Are Americans still movers and shakers? In his new book The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; OverDrive Sample), George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen says the answer is no. His analysis is receiving wide spread media attention.

On NPR’s Morning Edition today, Cowen argues that Americans “have grown more risk averse and are reluctant to switch jobs or move to another state.” As a result, they are not exposed to new ideas and have become less innovative. This has also brought about a new form of segregation, “wealthier people tend to live together more than before and so do poorer people.” Living in their own bubbles, they are unaware of much that is going on around them, “we see a version of this in the last election where so many people are shocked by the candidate who actually won.”

Thus far holds are heavy in just a few places on light orders, but the topic is much in the news and attention is growing. David Brooks writes about it in his NYT Op-Ed column, Cowen was interviewed in the Washington Post and featured on the Charlie Rose Show.

The following is the first in a set of videos Cohen has released.

Below, the NPR story.

Every month, librarians gather for our online GalleyChats to talk about their favorite ARCs. Our GalleyChatter columnist Robin Beerbower rounds up the most-mentioned titles from the latest chat below.

Some of these titles can still be nominated for LibraryReads. We’ve noted the deadlines in red.

Please join us for the next GalleyChat, this coming Tuesday,
March 7, 4 to 5 p.m. ET, 3:30 for virtual cocktails. Details here.
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Spring titles were still galvanizing librarians during the February chat, but several May titles also got attention. Most of these are available as Digital ARCs. Look for them on Edelweiss or NetGalley.

If you need even more titles to choose from, check our compilation of all 160 titles mentioned here as well as a transcript of the chat.

Nonfiction for Novel Lovers

Nonfiction stories where the pages almost turn themselves are always popular with patrons and two good contenders were offered in February’s GalleyChat.

The Lost City of Z by David Grann was a big success as a book and is shaping up to be at least as successful in the movie version, set to open April 24 in the US.  He has another winner on his hands with another true story, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (PRH/Doubleday, April). Movie rights to it were sold last year in a bidding war called by Deadline, “the biggest and wildest book rights auction in memory.”  The book is getting “much love” from 24 Edelweiss peers. Collection development librarian P.J. Gardiner,  Wake County (NC) Public Libraries, agrees, saying, “Why are so many Osage Native Americans dying in Oklahoma? It is the 1920s in rich oil country and local law enforcement cannot explain why some of the country’s most wealthy residents are dying at alarming rates and from an array of causes. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the newly created FBI, sends Tom White to investigate. What he finds is a tangled mess of racism, swindling, and lots of people willing to look the other way.”

Readers who hunger for more true history like Hidden Figures (Margot Lee Shetterly) will want to read Kate Moore’s Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women (Sourcebooks, May; LibraryReads deadline: March 20), the story of women during WWI working the coveted jobs of painting clock-faces only to start dying from radium poisoning. Nicole Steeves, Fox River Grove (IL) Library director said the elements are perfect for readers’ advisory (readable non-fiction, women’s stories, and science writing) and would also recommend it to teens. She added, “It is also is a timely example of good research and careful attribution, relevant to librarians’ concerns about news literacy.”

Classic Mystery Redux

Librarians are crazy about Anthony Horowitz’s The Magpie Murders (Harper, May; LibraryReads deadline: March 20), a cleverly assembled homage to classic country house whodunnits. Joseph Jones from Cuyahoga County (OH) Public Library says, “Mystery readers are in for a treat. We get not only one mystery to solve, but two as we get a book within a book; each having its own story. Each mystery was very well done with good characters and plenty of red herrings which kept me guessing until the end. A fun story for fans of locked room mysteries in the style of Agatha Christie.” Another librarian’s crystal ball predicts this could be the break-out hit of the summer.

Domestic Novels

It’s been four long years since readers have had a new novel by Anita Shreve and we are excited that The Stars are Fire (PRH/Knopf, April) is worth the wait. Based on Maine’s Great Fires of 1947, a young mother and her children have to start over after the death of her husband. Jennifer Dayton from Darien Library was smitten saying, “When the fire destroys everything that Grace has in the world, she is forced to reinvent her life and the lives of her children. And it is just when things look at their rosiest that her world is upended again. This story will have you rooting for Grace and her happiness long after you turn the last page.”

Readers who have read all of Liane Moriarty’s novels will want to try Lisa Jewell’s  I Found You (S&S/Atria, April). Set in a seaside English town, a single mother, a man with amnesia, and an abandoned wife all collide in a nail-biting climax. Readers of Clare Macintosh’s I Let You Go and Catherine McKenzie’s Fractured will enjoy the suspense and good character development.

Debuts

GalleyChatters love to read and promote good debuts and Sycamore by Bryn Chancellor (Harper, May; LibraryReads deadline: March 20), set in the sizzling mid-state desert of Arizona, is an easy one to recommend to anyone who wants an atmospheric coming-of-age novel. Kelly Currie from Delphi Public Library said “With a multitude of fully developed characters, multiple points of view, and a suspense-laden plot, Sycamore offers something to satisfy every reader. You will find humor and sorrow aplenty in this very well written story. “

At least three GalleyChatters raved about the intriguing new novel Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig (HarperCollins/Park Row Books, May; LibraryReads deadline: March 20), a moving story of a 14-year-old autistic teen who although recently adopted by a loving family, is desperate to return to her violence ridden life with her birth mother. Janet Lockhart was enthusiastic about this saying,  “Ginny Moon has a mission: to find her Baby Doll and make sure she is safe. Her problem? No one understands Ginny’s concern is for an actual, not an imaginary child. Ludwig has created a character whose voice leaps off the page. By turns engaging and infuriating, she is always true to herself — and to Baby Doll.”

Please join us for the next GalleyChat on Tuesday, March 7, with virtual happy hour at 3:30 (ET) and the chat at 4:00, and for updates on what I’m anticipating on Edelweiss, please friend me.

Growing press attention has sent George W. Bush’s  Portraits of Courage: A Commander in Chief’s Tribute to America’s Warriors (Random House/Crown; RH Audio) to #1 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

Bush was on the Today show yesterday to promote his book of paintings and stories of veterans. During the opening interview he was asked about the current administration. His responses, while hedged and careful, made front-page news, described by the NYT as “tacit criticism” of Trump’s immigration policy and his relationship with the media.

Today then aired a lengthy segment with some of the vets Bush features in the book.

More press coverage is forthcoming. Bush will be on Fox News’s Hannity show in a one-hour special on March 3. On that same day People Magazine will run a feature.

In the midst of a project to photograph every species of animal held in a zoo, aquarium, rehab center, or similar location, National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore has published a sampling in his new book The Photo Ark: One Man’s Quest to Document the World’s Animals (National Geographic).

Interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday, his book soared up the Amazon rankings to #32 this morning.

After a decade of shooting in the wild Sartore says he hopes that creating intimate, close up portraits will help humans become more invested in saving the other species that share the planet.

To give each species its due, the animals are presented studio style against a black or white background. “A mouse is every bit as glorious as an elephant, and a tiger beetle is every bit as big and important as a tiger. It’s a great equalizer.” It also reveals aspects of the personality of each animal. Some look joyful, some curious, some scared.

By the turn of the next century we stand to lose nearly 1/2 of all species, Says Sartre, making the project particularly urgent. “A lot of the species that you see in The Photo Ark would be extinct by now if it weren’t for captive breeding programs … I know of at least four or five animals now that are the very last of their kind in the world’s zoos and I’ve got to get to them, and it means I’m gone all the time, and once I get there I’ve got to do the world’s best picture of this animal before it’s lost.”

A new short feature sets up the violent dystopian landscape of Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (Houghton Mifflin, 1986; OverDrive Sample), set to being airing on April 26, 2017.. Executive producer and creator Bruce Miller says “It is unquestionably a dark world, but it’s not a dark show. The show is about perspective and not losing the hope of getting your life back.”

Star Elizabeth Moss adds, “Here’s this character stripped of everything, of her rights, of her family, of her friends, and she still can’t quite give up.” 

Atwood’s book broke on to the NYT Paperback Trade Fiction list last week, it is currently #5 (it is #13 on the Combined Print & E-Book list). Along with ther dystopian classics it has seen a sharp rise in popularity since the election, but Handmaid has the additional push of promotions from Hulu, including a Super Bowl spot that sent the title soaring to #1 on Amazon for a while.

A tie-in will be released on March 28, The Handmaid’s Tale (Movie Tie-in), (PRH/Anchor, trade pbk).

Another classic dystopian novel that has soared on best seller lists recently is also getting screen time. The film version of 1984 starring John Hurt will play in art house movie theaters across the country on April 4th. George Orwell’s novel, that is the day the central character begins to rebel against the oppressive regime by keeping a diary.

Debuting this week is a major TV documentary, a heavily anticipated adaptation of a YA novel, and the film version of a long-running inspirational best seller.

When We Rise airs on ABC starting Feb. 27 in a two-hour premiere. Gus Van Sant directs this chronicle of the LGBTQ community’s civil rights movement. Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Milk, created the project, inspired in part by Cleve Jones’s memoir When We Rise: My Life in the Movement (Hachette; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample).

It runs for eight hours over four nights. The large cast includes Guy Pearce, Mary-Louise Parker, Michael K. Williams, and Rachel Griffiths.

Entertainment Weekly gives it a B+, writing, “It’s a story of a marginalized people who deserve to be recognized, a history we all need to know and own, presented as potent mainstream television.” The LA Times calls it “powerful and moving.” USA Today says it is “overly ambitious … But goodness: Scattered within this history of the battle for gay rights are moments of great power and lessons of great importance, as it pays homage to a struggle that too frequently has been ignored by mainstream television — and has yet to be fully won.”

There is no tie-in but the hardback edition of Jone’s book now has a sticker connecting it to the show.

Before I Fall opens on March 3. It is an adaptation of Lauren Oliver’s debut YA novel, the best seller Before I Fall (HarperCollins, 2010).

Directed by Ry Russo-Young (Nobody Walks), the film stars Zoey Deutch (Vampire Academy), Halston Sage (Goosebumps), Logan Miller (Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse) and Jennifer Beals (Flashdance, The L Word).

Variety calls it “impressively stylish” and says it “forgoes the overlit Disney Channel look, embracing a cooler, steely-blue aesthetic that’s more in line with such bygone cult faves as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars — plus, it unfolds in that post-Judy Blume space where it’s OK to broach such touchy issues as teen suicide and contraception.”

The Hollywood Reporter says “this neatly written Heathers-meets-Groundhog Day high-concept package delivers both technical polish and a toothsome yet likeable cast. Better still, it has just enough tragic edge to draw young adults, and young-at-heart adults, with melancholy temperaments.”

Tie-in: Before I Fall Movie Tie-in Edition, Lauren Oliver (HarperCollins; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample).

Logan is the 10th X-Men movie and the final Wolverine solo film. It opens on March 3 and stars Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, and Dafne Keen.

USA Today calls it an “excellent adventure” and says the series ender is a “super sendoff … going out very much on top.” Entertainment Weekly, not as big a fan, gives it a B- and says it is “a high-octane action flick with a protect-the-cub emotional subtext.”

It is not a pure adaptation of the comics, but rather inspired by them. We wrote earlier about one tie-in, Wolverine: Old Man Logan, Mark Millar, illustrated by Steve McNiven (Hachette/Marvel; OverDrive Sample).

William P. Young’s 2007 self-published inspirational blockbuster, The Shack, (later picked up by Hachette/Grand Central; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample) has had a long road to the silver screen, but it is finally arriving on March 3.

The film stars Sam Worthington (Avatar), as a father who has lost is faith in the face of unspeakable tragedy. Octavia Spencer (The Help) plays God. Grammy winner Tim McGraw stars as well, alongside Radha Mitchell.

There are few reviews yet but there are multiple tie-ins: The Shack, Wm. Paul Young (Hachette/Windblown Media; Blackstone Audio;  OverDrive Sample; also in mass market). The novel is currently #4 on the NYT combined Fiction best seller list.

The TV series adaptation of Time After Time, based on the 1979 time travel novel by Karl Alexander, as well its earlier film version, will premiere in a 2-hour episode on March 3 on ABC.

The book features author H.G. Wells who creates an actual version of the apparatus featured in his novel The Time Machine, which is used by Jack the Ripper to escape to 1970’s era San Francisco, with Wells on his heels.

For the TV series, the US location was changed to present-day New York. Early reviews are not great. IGN says it “gets off to a bland start that doesn’t inspire much confidence in what’s to come.” Slash Film writes “What’s frustrating about the pilot is that it refuses to deviate from a story that most viewers wouldn’t be disappointed in seeing altered.”

No tie-in has been scheduled, but the book is still available, in a 2010 paperback reprint (Macmillan/Forge Books; OverDrive Sample).

Already in the top ten on USA Today‘s best seller list, Lincoln in the Bardo (PRH/RH; RH Audio/BOT; Overdrive Sample), debuts at #1 on the NYT Hardcover Fiction list, a first for author George Saunders.

Featured in the “Inside the List” column Saunders says that “private grief made Lincoln a better public servant.” and,

“What moved me about Lincoln’s arc during his presidency was the way that the burdens of the office — the floundering war effort, intense public criticism, the mistakes he made that were costing so many lives, the death of his son — beat him down and made him sorrowful, but also, almost causally, seemed to expand the reach of his empathy, so that, by the end, it included soldiers on both sides and the millions of Americans being enslaved by other Americans. It seemed to me that the empathy was somehow a byproduct of the sorrow — a burning-away of his hopes and dreams that resulted in a kind of naked seeing of things as they really were.”

As we have noted, critical praise has been growing.

On the Nonfiction Hardcover list, This Life I Live: One Man’s Extraordinary, Ordinary Life and the Woman Who Changed It Forever (Thomas Nelson; Thomas Nelson Audio; OverDrive Sample) debuts at #2, written by Rory Feek, one-half of the Grammy-winning duo Joey+Rory. He gained national attention when his wife, Joey Martin, was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The book pays tribute to her and their life together. It is #12 on the USA Today list, doing very well against other formats and categories. Holds are growing at a number of libraries we checked.

Feek appeared on the Today show last week:

Coming next week, the holds leaders are two authors who have each published over 20 titles in their series, but one has only recently jumped in popularity, the media will feature a past president who will not be talking politics, but painting, and tie-ins arrive for films currently in the news.

The titles highlighted in this column, and several other notable titles arriving next week, are listed with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of Feb 27, 2017

Holds Leaders

Banana Cream Pie Murder, (Kensington; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample)

The 21st in this series, which has been rising in holds since Hallmark began adapting the books as movies for the Murder, She Baked series, part of what is described as the “perfect storm that created Hallmark’s current ratings boom.” The fifth movie in the series, Just Desserts premieres Sunday, March 26. 

Bone Box, Faye Kellerman, (HarperCollins/Morrow; OverDrive Sample)

The 24th title featuring Police Detective Peter Decker gets middling prepub reviews.

Media Magnets

Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook, Tony Robbins, (S&S; S&S Audio)

It may seem that Robbins is a blast from an infomercial past, parodied by comedians, but he has new life as one of the inspirations for Showtime’s series, Billions.

Fox News. Hannity – One segment each night about the book, 2/27-3/2,  leading into the one hour special on 3/3 

Today Show – two-part live segment, 2/27

People Magazine – Interview with the President and one of the warriors – 3/3

Attitude: Develop a Winning Mindset on and off the Court, Jay Wright, Michael Sheridan, Mark Dagostino, (Random House/ Ballantine; OverDrive Sample)

The Villanova University basketball coach will be interviewed on PBS’s The Charlie Rose Show, as well as ESPN’s Sports Center and Mike & Mike.

Peer Picks

Only one Peer Pick comes out this week, the Indie Next pick Abandon Me, Melissa Febos (Macmillan/Bloomsbury USA).

“Melissa Febos has one of those minds that’s as good at describing scenes as it is at clearly breaking down a complicated idea or articulating ambivalence. Abandon Me is a powerhouse collection — each essay can be enjoyed on its own, but taken together, they form a striking autobiographical portrait of a talented young writer and thinker. You won’t want to abandon a voice this powerful, and you won’t forget it either.” —John Francisconi, Bank Square Books, Mystic, CT

Additional Buzz: Esquire lists it as one of “The 5 Books You Should Read in February,” writing that Febos “obliterates convention with her erotically charged and intellectually astute recollections of family, relationships and the search for identity.”

Tie-ins

The young readers’ edition of an Oscar nominated film adaptation hits shelves this week, Lion: A Long Way Home Young Readers’ Edition, Saroo Brierley (PRH/Puffin Books; Listening Library).

The publisher says it “features new material from Saroo about his childhood, including a new foreword and a Q&A about his experiences and the process of making the film.”

Brierley tells how he was separated from his family in rural India at age 4, when he climbed aboard a train and was carried over a thousand miles away to a city he did not know. He wound up in an orphanage and was adopted and relocated to Tasmania. Decades later, he traced his way back home using Google maps.

The film stars Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, Nicole Kidman, and David Wenham. They join a cast of actors well-known in India, including Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Priyanka Bose, and Tannishtha Chatterjee.

I’m Batgirl! (The LEGO Batman Movie: Reader), Tracey West (Scholastic; OverDrive Sample) is a leveled reader connected to the newest LEGO film, which opened on Feb. 10th.

Number 1 at the box office, the movie also has critics are raving. RollingStone calls it “a superfun time,” USA Today says it is “joyously bonkers,” and The Washington Post says it is better than the first one, writing “it is that rare sequel that outdoes the original.”

Other tie-ins have already been released.

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

The Starz adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is set to begin airing on Sunday, April 30 at 9 pm.

The first of the eight-episode series, titled “The Bone Orchard,” will be directed by David Slade (Breaking Bad, Hannibal).

Gaiman recently told WSJ Video that the eight shows will cover just a third of the book. He also said there will be characters and stories not in the novel and that a number of things only implied or hinted at in the book will get full episodes. He says the adaption is “really impressive” and that the showrunns have done a “remarkable job.”

Starz also released the series’ key art, to be featured on posters and in ads, as well as on the  tie-in cover, to be released on March 28. American Gods [TV Tie-In], Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins/Morrow; also in mass market).

An out-of-the blue debut graphic novel is sweeping the industry, being compared to the greats in the field and rising on Amazon’s sales rankings.

On NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris (Norton/Fantagraphics) reviewer John Powers says “this extraordinary book has instantly rocketed Ferris into the graphic novel elite alongside Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel and Chris Ware. You see, she’s produced something rare, a page-turning story whose pages are so brilliantly drawn you don’t want to turn them.”

The story is set in in Chicago in the nineteen-sixties and features a ten-year old girl named Karen Reyes who investigates the death of a neighbor, a Holocaust survivor. Powers says that Ferris uses the story to explore “the idea of monstrousness, from the small-scale cruelties of schoolyard bullying to Nazi death camps. Along the way, Karen learns to see a difference between what she calls ‘good monsters’ who are scary because they’re, quote, ‘weird looking and fangy’ and so-called ‘bad monsters.’ They’re scary because they want everyone to be scared so they can control them.”

Also covered in the NYT ‘s Art and Design section, it is described as “blood-tingling,” full of “grisly delights,” oozing “with the secrets and hungers that shadow childhood.” Art Spiegelman (Maus) tells the paper that “Emil Ferris is one of the most important comics artists of our time … She uses the sketchbook idea as a way to change the grammar and syntax of the comics page … And she came out of nowhere. Until recently, no one was aware of Emil — including Emil.”

The New Yorker offers an excerpt. Françoise Mouly, the influential art editor of the magazine and co-founder of the comics magazine Raw sets the story up, saying Ferris’s “mastery of comics, her pyrotechnic drawings, and her nested narratives are already placing her among the greatest practitioners of the form.”

Lincoln in the Bardo (PRH/RH; RH Audio/BOT; Overdrive Sample), George Saunders’s first novel, debuts at #9 on the USA Today list. Expect to see it in the top five on the NYT Hardcover Fiction list when it arrives tomorrow.

Saunders made the leap from well-respected short story writer to household name four years ago when the NYT Magazine declared on its cover, “George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year.” That book, the short story collection Tenth of December then landed at #26 on USA Today‘s list.

Glowing reviews continue to mount for Lincoln, adding to those we rounded up two weeks ago. In the Chicago Tribune, author Charles Finch says it is “profound, funny and vital, a meditation on loss and power … The work of a great writer.” It was People’s “Book of the Week. They call it “Devastatingly moving.” Tor.com writes that the book “will still be necessary in three hundred years.” The NPR reviewer says “there are moments that are almost transcendently beautiful, that will come back to you on the edge of sleep.”

Saunders continues to make the talk show rounds as well. Filling in for Charlie Rose, Saunders talks with Seth Meyers on the Charlie Rose show.

Holds are growing and there is pent-up demand for the audio. In libraries we checked, where audio copies have yet to enter into circulation, holds are running as high as 115 to 1.

Add short story author to Tom Hanks’s resume. The Oscar winner will publish Uncommon Type: Some Stories (PRH/Knopf; Oct. 24, 2017; ISBN 9781101946152). He will also read the audiobook. The news caught the attention of many sources, from Deadline Hollywood to USA Today.

Each story will be connected in some manner to a typewriter. Hanks is an avid collector and created an iPad app, Hanx Writer, to celebrate them. At one time it was the top selling app on iTunes. He even wrote a piece in the NYT on his fondness for the machines.

The Knopf press release describes the stories:

“A gentle Eastern European immigrant arrives in New York City after his family and his life have been torn apart by his country’s civil war. A man who loves to bowl rolls a perfect game–and then another and then another and then many more in a row until he winds up ESPN’s newest celebrity, and he must decide if the combination of perfection and celebrity has ruined the thing he loves. An eccentric billionaire and his faithful executive assistant venture into America looking for acquisitions and discover a down and out motel, romance, and a bit of real life.”

For a taste of Hanks’s talents, read a story he published in The New Yorker two years ago, “Alan Bean Plus Four.” The Guardian characterized it as “disposable, but enjoyable.”

Hanks told The New Yorker that his literary heroes are Chaim Potok, Alan Furst, Richard Ben Cramer, David McCullough and Stephen Ambrose. At that time he said he hopes to write more stories. He has already found success as a screenwriter (Larry Crowne, That Thing You Do!).

Entertainment Weekly has a lighthearted interview with Hanks about his writing process.

Starz’s The White Princess will premiere on April 16. It’s the sequel to The White Queen, which aired on Starz in 2013, and was based on the first four books in Philippa Gregory’s The Cousins’ War series, about the long-running War of the Roses. It won both Golden Globe and Emmy nominations.

The new series adapts the fifth title and final volume in the historical fiction series. Gregory outlines the chronology of the novels on her website.

Deadline notes “The White Princess picks up three days after the conclusion of The White Queen, as a new generation ascends to the throne … The historical drama is told from the perspective of the women waging the ongoing battle for the English throne.”

The tie-in cover depicts Princess Elizabeth of York’s bloody hands gripping a white rose, the symbol of the House of York. In the book she is forced to marry into the House of Tudor.

A trade paperback tie-in will be released on March 28: The White Princess, Philippa Gregory (S&S/Touchstone; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample; also in mass market).

It’s a light week for adaptations in theaters, as the movie business focuses on Sunday’s Academy Awards.

The Girl With All the Gifts, a zombie horror film based on M. R. Carey’s novel of the same title, opens in theaters and on VOD on Friday, after having already aired on DirecTV.

The film stars Sennia Nanua, Gemma Arterton, Dominique Tipper, and Glenn Close. It is directed by Colm McCarthy (Sherlock, Doctor Who).

Reviews are widely mixed.

The Hollywood Reporter was not impressed, writing it is “rather dreary … A runaway success like 28 Days Later or The Walking Dead, this is not.” Variety agrees, writing it is “A tired attempt to board the zombie bandwagon.”
However, The Guardian was enthusiastic, saying it is a “fiercely intelligent British chiller … [that] breathes new life into age-old horror tropes, taking familiar fears of zombies, the apocalypse and eerie children and spinning them in surprising ways.”

io9 goes further, saying it “Has Joined the Horde of All-Time Great Zombie Films … It’s the rare zombie film that innovates the genre with skill and excitement.”

There is no tie-in but the timing is good for Carey. He is writing a prequel, The Boy on the Bridge (Hachette/Orbit), due out May 2.

It’s deja vu all over again for Tulip Fever, which was scheduled to open this weekend. Based on the historical novel by Deborah Moggach, it was suddenly pulled from its original July 2016 opening. Now, just days before it was to open on its new date, it has been postponed yet again, this time to an unspecified date [UPDATE: It has now been rescheduled to August 25, 2017].

The Playlist says it was “at one time perceived as a big-ticket project. But somewhere along the way, it seems it was a promise that couldn’t be lived up to … Tulip Fever is starting to smell like another recent star-studded Weinstein picture that mostly flamed out: last year’s restaurant drama Burnt.”

For those getting the feeling that the film will never air, IndieWire notes the studio “has a history with these kind of recurring delays. Most recently, the company also moved the release date back twice for The Founder, the Michael Keaton-starring McDonald’s origin story … The decision to push Tulip Fever comes after a tough year for virtually all independent distributors in the theatrical marketplace.”

There is no official tie-in. Moggach has had success with adaptations of her novels before. She wrote The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

The focus of critical attention, Margaret Drabble’s newest novel, The Dark Flood Rises (Macmillan/FSG; OverDrive Sample) explores death and old age, but is enlivened by humor and enriched by deeply dimensional characters. The central figure is 70-something Fran who spends her time examining retirement homes for those older and more infirmed than she. The novel follows her circle of friends and family, all suffering in their own ways.

NPR’s reviewer says the novel “is a beautiful rumination on what it means to grow old [populated by] an unforgettable character [Fran], steely but likable … This isn’t a sentimental book, but it’s a deeply emotional one [asking readers] to consider how sad, how funny, how genuinely absurd aging is.”

The Washington Post‘s Ron Charles says “Margaret Drabble has written a novel about aging and death, which for American readers should make it as popular as a colostomy bag. That’s a pity because Drabble, 77, is as clear-eyed and witty a guide to the undiscovered country as you’ll find.” He continues, “the novel’s humor vaccinates it from chronic bleakness.”

The Guardian says “With their echoes of Simone de Beauvoir and Samuel Beckett, this quiet meditation on old age seethes with apocalyptic intent” and continues, that while not much happens in terms of plot, the characters are “brilliantly drawn.”

In its front page NYT Sunday Book Review, Cynthia Ozick calls it “humane and masterly.”

Perhaps fulfilling Ron Charles’s prediction, holds are light in most of the libraries we checked, but Salon points out the grimness of the topic is not the point of the novel, “A vein of black humor pulses in Margaret Drabble’s The Dark Flood Rises, which, thankfully, makes the novel’s reflections on how we age and die as entertaining as a conversation with a dear friend.”