation to write his biography returns her to her hometown, and gives her a rare chance to knit together a broken web of relationships. Like all de los Santos’ books, The Precious One features smart, funny characters who form an unconventional family. It’s luminous and heartwarming, without an ounce of sap.  — Heather Bistyga, Anderson County Library, Anderson, SC

A Reunion of Ghosts, Judith Claire Mitchell, (Harper; HarperLuxe; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample)

A GalleyChat favorite, this is also an Indie Next pick for March:

‘The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to the third and fourth generations.’ These are the words that the Alter sisters live by and the reason they have chosen to die at their own hands. Lady, Vee, and Delph Alter have written a suicide note that turns out to be a family history. The sisters are descendants of Lenz, a chemist and the creator of the poison gas that was first used in WWI, and his wife, Iris, the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry and the first in the family to commit suicide. A Reunion of Ghosts is a captivating chronicle of a family and the weight of consequences that grow heavier with time.—Jen Steele, Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

What Comes Next and How to Like It: A Memoir, Abigail Thomas, (S&S/Scribner; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample)

People “Book of the Week” — “It’s no wonder Abigail Thomas is leery of what lies ahead. The accident that left her husband brain-damaged was the starting point  for A Three Dog Life (2006); in her new book, she experiences a romantic betrayal that will leave you gasping. Mostly, though, she writes of the changes aging brings us all and of coping through love: of family, dogs, a well-turned phrase. She is superb company.”

Indie Next pick for April:

Like an honest talk with your wittiest friend, Thomas’ new memoir will have you both laughing out loud and on the verge of tears. Examining a life that has changed dramatically over the years and the friendship that has endured it all, What Comes Next and How to Like It reveals simple truths we can all recognize in our own lives. Thomas’ gentle humor is evident in every passage as she writes of struggling with aging, loyalty, and drinking after the death of her loving husband. What makes this all the more brilliant are the sparkling moments of insight, full of depth and emotion, that Thomas so beautifully shares with the reader. —Luisa Smith, Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA

 A literary nonfiction ghost story that is part family history, part haunted house story, and part investigative journalism, American Ghost: A Family’s Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest by Hannah Nordhaus, (Harper; Tantor Audio; OverDrive Sample) sounds like the kind of book readers devour.

As we reported last week, Entertainment Weekly is hot for the title, selecting it as one of their “20 Books We’ll Read in 2015.” They follow up by interviewing Nordhaus. Calling the book “captivatingly creepy.” they offer this quick, R.A.-worthy summary,

Hannah Nordhaus discovers that her great-great-grandmother, Julia Staab, is New Mexico’s most famous ghost, haunting a Santa Fe hotel called La Posada. Backed by an army of psychics and ghosthunters, a crumbling family diary, and a frontier-sized heap of curiosity, Nordhaus sets out to discover who Julia was—and why her spirit has stuck around for all these years.

American Ghost has earned starred reviews from Booklist, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly, which enticingly details Nordhaus’s research process.

She consults a variety of self-appointed supernatural experts—psychics, tarot-card readers, mediums, and dowsers—as well as more traditional sources such as newspaper archives, family diaries, and aging relatives. She also visits the settings of her grandmother’s life, from villages in Germany to the deserts of New Mexico where the Staabs lived.

It was featured on Sante Fe’s News 13:

It is also getting attention in print publications, including the Sante Fe New Mexican, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Boston Globe (subscription required), and is on Elle magazine’s list of “The 7 Must-Read Books Of March.”

Holds are strong on light orders in libraries we checked.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Monday features Andrew Cockburn, the Washington editor of Harpers magazine and the author of a book about a hot button issue, drone strikes, Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins, (Macmillan/Holt; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Cockburn also appeared on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show last week. He explained that the title is a common term in the military, describing the steps taken to identify and eventually hit a target. Drones can shorten the time that takes, but sometimes with unintended and terrible consequences.

It might seem that Social Security benefits are pretty straight forward. Not so, says Boston University economist Laurence J. Kotlikoff who found the 2,728 core rules so confusing that he created a service called Maximize My Social Security. He also put together a book Get What’s Yours: The Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security (Simon & Schuster; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample). It has become such a success, according to the New York Times, that it quickly rose to #1 on Amazon’s sales rankings and was sold out. Now back in print, it also just broke onto the 3/22 NYT Advice & How Bestseller List.

One of the book’s co-authors, Paul Solmon, is a PBS Financial News Correspondent. He featured some of the secrets from the book on the PBS NewsHour recently.

Despite several less than enthusiastic reviews, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant (RH/Knopf; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample) arrives at #3 on the NYT March 22nd Fiction Hardcover best sellers list, just below the log jam of The Girl on the Train at #1 after 8 weeks and All the Light We Cannot See at #2 after 44 weeks.

This is the first time that Ishiguro has hit the hardcover lists. As Gregory Cowles notes in the “Inside the List” column, his previous best sellers, The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go became best sellers but in paperback, as a result of their movie adaptations.

Film rights have already been acquired for The Buried Giant, by “The Godfather of the Literary Adaptation,” producer Scott Rudin (Captain Philips, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Moneyball, Angela’s Ashes and the upcoming Jobs, among many others).

Next week brings just one clear holds leader (three guesses as to the author’s name), and a debut that arrives with high expectations, as well as several LibraryReads picks to recommend.

The titles covered here, and several more notable titles arriving next week, are listed, with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of March 16, 2015.

Holds Leader

NYPD Red 3, James Patterson, Marshall Karp, (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print; OverDrive Sample)

Advance Attention

The Last Flight of Poxl West, Daniel Torday, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Thorndike, 7/22)

Michiko Kakutani’s review in the daily NYT last week is followed by this week’s New York Times Book Review cover. The reviewer notes that the novel begins with an excerpt from a faux review from NYT Book Review itself (the quote is a dead-on parody, although, as the reviewer says, it’s unlikely that the Book Review copy editors would have allowed “truly unique” to slide by). Echoing the faux review, this one is more mixed than Kakutani’s.

Hausfrau, Jill Essbaum, (Random House; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample)

This debut has come up repeatedly on GalleyChat beginning in November. In January, The Guardian saw it as a successor to Gone Girl and another book that was then on the horizon,

From Rachel Watson, the unhappy heroine of British writer Paula Hawkins’s much-anticipated debut novel The Girl on the Train, to Anna Benz, the depressed wife at the heart of Jill Alexander Essbaum’s haunting Hausfrau, this year’s most compelling reads are all about lost girls, some of whom, like Flynn’s Amy Dunne, turn out to have a core of steel in their soul.

Unlike The Girl on the Train, however,  Hausfrau does not arrive to long holds lists, or the amount of advance media attention its predecessor enjoyed, but that appears to be revving up. It is reviewed in the new issues of both People magazine (“Sexy and insightful, this gorgeously written novel opens a window into one woman’s desperate soul”) and Entertainment Weekly (a strong review, but it’s undercut by a low “B” rating).

The Wall Street Journal profiles the marketing campaign behind Hausfrau, saying that Random House is “touting it as a literary 50 Shades of Grey” and already has a third printing in the works.

It is an Indie Next pick, with a recommendation from a bookseller who is a  GalleyChat regular:

“In this powerful, affecting novel, Essbaum has written an ode to desire and the destructive choices we make. There is a grace in Essbaum’s writing that leads the reader to love Anna, to befriend her, and to be endlessly protective of her. Whatever it is that a poet does with words — the arranging, the building of something that is more than the sum of its parts — Essbaum, an accomplished poet, does with the emotions and the honesty in this work. It is brave, vulnerable, and filled with love, passion, and the kind of lust that one never speaks about. This is something special.” — Kenny Coble, The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA

If you think it’s easy to design a book jacket, take a look at the following video, which shows the many iterations this one went through. Robbin Schiff, executive art director at Random House, told Mashable, which featured it, “The final design, with its stark Swiss typography against the moody and lush floral grouping, conveys a sensual but claustrophobic atmosphere,” reflecting the atmosphere of the book.

Upcoming Media Attention

Better Than Before, Gretchen Rubin, (RH/Crown, RH Audio; OverDrive Sample)

The author of the best selling The Happiness Project will promote her new book about how to acquire positive habits and shed negative ones, in a Today Show 3 part mini-series on the subject of habits, which begins on Monday 3/16. She appears on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday.

Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania, Frank Bruni, (Hachette/Grand Central; OverDrive Sample)

Sure to appeal to parents dealing with college admissions insanity, the NYT‘s Frank Bruni asserts that it doesn’t really matter if your child gets into Harvard. In an early review, The New Republic knocks Bruni’s “repeated reassurance that the Ivies are unimportant because there are still other ways to attain wealth and status in America,” saying this is “a book that wants to dismiss the importance of status without questioning the validity of status-seeking motives.” That issue may be lost on most college-obsessed parents. UPDATE:  Bruni adapts a section from the book in essay for the NYT‘s Sunday Op/Ed section. As of Saturday morning, the online version, posted late Friday, is the most emailed story with nearly 450 comments.

Frank, Barney Frank (Macmillan/FSG; Macmillan Audio)

Frank’s memoir is reviewed in this week’s NYT Book Review by Frank Bruni, who, as noted above, has his own book coming next week. A clear fan of  Frank as a person, Bruni finds his chronicle of coming out as a gay politician rewarding because “the author’s odyssey to honesty perfectly tracks America’s journey to a more open-eyed, healthier, better place,” but is disappointed by the “sometimes dry manner at odds with his public personality.” Frank is scheduled to appear on NPR’s Fresh Air on Monday.

LibraryReads Picks

Prudence, Gail Carriger, (Hachette/Orbit; OverDrive Sample)

LibraryReads — “I was hoping we’d be seeing Prudence in her own series. Baby P – Rue to you –is all grown up and absolutely delightful. First-time readers will think it’s a wonderful book on its own merits. However, it becomes spectacular when we get to revisit some of the beloved characters from the Parasol Protectorate. Gail Carriger is always a delight!” — Lisa Sprague, Enfield Public Library, Enfield, CT

The Witch of Painted Sorrows, M. J. Rose, (S&S/Atria; Dreamscape Audio; OverDrive Sample)

LibraryReads — “Rose weaves a passionate tale of sensuality, heartbreak and despair, exposing readers to a side of Paris that is as haunting as its main characters. The melding of time and generations transform Sandrine and La Lune into a single force to be reckoned with. The unexpected ending will leave readers wanting more.” — Marianne Colton, Lockport Public Library, Lockport, NY

Delicious Foods: A Novel, James Hannaham, (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample)

LibraryReads — “How can you not be immediately intrigued by a novel that opens with a teenage boy driving from Louisiana to Minnesota after both his hands have just been cut off at the wrist? When you read this novel, you’re dropped right into a world – darkly funny and audaciously bold.” — Meghan Hall, Timberland Regional Library, Lacey, WA

The Pocket Wife, Susan Crawford, (HarperCollins/Morrow; HarperLuxe; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample)

LibraryReads — “Dana is a ‘pocket wife’ because her lawyer husband barely gives her the time of day. One afternoon, she drunkenly argues with her neighbor Celia, takes a nap, then wakes to find Celia dead. Could she have murdered Celia? Dana, suffering from manic episodes, tries to solve her friend’s murder before she loses all self-control. Highly recommended for fans of Gone Girl.” — Katelyn Boyer, Fergus Falls Public Library, Fergus Falls, MN

Bettyville by George Hodgman (Penguin/Viking; Thorndike; OverDrive Sample) is getting increased attention. The just released memoir by a former editor for Vanity Fair and book editor for Henry Holt who moves from NYC to tiny Paris, Missouri to care for his aging and ill mother, has already been featured in a profile in  The New York Times, which called it,

 “… a most remarkable, laugh-out-loud book … Rarely has the subject of elder care produced such droll human comedy, or a heroine quite on the mettlesome order of Betty Baker Hodgman … For as much as the book works on several levels (as a meditation on belonging, as a story of growing up gay and the psychic cost of silence, as metaphor for recovery), it is the strong-willed Betty who shines through.”

Yesterday, Terry Gross conducted a lengthy interview with Hodgman on Fresh Air. When asked about how he works to make his mother happy, Hodgman shared that they watch Dirty Dancing every week and “I started giving her books to read. We started with Nicholas Sparks. I don’t think there is anybody in this world who is more thankful for Nicholas Sparks than I am.”

The memoir is also People magazine’s “Book of the Week,” saying, “Slowly — convincingly — [Hodgman and his mother] come to terms with each other. You won’t finish their tale dry-eyed.”

Check your holds, some libraries have ratios over 5 to 1.

John Lewis was interviewed on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart yesterday, in celebration of the 50^th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Congressman Lewis spoke about the first two books in his graphic novel trilogy, March: Book One (Top Shelf Productions, 2013; OverDrive Sample) and March: Book Two (Top Shelf Productions, 2015), sending both books up the Amazon sales charts.

During the interview Congressman Lewis described a childhood of discrimination and how his parents would tell him “don’t get in the way, don’t get in trouble.” When he met Dr. King he said he found a means to “get in the way” and to “get in good, necessary trouble.”

The graphic novels recount Mr. Lewis’s life and momentous events in the Civil Rights Movement, from sit-ins to the Freedom Riders. He told Stewart he decided to write the March books because he wanted to

“… inspire another generation of young people to get out there, push, and stand up, and speak up, and speak out, and get in the way the same way that my generation got in the way, good trouble, necessary trouble.”

March: Book One was a Coretta Scott King honor book for 2014 and appeared on a host of best of lists. March: Book Two, which came out earlier this year, got glowing reviews and wide acclaim, The Washington Post called  it “a must-read monument.”

The Last Flight by Poxl West by Daniel Torday (Macmillan/St. Martin’s, 3/17/15) a debut novel about war, self-creation, and memory is getting rave attention from a variety of sources well in advance of publication date, one sign that a book is likely to take off.

Michiko Kakutani, the difficult-to-impress daily New York Times critic jumped the pub. date by eleven days in her Friday review. Saying Torday has “a keen sense of verisimilitude” and “a painterly eye for detail,” she sums up his skill as a writer with this high praise:

“It’s Mr. Torday’s ability to shift gears between sweeping historical vistas and more intimate family dramas, and between old-school theatrics and more contemporary meditations on the nature of storytelling that announces his emergence as a writer deserving of attention.”

Kirkus, in a starred review, calls it “a richly layered, beautifully told and somehow lovable story about war, revenge and loss” and offers an unexpected comparison:

“While Torday (The Sensualist: A Novella, 2012) is more likely to be compared to Philip Roth or Michael Chabon than Gillian Flynn, his debut novel has two big things in common with Gone Girl—it’s a story told in two voices, and it’s almost impossible to discuss without revealing spoilers.”

Ecstatic blurbs from a string of authors give the literary cred; Phil Klay, Karen Russell, Edan Lepucki, Gary Shteyngart, Rivka Galchen and George Saunders, who says the novel is “A wonderful accomplishment of storytelling verve: tender, lyrical, surprising, full of beautifully rendered details.” Shteyngart offers a more pithy “OMFG! What a book!”

Perhaps most influential of all, John Green took to Twitter on the 6^th to talk it up:

“POXL a lovely novel sentence-to-sentence, and it gets at something deep about how we’re all frauds, and all worthy of love.”

At least one librarian is convinced. Wendy Bartlett of Cuyahoga Public Library sensing a “literary page turner,” increased her order.

Nina Stibbe, who wrote last year’s sleeper hit memoir and a Library Reads pick,  Love, Nina: A Nanny Writes Home has just published her first novel about a divorced family, a move to rural England, and the hunt for a new father, A Man At the Helm (Hachette/Back Bay original trade pbk, 3/10/15; OverDrive Sample).

It is getting rave reviews. Kate Kellaway of The Guardian says “it is a brilliant find. It even trumps Love, Nina because Stibbe is more at home in it. It is full, free, outlandish. And I can’t remember a book that made me laugh more.” She goes on to compare it to Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle “with its opinionated innocence.’ ”

Aldia Becker in the NYT Book Review concurs, finding that “This densely populated ­coming-of-age story (for both mother and children) has retained and even ­expanded on ­Stibbe’s signature antic charm.” Her suggestions for read-alikes also include Smith as well as Stella Gibbons, saying “Man at the Helm, with its jauntily ­matter-of-fact social satire, wouldn’t be out of place on the same shelf as Cold Comfort Farm and I Capture the Castle.”

NPR interviewed Stibbe on Weekend Edition Sunday. Based on the delight expressed so far, expect more attention and plenty of eager readers.

Robert Putnam one of the co-authors of the influential book on American culture, Bowling Alone, was interviewed on  NPR’s Weekend Edition. about his new book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis,  (S&S). He explains his term the “savvy gap,” saying that widening inequality in the U.S. is partially a result of poor people lacking knowledge of “the opportunities and challenges around them. They lack savvy. They don’t lack IQ, they lack savvy.”

The book is also being reviewed widely, in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post and by Jill Lepore in The New Yorker and moved up Amazon’s sales rankings over the weekend as a result. It’s now at #107.

Erik Larson’s Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (RH/Crown; RH and BOT Audio; RH Large Print) has received heavy advance media attention. It got even more on Saturday with an interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition.

The account of the sinking is currently #1 on Amazon’s sales rankings. Library holds are also growing.

Calling it “ecstatically reviewed,” Deadline reports that film rights to Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant (RH/Knopf; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample) have been acquired by Scott Rudin, who has been called “The Godfather of the Literary Adaptation”  (Captain Philips, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Moneyball, Angela’s Ashes and the upcoming Jobs, among many others).

Take the comment about the novel being “ecstatically reviewed” with a grain of salt. The daily NYT critic Michiko Kakutani dismissed it as an “eccentric, ham-handed fairy tale.” Neil Gaiman had trouble nailing it down in the NYT Book Review, even after several readings and regretted his “inability to fall in love with it, much as I wanted to.” On NPR, Meg Wolitzer said she anticipated the book for months but was ultimately disappointed. The headline for her review on All Things Considered this week expresses her feeling succinctly, “Ishiguro’s Buried Giant Gets Lost In Its Own Fog.”

On the more ecstatic side is former Washington Post Book World editor, Marie Arana who calls it, “a spectacular, rousing departure from anything Ishiguro has ever written, and yet a classic Ishiguro story.”

Check your holds. Some libraries have reordered to meet demand, while others are doing well with relatively modest initial orders. Based on its rise on Amazon’s sales rankings (currently at #15, the third adult fiction title on the list), we can expect to see it in the top five on the NYT Best Sellers list next week.

Several of Ishiguro’s previous novels have been adapted as films, including The Remains Of The Day (1993) starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, and Never Let Me Go (2010),  Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield.

As we predicted last week, the memoir phenomenon, H is for Hawk (Grove Press; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample), rises on the 3/15 NYT Hardcover Nonfiction best seller list from #8 to #5. More attention (and reprints) are on their way, so next week may see it rising even higher.

Landing at #2 in its first week on sale is a quite different memoir, by one of the founding band members of Sonic Youth,  Kim Gordon, Girl in a Band (HarperCollins/Dey Street; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample) Those sales were recorded before her appearance on Fresh Air this week.

Debuting at #3 is a title featured on NPR’s TED Radio Hour, Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It, Marc Goodman, (RH/Doubleday; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample)

The idea of never aging continues to appeal. Arriving at #9 is journalist Bill Gifford’s investigation of the various schemes to achieve that goal,  Spring Chicken: Stay Young Forever (or Die Trying), (Hachette/Grand Central). It was featured in Fresh Air.

And in fiction, The Girl on the Train continues to roar along at #1 after 7 weeks on the list, six of them in the top spot. The new fiction entries are all from the usual suspects.

Nonfiction comes to the fore next week, with the new book by Erik Larson getting review attention and holds to rival fiction. The ever-fascinating Duke and Duchess of Windsor are examined by celebrity chronicler Andrew Morton and readers advisors have a real-life ghost story to recommend.

The titles covered here, and several more notable titles arriving next week, are listed, with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of March 8, 2015

Holds Leaders

Last One Home, Debbie Macomber, (RH/Ballantine; RH & BOT Audio; RH Large Print; OverDrive Sample) — Known for her long-running series, Blossom Street and Cedar Cove series, Macomber now publishes a standalone about three sisters.

Cold Betrayal, Judith A. Jance, (S&S/Touchstone; S&S Audio; Thorndike;  OverDrive Sample) – Series character Ali Reynolds is joined in this novel by a “Taser-carrying nun.”

Endangered, C. J. Box, (Hachette/Grand Central) — the latest in the series featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett.

Advance Attention

Dead Wake, Erik Larson (RH/Crown; RH and BOT Audio; RH Large Print)

This one could also be counted as a Holds Leader. It has been picked by a wide range of booksellers, from the independents  (Indie Next, March) to Amazon and  COSTCO’s book buyer (promoted in the COSTCO Connection). Also a LibraryReads pick, it has received major advance review attention, with more sure to come. The author is scheduled to appear on tomorrow’s NPR Weekend Edition Saturday.

Upcoming Media Attention

17 Carnations: The Royals, the Nazis and the Biggest Cover-Up in History, Andrew Morton, (Hachette/Grand Central; OverDrive Sample)

We don’t have specifics on this one, but a book about the eternally fascinating Duke and Duchess of Windsor by the man who broke the first stories about Princess Diana’s marital woes can’t help but be media bait.

Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, Robert D. Putnam, (S&S)

Featured in this week;s New York Times Book Review, which notes it is by the author of the “instant-classic” Bowling Alone who now “brings his talent for launching a high-level discussion to a timely topic.” to the subject of income inequality and how it affects  children. The author is scheduled to appear on tomorrow’s NPR Weekend Edition.

Picks

Vanishing Girls, Lauren Oliver, (HarperCollins; Listening Library; OverDrive Sample)

A crossover LibraryReads pick for March:

Reminiscent of E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars, this book begs for a re-read after you finish it. Nick, the main character, is recovering from a devastating trauma. Her family life is turned upside down, and a longtime childhood friendship is strained due to her sister’s exploits. I recommend this book to anyone who loves to read multi-layered stories.” — Sybil Thompson, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Cleveland, OH

Two of Oliver’s earlier books, Panic and Before I Fall have been signed for movies.

A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara, (RH/Doubleday; OverDrive Sample)

Featured in the GalleyChatter column from last month, this book follows the post-college lives of four male friends into their 50’s, and is getting remarkable attention from librarians, with many ready to declare it their favorite of the year. The trade reviews are all strong, but  only Kirkus grants it a star. It is a long novel (700 pages), which is considered a plus by Publishers Weekly, “There is real pleasure in following characters over such a long period, as they react to setbacks and successes, and, in some cases, change. By the time the characters reach their 50s and the story arrives at its moving conclusion, readers will be attached and find them very hard to forget.”

American Ghost: A Family’s Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest, Hannah Nordhaus, (Harper; Tantor Audio; OverDrive Sample)

Picked by Entertainment Weekly one of “20 Books We’ll Read in 2015.” Their intriguing annotation, “A journalist roots out the truth about an ancestor who’s believed to be haunting a Santa Fe, N.M., hotel,” is borne out by the trade reviews. Booklist‘s starred review ends, “the book’s unique blend of genres and its excellent writing make it hard to put down.”