For his upcoming middle grade novel, The Marvels, Brian Selznick has created his first book trailer, just released.

The Wall Street Journal describes the month-long process the author and former professional puppeteer went through to build the sets and act out the story.

With The Invention of Hugo Cabret Selznick introduced a unique style of combining art and illustration which won him a Caldecott Medal and served as inspiration for Martin Scorsese in his film adaptation, Hugo. His next book Wonderstruck is also set for a big screen adaption, with Todd Haynes directing.

The Marvels
Brian Selznick
Scholastic, September 15, 2015
Hardcover and eBook

The debut novel The Art of Crash Landing by Melissa DeCarlo (Harper Paperbacks; HarperCollins Publishers and Blackstone Audio) tops the September LibraryReads List.

Patricia Kline-Millard (Bedford Public Library, Bedford, NH) offers this annotation of the paperback original:

“At once tragic and hilarious, this book is a roller coaster of a read. You’ll find yourself rooting for the snarky and impulsive but ultimately lovable Mattie. At the heart of this tale is a beautifully unraveled mystery that has led Mattie to her current circumstances, ultimately bringing her to her first real home.”

Three other debuts also make the list. Bill Clegg’s buzzy Did You Ever Have a Family (S&S/Gallery/Scout Press; S&S Audio), The Gates of Evangeline by Hester Young (Penguin/Putnam), and Girl Waits With Gun by Amy Stewart (HMH; Recorded Books).

This is Stewart’s fiction debut, after writing popular nonfiction such as The Drunken Botanist. Maggie Holmes (Richards Memorial Library, North Attleboro, MA ) has this to say of Stewart’s move to novels:

“When the Kopp sisters and their buggy are injured by Henry Kaufmann’s car, Constance Kopp at first just wants him to pay the damages. As she pursues justice, she meets another of Kaufmann’s victims, the young woman Lucy. Stewart creates fully developed characters, including the heroine, Constance, who is fiercely independent as she faces down her fears. The time period and setting are important parts of the story as well, providing a glimpse of 1914 New Jersey.”

More well-known names such as Lee Child, Lauren Groff, and Jonathan Evison also appear, with Arleen Talley (Anne Arundel County Public Library Foundation, Annapolis, MD) offering this annotation of Evison’s This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! (Algonquin; HighBridge Audio).

“Harriet Chance receives word that her recently deceased husband, Bernard, has won an Alaskan cruise. Deciding to go on the trip, she is given a letter from her close friend Mildred, with instructions not to open it until she is on the cruise. The contents of this letter shatter Harriet and she begins to reevaluate her life and her relationships.”

The September Indie Next list is also available and Clegg’s Did You Ever Have a Family is tops for the month among booksellers.

Other LibraryReads picks that overlap with the Indie list include Stewart’s Girl Waits With Gun, Charles Belfoure’s House of Thieves (Sourcebooks Landmark), Young’s The Gates of Evangeline, and Evison’s This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance!

Our recent Crystal Ball pick, In A Dark, Dark Wood (S&S/Galley/Scout Press; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample), also makes the bookseller’s picks.

With growing word of mouth, Ruth Ware’s In A Dark, Dark Wood (S&S/Gallery/Scout Press; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample) is poised to hit next week’s bestseller lists.

Featured on NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday with the wonderful headline “Scream Meets Agatha Christie,” it is also rising on Amazon, currently at #150.

Entertainment Weekly gave it an A- review, writing that the novel’s “foggy atmosphere and chilling revelations will leave you breathless.” As we noted earlier, it’s a LibraryReads pick for August and was one of GalleyChat’s unexpected BEA gems.

Holds are more than respectable on fairly light ordering.

NPR’s David Greene said that he began reading the book in a secluded park and that that was “a very bad idea. Even the title sends chills up the spine.” Here is the full interview:

Like the fashion industry, the book world has its seasonal cycles. The fall book lists are now upon us and this week Entertainment Weekly debuts their runway favorites.

Highlighting “13 Blockbuster Novels to Look Out For This Fall,” the magazine leads with The Story of the Lost Child (Europa Editions; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample) by Elena Ferrante. An underground literary cult favorite, this is the fourth and final book in her Neapolitan series.

If you need background (and you won’t be alone in that), check our rundown of praise for Ferrante. She has also  been the subject of Slate’s Audio Book Club (by the way, the Audio Book Club has now posted their August episode, featuring Go Set A Watchman – spoiler alert, they think it is a boring and pretty bad book).

Big names such as Franzen, Atwood, and Irving make the list of 13 but so do a few debuts including Knopf’s big investment, City on Fire (RH/Knopf; Random House Audio) by Garth Risk Hallberg, acquired for almost $2 million. Producer Scott Rudin also snapped up the movie rights.

Another buzzy title is Welcome to Night Vale (Harper Perennial; HarperAudio) by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. An expansion of their popular podcast of the same name, it got a boost and much attention after being widely suggested as a “what to listen to next” after the popular Serial. It was also
featured at this summer’s ALA.

The full list of fall titles selected by Entertainment Weekly  currently only available in print, is in the August 14th issue.

YouTube stars had their day at the recently wrapped VidCon. A surprising number of them have ventured in the the old media of books. Coming next week, internet star Felicia Day‘s memoir impresses booksellers, who made it one of their Indie Next picks.

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 Aug. 10, 2015

Holds Leaders

Silver Linings: A Rose Harbor Novel, Debbie Macomber, (RH/Ballantine)

Gaining advantage by being published in the midst of season three of the Hallmark series based on Macomber’s Cedar Cove novels starring Andie McDowell, this is the holds leader for the week.

Who Do You Love, Jennifer Weiner, (S&S/Atria)

Kirkus calls this one, “Weiner at her heartstring-tugging best.”

Devil’s Bridge, Linda Fairstein, (Penguin/Dutton)

Featured in a full-page ad in this week;s NYT Sunday Book Review, PW calls it subpar while Booklist says it is “Another solid title … sure to follow its predecessors onto the best-seller lists.”

Media Attention

The tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is coming soon and this week’s NYT Sunday Book Review marks it with a roundup featured on the cover, including Katrina: After the Flood, by Gary Rivlin, (S&S). Closer to the actual anniversary,  the author is set to appear on MSNBC-TV/Hardball with Chris Matthews, August 21 and NPR’s Diane Rehm Show, August 27.

Rivlin presents five surprising facts about the storm in the following video.

Reaching further back in history, the Today Show’s Al Roker is publishing The Storm of the Century: Tragedy, Heroism, Survival, and the Epic True Story of America’s Deadlest Natural Disaster: The Great Gulf Hurricane of 1900, (HarperCollins/Morrow).

Consumer Media Picks

Days of Awe, Lauren Fox, (RH/Knopf)

People “Book of the Week”, Aug 17:

“You can do everything right, yet when tragedy hits, ‘you’re staring at the moonscape that used to be your life.’ Isabel Moore learns this when her best friend, ‘the glorious roller-coaster that was Josie,’ dies on an icy highway. Iz has a loving husband and a good job, but suddenly she’s fact-to-face with dark truths about Josie and herself. As Fox deconstructs the myths of perfect womanhood, her humor and humanity remind us that love’s the only lifeboat through grief.” It’s also reviewed in this week’s NYT Sunday Book Review.

Peer Picks

In the Dark Places: An Inspector Banks Novel, Peter Robinson, (HarperCollins/Morrow)

Indie Next Pick:

“In the Dark Places, Robinson’s 22nd Inspector Banks novel, is still rich in the landscape and culture of Yorkshire. Still populated with characters moving through their lives, reacting to events, reaching for experiences, skills, relationships — and justice for victims. Still ingeniously plotted, challenging even the astute reader to keep up through the nerve-racking suspense. Still flush with the musicality of Robinson’s prose and with the love of music that is so much a part of Banks’ personality. And still shaping the story with local history and landmarks so that In the Dark Places, like each Banks novel before it, is unique, yet contributing to a remarkable portrait of modern Britain in all its insularity and diversity.” —Barbara Peters, The Poisoned Pen, Scottsdale, AZ

The Race for Paris, Meg Waite Clayton, (HarperCollins/Harper)

Indie Next Pick:

“The Race for Paris is an action-packed tale of courage, friendship, and love during the grim, final days of World War II. Clayton’s triumphant new novel brings to life the intrepid female journalists who sought to break the limits of the times. While soldiers faced the brutal reality of war, women had to also overcome sexism and legal obstacles simply to do their jobs. Based on real characters and events, The Race for Paris brings a unique perspective to a little-known aspect of history. Gather your book club and prepare for an intense conversation as these characters will haunt you long after you turn the final page!” —Pamela Klinger-Horn, Excelsior Bay Books, Excelsior, MN

Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal, Wendy S. Walters, (Sarabande Books)

Indie Next Pick:

“In Multiply/Divide, Walters sifts through the weird, quietly horrifying wreckage that structural racism has left behind in everyday American life and presents something like a mythology, but stranger because, of course, it is real, and we have never known life without it. Her prose is as clear as day, her stories are candid, and only a poet could have written a book of essays like this. City by city, over radio waves and under the street, Walters beautifully maps for us what should have been obvious: that nearly all of our heartbreak — and even our joy — is rooted in this mythology.” —Daniel Poppick, BookCourt, Brooklyn, NY

You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost): A Memoir, Felicia Day, (S&S/Touchstone)

A YouTube star featured at this year’s VidCon, this memoir is also an Indie Next Pick:
“Day has penned what is sure to be an instant cult classic. By turns funny, insightful, inspiring, and all-too-familiar, she maps her rise from lonely homeschooled girl to internet darling, along the way revealing her struggles, her insecurities, her stubbornness, and, most transparently, her utterly relatable story of finding her way while not fitting in. For anyone who has woken up to realize they are not where they wanted to be, Day’s honest book is for you!” —Anna Eklund, University Book Store, Seattle, WA

For more on YouTube stars and their books, see our earlier story.

Tie-ins

it’s a big week for adaptations in theaters. Finally debuting today is Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places (reviews are not strong, however) as well as The Diary Of A Teenage Girl and an animated version of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.

Oddly, both of the movie tie-ins coming out next week are for films that don’t yet have a release date.

A Woman in Arabia : The Writings of the Queen of the Desert, Gertrude Bell, Georgina Howell, (Penguin Classics)

Called “the “female Lawrence of Arabia.” Gertrude Bell was a  Middle East expert who lived with Bedouin tribes and helped the British army find their way in the desert during the World War I. This is the latest of several collections of Bell’s writings is published to coincide with Werner Herzog movie Queen of the Desert, starring Nicole Kidman as Bell with James Franco, Robert Pattinson and Damian Lewis. The U.S. release date has not yet been announced.

The Dressmaker, Rosalie Ham, (Penguin Books)

Called a “revenge comedy,” the movie stars Kate Winslet, Judy Davis and Liam Hemsworth. It is adapted from a best selling Australian novel which is getting its first U.S. release. The film’s U.S. release date has not yet been set, however.

For our full list of upcoming adaptations, see our Books to Movies and TV and our listing of tie-ins.

“The smart summer thriller you’ve been waiting for. The black and harmful little book you want in your carry-on. The novel you should be reading tonight.” WOW — that’s what NPR’s Jason Sheehan says of Christopher Yates debut novel Black Chalk (Macmillan/Picador; OverDrive Sample).

In a review any writer would kill for, Sheehan reports that Yates “writes like he has 30 books behind him; like he’s been doing this so long that lit games and deviltry come to him as natural as breathing… I don’t want to say a word. And not because I don’t love the book (I do, deeply and weirdly), but because I want you to go into it cold, knowing nothing and expecting nothing, like I did. I want you to suck it down in one breath, like a lungful of dark water. For it to hit you the same way it did me: like a sucker punch delivered slowly and with exquisite precision.”

It’s also an IndieNext pick:

In Black Chalk, Yates has taken the traditional novel and tweaked it to create something very special. In Thatcher-era England, six first-year Oxford University students have come together as friends. As they get to know each other, an idea forms and quickly gains traction: they should play a ‘game,’ with the loser facing a consequence. All six agree, and the dares begin as innocuous fun. As time goes on, however, something shifts within the group and the stakes become much higher — even deadly. Fourteen years later, the remaining players meet in New York City to finish the ‘game,’ but what has transpired for them in the interim? And is winning worth the price? A gripping, sinister, and suspenseful read.”—Peggy Elefteriades, R.J. Julia Booksellers, Madison, CT.

Jamie Lubin of The Huffington Post gets in on the game too, saying the novel “reminds me of a Hitchcock film: multiple twists and reveals, the suspenseful IV drip of information Yates doles out to the reader with a master hand, the shadowy yet intense secrets locked inside the characters while they struggle to maintain composure, the ominous atmospheres of Oxford and New York — so seemingly opposite but equally threatening.”

Debut novels can sometimes slip out of mind. The next time a reader asks for a twisty clever thriller and has exhausted the usual suspects, try to remember Black Chalk.

On NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday, Susan Casey talks about  her new book Voices in the Ocean: A Journey into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins (RH/Doubleday; RH and BOT Audio; OverDrive Sample), sending the book charging up the Amazon rankings.

In a fascinating and lengthy interview Casey details sections from her book including stories about dolphin researchers investigating language acquisition, her own unexpected swim with a pod of spinners, the astounding attributes of dolphins, and the threats facing them today.

In the following clip from the audio narrated by Cassandra Campbell, Casey explains what draws her to scuba diving, even when there is a threat of sharks.

Casey, an experienced ocean adventure writer, has also published the bestselling books The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean and The Devil’s Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America’s Great White Sharks.

Holds are steady on fairly light ordering.

Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success by Michael D’Antonio (Macmillan/Thomas Dunne; Oct. 6) will be in the hands of readers sooner than first planned.

Originally scheduled for release in January, it will now be issued in early October in response to “high demand and heightened interest in Republican Presidential candidate Trump,” reports Entertainment Weekly. The LA Times adds that the biography will feature information gathered from interviews with Trump’s children and his ex-wives.

An update of Trump’s own 2011 book, Time to Get Tough: Making America Great Again (Regnery Publishing) is set for publication on Aug. 31. The burst on the cover, “Updated for 2016” indicates this may be his campaign book (the original, published in 2011, came out before the 2012 elections. He had hinted he would run then but ended up dropping out).

Neither book, however, will be available before the first Republican debates, scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday, August 6 at 9 p.m EST.

Trump has published many books. Carlos Lozada, nonfiction book critic of The Washington Post, binge-read all eight of them and reports he “encountered a world where bragging is breathing and insulting is talking, where repetition and contradiction come standard, where vengefulness and insecurity erupt at random.” He doubts Trump would be satisfied if he actually became President, quoting him on what makes him happy, “The same assets that excite me in the chase, often, once they are acquired, leave me bored … For me, you see, the important thing is the getting, not the having.”

It may be hard to believe, but next week we head into the fall publishing season. It will be a while before we begin to see multiple marquee name authors dominate . The only one this week is James Patterson with Alert, co-authored by Michael Ledwidge (Hachette/Little, Brown).

But we do have a cornucopia of peer recommendations, eleven titles from Indie Next alone. We’ve highlighted the ones getting the most buzz below and have included them all in this collection.

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 8/3/15

Advance Attention

The Man Who Wasn’t There: Investigations into the Strange New Science of the Self, Anil Ananthaswamy, (Penguin/Dutton)

isn’t the only way the brain can go wrong. In this book Ananthaswamy examines the many ways the brain can go wrong, including Alzheimer’s  and body integrity identity disorder, or BIID, a which can make a person turn on his own body. .On Fresh Air, 7/28, Ananthaswamy tells Terry Gross the story of a man who had his healthy leg amputates because he had become convinced it wasn’t his own. The book is reviewed in the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, which calls it “a blazingly original excursion through the brain.”

Consumer Media Picks

Villa America, Liza Klaussmann, (Hachette/Little, Brown)

People “Pick of the Week,” 8/10/15 — “In the fictionalized look at 1920s socialites Sara and Gerald Murphy — real life inspirations for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night — party central is the Cote d’Azur and the players include novelists, painters and a stoic WW1 pilot Fitzgerald fans may go mad trying to separate truth from fantasy, but Klaussmann’s portrait of a marriage that endured many temptations (including Hemingway!) is intriguing and tender to the bone.”

Trust No One: A Thriller, Paul Cleave, (S&S/Atria)

People pick, 8/10/15 –“Jerry Grey, a thriller writer with early-onset Alzheimer’s, confesses a horrific murder to the police. Or is his jumbled mind just reciting the plot of his first bestseller? And why are cops convinced he really HAS killed someone — a crime he can’t remember? Cleave’s whirligig plot mesmerizes as Jerry fights his decline and tries to put together the pieces.?

Peer Picks

The Marriage of Opposites, Alice Hoffman

Indie Next:
“Hoffman’s newest novel is based on the life of Rachel Pomie Petit Pissarro and her favorite son, Camille, who would become the famed ‘Father of impressionism.’ Growing up in a Jewish refugee community on tropical St. Thomas in the 1800s, strong-willed Rachel dreams of the cool, rainy streets of Paris. Raised by a stern mother and a kind-hearted father, Rachel is forced to marry a widower to save her family’s business and later follows forbidden passions, creating a scandal that turns her community against her. Hoffman fills the pages with the island’s magic and color in this unforgettable tale of what it means to walk the tightrope between tradition and independence, love and logic.” —Julia Sinn, Bookshop Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA

LibraryReads:
“Exquisite… Alice Hoffman’s finest work to date. The Marriage of Opposites is a beautiful love story of a man and woman and a mother and child intricately woven together to capture the author’s true message: Love more, not less.” — Marianne Colton, Lockport Public Library, Lockport, NY

Alice Hoffman talks about the inspiration for the book in the following video:

In a Dark, Dark Wood, Ruth Ware, (S&S/Gallery/Scout Press)

LibraryReads:
“Leonora Shaw is a crime writer who lives a solitary life in London until she receives an invitation to a hen party for a friend she hasn’t seen in nearly ten years. The party takes place in a remote location with spotty phone service. Are you nervous yet? We know from the opening pages that something horrible happens, but just what, and to whom, how, and why will keep readers guessing — and flipping the pages. Recommended for fans of The Girl on the Train.” Vicki Nesting, St. Charles Parish Library, Destrehan, LA

Entertainment Weekly:
“… you’ll find it almost impossible to put this twisting, electrifying debut down … it’s foggy atmosphere and shilling revelations will leave you breathless.” A-

Lord of the Wings: A Meg Langslow Mystery, Donna Andrewsm, (Macmillan/Minotaur)

LibraryReads:
“It’s Halloween in Caerphilly and the town has come up with another festival to bring in the tourists. Meg Langslow is heading up the “Goblin Patrol”, there’s trouble at the Haunted House, and body parts are being found at the zoo. Meg is once again called in to save the day and solve the crime. If you enjoy your mysteries packed with humor and fun, don’t miss this return to Caerphilly with Meg and her zany family and friends.” — Karen Emery, Johnson County Public Library, Franklin, IN

Fishbowl : A Novel, Bradley Somer, (Macmillan/St. Martin’s)

Indie Next:
“Somer uses the unusual device of a goldfish plunging off of a high-rise balcony to tie together the disparate stories of the building’s inhabitants. As our hero, Ian, plummets past floor after floor, he glimpses the lives of the residents — witnessing birth, heartbreak, new love, and all of the pathos and wonder that comprise human existence. Although Ian has only a goldfish’s seconds-long capacity for memory, readers will find themselves returning to the essential truths of Somer’s characters again and again.” —Jill Miner, Saturn Booksellers, Gaylord, MI

The U.K. book trailer is our pick of the week:

Tie-ins

Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal, Dick Lehr, Gerard O’Neill, (PublicAffairs)

Boston crime boss beginning in the early 1970s,, Whitey Bulger wasn’t found guilty of his multiple murders and other crimes until 2013, a verdict greeted by the Hollywood press as providing a convenient ending for the biopic.

Published last year, Whitey Bulger: America’s Most Wanted Gangster and the Manhunt That Brought Him to Justice by Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy (Norton, 2/11/13) was featured on NPR’s Fresh Air and described as not only a fascinating story, but “just a great read.”

He was called “Whitey” for his balding white blonde hair, which meant that Johnny Depp had to change his look for the role.

The movie opens 9/18/2015 (for our full list of upcoming adaptations, see our Books to Movies and TV and our listing of tie-ins).

A new trailer was released this week.

The Scorch Trials Movie Tie-in Edition (Maze Runner, Book Two), James Dashner, (RH/Delacorte hardcover; Trade Paperback)

The second movie in the series opens 9/18/15. A third movie, The Death Cure, 2/17/17. For once, it looks like the finale of a series will not be split into two movies.

The second trailer was released last week:

Editors Note: GalleyChatter Robin Beerbower is off this month and we’re grateful to one of our go-to readers advisors, Jennifer Dayton of Darien (CT) Public Library for stepping in to write about the titles librarians were buzzing about during July’s post-ALA GalleyChat:

There was still a lot of buzz this month among GalleyChatters for the titles by authors that thrilled them at BEA such as Kitchens of the Great Midwest, Fates and Furies, The Art of Crash Landing and Best Boy, (recently selected as the LibraryReads #1 pick for August), but excitement is also beginning to surface for some other titles.

The majority of the new titles are from familiar and beloved authors, titles we’d expect to see on everyone’s TBR piles, such as Louise Penney’s continuation of the Inspector Gamache series, The Nature of the Beast (Minotaur/Macmillan August), Geraldine Brooks’ The Secret Chord  (Viking/Penguin, October) as well as JoJo Moyes’ sequel to the surprise hit Me Before You entitled, of course, After You (Pamela Dorman/Penguin, September). But not all the authors are well-known and two debut memoirs are also getting word of mouth.

Familiar but not predictable:

Chris Bohjalian is a favorite among GalleyChatters, but he is always a surprise because you don’t know what subject he will tackle next. The Guest Room (RH/Doubleday, Jan) is the  story of a bachelor party that’s worse than anything imagined in the Hangover movies. The fallout opens the fault-line cracks in the life of main character, Richard Chapman. As always with Bohjalian, he is interested in larger topics, in this case the failure to ensure  women’s rights globally. Susan Balla (Fairfield Public Library, Fairfield, CT) says, “Chris Bohjalian is a master of writing a woman’s point of view”.

.
Kristi Chadwick (Advisor, Massachusetts Library System) was so engrossed in Karin Slaughter’s standalone Pretty Girls (RH/Delacorte, Sept.) that she got sunburned while reading it on the San Francisco docks during ALA. Kristi calls it “a fabulous standalone  There is a lot more to discover than the whereabouts of a missing girl, and the revelations keep coming long after you think the answers are found. It’s a stomach-dropping roller-coaster of a thriller.”

Katie Dunneback (@younglibrarian, Washington DC) was not alone in her excitement about Along the Infinite Sea by Beatriz Williams (Penguin/Viking, Nov).  “Williams ties off her Schuyler Sisters trilogy with the story of beautiful young woman trying to hide, a restored antique car whose origin in Nazi Germany is unknown, and the rich older woman who may have the answers for both.”

The hot-button topic of teen bullying is examined in The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs by Martin Dicks (Macmillan.St, Martins, September). Jennifer Winberry (Hunterdon County Library, NJ) says that readers will “be glad when Caroline Jacobs returns to confront her former BFF who turned on her and finds that things have not gone so well for her.” That IS the perfect comeback.

Non-Fiction:

Andrienne Cruz, (Adult Services Librarian, Azusa City Library, CA) managed to score a rare ARC of The Witches by Stacy Schiff (Hachette/Little, Brown, Oct) at BEA.  She says that, “It is not something you can regard lightly, the writing is very detailed in such a way that allows readers to discover for themselves how the Salem trials could have resulted the way they did. The reader will search for clues within and will feel bewitched in how Schiff’s research unfolds itself like magic.”

Black Man in a White Coat:  A Doctor’s Reflection on Race and Medicine by Damon Tweedy (Macmillan/Picador, Sept) was a BEA Editor’s Buzz choice and Tracy Babiasz (Chapel Hill Public Library, NC) backs that up. She calls this memoir of a black doctor trying to find his way “Equal parts objective and empathetic.” and applauds it for its “fascinating study of relationship between race and medicine.”

Two other memoirs, Home is Burning by Dan Marshall (Macmillan/Flatiron Books, Oct) and Furiously Happy; A Funny Book About Horrible Things  by Jenny Lawson  (Macmillan/Flatiron, Sept), got a lot of love from GalleyChatters for the humor used in exploring the serious subjects of cancer and ALS (Home is Burning) and depression (Furiously Happy).

And finally, The Natural World of Winnie the Pooh; A Walk Through the Forest that Inspired the Hundred Acre Wood  by Kathryn Aalto (Workman/ Timber, Oct) seemed to be on multiple To Be Read piles.  While Vickie Nesting and I confessed that we do indeed pick it up and “fondle it” frequently, we haven’t cracked it yet.

Perhaps it will come up at the next GalleyChat, Tuesday, August 4th,  4:00-5:00 (ET) with virtual cocktails at 3:30. Please join us.

What challenge will super-hacker Lisbeth Salander, the main character in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series, take on next?

The NSA, of course.

That’s one of the “key details” about the plot released today by British publisher MacLehose Press and reported in the Guardian.

Swedish writer David Lagercrantz was authorized by Larsson’s estate, managed by his father and brother, to write The Girl in the Spider’s Web as a sequel to the third title in the series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, (2009).

Not everyone is happy about the publication. Larsson’s long-time domestic partner, Eva Gabrielsson who lost a bitter dispute over who would manage the writer’s estate, says this book titled That Which Does Not Kill Us in Swedish, would have made Larsson “furious. Who knows, maybe he’ll send a lightning bolt at the book launch.” She claims to have 200 pages of a fourth novel by Larsson and will never allow them to be published.

The Girl in the Spider’s Web: A Lisbeth Salander novel, continuing Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series
David Lagercrantz
RH/Knopf; RH Audio; RH Large Print
September 1, 2015

As we previewed in March, the Star Wars books are coming, spinning off from the new movie, Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens, premiering on Dec. 18^th.

One of the titles we highlighted, Star Wars: Aftermath (RH/Del Rey/Lucas Books; Random House Audio, 9/15/15) by Chuck Wendig, is now excerpted on the Entertainment Weekly web site.

As Robin Nesbit, Columbus Metro Library, said when presenting the book at BEA’s Librarian Shout ’n’ Share program, libraries that don’t buy the  Star Wars books are missing some powerful “silent circulators,” adding that this one is by one of the series’ best authors.

Wendig has his own fans as well. His next book Blackbirds  (S&S/Saga Press; OverDrive Sample) comes out on the heels of Aftermath. A supernatural thriller about a woman who knows how people will die the moment she touches them, it is in development as a TNT TV series, with production expected to begin in October.

Carly Simon, perhaps most famous for the song You’re So Vain, is the daughter of one of the founders of Simon & Schuster.

She finally makes a foray into the family business (although not with the family company), with her first book, a memoir entitled Boys in the Trees (Macmillan/Flatiron; 9781250095893; Nov. 24). UPDATE: as one of our astute commenters notes, this is not Simon’s first time publishing. She has written children’s book.

While speculation is circling whether Simon will reveal the subject of her iconic song, neither the publisher nor the singer is saying right now.

Simon does share the scope of her book, however, in a widely quoted statement picked up by Entertainment Weekly, People, and the LA Times: “This book is my way of going back through my childhood, my music, my romances, my marriage … and trying to make sense of it all…I’ve been working on it for so long that it feels like my third child … but now it’s time to send that child out in the world.  It’s one of the most frightening — and exciting — things I’ve ever done.”

Boys in the Trees is due November 24^th and joins other popular musician memoirs like Patti Smith’s Just Kids and Keith Richard’s Life. Smith’s new memoir, M Train (RH/Knopf; RH Audio) hits shelves on Oct 6^th.

“If you like to read, we’ve got some news for you. The second half of 2015 is straight-up, stunningly chock-full of amazing books” proclaims the online literary magazine The Millions introducing the second part of their list of the year’s “Most Anticipated” upcoming books.

A handy overview of the season by literary insiders, the list contains over eighty titles, including the big children’s book of the season, The Marvels (Scholastic) by Brian Selznick which The Millions says “weaves together two seemingly unrelated stories told in two seemingly unrelated forms: a largely visual tale that begins with an 18th-century shipwreck, and a largely prose one that begins in London in 1990.”

The Millions follows up their big (mostly literary fiction) list with a Nonfiction list.

On June 18^th Pope Francis entered the climate change debate with his 184-page papal letter calling the issue a “principal challenge” of our age, placing the cause firmly at the door of human activity, and saying “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.”

His comments and call for action centered within a moral and religious context triggered headlines and OpEds.

The letter has been available free online, but on August 4th Melville House will release it in print under the title Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality: On Care for Our Common Home.

The independent publisher has a history of making special reports such as this more widely accessible in book form. Last December they published The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture, which sold out its initial 50,000 print run in a single day.

The publication will arrive just before the  Pope come to the US at the end of September for a three-stop whirlwind tour.