Janet Maslin is so enthralled with the memoir This Life is in Your Hands, that she dissolves into a booktalking cliche at the end of her NYT review, “If you want to know what happened, read it for yourself.”

In the book, author Melissa Coleman reveals what is was like to grow up with back-to-the-land zealot parents (her father, Elliot Coleman, is a major force in the organic farming movement and the author of several books on the subject). Maslin admits that it can be faulted for too much detail (“…the plink-plink of every freshly picked berry dropped in a bucket can almost be heard”) but, “More often, there is haunting power here, as well as lush, vivid atmosphere that is alluring in its own right.”

An excerpt appears in the April issue of O Magazine.

This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone Melissa Coleman Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Harper – (2011-04-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061958328 / 9780061958328

Knopf not only has a strong literary reputation, it is also known for bringing works in translation into the U.S.; a tradition that paid off spectacularly with Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series.

But reviewers are perplexed by Kyung-Sook Shin’s  Please Look After Mom, a book that has sold over a million copies in South Korea. On NPR’s Fresh Air last night, Maureen Corrigan said straight out, “I’m mystified as to why this guilt-laden morality tale has become such a sensation in Korea and why a literary house like Knopf would embrace it.” Reading the book made her fell like she “was stranded in a Korean soap opera decked out as serious literary fiction.”

Janet Maslin, in the daily NYT last week, detailed some of the book’s “Dickensian extremes,” rendering the plot twists laughable. Sister publication, the NYT Book Review, described the book more positively, calling it a “…raw tribute to the mysteries of motherhood,” but still didn’t communicate much enthusiasm for it.

Prepub reviews were much stronger. Library Journal said it “should be one of this year’s most-deserving best sellers.”

Libraries we checked are showing 4:1 hold ratios on light ordering.

The fourth in Cassandra Clare’s YA Mortal Instruments series, City of Fallen Angels (McElderry/S&S) releases today.

Meanwhile, the film based on the series is still being cast. Lily Collins, who is set to play heroine Clary Fray, was interviewed this week by MTV about the casting process, but didn’t spill any beans.

Collins, the daughter of musician Phil Collins, is currently a hot commodity in Hollywood. She debuted as Sandra Bullock’s daughter in Blind Side, and will appear this summer in Priest, based on the comic series and Abduction in the fall. She has been offered a role in Odd Thomas, based on the novel by Dean Koontz and is set to play Snow White in The Brothers Grimm: Snow White opposite Julia Roberts as the Evil Queen.

Congrats to librarian favorite, Jacqueline Winspear. Her latest book, A Lesson in Secrets, the eighth in her Maisie Dobbs mysteries (and the second to be published by Harper), lands at #6 on the 4/10 NYT hardcover fiction list, her highest spot to date (Among the Mad arrived at #9).

Also, to C.J. Box, whose Cold Wind (Putnam/Penguin), the 11th book to feature Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett, arrives at #10 on the list. Several in the series have been on the extended list, but this is the first to make the leap to the main list.

Titles to Watch

Please Look After Mom by Kyung Sook-Shin (Knopf) marks the first U.S. publication by the author, who is popular in South Korea, where this book sold more than a million copies. It’s about the self-absorbed family of a woman who gets lost in a Seoul train station and never reappears, and dramatizes the contrast between rural and city values that have lead to the family’s neglect of this selfless mother. Janet Maslin’s New York Times review doesn’t make it sound like it will jump the cultural divide, though it may help spur further media attention.

Say Her Name by Francisco Goldman (Grove) is this accomplished novelist’s fiction tribute to the wife he lost in a swimming accident in Mexico in 2007, and was excerpted in the New Yorker. It’s been selected as the #1 pick by independent booksellers for the month of April.

 Usual Suspects

I’ll Walk Alone by Mary Higgins Clark (S&S) gets the full treatment by the Wall St. Journal, with a cover story on the veteran mystery writer’s thriving career at age 83, and her children’s resistance to bringing in ghost writers to continue her mega-bestselling legacy when someday she is gone.

44 Charles Street by Danielle Steel (Delacorte) is the story of a 30-something gallery owner who takes in boarders at her West Village brownstone in New York City after her boyfriend leaves. Kirkus calls it, “classic Steel, phoned in. Much repetitious ruminating and a stultifying, unmusical prose style too often obstruct the intended edgy escapism.”

Miles to Go: The Second Journal of the Walk Series by Richard Paul Evans (Simon & Schuster) is the second installment in a series about an executive who loses everything and decides to walk from Seattle to Key West. Library Journal says, “the first book in this five-parter left him in Spokane, so in his search for hope he has a long way to go. . . . for some readers this walk got off to a slow start, so you might want to gauge interest before deciding how many to order.”

Elizabeth I by Margaret George (Viking) depicts the Virgin Queen as an actual virgin married to England, whose interests she pursues with shrewdness, courage, and wisdom borne of surviving the deaths of her family. Library Journal says the writing is formal “neither cinematic nor intimately personal,” and that the plot is “plodding,” with a focus more on accurate history than fiction that may “try the patience of casual readers.”

The Silver Boat by Luanne Rice (Pamela Dorman Books) is a portrait of three far-flung sisters who come home to Martha’s Vineyard one last time.

Mobbed: A Regan Reilly Mystery by Carol Higgins Clark (Scribner) finds private investigator Regan Reilly and her husband, Jack, head of the NYPD Major Case Squad, in a case that takes them through key sites in New Jersey.

The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown) brings back the Lincoln Lawyer for a “satisfying” case that pits him against a real-estate foreclosure mill, according to Kirkus.

Once Upon a Time, There Was You by Elizabeth Berg (Random House) follows the journey of a couple who meet again after their divorce. Library Journal calls it “classic Berg, who’s always beloved if not always tip-top best seller.”

The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer (Riverhead) is about a town where the women pull away from their men, as the high school puts on a production of Lysistrata (in which the women of Greece refuse to have sex until the men end the Peloponnesian War). Publishers Weekly calls it “a plodding story with a killer hook.”

Young Adult

City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Claire (Margaret K. Elderry) is the fourth book of the internationally bestselling series, and promises, love, temptation and betrayal.

Movie Tie-in

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides Junior Novel (Disney Press) marks the return of Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), and other familiar faces in the film release on May 20.

Libraries have long been frustrated by having to stick to on-sale dates. The issue is now entering public consiousness, with the controversy over David Foster Wallace’s highly-anticipated final novel, The Pale King, scheduled for publication on April 15 (Little, Brown’s countdown clock is shown at the left; stopped at the time we posted it).

[UPDATE: the on-sale date is not the issue in this case. While The Pale King‘s publication date is 4/15, when the promotion was scheduled to begin, the on-sale date was actually 3/22. That may be a moot point, however, since many stores and libraries have not yet received their copies].

Amazon and B&N.com released the book early, angering bricks and mortar stores, several of whom had midnight parties scheduled for 4/14, and making headlines in the NYT.

Adding insult to injury, reviews are also arriving early. Time magazine’s Lev Grossman calls it his “finest work.” The NYT‘s Michiko Kakutani says today that it’s “By turns breathtakingly brilliant and stupefying dull…”

The book has already risen to #10 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

Our “Book to Watch” this week is Lori Roy’s debut mystery Bent Road (Dutton/Penguin). It arrives with intense inhouse excitement, now being echoed by consumer reviews.

On the NPR Web site, Sarah Weinman warns,”Don’t be fooled by the novel’s apparent simplicity: What emerges from the surface is a tale of extraordinary emotional power, one of longstanding pain set against the pulsating drumbeat of social change…”

The 4/11 issue of People magazine (Elizabeth Taylor on the cover) bestows four stars on it (adding to the three it’s already received from the prepub reviewers), saying, “even the simplest scenes crackle with suspense.”

It’s an intriguing image; over 28,000 rubber ducks landing on beaches all over the world after being dumped from a ship in the North Pacific. Journalist Donovan Hohn was so taken with the story that he decided to follow the ducks. The resulting book hardly needs description; the incredibly long subtitle accomplishes that.

Featured on NPR’s Fresh Air last night, the book has also been widely reviewed. Libraries are showing heavy holds on modest orders.

Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them Donovan Hohn Retail Price: $27.95 Hardcover: 416 pages Publisher: Viking Adult – (2011-03-03) ISBN / EAN: 0670022195 / 9780670022199

Yesterday on the Today Show, Meredith Vieira interviewed JFK Jr’s ex-girlfriend, Christina Haag about her memoir, Come to the Edge. The interview did not address the issues that have made tabloid headlines (pot smoking, tantric sex), but instead focused on the book as a “beautiful tribute to John.”

Excerpted in the March issue of Vanity Fair, the book was also featured in USA Today and reviewed in the NYT last week. Libraries are showing light holds on modest ordering.

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

Two popular and long-running book series come to an end with the latest volumes published today. Judging by some of the reviews, readers may be better off returning to earlier volumes.

The Clan of the Cave Bear — The Land of Painted Caves (Crown/Random House) is the final volume in Jean M. Auel’s series, which began in 1980. USA Today says, “Auel has been driven by her insistence on accuracy, which is why it took more than three decades to publish the series,” but says, “Alas, her dedication to detail is what makes this final book interesting but not compelling.”

The Kurt Wallander series — in the NYT, Janet Maslin objects to the way Henning Mankell finishes off the star of his 22-yeqr-old series. In the final volume, The Troubled Man (Knopf/Random House), Maslin says the author sounds “fed up and bored” with him (she may be right; Mankell himself tells the Guardian why he is happy to say goodbye to Wallander). Although Maslin judges this a “successful stand-alone book” because Wallander, now 60, brings readers up to speed on the series by his ruminations on the past, she finds the novel overly focused on the character’s worries about his own mental and physical deterioration.

On the other hand, Marilyn Stasio, in her crime column in the NYT BR, says that Wallander is at “his gloomy best” in this final book.

A review on NPR’s All Things Considered last night called Peter Godwin’s book about Zimbabwe’s brutal dictator, Robert Mugabe, The Fear, “…a gut-wrenching portrait of Mugabe’s enormous political sadism — and the brave, heartbreaking, nearly superhuman resistance to it” and “…as important a book as we can read right now.”

The author was also interviewed on today’s Morning Edition.

The book is currently at #116 (up from #892 yesterday) on Amazon’s sales rankings.

The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe Peter Godwin Retail Price: $26.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Little, Brown and Company – (2011-03-23) ISBN / EAN: 031605173X / 9780316051736

It’s not unusual for a book to be used as part of a PR campaign. Howard Schultz has been remaking Starbucks since he took back control as hands-on CEO in 2008 and is now working to make sure the world knows it. He was interviewed earlier this month in the NYT and the WSJ. His just-released book is bringing even more media attention, including NPR’s Morning Edition today and CBS Evening News with Katie Couric last night. In addition, the book is excerpted in Newsweek.

Of the book, Fortune magazine says,

There may be more detail here than most readers really want, as when Schultz describes the weather outside his kitchen window… or what he wore to an important meeting with employees (“blue jeans and a dark gray sweater”).

But for anyone looking for insights on how to turn around a troubled giant brought low by overconfidence in its own success, Onward is essential reading

In the three years since he took back control of the company, Schultz has turned Starbuck’s share price around, earning him a $3.5 million bonus this year.

The book is now at #1 Amazon, but holds in libraries we checked are in line with modest ordering.

Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul Howard Schultz, Joanne Gordon Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 384 pages Publisher: Rodale Books – (2011-03-29) ISBN / EAN: 1605292885 / 9781605292885

This week marks the thirtieth anniversary of the attempted assassination of then President Ronald Reagan. CBS Sunday Morning looks at how close that call actually was.

Interviewed in the segment is Del Qentin Wilbur, author of a new book that discloses previously unknown details about the event. The book is titled Rawhide Down, after Reagan’s Secret Service code name.

The book rose to #79 on Amazon sales rankings as a result.

………………………….

Rawhide Down: The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan Del Quentin Wilber Retail Price: $27.00 Hardcover: 320 pages Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. – (2011-03-15) ISBN / EAN: 9780805093469 / 9780805093469

Audio; Macmillan; ISBN 9781427211835
Large Print; Center Point; 9781611730425; 4/1/11

Next week is dominated by new books in series (two of which are coming to an end), but one debut mystery may break through.

To Watch

The debut mystery Bent Road by Lori Roy, (Dutton/Penguin), arrives with the kind of inhouse excitement the publisher felt for Tana French’s breakout. It’s received stars from Kirkus, Library Journal and PW, and a review that reads like a star from Booklist, “Terrifying and touching, the novel is captivating from beginning to end.” Publishers Weekly called it “Midwestern noir with gothic undertones [that] is sure to make several 2011 must-read lists.”

Movie Tie-in

Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin, (St. Martin’s Mass Mkt., 9780312993177; Trade Pbk. 9780312600723). The tie-in arrives this week, the movie opens in theaters on May 6th, starring Kate Hudson and Ginnifer Goodwin. Check out the trailer here.

Usual Suspects

The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel (Crown) is the sixth and final book in the Earth’s Children series. Despite some long spells between books (the first, The Clan of the Cave Bear, came out in 1980; the most recent, The Shelters of Stone, in 2002), this one is hotly anticipated. It’s been on the Amazon Top 100 (now at #12) for 67 days.

The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell (Knopf) is, sadly, the final mystery featuring Kurt Wallander, which is likely to bring it extra media attention.

Lover Unleashed by J. R. Ward (NAL/Penguin), book nine in the Black Dagger Brotherhood vampire series, it’s getting a 300,000 printing.

Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later by Francine Pascal (St. Martin’s Press). The girls of the popular Sweet Valley High series, which began in 1983, are now grown up and what grownup fan can resist them? Entertainment Weekly‘s reviewer, for one. That former fan rates it a lowly C.

Mystery: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman, (Ballantine Books). The book is a mystery, but the title actually comes from the nickname of the murder victim in this 26th book featuring the L.A. psychologist/detective.

Nonfiction

Come to the Edge: A Memoir by Christina Haag (Spiegel & Grau). The ex-girlfriend of JFK Jr. revealed some supposed scandal (Tantric Sex! Marijuana! Thrill-seekng!) in an excerpt in Vanity Fair, riling up the tabloids. The book received more measured attention in an early review this week from Janet Maslin in the NYT. The author is scheduled to appear on the Today Show next week.

Addressing the issue of LGBT teen suicides yesterday, NPR’s Fresh Air spoke to the organizers of the It Gets Better Project, Terry Miller and Dan Savage. The project grew from a simple idea; ask adults to create videos reassuring LGBT teens that it’s worth surviving high school, because life does get better. Since the project began last fall, over 10,000 videos have been submitted from gay as well as straight people, including President Obama (a “historic moment” says Miller; the first time a US president has reached out to the LGBT community).

This week, Miller and Savage published a companion book to the It Gets Better Project, which is a collection of expanded essays and new material from people who have posted videos to the site, as well as new contributors, and resources for teachers.

A segment on the project is scheduled to air on ABC’s Nightline tonight.

It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living Retail Price: $21.95 Hardcover: 352 pages Publisher: Dutton/Penguin – (2011-03-22) ISBN / EAN: 0525952330 / 9780525952336