EarlyWord

Even before Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opens in theaters on Nov. 18, Deadline is reporting that Johnny Deep will star alongside Eddie Redmayne in the upcoming sequel.

There is no word yet on his role, but Deadline says that it might be revealed via a Depp cameo in the first film.

Also making news, J.K. Rowling, who is the screenwriter for the film and serving as one of the producers, announced earlier in the month that there will be five films in the franchise. As we had noted earlier, the original plan was to create a trilogy: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2 (2018) and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 3 (2020).

The screenplay of the first film will be published on Nov. 19, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay, JK Rowling (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books).

The final trailer for the film is also available:

After “spirited bidding,” Variety reports that AMC bought the rights to the TV adaption of Dietland by Sarai Walker (HMH; Highbridge Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Marti Noxon will head the project. She is the co-creator of UnREAL and has worked on hits such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Mad Men says Den of Geek.

The show, “envisoned as a mix of character drama and revenge fantasy with a feminist perspective,”is expected to skip the pilot stage and go directly to series next year, according to Variety.

Walker’s debut novel, an Indie Next pick, made a number of end of year best lists in 2015.

Entertainment Weekly gave it an A, writing “If Amy Schumer turned her subversive feminist sketches into a novel, dark on the inside but coated with a glossy, palatable sheen, it would probably look a lot like Dietland—a thrilling, incendiary manifesto disguised as a beach read.”

The author of the children’s classic Tuck Everlasting (Macmillan/Square Fish) has died from lung cancer. Natalie Babbitt was 84 years old.

In addition to Tuck, which as been adapted into films and a Broadway play, Babbitt is also known for the Newbery Honor book Kneeknock Rise and the National Book Award finalist The Devil’s Storybook (both from (Macmillan/Square Fish). Five of her books have been named ALA Notable Children’s Books.

Her other honors include the inaugural E.B. White Award for achievement in children’s literature and being the U.S. nominee for the biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award.

Bustle reports that Tuck, which marked its 40th anniversary in 2015, has sold over 3.5 million copies since publication and has never been out of print.

Her most recent published  book was The Moon Over High Street (Scholastic/Michael di Capua Books, 2011).

EDITORS NOTE:

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

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

Please join us for the next GalleyChat tomorrow Nov. 1, 4 to 5 p.m. ET, 3:30 for virtual cocktails. Details here.
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During the last GalleyChat, many of the top mentioned books were by authors whose names may not be familiar to most. Our crystal balls predict that, by the time  they are published, most will be on the tips of everyone’s tongues.

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

Vicki Nesting of St. Charles Parish Library (LA) led the discussion for the hot title, The Dry by Jane Harper (Macmillan/Flatiron, January; LibraryReads deadline: Nov. 20) by saying it was a “brilliantly plotted and atmospheric mystery.” She continued, “When federal investigator Aaron Falk learns that his childhood best friend Luke has killed his family and himself, Aaron feels he has to attend the funeral. The drought itself becomes a character and its effects invade everything, from the devastated landscape to the fear in the people’s eyes as Aaron and the local sheriff begin to ask questions.” Many of us are hoping to see the return of Aaron Falk in a future story. (Reese Witherspoon has also snapped up the movie rights.)

George Saunders’ follow up to The Tenth of December (his NBA nominated book of short stories), the novel Lincoln in the Bardo (PRH/Random House, February; LibraryReads deadline: Dec. 20), is already starting to make a splash, reeling in 17 “much love” Edelweiss votes. Jen Dayton, collection development librarian from Darien, CT, said it’s “like a literary fever dream. Told by many voices of both the living and the dead it focuses on February 22, 1862. Willie Lincoln has been laid to rest in a marble crypt in a Georgetown cemetery. Abraham Lincoln, bowed by his loss and the war that is raging comes to the crypt to see his son one last time under the cover of darkness. You will find it hard to leave the world that Saunders has created behind long after you close the book.”

Two galleychatters gave major kudos to the domestic psychological novel A Separation by Katie Kitamura (PRH/Riverhead, February; LibraryReads deadline: Dec. 20). Soon after a couple quietly decides to separate, the husband  disappears into a remote area of Greece, and while the wife goes on a search and rescue effort, she’s unsure if she really cares to find him. Elliott Bay Bookstore staff member Kenny Coble implored us to get a copy ASAP, and sounding like it could be compared to a popular TV show, Andrienne Cruz said, “This is a book that was almost about nothing. However, there are plenty of ideas to ponder about what makes a marriage, what makes a life.”

A book gaining attention for both teens and adults is The Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Lindsey Lee Johnson (PRH/Random House, January; LibraryReads deadline: Nov. 20), a novel that portrays high schools as a “scary, tragic place for kids and teachers” (Kaite Stover, Kansas City, MO, readers’ services librarian). Another one impressed by this novel was Jennifer Winberry from Hunterdon County Library:  “Mill Valley just north of San Francisco may seem like an idyllic place to grow up, but for a group of high school juniors, all connected by the suicide of one of their peers in middle school, it is anything but. As these teenagers traverse the final years of adolescence, they are keenly observed by a first year teacher who is both fascinated by and in awe of these students, their struggles and their decisions, both good and bad.” [NOTE: The author recently chatted with librarians as part of  our PRH EarlyReads program].

Chatters who were impressed with Peter Heller’s first novel, Dog Stars, were anxious to read Celine (PRH/Knopf, March; LibraryReads deadline: Jan. 20), a private eye mystery that introduces aristocratic sixty-nine year old Celine who travels to Yellowstone National Park in a camper to find a missing photographer.  Susan Balla quickly finished it and said, “Heller is a master of depicting man against nature and his writing transports you into the wilds, and yes, even into the RV, with Celine and Pete. Beautifully written with wonderful, memorable characters, Celine is a fun, smart, and thoroughly enjoyable novel.”

The Possessions by Sara Flannery Murphy (HarperCollins/Harper, February; LibraryReads deadline: Dec. 20), a futuristic novel about channeling the dead so the living can reconnect with loved ones, has the unsettling undertones of  Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Jessica Chiarella’s Two Again with many moral and ethical issues for book group discussion. Kimberly McGee from Lake Travis (TX) Community Library, “Edie is a body which means she takes a lovely pill, adds something personal from the person she is channeling and helps grieving people spend time with the deceased. This futuristic thriller raises some interesting questions and moral dilemmas.”

He may be more familiar than anyone mentioned above, but mainly by librarians who adore author Nail Gaiman for both his library-loving attitude and his excellent novels. His newest, Norse Mythology (WW Norton, February; LibraryReads deadline: Dec. 20), hasn’t disappointed any early readers with Janet Lockhart leading the shout outs by saying, “Neil Gaiman retells the Norse myths with wit and a keen eye for character.  Thor and Loki in particular leap off the page.  Sure to please his many fans and create new admirers.”

Please join us for the spirited discussion during our next GalleyChat on Tuesday, November 1,  and for updates on what I’m anticipating on Edelweiss, please friend me.

The next in the Marvel line of comic adaptations opens on Friday, Doctor Strange, an expected blockbuster.

It is about an arrogant surgeon who suffers from a career-ending accident and seeks the mystic arts in an effort to heal himself, only to discover powerful beings and other dimensions.

Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Doctor Strange along with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Michael Stuhlbarg, Benjamin Bratt, Scott Adkins, Mads Mikkelsen, and Tilda Swinton.

Early reviews are good. Variety calls it “Marvel’s most satisfying entry since Spider-Man 2, and a throwback to M. Night Shyamalan’s soul-searching identity-crisis epic Unbreakable, which remains the gold standard for thinking people’s superhero movies.”

Entertainment Weekly gives it a B+, writing it “mostly works very, very well” and crediting Benedict Cumberbatch and Tilda Swinton for the success, “two actors, who in addition to being intelligent, top-shelf stars both project a slightly alien, otherworldy air [and make the film] accessible and seductively engrossing … It’s eye candy and brain candy.”

There are tie-ins as well as related titles, including the film’s novelization, Marvel’s Doctor Strange: The Junior Novel, Marvel (Hachette/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; OverDrive Sample) and Marvel’s Doctor Strange Prelude, Brian K. Vaughan, Jason Aaron, Stan Lee, et al. (Hachette/Marvel), a collection of previous comics highlighting the origin story and some of his adventures.

Airing on The Hallmark Channel Nov. 5 is The Mistletoe Promise. Based on the novel by the “King of Christmas Fiction,” Richard Paul Evans, it stars Jaime King, Luke Macfarlane, and Lochlyn Munro.

It’s part of Hallmark’s “Countdown to Christmas,” which began on Saturday. It’s “Holiday Movies! All Day! All Night” through Christmas and beyond.

Hallmark describes the romance as “a chance meeting between two strangers who share a disdain for Christmas results in The Mistletoe Promise, a pact to help them navigate their holiday complications – together. But as they spend more time with each other and experience the magic of Christmas the phony couple discovers there may be more to their contract than business.”

There is not a direct tie-in but the book is still available (S&S; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample) as are the other two volumes in the “Mistletoe” collection, The Mistletoe Inn (S&S; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample),  last year’s seasonal offering, and The Mistletoe Secret (S&S; S&S Aduio), publishing on Nov. 15.

Eighteen genre novels get featured in a series of three new overviews in this week’s NYT book section.

The novelist Charles Finch takes on thrillers, casting a critical eye over some of the offerings but deeply enjoying The Fall Guy, James Lasdun (Norton; OverDrive Sample), about two men caught up in a competition over a woman, one of whom is destined to fulfill the title.

Finch calls it “exceptionally entertaining … a cross of literary fiction, thriller and mystery” that reads like “early Ian McEwan or late Patricia Highsmith.”

He says that Lasdun cleverly crafts the story, “His clues never seem like clues until they bind tightly around one of the three leads” and that the novel is “exactly what a literary thriller should be: intelligent, careful, swift, unsettling.”

It is also a November Indie Next pick.

Reviewing six Horror titles, film critic Terrence Rafferty (who wrote a piece on Thrillers featuring killer women in June) very much likes  the small press offering The Fisherman by John Langan (Word Horde), the story of two grief-burdened fisherman who cast their lines in possibly magical waters.

He calls it “superb” and says that Langan “manages to sustain the focused effect of a short story or a poem over the course of a long horror narrative.”

Rafferty continues that the novel is “unusually dense with ideas and images” and full of “elegant prose.” In the end, he says, readers feel a “sad urgency on every page” of this “strange and terrifying” tale.

In her largely non-committal survey of six True-Crime offerings, Marilyn Stasio picks The Thieves of Threadneedle Street: The Incredible True Story of the American Forgers Who Nearly Broke the Bank of England (Norton/ Pegasus; OverDrive Sample), Nicholas Booth as a good bet.

It is the tale of a masterful 19th century forgery case that Stasio calls a “jaunty caper” led by a man who was no stranger to international long cons.

The author of Mislaid (HC/Ecco, 2015), which made the National Book Award Longlist in 2015, as well as many best books lists, and most recently Nicotine (HC/Ecco; Harper Audio; OverDrive Sample), an Indie Next pick, is a reviewer favorite.

Laura Miller, the books and culture columnist for Slate, tries to understand why Zink is so beloved, while reviewing her newest novel as well.

She is a fearless writer, not worried about a backlash in the form of a “moral, political, or artistic reproach” says Miller. Perhaps this is because she was already mature, 51 years old, when she broke big in writing circles, and the fact that she is far from a product of the “MFA approach/”

Miller says that while reading her work she seems “to be the only novelist who truly does not give a fuck what you think of her.”

Second, she writes as she wishes, without regards to accepted rules. “Her willingness to simply tell you a story without adopting all the elaborate pretenses of dramatic realism, with its carefully constructed, allusive snapshots” is a big draw Miller contends.

Third is her style.  She has a “fundamentally comic sensibility” and excels at “Romantic farce.” She is also “remarkably subtle—too sympathetic, perhaps, to qualify as satire, but uninclined to let anyone off the hook.”

Finally, and most of all says Miller, she is willing to simply let her stories be, “the most transgressive thing of all about Zink’s work [is] that it has nothing it wants to teach us.”

As for Nicotine, Miller concludes “It spills out like the endlessly unfolding events of life itself, in discernible patterns of the wholesome and the toxic but refusing to stay still long enough to resolve into some kind of life lesson.”

The NYT features the author of A Man Called Ove (S&S/Atria, July 2014) and other bestsellers this weekend, highlighting his improbable rise to celebrity status.

Like his character Ove, Fredrik Backman is something of an unlikely star. He was largely ignored by publishers who either rejected his debut novel or simple ignored his query letters. He worked night and weekend shifts as a forklift driver to afford time to write during the day and for a while, it seemed like it would all be for nothing. One publisher told him his work had no “commercial potential.”

Now his debut novel is a feature film and a breakout hit. It has sold over “2.8 million copies worldwide, making the book one of Sweden’s most popular literary exports since Stieg Larsson’s thriller The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” writes the NYT.

The novel’s appeal is global, selling in 38 languages, but its start in the US was, similar to its reception by Swedish publishers, rocky.

Reports the NYT, “it sold steadily but in modest numbers. Then sales surged. It landed on the best-seller list 18 months after it was first published and has remained there for 42 weeks. Demand has been so unrelenting that Atria Books has reprinted the novel 40 times and now has more than a million copies in print.”

The US publisher credits the surge to independent booksellers, “who placed big orders and pressed it on customers. The Book Bin in Northbrook, Ill., has sold around 1,000 copies, largely based on word-of-mouth recommendations.”

The Daily Beast has also examined the novel’s word-of-mouth success.

Librarians have adopted Backman as their own as well, making Britt-Marie Was Here (S&S/Atria Books) a #1 LibraryReads pick and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry (S&S/Atria) a LibraryReads selection. Galleychatters have also followed Backman with great interest.

The success of Ove fueled the sales of others of Backman’s quirky novels and has led, as we noted earlier, to more book deals. The first of which hits shelves on on Nov. 1, the novella, And Every Morning The Way Home Gets Longer And Longer (S&S/Atria). Deadline Hollywood reports, that like Ove, it “centers on an elderly man, who struggles to hold on to his memories, face his regrets and help his son and grandson prepare for his death.” It will be issued in a “small-format hardcover,” with illustrations. His next novel will be Beartown (S&S/Atria, May 2, 2017).

In a very Ove take on life, Backman finds fame a problem. “Everyone keeps telling you how great you are and what a great writer you are” he tells the NYT. “They want selfies, and that’s not healthy, because you start liking that … You still have to write like you’re writing for 20 people, or you’re going to freak out.”

It seems Bob Dylan is pleased by the honor of being named the Nobel Laureate in Literature after all and will attend the ceremony in December, “if at all possible.” He is interviewed in the Telegraph.

This week’s big book is a kids title, the next in the series that spawned so many others, Jeff Kinney’s Double Down: Diary of a Wimpy Kid #11 (Abrams/Amulet Books; Recorded Books).

On the adult side, there’s a new Harry Bosch title by Michael Connelly, The Wrong Side of Goodbye (Hachette/Little, Brown; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample) as well as one by Danielle Steel, The Award (PRH/Delacorte Press; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample).

The unlikely success of Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove brought a deal to publish more, 3 new novels plus a novella. Arriving this week is the first, the novella And Every Morning The Way Home Gets Longer And Longer (S&S/Atria; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample). The publisher’s description indicates it treads familiar ground, about an “elderly man’s struggle to hold on to his most precious memories, and his family’s efforts to care for him even as they must find a way to let go.”

A new month, a new set of James Patterson’s BookShots, including Taking the Titanic (Hachette/BookShots; Hachette Audio; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample), which replaces the belatedly announced and quickly dropped title, The Murder of Stephen King. Patterson is the lead author on Killer Chef (Hachette/BookShots; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample), about the poisoning of diners in New Orleans.

The other two offerings are in the less-successful BookShots Flames series, Dazzling: The Diamond Trilogy, Part I, Elizabeth Hayley, James Patterson (Hachette/BookShots; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample) and Bodyguard, Jessica Linden, James Patterson (Hachette/BookShots; OverDrive Sample).

Arriving just after an Italian journalist claimed to have uncovered her true identity is Elena Ferrante’s own Frantumaglia: A Writer’s Journey (PRH/Europa; Blackstone Audio). Alexander Chee writes in New Republic, that “Ferrante records her 24-year fight against the manipulation of her authorial identity.”

Also arriving is a second work by Ferrante, this one, amazingly, for kids, The Beach at Night (PRH/Europa). The Washington Post calls it “The latest Elena Ferrante controversy” because, as reviewer Nora Krug puts it, “Though compelling and vivid, the book is also deeply chilling, and its vaguely sexual undertones are troubling.”

The titles highlighted here, along with many other notable titles arriving this week, are listed with ordering information and alternate formats on our downloadable spreadsheet, Early Word New Title Radar, Week of Oct. 31, 2016.

Awards

The Sun Is Also a Star, Nicola Yoon (PRH/Delacorte Press; Listening Library; OverDrive Sample) arrives this week. It is one of five finalists in the Young People’s Lit category for the National Book Awards (winner to be announced in two weeks, on Nov. 16).

The Lyrics: 1961-2012, Bob Dylan (S&S). Dylan finally acknowledged being awarded the Nobel in Literature recently and in an interview with the Telegraph says he will attend the actual ceremony on December 10 “if at all possible.”

 Media Attention

Between Two Worlds: Lessons from the Other Side, Tyler Henry (S&S/Gallery Books; OverDrive Sample). A memoir by the star of E!’s reality series Hollywood Medium with Tyler Henry. Expect a small media wave with appearances on Nightline and E! News Daily.

Peer Picks

Two peer picks publish this week, including the #1 LibraryReads and #1 Indie Next selection for November, Faithful by Alice Hoffman (S&S; S&S Audio).

“With only a touch of her usual magical realism, Hoffman crafts a tale that still manages to enchant. In Faithful, a young girl who survives a car accident that almost kills her best friend spends the next decade doing penance to try and alleviate her guilt. Despite her best efforts to avoid it, love, hope, and forgiveness patiently shadow her as she slowly heals. Shelby is a complex character and through her internal growth Hoffman reveals that she is a person worthy of love, a bit of sorcery that readers will hold dear. Simply irresistible.” — Sharon Layburn, South Huntington Public Library, Huntington Station, NY

Additional Buzz: It also impressed Canadian librarians, featuring on their Loan Stars list.

Cabo de Gata, Eugen Ruge (Macmillan/Graywolf Press; OverDrive Sample) publishes this week as well and is among the November selections on the Indie Next list.

“Bored, anchorless, and alone, a man leaves Berlin for a tiny Andalusian fishing village where he plans to write a novel. Instead, he encounters a cranky hotelier, green tomatoes, an Englishman who acts like an American, an American who acts like an Englishman, a very quiet bartender, a mysterious cat, and, possibly, the meaning of everything — or lack thereof. This slim, playful novel will speak to anyone who has ever questioned the path they were on — or whether there is a path at all.” —Sam Kaas, Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, WA

Tie-ins

Lion (Movie Tie-In), Saroo Brierley (PRH/NAL; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample) comes out this week as a tie in to the upcoming Nov 25th movie of the same name.

As we have previously written, it is a memoir of an amazing journey of loss and recovery originally titled A Long Way Home, (PRH/Viking, 2014, trade paperback, 2015).

In the book, Brierley recounts 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, was adopted and relocated to Tasmania.

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. The inspirational tear-jerker is directed by Garth Davis (Top of the Lake).

It debuts in the Friday after Thanksgiving time slot which is not just prime time to attract families looking for entertainment, but also good timing for awards. Vanity Fair reports the film is “Already on Awards-Season Short Lists.”

Fans of the hit TV show Mr. Robot can read Elliot Alderson’s personal journal with MR. ROBOT: Red Wheelbarrow: (eps1.91_redwheelbarr0w.txt), Sam Esmail and Courtney Looney (Abrams).

According to ars TECHNICA “Red Wheelbarrow is essentially Elliot’s marble notebook from when he was in prison, and he’s transparent this time (no more lies). The notebook is what Elliot asked Hot Carla to burn, but… she didn’t.”

As reported by Tor.com, the creators say the book is “its own story, and you’re only ever going to hear this story with this book.”

The title, as many may suspect, is indeed a reference to the poem by William Carlos Williams.

The film Nocturnal Animals opens in limited release on Nov. 18 and in wide distribution on Dec. 9.

It is a psychological thriller written and directed by fashion designer and filmmaker Tom Ford (A Single Man), based on the 1993 novel Tony and Susan by Austin Wright.

The ensemble cast features Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Isla Fisher, Armie Hammer, Laura Linney, Andrea Riseborough, and Michael Sheen.

It is getting praise in early viewings. Variety says that Ford has created “another winner, an ambitious high-wire noir thriller.”

The Hollywood Reporter writes “David Lynch meets Alfred Hitchcock meets Douglas Sirk in Nocturnal Animals, a sumptuously entertaining noir melodrama laced with vicious crime and psychological suspense, which more than delivers on the promise of A Single Man.”

A tie-in edition, with the original title, comes out this week: Tony and Susan, Austin Wright (Hachette/Grand Central Publishing; OverDrive Sample).

The last tie-in of the week is for a work not yet in post-production, the start of a crime trilogy that will form the basis of an upcoming TV series.

Entertainment Weekly says it features “Ravi Chandra Singh, a London private investigator who handles “cases so high-profile that they never make the headlines” with his bevy of happily corrupt colleagues, like a hacker from Hong Konk, a Nigerian lawyer, and a brilliant stoner. When Ravi starts to see visions of Hindu gods as he becomes overwhelmed by his complex cases, he has to figure out if he’s completely delusional — or if he might actually be a modern day shaman.”

Sendhil Ramamurthy (Heroes) is signed to star in the still-in-development adaptation, EW reports.

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

A recently announced deal will bring the BBC adaption of The Cormoran Strike series of mystery novels by Robert Galbraith (aka J. K. Rowling) to HBO

A similar deal was struck for the adaptation of the author’s The Casual Vacancy, which aired in 2015

Filming for Cormoran Strike is set to begin in London soon, with release possible in 2017. According to Deadline, it will be filmed as three movies, each focused on one of the books, The Cuckoo’s Calling, The Silkworm and Career Of Evil. 

Tom Burke (War and Peace, The Musketeers) has been cast as Cormoran Strike,

Published in July, the middle-grade novel, The Girl who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill (Workman/Algonquin Young Readers) received rapturous reviews, including stars from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal and Booklist plus the NYT Sunday Review, which wrote, “Kelly Barnhill’s wonderful fourth novel … educates about oppression, blind allegiance and challenging the status quo while immersing the reader in an exhilarating story full of magical creatures and derring-do.” It also has a large number of “Much Love” ratings from booksellers and librarians on Edelweiss.

Word has made it to Hollywood. Fox Animation has picked up the movie rights. Deadline reports, it  “is expected to be a hybrid live-action/animation.”

The script will be written by Marc Haimes, co-wrote the script for the well-received adaptation, Kubo and the Two Strings.

Downton Abbey favorite Lily James is set to star as Juliet Ashton in the film adaptation of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer (PR/Dial, 2008), reports Deadline Hollywood.

Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Love in the Time of Cholera) will direct the film, re-titled Guernsey.

Don’t  make plans for a popcorn themed book club meeting just yet. This is at least the third set of actors/directors associated with the somewhat troubled adaptation.

In 2013 the BBC reported that a project helmed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Kate Winslet had been tabled with Simon Curits taking over direction and a new, unnamed, actress replacing Winslet.

As we noted in February, the project has had several big names attached with little outcome. Rosamund Pike was reportedly in talks to star at the start of the year.

Filming for this latest attempt has yet to begin. The project currently has a 2018 completion date according to IMDb.

Two professors of politics at New York University have written a hot title, The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith (Perseus/PGW/Legato/PublicAffairs; Tantor Media; OverDrive Sample).

The cynical and insightful guide to ruling was first published in 2011, but is gaining new attention thanks to a video that has gone viral:

The new exposure has caused the book to make an astounding leap on the Amazon rankings. Like a corrupt wanna-be ruler, it has conducted a coup on the list and moved from #63,499 to #2 yesterday. It is now at #40.

In their 2011 review, WSJ compared it to Freakonomics and called it “lucidly written, shrewdly argued.” [subscription may be required].

Paul Beatty’s The Sellout (Macmillan/FSG; OverDrive Sample) jumped up Amazon’s sales ranking as a result of the announcement of the Man Booker Award yesterday. The trade paperback, released here in March, rose to #2 and the hardcover to #52.

Below is the first part of his emotional acceptance speech. For some reason, all the videos we found cut off before the end of the speech. Please let us know in the comments if you find a video of the full speech.

Below, Beatty speaks to the press after the award.