In a twist on the movie trailer, Dan Brown, Google, and Sony Entertainment have partnered to create a puzzle game for fans of Robert Langdon.

USA Today reports the three-week run of games, called Inferno Journey Through Hell, is designed to increase interest in the forthcoming film, Inferno, opening October 28.

Brown told the paper that “It’s always been of interest to me to create a treasure hunt online where people who don’t have the opportunity to travel can take the quest virtually and interact with real works of art and locations and have the experience from their living room or office.”

It is also a giant product placement for Google as the clues needed to solve the puzzles are “hidden in various Google products such as Google Maps, Gmail, Google Search and Google Play as well as on social-media platforms,” reports USA Today.  Players can win weekly prizes including a trip to Florence, Venice, Rome and Milan.

Brown serves as an executive producer for the film and says that director Ron Howard and lead actor Tom Hanks “very generously pretend I’m relevant, but once the screenplay’s done, my part in the movie is complete and I can just watch what really becomes a different telling of my story.”

Traditional forms of marketing are also being unleashed, including a series of trailers. The latest below:

And several tie-ins:

Inferno (Movie Tie-in Edition), Dan Brown

Trade Paperback, (PRH/Anchor)
Mass Market, (PRH/Anchor)
Audio CD (PRH/Random House Audio)
Inferno (Movie Tie-in edition en Espanol), (PRH/ Vintage Espanol)

Looking for October titles to please genre fans? io9 surveys the Science Fiction and Fantasy field and highlights 21 titles coming out this month to suggest to readers and include in displays.

Among them is Alex Award-winner Wesley Chu’s new stand-alone title, The Rise of Io (PRH/Angry Robot; OverDrive Sample), described as what happens when an “intergalactic small-time crook” is overtaken by a “body-swapping alien” who is conducting a murder investigation.

Shakespeare is rarely classed as SF or Fantasy, but Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed  (PRH/Hogarth; RH Audio/BOT), is also on the list, described as her “fresh take” on The Tempest.  It is just one of many Atwood upcoming projects, including her debut graphic novel. She is also consulting on Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale,starring Joseph Fiennes and Elisabeth Moss, which begins shooting in Toronto this fall.

Based on the cult hit TV series, The Secret History of Twin Peaks by Mark Frost (Macmillan/Flatiron Books; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample) offers “a deeper examination of the tiny town’s history and its many deep and troubling mysteries.” New attention will also be brought to series in the form of a revival, to air in 2017.

Crosstalk by Connie Willis (PRH/Del Rey; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample) blends genres. A LibraryReads pick for this month, it is described it as “he perfect romantic comedy for the digital age,” Also on the list is Ken Liu’s The Wall of Storms (S&S/Saga; S&S Audio), the sequel to the highly regarded Grace of Kings. It has also received high praise in a review on the NPR site this week, saying that “It surpasses The Grace of Kings in every way, by every conceivable metric, and is — astonishingly — perfectly readable as a standalone.”

The Tim Burton adaptation of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children was tops at the box office, this weekend, propelling the book further up Amazon’s sales rankings. Unfortunately, the high expectations for Disney’s Queen of Katwe, were not met in its expanded release, although it did well with critics.

After much drum-rolling, The Girl on the Train finally pulls into theaters this coming Friday. Directed by Tate Taylor (The Help), it stars Emily Blunt, Rebecca Ferguson, Haley Bennett, Justin Theroux, and Luke Evans.

No reviews yet, but the NYT and the WSJ [subscription maybe required] ran features on the film last week. Apparently the film version scared the author, reports NYT, “It’s a shocking film in parts, really frightening … It’s an odd thing, because I actually know what’s happening, but it felt really fresh to me.” Tie-ins were released in August.

James Patterson moves in to the lucrative family movie genre with the adaptation of his  Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life.

Directed by Steve Carr (Daddy Day Care), it stars Griffin Gluck, Lauren Graham, Rob Riggle, Retta, and Thomas Barbusca. It opens Oct. 7.

A tie-in came out in August.

The Great Gilly Hopkins. an adaptation of Katherine Paterson’s 1978 National Book Award-winning children’s novel of the same name (it also was a Newbery Honor Award title) also opens this weekend, with a simultaneous release on VOD.

The family film is directed by Stephen Herek (101 Dalmatians) and stars Sophie Nélisse, Julia Stiles, Glenn Close, Kathy Bates, Octavia Spencer, Bill Cobbs, and Billy Magnussen. No tie-in has been released.

The book version of the most popular class at Stanford tops the latest NYT‘s Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous list.

Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans (PRH/Knopf; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample) applies the principles of design thinking to the career planning/self-help movement, teaching readers how to solve problems in creative ways and craft a more meaningful and fulfilling life.

The book has received media attention including coverage in the NYT, WSJ, [subscription maybe required], and Forbes. Fast Company offers the most exhaustive report, highlighting the point of view and processes of Burnett (the executive director of Stanford’s design program) and Evans (who has worked at Apple and is a co-founded Electronic Arts).

The magazine reports the goal is to change higher education, as Evans puts it, of “forming you into the person that will go out into the world, effect change, and be a leader. … [inviting ] people to live intentionally, in a generative, thoughtful way, and we give them a bunch of tools.”

Burnett says that class fits the anxiety of our current times very well, “The thing that’s true about design problems is that you don’t know what the solution is going to look like … You can’t know the future, but you can know what’s available and you can prototype different versions of the you that you might become.”

The class is so difficult to get into and so transformational that Evans says “We’ve had students literally teach the class on the side to their friends who weren’t enrolled.”

The same approach seems to be fueling library demand where holds have skyrocketed in some systems, topping 6:1 ratios.

Below is the book trailer:

But the following discussion gives more insight into the authors’ process and thinking:

The premiere of Netflix’s new 13-episode Luke Cage series, based on the Marvel comics’ character, was so successful that it may have caused the streaming service to go down for two hours on Saturday.

The NYT television critic offers a lukewarm take on the new run, but he is in the minority. Most other critics agree with Deadline Hollywood which calls it “one of the most socially relevant and smartest shows on the small screen you will see this year.”

New York magazine calls the comic book Cage “one of the most important black characters in sequential art,” noting, however, that over his 44-year history, Marvel struggled to “make the character relevant in a world where conceptions of black characters in American pop culture were rapidly evolving.”

Charting the character’s evolution in “5 Comics to Read Before You Watch Luke Cage,” New York magazine writes that the first stories, collected in Luke Cage, Hero For Hire vol. 1, represent “Marvel Comics’ blatant attempt to cash in on the Blaxploitation craze.” As a result, the collection is “somewhat awkward to read today, with its urban patois (penned by white men, of course) and simplistic depictions of avarice.”

The Netflix series is quite the opposite. As the show’s creator Ched Hodari Coulter tells Wired magazine in a cover feature on the series, “There have been African ­American super­heroes on our screens before—such as Wesley Snipes’ titular turn in Blade—but Luke Cage is the first to be surrounded by an almost completely black cast and writing team and whose powers and challenges are so explicitly linked to the black experience in America.”

A collection of comics featuring the character was released in August,  Luke Cage: Avenger, (Marvel).

Just weeks before Inferno hits screens, comes news that Robert Langdon will star in yet another book by Dan Brown, Origin (PRH/Doubleday; Sep 26, 2017; ISBN 9780385514231), the fifth in the series.

The news is being widely reported. In a press release Doubleday says:

“In keeping with his trademark style, Brown interweaves codes, science, religion, history, art and architecture into this new novel.
Origin thrusts Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon into the dangerous intersection of humankind’s two most enduring questions, and the earth-shaking discovery that will answer them”

The title is already on wholesaler systems for pre-order.

EDITORS NOTE:

Our GalleyChatter columnist Robin Beerbower, rounds up the most-mentioned titles from our most recent chat, to add to your TBR and downloads.

If you fall in love with any of these titles, be sure to consider nominating them for LibraryReads. We’ve noted in red the deadlines for those titles are still eligible.

Please join us for the next GalleyChat on Tuesday, Oct. 4th, 4 to 5 p.m. ET, 3:30 for virtual cocktails. Details here.
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“Winter is coming” and judging from the advance publication dates of most of the titles ardently discussed during the this month’s GalleyChat, librarians aren’t waiting for inclement weather to read 2017 books.

For a complete list of titles mentioned during the chat, check the Edelweiss compilation here.

If you missed a GalleyChatter column or are curious to see how we are doing in our predictions, check here:

June 2016, Discoveries from BEA, which include several titles currently making a splash, like Amor Towles’s A Gentleman in Moscow

July 2016,  Featuring the just-released librarian favorite, Bookshop on the Corner.

August 2016, Psychological thrillers, including a title that many consider better than Gone Girl.

Splendid Women

Give me a biography of someone talented and a little quirky with an adventurous spirit and I’m hooked.  Anyone who has read Goodnight, Moon countless times to children will want to read In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown by Amy Gary (Macmillan/Flatiron, January; LibraryReads deadline: Nov. 20). This is a captivating and moving story of the extraordinary woman who has lulled millions of children to sleep with her charming stories.

Kaite Stover, Head of Readers’ Services, Kansas City PL, predicts that fans of the movie A League of Their Own will love The Dust Bowl Girls: The Inspiring Story of the Team That Barnstormed Its Way to Basketball Glory by Lydia Reeder (Workman/Algonquin, January; LibraryReads deadline: Nov. 20). PJ Gardiner, Collection Development Librarian at Wake Co (NC) said, “What can bring people together and give reason for celebration during the Great Depression?  Women’s basketball. Against all odds, a small college team consisting of mostly farm girls gets a chance at what was thought unattainable: a formal education and a shot at a better life.  Their will and determination awaken the spirit of a struggling town.”

Spellbinding Novels

The discussion was replete with titles featuring elements of magic, paranormal,  fantasy and the trending topic of time travel.

The popular favorite is the conclusion to the Queen of the Tearling fantasy series, Fate of the Tearling (HarperCollins/Harper, November) [first in the series is Queen of the Tearling, followed by Invasion of the Tearling]. Beth Mills of New Rochelle (NY) Public Library gives it high praise, “[this] has evolved into a totally fascinating blend of fantasy and dystopian fiction with characters developing in interesting, unexpected but satisfying ways. There’s a plot twist in Fate of the Tearling that I did not see coming at all, but it’s given me lots of food for thought and makes me want to reread all three books.”

Last December Naomi Novik’s dark fairy tale, Uprooted, reached a top spot in Twitter’s annual #libfaves15 and judging from the reaction of librarians, a new novel based on old tales, The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden (PRH/Del Rey, January LibraryReads deadline: Nov. 20), could become another favored choice. Andrienne Cruz (Azusa City Library, CA) said this could “cast a spell over adult readers,” and continues, “Prepare to be enthralled by mysterious elements with wonderful Russian mythical folks and a courageous heroine. Vasilisa has special abilities that let her talk to animals and sense elemental sprites. As her town shifts their belief, it’s up to Vasilisa to make sure that no harm comes to her loved ones and friends.” [Note: See our EarlyReads chat with the author].

Alice Hoffman continues to blend magical realism elements into her plots. This time, a guardian angel watches over a young woman trying to recover from extreme trauma in Faithful (S&S, November). Tracy Babiasz, acquisitions manager for Chapel Hill Library, NC, said, “Lovely writing to describe one girl’s incredibly difficult struggle to live after surviving a car accident that leaves her friend in a coma. I just wanted to hug her the whole time.” Other Edelweiss readers agree, so far racking up 22 “much love” votes.

Felix Funicello from Wally Lamb’s Wishin’ and Hopin’ is back in I’ll Take You There (HarperCollins/Harper, November). A film studies professor and a divorced father of a daughter, Felix writes for New Yorker magazine. Through a series of ghostly encounters, he revisits his childhood and female relationships and discovers a dark family secret. Kelly Currie from Delphi Public Library (IN) said of the writing, “Lamb is a talented writer, and I loved the family he introduced to me in this book. The characters are full and faulty and real.” NOTE: This is not available as a DRC; to request a print galley, email HC’s library marketing team. Don’t forget to include your mailing address (no P.O. boxes). Supplies are limited.

The perennial favorite topic of time travel is bigger than ever, on TV and in books. All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai (PRH/Dutton, February LibraryReads deadline: Dec. 20) is garnering “much love” on Edelweiss. Kimberly McGee from Lake Travis Community Library (TX) loved it, saying, “Tom Barren is an average guy who is overshadowed by his famous physicist father who just happened to invent a time machine. It is an interesting way to look at life choices – if you could go back and change things, would you?” Kaite Stover recommends this as a nice addition to readers of Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter, and Jack Finney’s classic Time and Again.

Thriller Choice

The GalleyChat column wouldn’t be complete without a psychological suspense novel and this month’s pick is The Girl Before by J. P. Delaney (PRH/Ballantine, January; LibraryReads deadline: Nov. 20). Jennifer Winberry, Hunterdon County Library (NJ) summed it up by saying, “Jane scores an ultra-modern, high-tech London apartment that seems to anticipate all her needs…but does it know her too well? Jane learns that the previous occupant died in the apartment and begins to look into her death leading to a high speed ride through a tale of obsessions with twists and turns that don’t stop until after the final page is turned.”

There’s no limit on who can join the fun, so note our next GalleyChat date of Tuesday, October 4, starting at 3:30 (ET) for virtual happy hour. For up-to-the-minute posts of what DRCs I’m excited to read, friend me on Edelweiss.

Fall books have replaced most of the summer titles on best seller lists, but one is still going strong. Months after its publication on July 19, Ruth Ware’s second novel,  The Woman in Cabin 10 (S&S; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample), continues at #17 on USA Today’s list released today, and is therefore declared “a sleeper hit.”

According to the book’s publicist, quoted by USA Today, the success is due in part to word of mouth and the April release in paperback of Ware’s debut, In a Dark, Dark Wood, which “set the table for Cabin.”

Although it was listed on multiple summer reading lists, it received few reviews in the consumer press, other than a glowing mention in a thriller roundup from the Washington Post comparing it aptly to Alfred Hitchcock’s films.

Librarians were early advocates. Both her novels have been Library Reads picks as well as Galleychat favorites.

Library holds queues are long are growing.

More is coming from Ware. She signed a deal with her British publisher for two more books, to be released in the summers of 2017 and 2018 and Reese Witherspoon acquired the film rights to her first book, In a Dark, Dark Wood.

Alton Brown is still remembered by fans for Good Eats, a cult hit from the early days of the Food Network, currently available for binge watching on Netflix. Now best known for the culinary contest show, Cutthroat Kitchen, he has just published his next book, Alton Brown: EveryDayCook PRH/Ballantine Books).

The tag on the cover, “This time, it’s personal,” is proving a focus for media coverage. Written after his divorce from his second wife, the NYT calls it “a midlife-crisis book.”  In a profile in the WSJ Brown provides a short, sorrowful, summary of his childhood and career.

Described by the NYT as “an eclectic and appealing collection of 70 recipes in Mr. Brown’s regular rotation and another 30 he created to bring the book to a respectable size,” it is on the first two previews of best cookbooks of season, leading the NYT‘s list and also one of  People‘s “25 New Fall Cookbooks That Deserve a Spot in Your Kitchen”

In systems we checked, holds are topping 10:1 ratios where libraries have bought very low and are exceeding orders where libraries bought multiple copies.

The first teaser has just been released for Denzel Washington’s film adaptation of August Wilson’s 1983 Pulitzer Prize and Tony winning play, Fences.

Washington directs and co-stars with Viola Davis, reprising their roles from a Broadway revival of the play six years ago, for which both won Tony Awards.

The story revolves around a former baseball player in the 1950s struggling to reconcile his life and provide for his family.

The film is already a hot Oscar contender with Vanity Fair offering an alternative title of “Please Hurry Up and Give Viola Davis an Oscar.”

The movie is set to open on Christmas day. The trailer is getting wide coverage, including in Entertainment Weekly.

Tie-in:
Fences (Movie tie-in) by August Wilson
On Sale Date: November 1, 2016
9780735216686, 0735216681
$14.00 USD, $19.00 CAD
Trade Paperback
(PRH/Plume)

“The shelves of every library in the world brim with time machines. Step into one, and off you go.”

So says Anthony Doerr in his engaging and story-filled NYT‘s Sunday Book Review (online now, in print Oct. 2) of James Gleick’s Time Travel: A History (PRH/Pantheon; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

Fittingly for a book that considers the concept of time travel, including how it has been imagined and used in literature, Doerr begins his review by sharing his favorite time travel stories (a key one is Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder”) and then moves on to Gleick’s history, calling it,

“a fascinating mash-up of philosophy, literary criticism, physics and cultural observation. It’s witty (“Regret is the time traveler’s energy bar”), pithy (“What is time? Things change, and time is how we keep track”) and regularly manages to twist its reader’s mind into … Gordian knots … he employs time travel to initiate engrossing discussions of causation, fatalism, predestination and even consciousness itself.”

Time is a subject bound to be at the forefront this fall. In addition to Gleick’s book there is Now: The Physics of Time, Richard A. Muller (Norton) and a surprising number of TV shows on the subject. So many that it has lead the WSJ to call time a “hot concept” for the upcoming season, writing, “Television networks are consumed with time-shifting in every sense.”

Shows about time travel include Frequency, Legends of Tomorrow, Making History, Timeless and Time After Time (adapted from the 1979 novel by Karl Alexander).

Not exactly time travel, more deja vu,  are the many remakes and spin-offs of older shows. WSJ lists “Taken (a prequel to the Liam Neeson revenge movies) and Emerald City (billed as an edgier Wizard of Oz fantasy). Then there are the franchise expansions, with spin-off The Blacklist: Redemption and a fourth (fourth!) addition to the Chicago line of dramas from Dick Wolf (Chicago Justice) … Lethal Weapon (Fox), and Training Day (CBS) … Fox’s Prison Break sequel and a series based on 43-year-old horror classic The Exorcist … MacGyver.”

All this led Jimmy Kimmel, WSJ reports, to say: “All your favorite VHS tapes are now becoming shows,” leading Glamour magazine to point out “The past is a franchise.”

Amazon’s hit series, Transparent, won a second Emmy for Best Comedy Series earlier this month and the show’s creator, Jill Soloway won her second Best Director Emmy. Good timing, as the third season premiered just a week later.

Soloway is now set to create a new series. Amazon Studios announced today that I Love Dick, based on the cult novel by Chris Kraus, published by the indie press Semiotext(e) in 1997, has been ordered to series and will  begin streaming in 2017. It stars Kevin Bacon and Kathryn Hahn, who also stars in Transparent.

Profiling the production, New York magazine writes that Soloway turns “one of the most compelling cult novels of the last 20 years into a television show with the potential to be as groundbreaking in its examination of gender politics as her first.”

The cult status of the book was explored last year in a piece in the New Yorker and the Guardian celebrated its UK debut last fall.

The pilot is still available free on Amazon Prime. Below is the trailer.

Coming to theaters Oct. 14, is a documentary about Maya Angelou, titled And Still I Rise.

Deadline reports, “From her upbringing in the Depression-era South to her swinging soirees with Malcolm X in Ghana to her inaugural speech for President Bill Clinton, we are given special access to interviews with Dr. Angelou whose indelible charm and quick wit make it easy to love her.”

The trailer was released last week:

Making a splash at the box office over the weekend was Disney’s heavily-promoted Queen of Katwe, in a limited run. The adaptation of a book with the same title about a chess champion, it will expand to more theaters over the coming weeks. Also expanding to more theaters is the Australian hit adaptation, The Dressmaker.

Leading films opening at the end of this week is Tim Burton’s adaptation of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

Based on Ransom Riggs’s eerie photo-fantasy hit novel, it stars Samuel L. Jackson, Asa Butterfield, Eva Green, Chris O’Dowd, Ella Purnell, Allison Janney, Rupert Everett, Terence Stamp and Judi Dench.

Early reviews are not enthusiastic. The Hollywood Reporter says that during the first hour of the movie, it “appears Tim Burton seems well on his way to making one of his best films,” but after that special effects take over and undermine the story. Predicting the movie will “generate some robust initial business based on the built-in teen fan base as well as Burton fans, but whether it’s enough to spur sequels to the two remaining books in the trilogy is an open question.”  The novel is currently #6 on The USA Today Best-Selling Book list.

There are multiple tie-ins.

Denial is a courtroom drama about the legal fight to prove the Holocaust occurred. It is based on Deborah E. Lipstadt’s book History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier and is directed by Mick Jackson. Rachel Weisz, Tom Wilkinson and Timothy Spall star.

It centers on a libel case brought against Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, by David Irving, a Holocaust denier, who posts videos Variety says are like watching “the hate version of a man claiming that the Earth is flat.”

Its debut at the Toronto Film Festival brought mixed reviews. Variety calls it “a curiously awkward and slipshod movie that winds up being about nothing so much as the perverse, confounding eccentricities of the British legal system.”

The Hollywood Reporter says it is “compelling” and “sensitively dramatized” and that “Rachel Weisz’s arresting, combative Lipstadt, a shining woman warrior, is a role she will be remembered for.”

A tie-in is out: Denial: Holocaust History on Trial, Deborah E. Lipstadt (HC/Ecco).

Comic fans can rejoice as Luke Cage, a live action series on Netfilx, finally airs. It is based on the comic superhero which first appeared in 1972’s Luke Cage, Hero for Hire.

Mike Colter plays Cage, a role he first created on the Jessica Jones series, also on Netflix.

Deadline Hollywood says it is “one of the most socially relevant and smartest shows on the small screen you will see this year. In fact, with star power deluxe from lead Mike Colter and House Of Cards alum Mahershala Ali as the villainous Cornell Cottonmouth Stokes, the 13-episode first season is one of the best shows on the air and on the horizon.”

A collection of comics featuring the character was released in August,  Luke Cage: Avenger, Mike Benson, Adam Glass, Brian Michael Bendis, Frank Miller, Dalibor Talajic, Leinil Francis, Billy Tan and, Eric Canete (Hachette/Marvel).

A Man Called Ove opens as well. The film, based on Fredrik Backman’s book of the same name, is directed Hannes Holm (who also adapted the novel) and stars Rolf Lassgård.

Sweden has already picked it as their entry for this year’s Foreign Language Film Oscar race, reports Deadline Hollywood.

The Daily Beast examines the novel’s word-of-mouth success.

Reviews for the film are glowing with Variety calling it “irresistible … A touching comic crowdpleaser that may call for a tissue or two by the end.”

Milton’s Secret is based on the children’s book Milton’s Secret: An Adventure of Discovery through Then, When, and the Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle and Robert S. Friedman with illustrations by Frank Riccio (Red Wheel Weiser Conari/Hampton Roads).

Directed by Barnet Bain, it stars Donald Sutherland, Michelle Rodriguez, Mia Kirshner, David Sutcliffe, and William Ainscough.

So far, there are few reviews for the film about being present and aware and creating a happy family.

.

Stephen King can rest a bit more easily. James Patterson has called off the publication of a title in his new BookShots series, originally scheduled for November, The Murder of Stephen King.

Having announced the book just two weeks ago, its cancellation, reports The Guardian, was a result of Patterson “belatedly deciding that he did not want to cause King and his family ‘any discomfort.'”

It will be replaced with Taking the Titanic, co-authored with Derek Nikitas. A book with the same title, but co-authored by Scott Slaven, is listed on retailer and wholesaler sites for April. The Hachette site, however, has it listed for November, but still with Slaven as the co-author.

Several other new titles in the series have been announced, including a hardcover collection of four BookShot titles, Kill or Be Killed, set for publication in October, and three mass market “ominous” editions. See our downloadable spreadsheet, BookShots Oct, 2016 thru May,2017