EarlyWord

A feature story on Good Morning America has given a sales boost to Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy by Mo Gawdat (S&S/North Star Way; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample).

The mix of memoir and self-help by the Chief Business Officer for Google’s innovation department, Project X. jumped onto Amazon’s Top 100 list and is currently at #27.

Gawdat wrote the book after a major set back to his own happiness, the death of his son. He details his 12-year experience of decoding happiness, treating that quest as an engineer would, looking for an equation.

As Parade puts it in an interview, the happiness formula he found is “’You’re happy when life behaves the way you want it to.‘ Or more precisely, when your perception of events is equal to your expectations.”

Google features him in their talk series. The whole interview runs over an hour, but the first few minutes is enough to give a sense of his story and approach.

Boss Baby continued to rule the box office over the weekend, happily beating out another movie aimed at kids, the formulaic Smurfs: Lost Village. On TV, the adaptation of Jay Asher’s best-selling 2007 YA novel 13 Reasons Why is a hit for Netflix and is stirring up controversy about whether there should be a second season.

Two adaptations come to screens this week.

Having received much advance attention for its star studded cast, The Lost City of Z finally hits theaters in a limited run at the end of this week, expanding to more theaters next week. Based on David Gann’s nonfiction account of Percy Fawcett’s search for a fabled lost city, it stars Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller, and Tom Holland.

Already released in the UK, The Telegraph says it is “Transporting and profound … an instant classic.” Business Insider says it is “the best movie of 2017 so far” and director James Gray’s “magnum opus.” The Wrap says it “blends knock-out visual beauty, tender feminism, overall personal inter-connectedness, and something else, too, something yearning and just out of reach … [it] feels like a clear artistic advance for Gray, who proves himself here as one of our finest and most distinctive living filmmakers.”

Reviewing it after its NY Film Festival debut, Variety called it “Apocalypse Now meets Masterpiece Theater … a finely crafted, elegantly shot, sharply sincere movie that is more absorbing than powerful.”

The book received raves. The NYT critic Michiko Kakutani wrote it is at “once a biography, a detective story and a wonderfully vivid piece of travel writing that combines Bruce Chatwinesque powers of observation with a Waugh-like sense of the absurd … it reads with all the pace and excitement of a movie thriller and all the verisimilitude and detail of firsthand reportage.”

It topped most of the year’s best books lists the year it was published. Grann is now back in the news for a new book, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (PRH/Doubleday; RH Large Type; RH Audio/BOT).

Tie-in: The Lost City of Z (Movie Tie-In): A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, David Grann (PRH/Vintage; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

On cable The White Princess begins on April 16, about the long-running War of the Roses.

It’s the sequel to The White Queen, which aired on Starz in 2013, based on the first four books in Philippa Gregory’s The Cousins’ War series and earned both Golden Globe and Emmy nominations.

The new series adapts Gregory’s fifth title in the historical saga and relates the story of Princess Elizabeth of York, forced to marry into the house of her enemy. Gregory outlines the chronology of the novels on her website.

It stars Jodie Comer as Princess Elizabeth, Essie Davis as Elizabeth Woodville, Joanne Whalley as the Duchesss of Burgundy, Michelle Fairley as Margaret Beaufort, Jacob Collins-Levy as Henry VII, and Suki Waterhouse as Cecily of York.

One of the few reviews out thus far says “if it’s melodrama you want, The White Princess delivers – serving up a steamy soup of bitchy, backstabbing, corseted women plotting each other’s doom.”

Vanity Fair offers an interview with the stars.

Tie-in: The White Princess, Philippa Gregory (S&S/Touchstone; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample; also in mass market).

Imbolo Mbue is the 2017 winner of the PEN/Faulkner Fiction Award for her debut novel, Behold the Dreamers (Random House; PRH Audio/BOT; trade pbk to be published in late May OverDrive Sample). The Faulkner honors a work of literary fiction by an American author and claims to be “the largest peer-juried award in the country,” awarding $15,000 to the winner and $5,000 to each finalist. While some of the awards from the separate PEN America Foundation come with more money, as high as $75,000, the juries include non-writers.

The novel, about an immigrant from Cameroon trying to become a U.S. citizen, set during the recession, got some strong press when it was published an appeared on several best of the year lists, but did not receive the level of recognition that Colson Whitehead did for The Underground Railroad, which won  the National Book Award.

It was a People magazine’s “Book of the Week,” described as a “page-turner about race, class and the Wall Street meltdown … Mbue’s writing is warm and captivating, but her message is pointed: American dreams can and do turn into nightmares.”

The Washington Post chief critic, Ron Charles, said that it comes at the right time, as it “illuminates the immigrant experience in America with the tenderhearted wisdom so lacking in our political discourse.”

The NYT covered it in the Sunday Book Review, calling it “a capacious, big-hearted novel.”

The award was founded in 1980 by Mary Lee Settle who donated her National Book Award prize money to begin the award in support of a group of authors who felt the NBA had become too commercial. The name of the award honors William Faulkner, who similarly donated the money from his 1949 Nobel Award to create the  Faulkner Foundation to give awards to authors. It was dissolved in 1970.

When this year’s finalists were announced, Ron Charles praised the selections as being a “sign of new diversity in books,” moving away from a time when “all the stars of American literature seemed to be straight white guys named John.”

The other finalists are:

After Disasters, Viet Dinh (Amazon/Little A)

LaRose, Louise Erdrich (HC/Harper; HarperLuxe; Harper Audio; OverDrive Sample)

What Belongs to You, Garth Greenwell (Macmillan/FSG; OverDrive Sample)

Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist, Sunil Yapa (Hachette/Lee Boudreaux; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample)

Excitement is building over a possible sequel to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (Houghton Mifflin, 1986; tie-in ed., PRH/Anchor, 2017; OverDrive Sample).

A sly wink from Atwood as well as some additions she wrote for the newly released audiobook version (Audible only; cover at let) have brought speculation from many quarters, including Entertainment Weekly, Flavorwire, The Guardian, io9, New York magazine, and the Canadian entertainment site The Loop,

The original print book ends with a symposium set after the book’s event, reflecting on the dystopian period that came before. The final line comes from one of the presenters, a professor who asks, “Are there any questions?”

In the new Audible edition, Atwood has provided those questions, via an exchange between conference attendees and the professor.

One of the questions concerns how much more information the professor has. He responds:

“We have indeed made some fresh discoveries but I am not yet at liberty to share them … I hope to be able to present the results of our further Gileadian investigations to you at some future date … Give us a year or two and I hope you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

The Loop asked Atwood if that meant a sequel was in the works and she replied:

“I am in consultation with the Professor, but he is being very cagey about this. He evidently doesn’t want to make any promises before he has finished authenticating his new discoveries.”

So … maybe more will be forthcoming. In the meantime, Atwood has been promoting the audio, saying in a release “I’m delighted to see the novel that I wrote over thirty years ago come alive on new platforms every year. The roots of my original book are in audio — Offred’s story was recorded, not written, and even the ‘Historical Notes’ are a voice — so I was excited to extend the story with additional material meant specifically to be heard. … The Handmaid’s Tale is alive, it seems — and like all living things, it grows and multiplies!”

It is set to multiply in yet another format, on April 26 when the TV adaptation begins streaming on Hulu.

Next week, Jeffery Deaver’s character Lincoln Rhymes returns in his lucky 13th outing in The Burial Hour (Hachette/Grand Central; Hachette LP; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample). In terms of holds for titles arriving next week, it is running neck and neck with a new standalone from Lisa Scottoline, One Perfect Lie (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample).

On the other hand, there are surprisingly few holds for James Patterson’s Two from the Heart (Hachette/BookShots; Hachette Audio/Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample). It is under his imprint BookShots, which seems to be going through a reevaluation. Announced last year as a series of short original paperbacks, most upcoming titles are now showing on wholesaler sites as cancelled. This title is a hardcover and may be a compilation of two titles originally planned for the paperback series.

It’s not high on holds lists yet, but keep your eye on the thriller, The Perfect Stranger by Megan Miranda (S&S; S&S Audio). Word of mouth continues for her title from last year, All the Missing Girls, propelling the paperback edition on to the NYT best seller list, where it is currently #10, after five weeks, down from a high of #7. A full-page ad in this week’s New York Times Book Review overstates that a bit, calling Missing a “runaway New York Times bestseller.” Most prepub reviews are strong for Stranger, with PW suggesting it for fans of Gillian Flynn, Chevy Stevens, and Jennifer McMahon.

Also getting a full-page ad in this week’s New York Times Book Review, in a shocking shade of pink which sets off the cover, is Jojo Moyes’ The Horse Dancer (Penguin Books; RH Large Print; Penguin Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample). After the author’s big success here with her most recent titles, the publisher is reaching in to her backlist to bring her earlier novels to the US in trade paperback, branded to remind her fans of the success of Me Before You. Booklist warns that this release, a coming of age story “differs sharply” from the author’s later romances.

The titles covered here, and several more notable titles arriving next week, are listed with ordering information and alternate formats, on our downloadable spreadsheet, EarlyWord New Title Radar, Week of April 10, 2017

Media Magnets

An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back, Elisabeth Rosenthal (PRH/Penguin Press; RH Large Print; Penguin Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

This timely new book, featured on the cover of this week’s NYT BR, is by former physician, now journalist Elisabeth Rosenthal. As a reporter for The New York Times, she wrote the prize-winning series “Paying Till It Hurts.”

Out of Line: A Life of Playing with Fire, Barbara Lynch (S&S/Atria).

Boston restaurateur Barbara Lynch’s rags-to-ricotta memoir, is called by Kirkus, “A rugged tale of a self-made woman in a high-stress profession.” Profiled in 2012 by the NYT, she clearly has a fascinating backstory, so it’s not surprising that the host of the Food Network program “Giada at Home” has already optioned the book for a possible TV series. Lynch is scheduled to appear on this week’s NPR Weekend Edition Sunday.

Peer Picks

One LibraryReads title comes out this week:

The Shadow Land, Elizabeth Kostova (PRH/ Ballantine; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

“Twentysomething Alexandra heads to Bulgaria to teach English and attempt to escape the pain of losing a family member. She ends up searching for a family when she realizes she accidentally kept one of their bags after helping them on her first day in the country. With the help of Bobby, a Bulgarian taxi driver, and many other entrancing characters, the search takes her all over Bulgaria and even back in time as she learns more about the family she is trying to find. Beautifully written and completely enthralling.” — Caitlin Loving, Bedford Public Library, Bedford, NH

Additional Buzz: Also an Indie Next pick, it is one of Entertainment Weekly‘s “13 books you need to read in April.” It also makes Signature‘s list of monthly reads and the April rundown of newly released titles that look good to Smart Bitches Trashy Books.

Four additional Indie Next titles publish this week:

Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage, Dani Shapiro (PRH/Knopf; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

“As I consider the themes of memory and marriage in my own life, I realize that Dani Shapiro has reached across time to touch me with her insight and candor, and this is how Hourglass will touch every reader who is lucky enough to find this special little gem of a book. What a particular and original voice she has shared, reflecting on questions like, how are relationships formed? How does love burn and transform you? How does marriage, that age-old subject, play out between creators in the race against time? Through fragments, touching bits of memory, and poetic flights of fancy, this memoir honors the genre and elevates the form. I couldn’t put it down and devoured it in one sitting.” —Cristina Nosti, Books & Books, Coral Gables, FL

Additional Buzz: Elle picks it as one of their “7 Great Books to Read in April,” saying “If you’re in the mood for a Calder mobile–like memoir that spins on its own inventive, beautifully crafted apparatus, [this] is that work of art.” NYLON picks it as well, “reading Shapiro’s magical reflection on love and aging and family and self [is] akin to reading a diary instead of a memoir, so intimate are the thoughts and experiences that unfold within.” Literary Hub includes it on their list of 16 April choices, saying it “might already be a classic.” PW and Kirkus star; Cheryl Strayed and Jenny Offill blurb.

The Redemption of Galen Pike, Carys Davies (Consortium/Biblioasis; OverDrive Sample).

“This is the most beautiful collection of short stories I have read in a long time. Each story feels perfect. The writing, the topic, and the resolution all left me completely satisfied. Their connecting theme is solitude or isolation and the struggle to move through it. The collection reminds me of some of Kevin Brockmeier’s writing: beautiful, sometimes disturbing, and always memorable.” —Lisa Sharp, Nightbird Books, Fayetteville, AR

Additional Buzz: Sharp also appeared on Minnesota Public Radio to talk about the book, saying the stories are “always a little bit dark, a little bit odd, always absolutely beautiful and hard to forget.”

Sunshine State: Essays, Sarah Gerard (HC/Harper Perennial; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample).

“Sarah Gerard is a Southern writer for the 21st century. In Sunshine State, the sacred lies right next to the profane; the weird is always inextricable from its own beauty. These essays reach out toward the people and places of Gerard’s childhood, family, and history while also reaching within to examine her own complicity in the creation of her life’s story. You’ll want to linger in these strange, quiet corners with her, and you will struggle, as she does, to understand the mysteries that motivate the people we love.” —Elizabeth Anderson, Charis Books & More, Atlanta, GA

Additional Buzz: The NYT reviews it calling it “striking.” It also makes a number of best of the month lists including LitHub, NYLON, and BuzzFeed, which says it is “entertaining and engaging throughout.” It is also one of The Millions “Most Anticipated” for 2017. Local coverage via The Miami Rail: “Gerard publicizes the private and privatizes the public. Though complex and intricate, her exceptional writing cuts with a surgeon’s care.”

The Day I Died, Lori Rader-Day (HC/William Morrow Paperbacks; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample).

“In this story, the devil is, indeed, in the details. You think you’re being distracted, only to learn that Rader-Day is actually building layers of evidence for the reader, connecting a framework of apparent incidentals to reach a pinnacle of suspense. Almost anyone can be guilty, but only one is a villain. You unexpectedly feel sympathy for certain characters, partly because they’re so genuine. I neglected things because I HAD to finish this book. You will, too.” —Tracy Aleksy, Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore, Forest Park, IL

Tie-ins

Advertising is beginning to hit for the National Geographic series which begins airing on April 25 and the tie-in is releasing this week, Einstein: His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson (S&S; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample). The series portrays Albert as a young man, his personal life, and rise in scientific circles. Based on Isaacson’s book, it stars Geoffrey Rush (The King’s Speech) Johnny Flynn (Clouds of Sils Maria) and Emily Watson (The Book Thief). Ron Howard directs, in his first effort at scripted television.

The series will span 10 episodes.

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

The third time’s a charm for Jessica Shattuck. Her third novel, The Women in the Castle (HarperCollins/Morrow; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample), debuts at #6 on this week’s NYT Hardcover Fiction best seller list.

Press coverage has been very good. The NYT features it in their “World War II Fiction: The Home Front” round-up, writing “Her achievement — beyond unfolding a plot that surprises and devastates — is in her subtle exploration of what a moral righteousness [looks] like … in the aftermath of war.”

USA Today adds. “World War II has inspired dozens of unforgettable novels, but Jessica Shattuck offers a mesmerizing new look.” People calls it a “masterful epic” (review not available online), and Bustle says it is “Riveting and emotional … a WWII story like you’ve never seen before.”

Librarians were on board early. It is a LibraryReads pick and a GalleyChat choice. Holds are strong in everywhere we checked, with some spiking as high as 15:1.

As we noted earlier in Titles to Know, the story has personal resonance, as Shattuck reveals in a NYT Op/Ed piece titled, “I Loved My Grandmother. But She Was a Nazi.”

The “gleefully gruesome” And Then You’re Dead: What Really Happens If You Get Swallowed by a Whale, Are Shot from a Cannon, or Go Barreling over Niagara by Cody Cassidy and Paul Doherty (PRH/Penguin; Penguin Audio; OverDrive Sample) outlines the most outlandish ways of dying. Naturally, it’s getting attention.

A reddit discussion yesterday drew thousands of participants. Fun fact: apparently eating too many pickles in one session can make your stomach explode (and then you ARE dead).

Popular Science ran a story yesterday as well, pointing out the grisly appeal of learning about “someone else’s totally hypothetical, totally bizarre death … You know you want all the details.”

The book was featured on the popular NPR show, Science Friday, and on April Fool’s Day in the New York Post.

Prepub reviews are scant. Only Booklist covered it, giving it a star and calling the book an “arch, brainy volume … With bite-size morsels of astonishing science and the perfect combination of smart-alecky writing and black humor, this page-turner will surely debunk any misapprehension that science is dull.”

Libraries we checked have either not purchased or bought lightly. Where purchased, holds ratios are topping 7:1.

“When you see an owl … you feel that you’ve seen something special, almost secret.”

Mike Unwin tells the NYT that part of their allure is that they look more human than most birds and are hidden from our sight by their nocturnal habits. It is a rare and special moment for many to see one.

Unwin is the author of a new lavishly photographed guide: The Enigma of the Owl: An Illustrated Natural History (Yale UP).

The NYT says it “explores the diversity, beauty and ecological importance [of owls and] introduces readers to 53 of the world’s 200 to 250 species … organizing the birds by continent and including well-known … as well as rare, more enigmatic ones.”

The StarTribune also reviews it, writing the text has “the right measure of starchy erudition: the springy, high camp of Jeeves, with a faithfulness to scientific inquiry” and that “not one of the 200 photographs is unworthy of a museum home.”

LJ gave the book a star, calling it a “most worthy addition” to the collection and an “authoritative, beautiful title.”

This follows an earlier high-profile book on owls, Tony Angell’s 2015 The House of Owls. Angell provides an introduction to Unwin’s work.

The wildly popular storytelling site,The Moth, distributed through a podcast, YouTube, and the Peabody Award-winning Moth Radio Hour, is also available in print form, The Moth Presents All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Unknown, Catherine Burns (PRH/Crown; OverDrive Sample).

Attesting to The Moth’s power in the literary world, Neil Gaiman provides a forward for the book and Louis C.K., Tig Notaro, John Turturro, and Meg Wolitzer contribute stories. It also has pop culture cred, having been featured on an episode of HBO’s The Girls.

The site’s fan are propelling this 20th anniversary collection of 45 stories up Amazon’s sales rankings, where it is currently in the top 100, at #75.

The NYT‘s chief critic Michiko Kakutani, is a fan, calling it a collection of “remarkable emotional depth and sincerity … by turns, raw, wry, rueful, comic, elliptical and confiding.” The Moth is playing that up on social media, highlighting it on both Twitter and Facebook for their 100,000+ followers.

This is the second collection, following The Moth, ed. by Catherine Burns (Hachette, 2013).

Fashion entrepreneur Sophia Amoruso received media attention in 2014 for her book #GirlBoss (PRH/Portfolio; Penguin Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

She is set to get more from a Netflix series “inspired” by the book, which begins airing on April 21. The just released trailer already has people talking. Jezebel says “if the first trailer is any indication, it’s going to be quick-witted, irreverent, and wildly multi-chromatic.” Elle writes “it looks good.”

Kay Cannon (Pitch Perfect 2, New Girl, 30 Rock) created the series and serves as showrunner. Britt Robertson (Tomorrowland) plays Sophia. Amoruso is an executive producer alongside fellow EP, Charlize Theron.

The Washington Post called #GIRLBOSS, a mix of memoir and business advice, “Lean In for misfits, it offers young women a candid guide to starting a business and going after what they want.” The NYT called fashion-powerhouse Amoruso the “Cinderella of tech” for the way she leveraged her interest in clothes and an eBay presence into a multi-million dollar business.

In recent years the shine has fallen off the company and it filed for bankruptcy. Vanity Fair writes “But from this fashionable mess, Netflix is hoping its new comedy series … will rise, like a Doc Marten-clad phoenix.”

There is no tie-in but a new spin off, non-library friendly, book comes out in October: The Girlboss Workbook: An Interactive Journal for Winning at Life, Sophia Amoruso (PRH/Portfolio).

The publisher describes it as “the attitude of #GIRLBOSS with the hands-on spirit of WRECK THIS JOURNAL … A graphic and whimsical guide filled with exercises, illustrations, and plenty of scribble room.”

Clearly, it’s not suitable for circulation.

After a wave of PR, including the author’s appearance on CBS This Morning, Sarah Robb O’Hagan’s Extreme You: Step Up. Stand Out. Kick Ass. Repeat, (HC/HarperBusiness; HarperAudio; OverDrive Sample) jumped into the Top 100 on  Amazon’s sales rankings, currently at #37.

O’Hagan, who made a name for herself by rebranding companies such as Nike, Virgin Atlantic, and Equinox, writes that average people can succeed by creating the most extreme version of their best traits. She tells the hosts at CBS This Morning she’s experienced epic fails including getting fired and believes that perfection is overrated and successful people should share their failures to inspire others.

The book is getting attention from a number of other media outlets including Fox, Marie Claire, Shape, and Inc., which includes it on a list of “9 Business Books of 2017 That Will Change How America Does Business.”

O’Hagen gives a taste of the book in the following video:

The final episode of HBO’s Big Little Lies, which aired on Sunday, has left fans clamoring for more.

Liane Moriarty, who wrote both the novel and its screen adaptation, tells Elle magazine today that she hasn’t ruled out the possibility of a sequel.

Meanwhile, Witherspoon and her co-producer Nicole Kidman also have the rights to Moriarty’s 2016 novel, Truly Madly Guilty. The author says, “That is still going ahead, though it’s not yet decided whether it will be a movie or a series.”

There’s been little news on other Moriarty adaptations. Rights were sold some time ago to both The Husband’s Secret and to What Alice Forgot. but there has been no recent news on either. In an article titled “Enjoyed Big Little lies? The best Liane Moriarty books to read next,” The Telegraph indicates both may still be in development.

The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction has announced its shortlist for 2017. The six titles include a past winner and a debut novel:

Stay with Me, Ayobami Adebayo (PRH/Knopf; RH Audio/BOT), the debut, publishes on August 22

The Power, Naomi Alderman (Hachette/Little, Brown) publishes on October 10

The Dark Circle by Linda Grant, who has won the prize before, is the only shortlist title without a US edition

The Sport of Kings, C.E. Morgan (Macmillan/FSG; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample)

First Love, Gwendoline Riley (PRH/Melville House; OverDrive Sample)

Do Not Say We Have Nothing, Madeleine Thien (Norton; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample)

Just released in the US, Riley’s First Love has gotten little attention here thus far. In the UK, critics were impressed.

The Spectator calls it “a hilarious send-up of chick lit … the meat of First Love is in its rich character depictions, from which Riley teases out a series of painful but exquisitely comedic episodes.”

The Guardian calls it “an exquisite and combative piece of news from nowhere – which is everywhere, too … Riley’s emphasis is on the quotidian experience of her characters – unbearable yet ordinary.”

The Evening Standard says it is “compelling from the beginning,” and The Scotsman says “This is, in a truly wonderful way, a perfectly horrible little novel. I read it in a kind of perpetual squirm, in a series of flinches and gasps. It is exact and exacting, and has the nasty pleasure of testing an unhealed abrasion.”

The two novels that received the most attention in the states are Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Norton; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample) and C.E. Morgan’s The Sport of Kings (Macmillan/FSG;Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Thien swept Canada’s literary awards, taking the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the highly prestigious Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. The NYT called her novel “a beautiful, sorrowful work.” While C.E. Morgan’s novel initially was not reviewed widely when first released, it went on to win the Kirkus Prize and was selected for the Carnegie Medal longlist for fiction.

The winner will be announced on June 7, 2017.

The first full-length trailer was released yesterday for the upcoming Netflix series, Anne, an adaptation of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables.

Emmy-winning writer Moira Walley-Beckett (Breaking Bad) is the showrunner and newcomer Amybeth McNulty plays the title role. R.H. Thomson (Chloe) and Geraldine James (Sherlock Holmes) play Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. The eight-episode version starts streaming on May 12.

Although it’s set at the turn of the century, Netflix says the series will speak to today’s kids, as it deals with “timeless and topical issues including themes of identity, feminism, bullying and prejudice.”

This is expected to be the first of several seasons. Walley-Beckett tells CBC that “the series producers have a five-year plan that would take Anne right through her high school years.”

That red-haired girl has had a recent spurt of popularity. A series of film adaptations of her story have also been completed, starring Martin Sheen as Matthew, Sara Botsford as Marilla, and Ella Ballentine as Anne. The first of those films debuted on Thanksgiving on PBS. At that time, Sheen told Entertainment Weekly that he hoped PBS would pick up the two sequels. The second has been released in Canada an the third is scheduled, but no US release has yet been announced.

There are no direct tie-ins but the public domain title is available from several publishers.

Rising to #75 on Amazon’s sales rankings today is the book We Do Our Part: Toward a Fairer and More Equal America by Charles Peters (PRH/RH; OverDrive Sample),

On the PBS News Hour last night Peters, a life-long democrat, a founder of the Peace Corps, and the founding editor of the nonprofit political magazine, The Washington Monthly, tells Judy Woodruff the book grew out of his worry that snobbery and greed have split the country. He blames his own party for becoming too involved in making money and too interested in status.

The book has also gotten coverage in the NYT, which calls it “a desperate plea to his country and party to resist the temptations of greed, materialism and elitism — vices he believes have corroded the civic culture and led to the Democrats’ failure last year.” The Atlantic says “it fills in a missing part in our current political discussion.”