Many of you are already aware of Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal by Conor Grennan (Morrow), from the author’s appearances at BEA and ALA. It’s the story of 29-year-old Grennan’s transformative experience volunteering in a Kathmandu orphanage, and going above and beyond the call of duty to reunite children taken from their parents by war-profiteers. It’s received a strong recommendation from SLJ’s Adult Books for Teens blogger Angela Carstensen.

Of course, it is drawing comparisons to Three Cups of Tea, but Carstensen says, “Conor has a wonderful voice all his own: self-deprecating sense of humor, and a real affection for his young charges, combined with a story of survival and rescue in a civil-war torn country. Perfect for summer reading, all-school reading, and One Book, One Community Reads.”

You will be hearing about this book in the media. Reuters profiled Grennan this week (also featured on the Huffington Post), USA Today is planning a profile, and the book is the #2 Indie Next Pick for February and, it is Costco’s Book Buyer’s pick for February. Grennan he will be making several appearances in libraries as part of his book tour.

Libraries are already showing holds that triple the modest orders.

Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal Conor Grennan Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: William Morrow – (2011-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061930059 / 9780061930058

Thorndike; LP edition; 2/16; ISBN 9781410435279; $31.99

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

Live and Let Love: Notes from Extraordinary Women on the Layers, the Laughter, and the Litter of Love by Andrea Buchanan (Gallery) is a collection describing women facing various hardships. Buchanan will appear on Good Morning America on February 3.

Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age by Susan Jacoby (Pantheon) refutes the misconception of carefree old age usually perpetuated by sellers of “anti-aging” products. Kirkus calls it, “a cogently argued and well-written corrective to the fantasy of beating old age.”

Of the debut novels going on sale next week, Swamplandia!, by New Yorker “20 Under 40″ writer Karen Russell, looks like one of the most promising. It builds on a short story from her 2006 collection St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and tells the tale of the Bigtree family, operators of an alligator wrestling tourist attraction deep in the Everglades, after their star wrestler dies of cancer.

EW gives it an A- for “its effortless prose and its small, beautifully drawn cast of characters…while the novel deals in ghosts, whether actual ectoplasms or just unexorcisable memories, the characters, and their tale of family lost and found, remain triumphantly alive.”

Libraries we checked are showing orders in line with holds.

Swamplandia! Karen Russell Retail Price: $24.95 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Knopf – (2011-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0307263991 / 9780307263995

Usual Suspects

Deep Black: Death Wave by Stephen Coonts and William H. Keith (St. Martin’s) follows NSA operatives trying to stop a terrorist plot to cause a cataclysmic landslide in the Canary Islands. PW is not impressed: “Coonts and Keith employ a laundry list of familiar elements in their ho-hum third Deep Black thriller.”

Fatal Error: A Novel by J.A. Jance (Touchstone), the sixth mystery with journalist-turned-police officer Ali Reynolds, gets love from PW: “the plot never stalls and leads to a logical and exciting finale.”

In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor V by David Weber (Baen) continues the science fiction Honor Harrington series.

Young Adult Novels

Delirium by Lauren Oliver (HarperCollins), the follow-up to the bestselling debut Before I Fall (2010), takes place in a dystopian near future where love is considered a disease and is erradicated by mandatory medical procedures. PW says, “Oliver’s nightmare future lacks a visceral punch, primarily because of the weakness of the world-building. Her America has undergone a seismic shift, but the economic, religious, and cultural ramifications are all but ignored.”

Silverlicious by Victoria Kann (HarperCollins) continues the Pinkalicious children’s book series. PW says, “ungrateful Pinkalicious eventually learns that real sweetness comes from inside, but readers may wonder why it takes so long for the heroine to change her tune.”

Also Worth Watching

Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino (Minotaur)  is the U.S. debut of one of Japan’s bestselling crime novelists, about a woman who kills her abusive ex-husband, and hides the body with her neighbor, while seeking the ultimate logical alibi. The Wall St. Journal says, “Whether it amounts to math, philosophy, psychology or cosmology, The Devotion of Suspect X is an elegant literary experiment. It suggests, among much else, that a lot of bad behavior is forgiven in the name of genius—and then even a genius can push the envelope just so far before it breaks.”

The Oracle of Stamboul by Michael David Lukas (HarperCollins) is a debut novel about a child prodigy in 19th century Turkey who has a profound effect on itspolitical and cultural leaders. Baker & Taylor included it in its Galley Mailing for November, and librarians are giving it enthusiastic early reads. LJ says “first novel by a promising young writer is both vivid historical fiction and a haunting fable. It will appeal to a wide range of readers.”

The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale (Twelve) is the fictional memoir of a talking, reading chimpanzee held for murder, who goes on the lam with a woman who becomes his lover. It was highlighted at the BEA Editors Buzz Panel by Associate Publisher Cary Goldstein. And despite the questionable premise, it gets an enthusiastic review in New York Newsday, which calls it “one rollicking story. Adventure tale, love story, science fiction, novel of ideas – this one’s got it all.”

Prayers and Lies by Sherri Wood Emmons (Kensington) is a debut novel about two young girls and a family secret, set in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia. LJ says it’s “a bit like a West Virginia version of the 1998 Todd Solondz film “Happiness”—technically good, but everyone will need a quick jolt of antidepressants afterward. Readable, but only for those with a penchant for realistic, dark stories.”

We’re fans of author Francisco Goldman, so we’re excited to hear that Monday’s New Yorker will feature a piece adapted from Goldman’s forthcoming book, Say Her Name, to be published by Grove Press in April 2011. Below is  the publisher’s description,

In the summer of 2007, acclaimed writer Francisco Goldman’s young wife Aura Estrada died from injuries sustained in a surfing accident on a beach in Mexico. Blamed for Aura’s death by her family and blaming himself, Goldman wanted to die too. But instead, he wrote Say Her Name–a deeply personal novel about Aura and his life with her, weighing the glorious gifts of their shared journey against its heavy costs.

Several librarians were attended special dinners that Grove Atlantic gave for Goldman (the one in San Francisco was co-sponsored by EarlyWord).

Copies of the book as an eGalley are available on NetGalley.

Say Her Name: A Novel Francisco Goldman Retail Price: $24.00 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Grove Press – (2011-04-05) ISBN / EAN: 0802119816 / 9780802119810

Time magazine confirms that the anonymous author of O: A Presidential Novel is Mark Salter (as guessed by Page Six).

Both Salter and S&S Publisher Jonathan Karp declined to comment, but Time says the identity has been confirmed “by sources.”

Maybe:

A recent tweet about Tiger Mother — “In China, Amy Chua is ‘American Mom.'”

On Colbert last night, Chua said that she thinks the values she tries to instill in her children are fundamental American values.

Jonathan Karp on the Today Show:

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

In this age of text messaging, it’s comforting to know that the book How to Write a Sentence can become a best seller.

Stanley Fish’s book rose to #15 on Amazon’s sales rankings after he appeared on NPR’s Talk of the Nation yesterday (listen here).

Fish lists his top five favorite sentences on Slate yesterday (does it say something that the most recent one is from 1935?). Slate is also running a contest; readers list their favorite sentences and Fish will pick the best one. The contest runs through midnight, Eastern on Thursday; let’s see a librarian win this one.

How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One Stanley Fish Retail Price: $19.99 Hardcover: 176 pages Publisher: Harper – (2011-02-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061840548 / 9780061840548

One of the most reviewed books recently is David Vann’s Caribou Island, which arrives with high expectations, as signaled by an author profile by Charles McGrath featured on the Jan. 15 cover of the NYT‘s Arts section.

McGrath says that the book had already been “enthusiastically” reviewed in the Washington Post, a strange description for a review that begins by suggesting the reader, “Approach David Vann’s first novel the way you would a fresh grave – with a mixture of fascination and fear,” and concludes with,

…is the ending too much, too Gothic, too masochistic in its determination to make these hapless characters pay for surviving, for imagining that hope isn’t a cheat? As the final pages rise into the piercing registry of Cormac McCarthy… some readers may spot Vann’s thumb on the scale, making sure every drop of agony is paid. But just wait: For a few moments after this perfectly choreographed horror, it’s impossible to say anything at all.

It’s a curious dilemma; how do you recommend a book about a disintegrating marriage that ends with little hope? It’s echoed in subsequent reviews:

NYT BR; Caribou Island gets to places other novels can’t touch. By the end, I felt the senseless logic of the dream. Though it wears the clothes of realism — the beautiful exactness of the language, the unerring eye for detail — it takes us someplace darker, older, more powerful than the daylit world.

Alan Cheuse, All Things Considered; NPR, Despite multiple story lines, which…appear somewhat badly nailed together, Caribou Island builds to an horrific climax and stands as an engrossing and disturbing work of art.

Seattle Times; a beautifully gloomy debut novel.

San Francisco Chronicle; David Vann portrays a failing marriage with stinging precision. The slow boil of pent-up resentments rang so true, I found myself wanting reassurance from my own spouse that all was well…Abounding in language that heightens our senses for the next evocative metaphor, Caribou Island gives us a climax as haunting and realized as any in recent fiction.

Cleveland Plain Dealer;  Vann… tips his book into horror, and then grinds out the last ember like a cigarette butt. It burns for a long, queasy time.

It seems readers are not put off; many libraries are showing high hold ratios on light ordering.

Caribou Island: A Novel David Vann Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Harper – (2011-01-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061875724 / 9780061875724

Blackstone Audio;UNABR; read by Bronson Pinchot
OverDrive; Adobe EPUB eBook; OverDrive WMA Audiobook

Amy Chua’s book has been out for less than two weeks, but already “Tiger Mother” has passed into the lexicon. She appears on the Colbert Report tomorrow night.

Holds are rising quickly; several libraries have reordered aggressively.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother Amy Chua Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The – (2011-01-11) ISBN / EAN: 1594202842 / 9781594202841

Penguin Audio; UNABR; 6 Hours; 5 CDs; ISBN 9780142429105; $29.95

The number one book on Amazon at the moment is The Investment Answer by Daniel C. Goldie and Gordon S. Murray (Business Plus), which offers a conservative blueprint for average investors.

The hardcover publication coincides with the death of author Murray last Saturday. Originally self-published, it was picked up by the Business Plus imprint of Grand Central Publishing following coverage in a “Your Money” column by Ron Lieber in the New York Times.

Libraries we checked are behind the demand on this one – either they don’t have it, or have high holds on modest orders.

The Investment Answer Daniel C. Goldie, Gordon S. Murray Retail Price: $18.00 Hardcover: 96 pages Publisher: Business Plus – (2011-01-25) ISBN / EAN: 1455503304 / 9781455503308

Other Notable Nonfiction Coming Next Week

The Next Decade: Where We’ve Been… and Where We’re Going by George Friedman (Doubleday) is a Machiavellian analysis of possible near future geopolitical events by the author The Next 100 Years.

The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos by Brian Greene (Knopf) explores the limits of modern cosmology’s understanding of the “multiverse.” PW says, “With his inspired analogies starring everyone from South Park’s Eric Cartman to Ms. Pac-Man and a can of Pringles, Greene presents a lucid, intriguing, and triumphantly understandable state-of-the-art look at the universe.”

Neptune’s Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal by James D. Hornfischer (Bantam) recounts the tumultuous experiences of the U.S. Navy in early battles against the Japanese during World War II. In a starred review, Booklist says, “as in his first two books, the author’s narrative gifts and excellent choice of detail give an almost Homeric quality to the men who met on the sea in steel titans.”

Among the new fiction arriving next week, the trade paperback original novel Pictures of You by Caroline Leavitt looks like one worth watching. The story about the aftermath of a car collision between two women fleeing their marriages, which ends fatally for one of them, is an Oprah magazine pick for January, and a special pick of Costco buyer Pennie Ianniciello, a well-known market mover.

It’s often said that publishing original trade paperbacks is a risky business because reviewers tend to overlook them. This is clearly not the case for Pictures of You, which has already received admiring attention from the San Francisco Chronicle and from Carolyn See in today’s Washington Post.

Most libraries we checked had solid orders, with reserves of 3:1 or more. Take advantage of the less expensive format and buy extra copies for your readers advisors.

Pictures of You Caroline Leavitt Retail Price: $13.95 Paperback: 336 pages Publisher: Algonquin Books – (2011-01-25) ISBN / EAN: 1565126319 / 9781565126312

OverDrive; Adobe EPUB eBook
Highbridge Audio; UNABR; 9781615736553; Library Edition, 9781611741025;

Also on Sale Next Week

O: A Presidential Novel by Anonymous (Simon & Schuster), a fictional vision of the 2012 presidential election written by an unnamed insider on the Obama team (how big of an insider is no defined; the person claims to have been “in the room” with him. Is that like being able to see Russia from your house?), has been getting the strong press coverage in the days leading up to publication. Reviews, however, have been tepid to disparaging. In its syndicated review, the Associated Press calls O “an enjoyable read for political junkies who can’t wait for the next campaign to start. But for readers not consumed with the granular detail of focus groups and ad buys, O falls short — especially in its portrayal of Obama, who remains as opaque in this book as he does real life.” Entertainment Weekly is even less charitable: “Short on character, short on plot — a hapless, poorly executed attempt at satire that’s missing literally everything that Primary Colors had going for it: the detail, the zing, the insidery knowledge, the humor. Let’s give S&S an A for marketing O so well. But let’s give the book itself a D.”

Tick Tock by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge (Little, Brown) is the newest mystery featuring New York detective Michael Bennett.

The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman (Crown) chronicles the history of a Massachusetts town from pilgrim settlers through the modern day in a series of 14 stories. PW says, “Hoffman’s deft magical realism ties one woman’s story to the next even when they themselves are not aware of the connection. The prose is beautiful, the characters drawn sparsely but with great compassion.” Entertainment Weekly gives it a solid “A”.

The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern (Harper) is the tale of a 16 year-old girl whose gilded life shatters with her father’s suicide, and has a 150,000-copy first printing. LJ says, “Ahern has made a definite change in her writing with her recent fiction, going from chick lit to modern fairy tales. The supernatural element doesn’t work well in this novel, however, with a buildup that falls slightly flat…. Still, Ahern has fans from her P.S. I Love You days, so purchase accordingly.”

A Cup of Friendship: A Novel by Deborah Rodriguez (Ballantine) follows a group of women who meet in a Kabul coffee shop owned by an American, by the author of The Kabul Beauty School. Kirkus says, “Rodriguez paints a vivid picture of Afghan culture and understands the uncomfortable role Americans play in political upheavals. But ultimately her cozy sentimentality undercuts the elements of harsh realism, as if Maeve Binchy had written The Kite Runner.”

The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard (Ecco) is the story of the lasting effects of the disappearance of a teenage girl on the boys in her town, reminiscent of The Virgin Suicides. PW says “Though the truth about Nora remains tantalizingly elusive… the many possibilities are so captivating, and Pittard’s prose so eloquent, that there’s a far richer experience to be had in the chain of maybes and what-ifs than in nailing down the truth.”

The authors of a new book about undergraduate education assert,

Growing numbers of students are sent to college at increasingly higher costs, but for a large proportion of them the gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and written communication are either exceedingly small or empirically nonexistent.

Unsurprisingly, the book, Academically Adrift, has been drawing attention since it was released on Tuesday. It is currently at #22 on Amazon’s sales rankings and is not owned by most major public libraries. An excerpt  appeared earlier this week in the Chronicle of Higher Education under the headline, Are Undergraduates Actually Learning Anything? It’s being picked up by news sources

Study: One-Third of Students Don’t Learn Much in College CBS MoneyWatch.com

The Choice: How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study? New York Times (blog)

Study: Students slog through college, but don’t gain much critical thinking, Seattle Times

The value of college, The Economist (blog)

Guest post: ‘Academically Adrift,’ indeed, Washington Post (blog)

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses Richard Arum, Josipa Roksa Retail Price: $25.00 Paperback: 256 pages Publisher: University Of Chicago Press – (2011-01-15) ISBN / EAN: 0226028569 / 9780226028569

Discussion of Amy Chua’s approach to mothering, as she describes it in Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother continues unabated.

In today’s NYT, Janet Maslin, who actually read the entire book (rather than just the WSJ except, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior“) comes to an unexpected conclusion,

In truth, Ms. Chua’s memoir is about one little narcissist’s book-length search for happiness. And for all its quotable outbursts from Mama Grisly (the nickname was inevitable), it will gratify the same people who made a hit out of the granola-hearted Eat, Pray, Love.

According to Maslin, the two share an obsessive fascination with self. She also points out that, by the end of her book, the Tiger Mom has softened,

But Ms. Chua’s story has been shaped according to a familiar narrative arc, the one that ensures that her comeuppance will occur, that her children will prove wiser than she and [she will] fess up to shortcomings (“the truth is I’m not good at enjoying life”) and smell the roses at the end of the book.

The Today Show can’t get enough of her; they’re planning a second appearance, and are gathering questions for her on the site right now.

The book appears at #5 on the 1/30/11 NYT Nonfiction list, after just five days on sale (the list reflects sales through 1/15).

If you’ve been on the fence about buying more, it’s time to get off. This one won’t end soon.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother Amy Chua Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The – (2011-01-11) ISBN / EAN: 1594202842 / 9781594202841

Penguin Audio; UNABR; 6 Hours; 5 CDs; ISBN 9780142429105; $29.95

It’s encouraging to learn that Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who once attacked the ALA’s bill of rights, is now a proponent of free expression (at least for herself). On the Today Show, she told Matt Lauer that she moved her radio show to Sirius XM, because various organizations had decided,

… that I should be silenced. And that’s when I realized I had to go on Sirius XM or something like that in order to have the freedom of speech without being assassinated.

On Salon Laura Miller looks into the incident that sparked the move, “The Revenge of Dr. Laura Schlessinger.”

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

…………………………

Despite Dr. Laura’s continuing stance against the ALA, libraries are not exacting revenge. The ones we checked have ordered her book, but holds are modest.

Surviving a Shark Attack (On Land): Overcoming Betrayal and Dealing with Revenge Dr. Laura Schlessinger Retail Price: $25.99 Hardcover: 208 pages Publisher: Harper – (2011-01-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061992127 / 9780061992124