EarlyWord

Last night, Seth Meyers turned his attention from celebrities to an author he’s been a “fan of for a long time,” Colson Whitehead and his book The Underground Railroad (PRH/Doubleday; RH Audio; BOT).

Although he features authors on his show relatively rarely, Meyers is known for reading widely and for personally selecting the books he features.

The book is currently at #2 on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction best seller list, after 5 weeks.

First segment:

Hitting shelves today with a hardy thunk is Jerusalem (Norton/Liveright), Alan Moore’s 1,000-plus page modernist novel that addresses “a secular theory of the afterlife,” the metaphysics of time, and poverty and class. So heavy is it (it is almost 10 inches thick and weighs more than some laptops) that the publisher is offering it in a boxed set of three volumes to make reading it more manageable.

It is fitting then that the most recent interviews with Moore, one published by New York magazine and another by The New York Times are weighty, too.

The New York magazine interview captures the author in a good, if reflective, mood, except for his take on certain comics. Known for many pioneering comics, including The Watchmen (DC Comics), he says, “I am really in a bad mood about superheroes,” and goes on to say about film adaptations that cycle through the same material, “What are these movies doing other than entertaining us with stories and characters that were meant to entertain the 12-year-old boys of 50 years ago?”

Despairing about much of the comic industry and his own role in creating some of the most iconic comics of the past few decades he says “I probably only have about 250 pages of comics left in me to write. With regard to the superhero characters, my opinion is that they were what I was given to play with when I was starting out in the industry. That’s it. It wasn’t as if I had ever expressed any particular desire to do them.”

The NYT caught Moore in a worse mood, one in which he is both evasive and self-indulgent, but did manage to illicit the news that he is currently obsessed with David Foster Wallace and particularly  Infinite Jest.

There is a way to teach your cat that the carrier is a safe place.

According to Sarah Ellis, co-author with John Bradshaw of The Trainable Cat: A Practical Guide to Making Life Happier for You and Your Cat,  (Perseus/Basic Books; OverDrive Sample), the key is an understanding of feline psychology.

The author was interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday by Terry Gross. Clearly, the subject connected with many listeners. The book is on the rise on Amazon’s sales rankings hitting #28 today.

The entire interview is a must-listen for cat lovers but a highlight is the discussion of the essential nature of cats. Rather than imprinting on humans as a point of safety the way dogs do, cats find safety in place, their home territory that they have marked with scent and know very well.

Taking a cue from that, rather than bringing out the carrier only when it’s time to go the the vet, owners should keep the carrier out of the closet, treating it like a piece of furniture, allowing the cat to mark it, become used to it, and to associate it with their safe home environment.

The six books that are still in the competition for the Man Booker Prize were announced today, winnowed down from the longlist of 13 titles announced in July.

Two of the titles are by authors from the US (in 2014, the rules were changed to make US authors eligible). Three others did not make the cut, including Elizabeth Strout’s My Name is Lucy Barton (PRH/Viking).

Paul Beatty, US, The Sellout (Macmillan/FSG, 3/3/15; OverDrive Sample)
On several U.S. best books lists for the year, including the NYT Book Review‘s Top Ten, it was heavily reviewed here.

Ottessa Moshfegh, US, Eileen (PRH/Penguin; OverDrive Sample;  8/18/15)
Featured on the cover of the  NYT Book Review,  it was also reviewed in the LA Times, The Washington Post, and NPR, appeared on several 2015 “best”  lists and is being adapted as a movie.

The other four titles are by authors from Canada and the U.K. Only one of the titles has been published in the U.S. The rest are set for release in time for the announcement of the winner on Oct. 25.

Madeleine Thien, Canada, Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Norton; 10/11/16)
Reviewed by Publishers Weekly, the Guardian and by The Globe and Mail.

David Szalay, Canada-UK,  All That Man Is (Macmillan/Graywolf; OverDrive Sample; 10/4/16)
Reviewed by Publishers Weekly, the Guardian and the Telegraph.

Graeme Macrae Burnet, UK, His Bloody Project, (Skyhorse, 10/4/16)
Published by the “tiny” press Saraband in Scotland, this title’s appearance on the list has drawn headlines in the U.K.. Up until the longlist announcement, the book had received little attention. In its review, the Guardian, said “this Man Booker-longlisted historical thriller deftly masquerades as a slice of true crime.”

Deborah Levy, UK,  Hot Milk (Macmillan/Bloomsbury USA; OverDrive Sample; 7/12/16)
Reviewed in the daily NYT, the Washington Post and the NYT Book Review

The glittering era of cinematic TV adaptations continues with the news that movie star maven Meryl Streep and Star Wars director J.J. Abrams are teaming up to produce a small screen limited series of The Nix by Nathan Hill (PRH/Knopf; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

Deadline Hollywood reports the deal is with Warner Bros Television which will be able to auction the finished project to the highest bidder.

New York Magazine has already called the debut novel “One of This Fall’s Buzziest.”

As we noted, it racked up accolades when it hit the shelves with People magazine making it a pick for the week, calling it  “as good as the best Michael Chabon or Jonathan Franzen.”

Entertainment Weekly was also impressed, giving it an A- and calling it “a big fat cinder block of a book brainy enough to wipe away the last SPF-smeared vestiges of a lazy summer but so immediately engaging, too, that it makes the transition feel like a reward.”

Early days yet and no word on who will star opposite Streep in the role of her on-screen son, Samuel Andresen-Anderson.

Graphic novelist Raina Telgemeier was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition yesterday, causing her new book Ghosts (Scholastic/GRAPHIX) to jump to #8 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

She tells interviewer Barrie Handyman that she hopes the book will serve as a way to talk to children about a difficult subject, death.

The book will be published tomorrow.

The majority of the Fall Preview lists are out, providing an overview of the reading season. In addition to the lists we have already covered, USA Today recently released their Fall Preview, as did Lit Hub, which rounded up eclectic picks from indie booksellers. Even the fashion magazines joined the game, with Glamour, Elle, and Vogue issuing lists and putting to good use all the extra editorial pages that come along with the fat September issues.

We’ve set up links to the various lists to the right. You can also browse our catalog of Fall consumer media picks. Reading through them is a quick way to get to get a leg up on books people will be asking about.

Most of the lists focus on adult titles, but Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, and LitHub also feature children’s and YA books.

Consensus Picks

Several titles emerge as clear favorites including Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth (Harper; HarperAudio). All the annotations emphasize that this novel about blended families feels very personal. Indeed, the WSJ says it “recalls elements of her own experiences as a child of divorce” and quotes the book’s publisher Jonathan Burnham, saying it is “probably the most commercial novel Ann has written yet.”

Jonathan Safran Foer’s Here I Am (Macmillan/FSG; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample) is on most of the lists, including Glamour‘s, but with a dismissive recommendation, “For Keeping Prominently on Your Bedside Table or Bookshelf to Thumb Through Once in a While and Feel Smart for Owning, Even Though You Never Get Around To Actually Reading It.”

On the other hand, Glamour is over the top about another much-anticipated title, Zadie Smith’s Swing Time (PRH/Penguin Press; Penguin Audio/BOT; Nov. 15): “Book club, over wine, on a date, on the phone, online…there’s never a wrong time to gush about the latest Zadie Smith, so inoculate yourself against spoilers by reading it the moment you can.” 

Blockbuster Authors

Even the fashion magazines tend to focus on literary titles, leaving USA Today as the only source to mention Nicholas Sparks’s latest, Two by Two (Hachette/Grand Central; Blackstone Audio) or Stephenie Meyer’s The Chemist (Hachette/Little, Brown) saying she “channels her inner Jason Bourne in her first adult thriller.” The Amazon Editors, of course, also mention some expected big sellers, including  John Grisham’s The Whistler (PRH/Doubleday; RH Audio/BOT; RH Large Print) and Jojo Moyes’s  Paris for One and Other Stories (PRH/Pamela Dorman; Penguin Audio/BOT;RH Large Print).

Memoirs

Oprah’s latest pick, Love Warrior, isn’t on any of these lists, but two memoirs that many thought were worthy candidates for the nod are, Anuk Arudpragasam’s The Story of a Brief Marriage (Macmillan/Flatiron Books; OverDrive Sample) and iO Tillett Wright’s Darling Days (HarperCollins/Ecco).

Debuts

By their nature, these lists tend to focus on authors with proven track records, but several debuts appear on multiple lists:

The Mothers, Brit Bennett (10/11, PRH/Riverhead; Penguin Audio/BOT). Note: It is the #1 Indie Next pick for October.

Annotation That Grabbed Us — Vogue — “explores a love triangle in a Southern California beach town, and the ways in which women often nurture, and sometimes betray, one another.”

Mischling, Affinity Konar (Hachette/Lee Boudreaux Books; HachetteAudio; OverDrive Sample).

Annotation That Grabbed Us — Lit Hub — “If you read one book this year, prepare to be swept away by this luminous story of twins surviving the horrors of Auschwitz … The sisters are forced to endure the experiments of Josef Mengele and yet they survive—participating in camp events, plotting the death of Mengele and finding hope in despair. The pace is so beautiful that you must take your time with her words—imaginative, humorous, and transcendent.  –Valerie Koehler, Blue Willow Bookshop

The Wangs vs. the World, Jade Chang (HMH).

Annotation That Grabbed Us  — New York magazine — “In Jade Chang’s highly entertaining debut novel The Wangs vs. the World, Taiwanese-born American businessman Charles Wang loses his fortune to the 2008 recession and must unite his children to start fresh in China. Along with their stepmother Barbra, the Wangs set off on a road trip across the country, all the way struggling to deal with their new financial situation — and each other. A meditation on what it means to be an immigrant in America, The Wangs vs. the World shows the often surprising ways hardship can bring a dysfunctional family closer together.”

We’ll be watching to see which of these titles make the transition to the end-of-the-year bests lists.

A new throne may be coming to television.

Hulu has ordered a pilot for a potential TV series based on Sarah J. Maas’ best-selling YA books, Throne of Glass, to be titled after the fourth book in the series, Queen of Shdows. The series is being developed by the Mark Gordon Company, which also produced Ray Donovan  for Showtime and ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy.

The fifth title in the planned six-book series was just published, Empire of Storms (Macmillan/Bloomsbury USA Childrens).

It may be a race to see which Maas series gets adapted first. Rights were acquired last November to the author’s second series,  A Court of Thorns and Roses (Macmillan/Bloomsbury USA Childrens, May 2014).

The second title in that series, A Court of Mist and Fury was released in May of this year and landed at #1 on the NYT Young Adult Best Seller list. It is currently at #7 after 18 weeks.

Among the many memorials to mark the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11, is a new wave of novels aimed at readers  who were either too young to remember the events, or were born since they took place.

In a feature on the trend, the NYT reports “the first major wave of children’s literature that explicitly deals with the terrorist attacks” is now forthcoming. “The stories range from tame middle-grade novels for 8- to 12-year-olds, which center on the tragedy but keep the horror mostly at a distance, to young-adult novels with unflinching descriptions of the mayhem and bloodshed that unfolded as the towers burned and fell.”

It has taken so long to see a concentrated group of titles, writes the the NYT‘s publishing reporter, Alexandra Alter, because editors and publishers have been too jittery to publish books set during that era, fearing the material would be overly traumatic for readers or seem exploitative.

Authors, worried that teens have no clear idea of what actually happened and that they themselves were becoming too removed from the events to write about them with truth and power, pushed back against those concerns, reports the NYT, quoting one author as saying of the 10 editors who rejected her novel for fear it was too raw and painful that “they’re not the audience for the book, and the teens that are going to be reading this book are not going to have that visceral reaction.”

The story highlights a number of titles:

All We Have Left, Wendy Mills (Macmillan/Bloomsbury USA Childrens; OverDrive Sample).

Love Is the Higher Law, David Levithan (PRH/Knopf Books for Young Readers; OverDrive Sample). An early outlier from 2009.

Somewhere Among, Annie Donwerth-Chikamatsu, illustrated by Sonia Chaghatzbanian (S&S/Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books; OverDrive Sample).

Towers Falling, Jewell Parker Rhodes (Hachette/Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Hachette Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story, Nora Raleigh Baskin (S&S/Atheneum Books for Young Readers; OverDrive Sample).

The Memory of Things, Gae Polisner (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Griffin; OverDrive Sample).

The Christian Science Monitor has a similar story, offering annotations of some of the titles.

Rising on Amazon’s sales rankings is The 37th Parallel: The Secret Truth Behind America’s UFO Highway, by Ben Mezrich (S&S/Atria; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample). Moving from #240 to within the top 100 best sellers, the jump is a result of  the author’s appearance on CBS This Morning.

Mezrich, known for his juicy, edgy, social science books such as Bringing Down the House (adapted as the 2008 movie 21) and The Accidental Billionaires (adapted as the 2010 movie The Social Network) turns away from accounts of college kids making money to focus his attention on a very different type of speculation, whether extraterrestrials exist and the story of a real life alien hunter.

In the interview with CBS, Mezrich says he went into the project as a non-believer, but in the course of investigating the tales of unexplained happenings along what is essential the UFO Highway (a 3,000 mile strip across the middle of the country), he now knows “that at least once something happened that still has not been explained” and that “the impediments to believing have dissapeared.”

He says there is a “enormous amount of evidence” and he hopes readers will consider it.

Like his previous books, this one  is already in the process of being adapted into a movie.

The book of the week, at least among reviewers, is Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth (Harper; HarperAudio), arriving on Tuesday. It’s already received coverage, and it’s likely to get more attention in the upcoming week (see Peer Picks, below). It also comes with the news that her breakout title, Bel Canto, is being developed as a movie, starring Julianne Moore. Check your holds, some libraries are showning ratios of ten to one.

The other literary title getting attention (as well as props from GalleyChatters this week) is Nutshell by Ian McEwan (PRH/Nan A. Talese; Recorded Books; RH Large Print), featured on the cover of this week’s NYT BR. McEwan is also getting the Hollywood treatment. His novel On Chesil Beach is in the process of being adapted, starring Satires Ronan.

Showing a larger number of holds than his earlier titles, perhaps because of the A&E series based on his books, is Craig Johnson’s An Obvious Fact (PRH/Viking; Recorded Books; OverDrive Sample). Netflix picked up the Longmire series (after A&E cut it). A fifth season will air later this month,

As we’ve written, Ta-Nehisi Coates followed up his long-running nonfiction best seller with a comic featuring the Black Panther, with illustrations by Brian Stelfreeze. The first four issues are being released in book form as Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet Book 1. WSJ interviews him about the series this week.

Jennifer Weiner makes her children’s debut with a middle grade novel, the first in a trilogy, The Littlest Bigfoot (S&S/Aladdin; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample). She also publishes her first book of essays in October, Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing (S&S/Atria; S&S Audio).

The titles covered here, 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 Sept. 12, 2016

Media Attention

Between Breaths: A Memoir of Panic and Addiction, Elizabeth Vargas (Hachette/Grand Central; Hachette Audio; Hachette Large Print; OverDrive Sample).

The ABC News 20/20 co-anchor writes about her struggles with alcoholism. She will be be interviewed by Diane Sawyer tonight on the 2-hour season premiere of the show.

The book was excerpted in People magazine.

In Such Good Company: Eleven Years of Laughter, Mayhem, and Fun in the Sandbox, Carol Burnett (PRH/Crown Archetype; RH Audio/BOT; RH Large Print; OverDrive Sample).

Watch for a flood of attention:

USA Today – Fall Books Preview – 9/4
ABC-TV – Live! with Kelly – Interview – 9/13
Bravo TV – Watch What Happens Live – Taped Interview – 9/13
Entertainment Tonight – Interview – 9/13
Today Show – 8AM & 10AM appearances – 9/13
Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon – Guest appearance – 9/13
The Rachael Ray Show – Guest appearance – 9/13

Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy, Mike Love with James S. Hirsch, (PRH/Blue Rider Press; Penguin Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample).

Excerpt in People magazine, playing up the Manson connection. There is a VERY early, but none too complimentary, NYT review by Janet Maslin, two weeks ahead of pub. date. Coming in October is a memoir by another Beach Boy, I Am Brian Wilson.

Alan Cumming follows up on his well-received memoir from 2014, Not My Father’s Son, with another life tale, You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams: My Life in Stories and Pictures, Alan Cumming (Rizzoli; Brilliance Audio; OverDrive Sample).

Expect a media attention, including:

Vanity Fair – 9/1
W Magazine – 9/1
CBS-TV / Late Show With Stephen Colbert – 9/9
ABC-TV / The Chew – 9/13
CBS-TV/Late Late Show with James Corden – 9/20

Man of the World : The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton, Joe Conason (S&S; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample) provides an inside look at the second career and world-wide brand of Bill Clinton. The book was the basis for a news story in The Washington Post this week.

Expect more attention to follow, including:

CNN-TV/ Newsroom, September 13
MSNBC-TV/ Morning Joe, September 13
CNBS-TV/ Squawk Box, September 14
WNYC-Radio/ Brian Lehrer Show, September 15

Wolf Boys: Two American Teenagers and Mexico’s Most Dangerous Drug Cartel, Dan Slater (S&S; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample). The publisher offers a sure-bet hook for this true crime tale, “The story of two American teens recruited as killers for a Mexican cartel, and their pursuit by a Mexican-American detective who realizes the War on Drugs is unwinnable.”

There is a media wave for it as well:

New Yorker, 9/12/16
NPR-Radio/ Weekend All Things Considered, September 10
New York Times Book Review, September 11
C-SPAN Book TV/ AfterWords, September 20

Consumer Media Picks

In addition to Ann Patchett’s novel, People picks:

I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual, Luvvie Ajayi (Macmillan/Holt Paperback original; Macmillan Audio; OverDrive Sample) — “blogger Ajayi might make you rethink some assumptions about meant and women. At the very least, she’ll make you laugh.”

Juniper: The Girl Who Was Born Too Soon. Kelley French and Thomas French (Hachette/Little, Brown; Blackstone Audio; OverDrive Sample) — “The Frenches, both journalists, eloquently chronicle the terrifying, heroic first six months of their daughter Juniper’s life … tender, fierce and breathtaking.”

Unfortunately, Entertainment Weekly‘s book section  was pre-empted this week by their extensive preview of the fall TV season, but Ann Patchett’s Commonwealth is #6 on their “Must List” for the week.

Peer Picks

Four LibraryReads titles hit shelves this week:

Commonwealth, Ann Patchett (Harper; HarperAudio).

“The Cousins and the Keatings are two California families forever intertwined and permanently shattered by infidelity. Bert Cousins leaves his wife for Beverly Keating, leaving her to raise four children on her own. Beverly, with two children of her own, leaves her husband for Bert. The six children involved are forced to forge a childhood bond based on the combined disappointment in their parents. As adults, they find their families’ stories revealed in a way they couldn’t possibly expect. Patchett has written a family drama that perfectly captures both the absurdity and the heartbreak of domestic life.” — Michael Colford, Boston Public Library, Boston, MA

Additional Buzz: On most, if not all the fall reading previews, it is also the Indie Next #1 pick for September, Entertainment Weekly gives it a solid A review; The Guardian says it is “outstanding;” and Jennifer Senior reviewed it early for the daily NYT, calling it “exquisite.” The author was interviewed on NPR’s All Things Considered on Thursday. The film adaptation of Patchett’s 2001 breakout novel, Bel Canto, just got its own buzz, with the announcement that Julianne Moore will star in a film adaptation along with Ken Watanabe and Demian Bichir.

The Tea Planter’s Wife, Dinah Jefferies (PRH/Crown; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample).

“When Gwendolyn Hooper comes to Ceylon as a young bride, she has no idea that she’s entering a region on the cusp of political upheaval or that she’s living with a widower and his secret-filled past. The Tea Planter’s Wife has all of the elements that I’m looking for in historical fiction: compelling characters, an evocative setting, a leisurely pace, and a plot that unfolds like the petals of a flower, or, in this case, the tea plant.” — Amy Lapointe, Amherst Town Library, Amherst, NH

The Secrets of Wishtide, Kate Saunders (Macmillan/Bloomsbury USA; OverDrive Sample).

“A charming mystery introduces Laetitia Rodd, a widow who moonlights as a sleuth in 1850s London. She’s tapped to help uncover the mysterious past of a prospective bride, but the more Laetitia digs, the more certain individuals want to keep their secrets buried. And when those secrets turn deadly, Laetitia may be in danger herself. Saunders nails the raucous world of Victorian London, capturing the Dickens-like characters from the lowest of society to the lofty ranks of the wealthy. A fine read for those who love vivid settings and memorable characters.” — Katie Hanson, Madison Public Library, Madison, WI

Darktown, Thomas Mullen (S&S/Atria/37 INK; S&S Audio; OverDrive Sample).

“In Atlanta in the late 1940s, the integration of black police officers into the force is proving to be challenging. White civilians don’t respect their authority, and black civilians don’t trust that they can protect them. Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith are men with heavy burdens on their shoulders. Every move they make is examined. When the body of a young black woman is found, they will put everything on the line to gain justice for a woman who turns into a symbol of all that is wrong with their town. Despite its historical setting, so many elements of this tale seem timely, and readers will have much to think about after turning the last page.” — Sharon Layburn, South Huntington Public Library, South Huntington, NY

Additional Buzz: Film rights were acquired in a “very competitive” auction ahead of publication. It is also a September Indie Next selection.

There are four additional Indie Next picks out this week:

A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler and translated by Charlotte Collins (Macmillan/FSG; RH Audio; OverDrive Sample).

“Andreas Egger lived his whole life with nature as his most trusted companion. When humans, war, and debilitating events threatened him, he quietly climbed mountains, bathed in icy streams, watched the sun streak its intense color into the sky, and then put his head down and forged ahead. He lived eight decades, mostly alone, and faced death and privation with heroism, stoicism, and a depth of character rarely seen in the ‘modern’ 20th century. In this short novel, Seethaler has poetically created a character and a way of looking at the natural world that readers will never forget.” —Gayle Shanks, Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe, AZ

Additional Buzz: It is on the 2016 shortlist for the Man Booker International Prize. The NYT featured Seethaler last month in an interview for the International Arts section. The Irish Times says the book  is “haunting” and “spare” and compares it to Paul Harding’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Tinkers and John Williams’s Stoner.

Little Nothing, Marisa Silver (PRH/Blue Rider Press; OverDrive Sample).

“Silver turns the oral tradition into fine literature with Little Nothing, a masterful work of fairy tale and folklore. Pavla, a dwarf born in Eastern Europe in the early 20th century, is a survivor who magically adapts time and again in order to overcome cruelty. Danilo loves her and is obsessed only with protecting her. This is a story of the power of transformation and the gift of finding the love we need, if not the love we seek.” —Maureen Stinger, The Fountain Bookstore, Richmond, VA

Loner, Teddy Wayne (S&S).

“David Federman, a gifted student who is both socially awkward and emotionally immature, is trying to find his place as a Harvard freshman. Enter the beautiful and sophisticated Veronica Wells, and David is hopelessly, obsessively in love for the first time. Suffice it to say this is not a match made in heaven, and it ends badly for everyone when David starts stalking Veronica and violates the school’s honor code — the first steps down a slippery slope towards a violent and tragic ending. David is by turns sympathetic and repellent, and Loner is a complex portrayal of alienation, gender politics, and class at the highest echelons of American academic life.” —Ellen Burns, Books on the Common, Ridgefield, CT

Additional Buzz: It is a New York Magazine Fall Reading pick. The author is scheduled to appear on NPR’s Weekend Edition tomorrow and a review is scheduled for the New York Times Book Review, September 25. People magazine will also review.

The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World, Peter Wohlleben (Perseus/PGW/Legato/Greystone Books).

“The Hidden Life of Trees reads like a 250-page epiphany. Wohlleben knows trees inside and out, and his revelatory examination of the inner lives of forests provides evidence of what many sensitive nature-lovers long suspected: that trees form friendships, sustain one another, and should be viewed as more than a natural resource. This is the kind of writing that can profoundly affect the way we live on this planet.” —Stephen Sparks, Green Apple Books, San Francisco, CA

Additional Buzz: The NYT ran a profile of Wohlleben at the start of the year. It created a stir at the time, causing the book to rise on Amazon nine months before its pub date.

Tie-ins

Trolls. Film opens on Nov. 4, 2016. Directed by Mike Mitchell and Walt Dohrn (both of whom worked on various Shrek movies). Starring the voices of Anna Kendrick, Zooey Deschanel, James Corden, Justin Timberlake, Russell Brand, and Gwen Stefani.

Tie-in: See listing of tie-ins for the many related books coming out next week.

The summer blockbuster,  Finding Dory is still in theaters, and, with terrible consequences for blue tangs. Digital releases are set for this fall. A new tie-in follows earlier releases.

Tie-in: Big Fish, Little Fish (Disney/Pixar Finding Dory), Christy Webster, illustrated by The Disney Storybook Art Team (RH/Disney).

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

Tom Hanks’s turn as Sully in Clint Eastwood’s movie about the hero pilot  is scoring with audiences, based on today’s box office. The tie-in continues on best seller lists, enjoying the promotion from the movie’s advance publicity.

Also doing well is the series Queen Sugar on Oprah’s OWN channel. It’s two-night premiere was a ratings high for the network. The novel it is based on,  Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile (Penguin/Pamela Dorman;see our chat with the author just prior to the book’s publication), has also been rising on Amazon’s sales rankings.

Opening on Sept 16 is Bridget Jones’s Baby, the third in the franchise based on Helen Fielding;s character.

Renée Zellweger and Colin Firth reprise their roles as Bridget Jones and Mark Darcy and Patrick Dempsey stars a dishy American love interest. Emma Thompson features in the new role as Bridget’s ob-gyn.

Fielding, along with Thompson and David Nicholls wrote the script.

The producers unsurprisingly feel that, fifteen years after the first film in the series arrived and ten years after the most recent one, viewers might need a refresher course. To help that cause they have made an orientation featurette:

Never published as a novel, the tie-in will come out after the film premieres, Bridget Jones’s Baby (PRH/Knopf, Oct. 11, 2016; RH Audio/BOT), presumable to avoid spilling the beans on who fathered Bridget’s baby.

It may not matter if viewers remember the earlier movies. Placing it at #1 on their “Must List” for the week, Entertainment Weekly asserts, “it’s the rom-com romp fans have been waiting for.”

Below is the full trailer:

Also opening on the 16th is Oliver Stone’s Snowden. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson, and Timothy Olyphant also star.

According to Variety, Stone co-wrote the screenplay with with Kieran Fitzgerald and based it on Luke Harding’s nonfiction account The Snowden Files (Movie Tie In Edition): The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man (PRH/Vintage; RH Audio/BOT; OverDrive Sample) and the novel Time of the Octopus, Anatoly Kucherena (Glagoslav Publications. Note: Kucherena is Snowden’s Russian lawyer).

That fictional account is not yet published in the US, but The Hollywood Reporter quotes Stone as describing the book as

“a ‘grand inquisitor’-style Russian novel weighing the soul of his fictional whistle-blower, Joshua Cold, against the gravity of a 1984 tyranny that has achieved global proportions. His meditations on the meaning of totalitarian power in the 21st century make for a chilling, prescient horror story.”

The director has visited Snowden in Russia and shown him the film. For his part, Snowden says “it’s pretty on the money.”

Dennis Lehane’s novel, Live By Night (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2012) hits the big screen on Jan 13, 2017, directed by and starring Ben Affleck.

In addition to Affleck, it stars Chris Messina, Sienna Miller, Brendan Gleeson, Zoe Saldana, Chris Cooper and Elle Fanning.

Tie-ins in trade paperback and mass market will be published on Dec. 27th. For more tie-ins, check our Edelweiss collection.

The moody first trailer has just been released:

Not to be outdone by Hillary or Trump, Bernie Sanders is also publishing a book, Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In (Macmillan/Thomas Dunne Books, Nov. 15, 2016).

To be published the week after the election, the book recounts Sanders’ primary fight and offers a call to arms to continue his revolution.

The book title is the same as Sanders’s new political group. Intended to continue the movement he began during the primary, the NYT says it is “focused on addressing economic inequality and taking on special interests.”

Macmillan is promoting the book with the hashtag #readtheburn.